China's Social Credit: Rewards and Punishments - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4/?r=US&IR=T <comment><USER2> >Citizens with low social credit would also be prohibited from enrolling their children at high-paying private schools

that's the most fucked up part. sure, I can see why you want to punish people who smoke on train platforms, but punishing children for their parents misdeeds? how's that even remotely justifiable? would it be justifiable during a bank robbery hostage situation for the state to take their kids/spouse/family hostage for leverage?

>Being publicly named as a bad citizen. [...] However, people will be notified by the courts before they are added to the list, and are allowed to appeal against the decision within ten days of receiving the notification.

I'm sure that the CCP will provide a fair and impartial trial for those people.

<comment><USER3> This one looks a little weird (the original quote is very sketchy with little detail) so I researched on it a little. If you search for "私立学校 老赖" you can get a picture of what is going on. You can try Google Translate if you don't read Chinese.

Laolai 老赖 refers to those who can afford to pay debts but refuse the court orders to do so. High cost private school tuition is considered luxury spending. So the ability to afford private school is considered constructive evidence of ability to pay debt outstanding.

China needs to figure out a personal bankruptcy system. But it also needs to figure out how to deal with people who hide assets through friends and relatives.

As it stands I doubt this has much to do with social mobility, as some seem to be worried about here.

<comment><USER4> According to the linked article, social credit can be moved up or down for many reasons: "examples infractions include bad driving, smoking in non- smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online."

That means that if your social credit goes down for any of these reasons, which are not all financial, then you can be barred from the best schools.

I think it's far more likely to be used to keep top schools (which feed into top gov't/industrial positions) clean of any rabble-rousers.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean that the private schools could use social credit scores to select students? That is possible, maybe even likely. But one would think or at least hope that there will be diversity, as some private schools may then cater to the unmet demands by others. Remember private schools are in the business of competing for both revenue and talents. A "best" private school that refuses to accept the best students may soon find that they are no longer the "best" school anymore.

OP was talking about a government ban. I could only find cases of courts enforcing civil judgement this way at some cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some thought on why an explicit social credit score might be better than the current system.

The current system already has surveillance. And it's very likely that some hidden score system is already in place (because surveillance is basically useless without some kind of data-analaysis/filtering tools, which boils down to giving scores to people...) So with the current system, you may be denied government jobs or access to some services based on this hidden scoring system already in place. You will be denied but without knowing why, with no clues on how to fix this.

With an explicit social score, contrary to the current system, you see your score going down whenever you do something that does not please the gov. You also get an explicit score increase or (whatever reward) if you manage to change your behavior to please the gov. This makes it possible to understand why your score might go down and to game the system to bring your score back to normal. Gaming the system and understanding how to regain access to denied services is not possible with the (probably) currently implemented hidden scores.

Of course, I am fully against this type of surveillance and thankful of not living in such country. But the idea the the new, more explicit social credit scores will be worse than the current system can be challenged.

<comment><USER6> Creating an accurate numeric ranking of the tens of thousands of varieties of criminal, civil, financial, social and etiquette crimes and infractions, which may or may not be written down, is impossible. If you don't know the methodology, you can't effectively "game" the system. For example, is spitting on the sidewalk remedied by volunteering as an unpaid political canvasser for two months? Or by buying a new car and making the payments on time for at least year? Are these in different slots? Did a coder forget to test an expiration date on certain types of demerits? Are others off by a magnitude factor? You'd never know.

The benefit of a lawful society is that the laws are open source. (Takes a lot of meetings to get commit privileges, but that's often more of a feature than a bug)

<comment><USER7> Yeah but then you just have these closed-source, buggy, imperfect algorithms run by private corporations instead. And some of those corporations have proven themselves to be very incompetent. Maybe if these numbers are fully gamified in terms of social credit, we would actually have a chance of knowing how and why the government and corporations are judging us the way they are. It doesn't sound much worse to the current situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Putting aside the idea that this is a bit creepy by western standards; it might also be a bad idea more generally.

I'm reminded of Alan Turing; there was a really nice quote by some Briton to the tune of "If we had known he was gay we might have lost the war". There are a lot of social norms that simply haven't withstood the test of time. I look at the 10 Commandments and I think about half of them still hold for me.

Linking social norms, which are significantly arbitrary, to a powerful surveillance state and enforcement? Ignoring the personal risk the citizens would face, this might have economic and military consequences to China's detriment.

<comment><USER9> Western cultures do a variant of the same thing. Your prospective employer will not only look stuff up about you online (over much of which you have no control), they will also run a pretty deep background check, and if that doesn't work out in your favor your offer can be withdrawn. God forbid if you had any run-ins with the law, you're screwed for the rest of your life. Bad credit rating could disqualify you from a lot of jobs as well.

The major difference is that this is merely enabled by the government, not run by it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wasn't there a Black Mirror episode about this? Seems like a terrible idea, but will inevitably end up being required by many companies, just like credit scores.

<comment><USER11> There are some really nice touches in this episode - everything is beige and inoffensive, all the cars look the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks to be legitimate.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to- bar...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar-people- with-bad-social-credit-from-planes-trains-idUSKCN1GS10S)

Unreal. How long until this takes root in the west?

What happens to people who don't use social media, don't necessarily like being social, and just want to sit at home and play video games or reball some BGP's? Does this mean they're a bad person?

<comment><USER13> Instead of asking if it will ever take root here, maybe it's time to start talking about how to make sure it never does.

<comment><USER14> Too late. This is just an expansion of the concept of credit scores which people already find offensive. I agree with you though.

For example, in some states, you can be denied a job based on your credit score.

[https://www.selflender.com/blog/can-an-employer-not-hire- me-...](https://www.selflender.com/blog/can-an-employer-not-hire-me-based-on- my-credit.html)

[http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/pf/employer-credit- checks/in...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/pf/employer-credit- checks/index.html)

<comment><USER13> Fraud is bad when individuals and corporations do it, but when your government begins to commit fraud it's a lot worse. It's bad when individuals suppress ideas, but when the government starts censoring things that the powerful few find uncomfortable it's a lot worse.

So, with social scores: when corporations organize to share information against people it's bad, but when the government formalizes, legalizes and makes mandatory the entire system it's a whole lot worse.

<comment><USER14> I'm inclined to agree with you but consider this alternative point of view. The credit system in the country is essentially mandatory and fraud isn't necessary for it to hurt ordinary people. If someone (a poor person!) is denied a job (with which they hoped to remedy their poverty!) based on the ordinary operation of the credit system with correct information in it irrelevant to the position, that's a travesty.

Power and who has it can be more subtle than guns. However, I agree that the guns add quite a kick. One step deeper though one might interrogate the extent to which government power is used to support corporations. People get shot and go to jail over such things.

<comment><USER13> The government has a little more than the guns (in the form of the police, the jails), it also has the ability to force resolutions to prisoner's dilemmas and tragedies of the commons that are currently working in _our favor._ If corporations ever cut out a group of people that should actually be served (for example, denying loans to capable individuals on grounds that have nothing to do with their financial stability), then there is a Schindler's list motivation for corporations to "defect" and include the group. Then, the market dynamics make everyone else a lot worse off unless they also defect.

America already has one experience with a mechanism that can coordinate non- equilibrium behaviors among companies that would individually benefit from defecting: racism. Government fiat is another such mechanism, and as far as the similarities go, it could produce something of the same results. (Groups cut out of society with nowhere to turn.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Meanwhile in Hong Kong, the Chinese national anthem still gets booed every football match [0]. This will be an interesting reunification to watch.

[0]: [http://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1901082/hong-kong- fo...](http://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1901082/hong-kong-football- association-fined-again-fifa-booing-china)

</comment><comment><USER16> The most important point was overlooked in this article: when your credit score is partly computed from the credit scores of your social links, you tend to form elitist cliques. People with less wealth or financial skill or poltical demerits are shunned. They far further behind because they cant make the better links that they would help them. I hear even family members disavow each sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is how you brainwash an entire nation. Pavlovian techniques at their finest on display here. Kudos to China.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm so deeply disappointed by the Chinese people right now. Here China has an opportunity to enter the 21st century as a the world's most rapidly improving country with the world's biggest economy.

Instead, this is the absolute worst of American-style private contractor bullshit (private prisons, etc.), rolled up with the absolute worst of Chinese-style opacity and oppressiveness.

Who on earth would think that a hidden (known to few) objective function for being a good citizen would help create a better society? Why would anyone think that the private sector in China is even remotely transparent or credible enough to hold this kind of responsibility? Who on earth believes that China has the ability to administer this system with even a modicum of fairness (that might not be a shared value, to be fair)?

Nothing is black and white on this earth, and I genuinely hope this can work, but I think it is a transparently awful idea and I am disappointed in any group of people who would yoke themselves to it.

[edit] It's the worst of neither American private contractor bullshit or Chinese oppressiveness and opacity, that's a deep dark well that it would be pretty tough to scrape the bottom of. It's a crude fusion of both, and it's going to hurt a lot of people in ways little and big, but it isn't the worst of either.

<comment><USER19> Keep an eye on that Second Amendment of yours. Odds on anyone wanting to try something like this would want to disarm you first.

<comment><USER18> I've never really understood liberal opposition to the possession of firearms in the United States, given the country's founding principles. That said, I'd be more concerned about the right to vote, the right of the free press, the 10th amendment (which why aren't people more angry about?), the right to privacy as currently understood by the courts, and the fact that class-action lawsuits on behalf of people harmed unlawfully by such a system would cripple any corporate version of it.

I don't really understand the political spectrum in the United States, tbh. Obviously you need to be willing to take up arms against an oppressive federal government, should such a thing happen (and who would be deluded enough to think that a military coup would be categorically impossible in any country - if not now, what about a century from now?)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you can't fault the US for it's gun laws based on its founding (which was violent revolution), then you surely can't fault China's human right abuses, because they are similarly a product of its founding.

<comment><USER7> Pardon the ignorance, but how exactly are human rights abuses part of China's foundation?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chromecast now available on Amazon UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00I4WQ618/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B00I4WQ618&linkCode=as2&tag=72184612-21

<comment><USER2> I imported one of these (paying roughly the same price) and it was well worth it purely for netflix. My family has since bought about a dozen of them.

Hopefully with the official UK release BBC iPlayer (both TV and Radio) support is on the way.

edit: iPlayer support rolls out today, yay!</comment>


VisUAL, a highly visual ARM emulator - <AUTHOR> http://salmanarif.bitbucket.org/visual/index.html <comment><USER2> I'm working on a similar web-based emulator for the version of MIPS my school uses (UWaterloo, CS 241). We have to build parts of a compiler for the course and I was sick of hand-simulating my compiler's output to look for bugs.

[https://github.com/zodiac/yamd](https://github.com/zodiac/yamd) [http://readdit.xuanji.li:8000/](http://readdit.xuanji.li:8000/)

<comment><USER3> If you can make a really nice MIPS emulator, that would be awesome. I had to learn MIPS for a programming unit I did in my first year of university. We had to use the MARS emulator which is a not particularly good MIPS emulator in java.

A well made and nice looking MIPS emulator would be awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was reading through thinking "gah, wish I'd had something like that when I took Into to Comp Arch [with ARM] ... I should link it on the department facebook group or something" when what do you know:

        > It has been designed specifically to use as a teaching
        > tool for the Introduction to Computer Architecture
        > course taught at the Department of Electrical and
        > Electronic Engineering of Imperial College London.

Someone else clearly thought it would be useful without (like me) having to see the finished product first!

</comment><comment><USER5> wow this is gorgeous, it looks like it performs a function similar to [http://www.easy68k.com/](http://www.easy68k.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Thank you for sharing.

Do you know a similar tool for Linux or OS X?

Edit:

Not optimal but it works great on OS X with Wine (v1.6.2 installed via homebrew). Screenshot as a proof [http://i.imgur.com/qCwKhXv.png](http://i.imgur.com/qCwKhXv.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Magnificent! I am building a very similar HIP (Hypothetical Processor, reduced MIPS, created at my university for educational purposes) processor emulator with similar functionality. Still a long way to go, but I can definitely get inspired, since I imagined the very exact functions as here.

[http://www.hipsim.org](http://www.hipsim.org)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what GUI toolkit this uses. It looks beautiful!

Edit: Looks like it might be based on JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA.

<comment><USER8> JavaFX, although developed using IntelliJ IDEA :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was literally just looking for something like this the other day. Amazing timing. Thanks OP!

<comment><AUTHOR> I found it thanks to Karsten Schmidt aka @toxi ;-) [https://twitter.com/toxi/status/679826201502978048](https://twitter.com/toxi/status/679826201502978048)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this support the thumb (2) instruction set as well, or only ARM mode? We are primarily using ARM on Cortex M-devices that only run in thumb mode, but something like this tool would be very valuable for learning!

<comment><USER8> ARM mode only I'm afraid. It was designed specifically for a course teaching ARM instructions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wish I had this for my CE Assembler classes during first semester. Wonderful tool.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it open source?

</comment><comment><USER13> Any code examples I can just load?

<comment><USER8> Not yet, but if there is demand I can definitely add some!

<comment><USER13> Yes please!

[http://imgur.com/KzShplA](http://imgur.com/KzShplA)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> it's not open source, when we expect you make the project open source</comment>


'Chemtrails' not real, say atmospheric science experts - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160812103718.htm <comment><USER2> The idea of chemtrails is appealing to so many people because it's a way to express outrage toward the elites or upper echelons in society.

The theories are always a bit vaporous (like the chemtrails themselves), but I think it's stemming from an honest, genuine sense of frustration that one is being cheated or manipulated by a system that doesn't represent them. Chemtrails give a head to this boogeyman.

<comment><USER3> Those theorists are quite irrational, but what I find most ridiculous about a lot of them is not the theories themselves, but the idea that they have the ability to actually fight back.

Sensationalists like Alex Jones assert crazy ideas such as the government tainting our tap water to perform mass mind control and yet at the same time spread this message that they can resist against the upcoming "New World Order." With chemtrails specifically, on YouTube, you'll find videos of people spraying vinegar bottles outside when they see airplane contrails outside, believing it to be some sort of deterrent against their effects. If I believed that the government was capable of shit like super-effective mind control and all that other shit, I'd pretty much believe there's no hope for the world and recline to live the rest of my life in a bunker somewhere.

<comment><USER4> This. If the government is really that omnipresent and controlling in our lives, are they really going to let some blogger who knows the Truth run amok and post it everywhere?

Yes siree, this government is capable of faking the Moon landing, concealing the existence of aliens / lizard people, and executing 9/11 to invade Iraq, but they are _powerless_ against some random dickhead with a laptop who spotted the holes in the Official Story that this omnipotent cabal just couldn't cover up. Riiight.

<comment><USER5> Not this. "The government" is just groups of people. Some groups, such as the NSA, certainly do have the ability to be close to omniscient (or as much as it matters here). Their motto is "Total Information Awareness" for crying out loud!

Didn't you ever read Brave New World? You don't publicly kill the Truth- knowing bloggers. You drown them out with by a million distractions. See also: Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign.

I'm not going to argue every stupid conspiracy theory that anyone can name...but I don't need to. There are plenty of actual conspiracy facts that should be sufficient to convince anybody that this kind of shit actually happens. COINTELPRO, Operation Mockingbird and MK Ultra to name a few.

The modern "skeptic" gets it all wrong - they don't question anything and come to conclusions way too quickly. That's because they're not actually skeptics, they're just afraid of getting out of their mental comfort zone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The chemtrail people are nuts. I have some experience with them from my NASA sounding rocket days.

Some sounding rocket missions do release chemicals, including lithium, into the upper atmosphere to study how high-altitude winds behave. That lithium, by the way is a different form than you'll find in psychoactive medications and a very small amount is released anyway.

But many chemtrail people believe that _every_ sounding rocket mission includes chemical releases. Some were very upset about one mission I worked, which had no releasables at all. It was an underflight calibration of the EVE instrument on SDO, so all we were doing was staring at the sun for about 10 minutes. But no, we must have been hiding something, because we were sinister and evil.

<comment><USER7> What's a sounding rocket?

<comment><USER6> _Sounding_ is an old nautical term meaning "to measure something". You may have heard/read the expression "sound the depths", describing the process of seeing how deep the water under the keel of a sailing vessel is. That's the origin of the term.

Sounding rockets are rockets launched for scientific research purposes. NASA has the most robust Sounding Rocket program, but there are others out there.

Your typical NASA sounding rocket has two or three motor stages and can send a ~1000 lb payload to an altitude of about 280 miles, with about 10 minutes of time above 62 miles (the official demarcation between 99.99% of Earth's atmosphere and space). These are not orbital missions -- you go up and you come back down in the space of 20 to 30 minutes or so.

Science objectives include things like observing comets, the composition of the interstellar medium, the dynamics of the Sun, trying to find direct evidence of dark matter, understanding the dynamics of the ionosphere, wind currents in the upper levels of the atmosphere, and many more. For only $1 - $6 million USD per mission, a sounding rocket is a relatively cheap way to do some science in space, and the science payoffs have been huge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _" Caldeira said. "I felt it was important to definitively show what real experts in contrails and aerosols think. We might not convince die-hard believers that their beloved secret spraying program is just a paranoid fantasy, but hopefully their friends will accept the facts.""_

I doubt they will convince any conspiracy theorists. Often, the opposite occurs, i.e. _' the backfire effect'_: when they are approached with factual evidence, they end up feeling more strongly about their views than before, despite however wrong they may be.

<comment><USER8> Usually quoting a combination of other conspiracies that turned out to be true, and the 'first they ignore you, then they laugh at you' cliche, like somehow those things add credence to their story.

Carl Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World' book from the 1990s is a fascinating read on how the world is obsessed with conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given the inherent implausibility of a massive global conspiracy that has such obvious effects but no coherent explanation of... anything... it seems to me that it would be more useful to study why and how people come to believe in these things.

The problem is in people's heads, not the sky.

<comment><USER10> I agree, the problem is in the heads of the people who blindly trust everything they are told. Why is it so outrageous to assume that chemtrails might be a covert experiment to manipulate climate (or has some other purpose)? I'm not saying that it is, but is it outrageous to doubt official narratives? Since when is that scientific?

Doubt is reasonable, there's no problem here. Unquestioned belief in "common sense" and what authority figures say is not. A lot of people have a lot to gain by leading the public to believe certain things. Isn't it too naive to assume that you are always being told the truth, when some stakes are so high?

<comment><USER11> _Why is it so outrageous to assume that chemtrails might be a covert experiment to manipulate climate (or has some other purpose)? I 'm not saying that it is, but is it outrageous to doubt official narratives?_

If it were a single national airline, or even a subset of airlines, then maybe there would be cause for concern. But, a global conspiracy involving airlines, private airplanes, multiple governments, and tens of thousands of employees? That is patently ridiculous. Has anything on that scale ever been kept secret for long?

<comment><USER12> Manhattan project[0]

It may fail your 'for so long test' \- could you define how 'so long ' is?

0 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project)

<comment><USER13> Manhattan project was circumscribed to one country on one place and didn't involved a worldwide collaboration between almost all the airlines

<comment><USER12> Wikipedia disagrees in the second sentence of the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The survey results show that 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they had not encountered evidence of a secret spraying program"

Hang on...

<comment><USER15> Yes, really curious what the 77th one said.

I quickly arrived at the conclusion chemtrails had to be bullshit when I first heard of it in the 90s. But it's amusing bullshit nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "We wanted to establish a scientific record on the topic of secret > atmospheric spraying programs for the benefit of those in the public who > haven't made up their minds," said Steven Davis of UC Irvine. "The experts > we surveyed resoundingly rejected contrail photographs and test results as > evidence of a large-scale atmospheric conspiracy."

Not that I disagree with their expert opinions, but this is not a scientific record. This is not a hypothesis with reproducible experiments that prove or disprove the hypothesis. This is the aggregate opinion of many highly-educated people.

<comment><USER17> To be fair to them, a scientific record is in many ways just the aggregate of the agreements of the practitioners of [insert experimental / theoretical discipline here] who agree that a particular set of data and theories seem to be well-formed. So, scientific record is an aggregate opinion, backed by data. Sometimes the data are experiments, but these experiments require peer validation, or else any old crackpot wcould have their theories accepted. Other times the scientific consensus is less-well-backed by experiement (String theory anyone?) sometimes correctly, sometimes not. This is how induction works!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I see an awful lot of derision of "conspiracy theorists" but very little actual discussion about the known factors that play in this conversation. First of all, lets state the fact that the very term conspiracy theorist was part of a post public non-acceptance of the Warren report program by the CIA to silence and ridicule the reports critics by labelling them. Then lets understand that this same technique is being used today but they have higly evolved their propoganda.

I'm one of HNs resident "conspiracy theorists", but I also highly value logical and rational thinking and evidence/citations in thos theories. The people I talk to don't think that every line in the sky is a chemtrail, rather, they are concerned and geoengineering and its unforseen side effect consequences, and dont trust those in power to be either competent or non malicious.

To then lump all the people concerned about this and to only specifically discredit chemtrails but not talk about that bigger picture is fine, but what isnt is for everyone to start ridiculing conspiracy theorists as if they are all one crazy irrational monolithic group. Great discrediting technique, but not good for intellectual discussion focused on finding truth or educating people.

I especially dont like all the people taking this chance to wax one or two sentences poetic about just how irrational theorists are, suddenly shifting and not even referencing the subject matter presented. (on a similar note, I think Hanlons razor, often invoked by those doing the ridiculing, is actually a logical fallacy on its face).

Now, to play a little devils advocate, heres a youtube link that is interesting. Notice how he doesnt say this is happening, just that he is interested in this tech. Please ignore the sensational title and the horrible videos attached by association.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfH5_BiaP8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfH5_BiaP8Y)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprised to see this article in 2016. I thought chemtrails were debunked decades ago.

<comment><USER20> There are people that still believe the Earth is flat. You will never, ever, change the minds of these believers.

<comment><USER21> The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 'The survey results show that 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they had not encountered evidence of a secret spraying program'

I just want to know what the 77th said!

</comment><comment><USER23> Am I the only one to detect some sleight of hand at work here? How can "the experts" "resoundingly reject" the existence of a secret program? Surely, by definition, they would know nothing about its existence if it is SECRET?!?

As you can see, it is the widespread governmental secretiveness that provides the fertile ground for such "theories".

</comment><comment><USER24> > 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they had not encountered evidence > of a secret spraying program,

Have they been looking for evidence? If not this study is pretty worthless.

</comment><comment><USER25> > The survey results show that 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they > had not encountered evidence of a secret spraying program, and agree that > the alleged evidence cited by the individuals who believe that atmospheric > spraying is occurring could be explained through other factors, such as > typical airplane contrail formation and poor data sampling.

Whatever so called chemtrails are, pretty much anybody honest would have to admit that this really isn't any kind of new science or information that really proves anything one way or the other.

<comment><USER26> What about the 77th guy? I'd love to hear what he had to say...!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "76 out of 77 scientists had not encountered evidence"? Lol. What's that one guys evidence? I want to hear about that. I bet the researchers were like... REALLY dude!? C'mon! Props to them for still sticking to their data.

</comment><comment><USER28> But, but, water is a dangerous chemical, which has been used for societal control forever!

Reply with a self addressed envelope to receive your free tinfoil trilby.

<comment><USER29> Indeed sir, I'm glad you share the wider concern. There has long been established (and denied by the establishment) that there is an undeniable link between consumption of this 'dangerous chemical' and death in humans. Conspiracy if there ever was one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The numerous cockpit Chemtrail toggle switches are worth stockpiling for when you come across crackpots.

</comment><comment><USER31> In other news, 76 of 77 atmospheric science experts continue to receive access to government grants and facilities by touting the company line.

</comment><comment><USER32> Give this a listen

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1eVTy0bBCg&t=115](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1eVTy0bBCg&t=115)

Its a NASA scientist Dr. Douglas Rowland at the minimum admitting geo- engineering and that there are different types of "chemtrails" and that they have dumped lithium into the atmosphere.

<comment><USER13> No, he is not admitting geoengineering or chemtrails being what you think chemtrails are</comment></comment>


Motorola is turning Android into a desktop OS with Webtop 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://androidandme.com/2012/04/news/motorola-is-turning-android-into-a-desktop-os-with-webtop-3-0/

<comment><AUTHOR> This recent development is part of a much larger, industry-wide trend: the traditional lines between mobile, laptop, and desktop operating systems are getting blurry – and perhaps may disappear altogether for many consumers in the coming decade. Consider:

* Apple is making OS X more and more like iOS. Will they eventually be merged into a single OS? Will they eventually run side-by-side (e.g., insert your iPhone into a dock, get your full desktop)?

* The newest desktop version of Windows, which is tablet- and touch-ready, looks and feels just like Windows Phone – will they eventually be merged into a single OS? Will they eventually run side-by-side?

* Android, which got its start in phones, is showing up in more and more unexpected places, including many large-screen form factors – Motorola's Webtop 3.0 is just the latest example.

* Google and Mozilla are trying to make the browser a universal application platform for all kinds of devices – desktop, laptop, and mobile (effectively, they want to abstract away the underlying OS). FWIW, some new web applications already run on all platforms without modification (e.g., Trello – see [http://blog.fogcreek.com/building-trello-com-for-multiple-de...](http://blog.fogcreek.com/building-trello-com-for-multiple-devices/) )

* With GNU/Linux infrastructure available _everywhere_ , other smaller players are making similar efforts. For example, Ubuntu can now run side-by-side with Android, and is gradually becoming a viable desktop, laptop, tablet, TV, and mobile OS with single universal interface: Unity.

* More and more end-user applications are becoming, effectively, front-ends to services that truly reside in the cloud; and consumers want access to these services from _all_ their devices, mobile or not, ideally with a consistent, unified user experience.

This profound shift will likely shake up the industry, because it's not yet clear who the ultimate winners and losers might be. Things are bound to get very interesting...

<comment><USER2> I can't wait to see what Canonical will do with Android and Ubuntu once the Android kernel is fully merged into the Linux kernel again.

That being said, I still think Ubuntu is not ready for most consumers right now. It still feels too much like Linux. I still find myself needing to use commands to do something. That's just _completely unacceptable_ if it wants to target the large consumer market. Once everything you need to do in Ubuntu can be done with point and click, _then_ it will be worth a second look from regular consumers.

As for Google, I believe this is the direction they need to take right now. Get a ton of tablet apps on Android, and try to optimize it a bit more for laptops, without compromising on the touch/tablet experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> They should've done this from the beginning, with the Motorola Atrix (first phone to feature Webtop) booting into Honeycomb (which Motorola was also first to release around the same time).

It would've still been 2 different OS's though, Gingerbread on phone and Honeycomb in the "Webtop mode", and ICS should finally unify this, allowing you to use the same OS in both phone phone and Webtop mode.

This is clearly the direction Google needs to take, especially now that they have Chrome for Android. Can't they just port whatever extra features ChromeOS has to Chrome for Android and be done with it? That would make a lot more sense than dual booting Android and ChromeOS, which was one of the rumors earlier. It would seem awfully redundant to me.

I know Google dreams about competing with Microsoft in the laptop space, but to do that they need a complete 180 degree turn-around on their very annoying passiveness about tablet apps. They need a ton more tablet apps if they want this to succeed, and they need them before fall 2012 when Windows 8 is launching. Waiting around for them to arrive is not a smart strategy for them. They need to go after the developers and make them do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used a friend's Asus Transformer Prime a couple weeks ago (Android tablet with keyboard) and it seemed very well implemented. The Transformer Prime is a great netbook and dang close to being a laptop replacement.

It made me wonder what the point of ChromeOS is. If the Transformer Prime has Chrome and does a lot else too, ChromeOS seems redundant.

<comment><USER4> Chrome was, I suspect, the internal reason why Google not only lagged on using Android on tablet form factors, but actually dissuaded such use. They lost a lot of time during that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "desktop" mode looks like standard Android. What are they doing to make it work better in a keyboard/mouse scenario?

</comment><comment><USER6> Using a mobile OS on a non mobile/tablet device. Why?!?! If I have a bulky machine, I want it to offer a lot more than a mobile device.

They'd be better off putting it on a tablet + separete keyboard. Looks cool though, I have to say.

<comment><USER2> I wish more manufacturers would follow Asus's lead with the Transformer, Samsung especially. They don't even have to promote it together, just offer the option as an accessory. What's there to lose from that? Actually, Samsung does offer some keyboards for their 10.1 tablets, but they feel completely disjointed, like it's just a regular keyboard, not an integrated one. I want to be able to turn it into a laptop and use it as a laptop, not just as a dock for the tablet that I could only use at home.

<comment><USER7> We have to competing Ways.

The top down Apple Way and the exploratory Android Way (they have other competing qualities besides). I'm pretty happy to see this going on and happy that both are having success. I'd also be happy to see MS join in with another Way.

Anyway, rather than follow a lead I would like to see other manufacturers explore different paths. If Asus do well enough, other manufacturers will follow anyway. For now Id like to see manufacturers work on making Android laptops/netbooks that can replace Windows/Mac for some people or some cases. It seems to me that the making it "a table too" would be more natural than making it "a netbook too."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds pretty cool, I think. After all, the only reason I have a PC is for gaming, for all the rest (including work) all I use is a SAP log-on pad and office. AFAIK all that can be run either on a tablet or in the cloud. So yes, smartphone, tablet and desktop OSs can merge (or how ever you gonna call that).

Whats gonna happen to Linux / Unix in that scenario is another question.

Regarding the Razr / Webtop 3.0, hell that looks cool!

</comment><comment><USER9> Personally, I think it'd be cool if they had the phone plug in not at the back but in place of the touchpad....that way the phone can act as a mouse and also extend the primary display

</comment><comment><USER10> A desktop OS written in Java.

:(

<comment><USER11> android id written in c, its applications are written in java. (and indirectly html5, to an extent)</comment></comment>


Erlang/OTP, Manning beta book  - <AUTHOR> http://www.manning.com/logan/ this might be an early beta, sofcover release will be feb 09.<p>authors: Martin Logan, Eric Merritt, Richard Carlsson, and Robert Calco <comment><USER2> It looks promising...

I wrote the authors and asked them to reconsider the Silverlight chapter, though. I think focusing on Flash/Flex integration (or even something else entirely) would be much more useful to the community. Silverlight has very little traction, and Flash/Flex have better platform and open-source support. Silverlight integration would be a wasted chapter for many, I think.

<comment><USER3> It appears to me that the entirety of section 3 has very little to do with OTP. What would have been far more useful would be chapters on debugging, distel, more digging into the hidden corners of OTP, and a chapter or two dedicated to mnesia. Too bad, but at least there are two other erlang books coming out in the next six months or so...

<comment><USER2> I tend to agree, although I didn't want to jump to too many conclusions just based on chapter titles. A chapter with Silverlight in the title is a dead giveaway, though ;-)

Is anyone writing a book just on Mnesia/DB integration?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> actually only a couple chapters, right now

[http://patricklogan.blogspot.com/2008/08/concurrent- programm...](http://patricklogan.blogspot.com/2008/08/concurrent-programming- with-erlang-otp.html)</comment>


Http://www.Google.com/search?q=recursion - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=recursion

<comment><USER2> Also see the comments on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2124193>

</comment><comment><USER3> Other easter eggs:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=anagram> <http://www.google.com/search?q=ascii+art>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://google.blogspace.com/archives/001066>

_Terry noted that when she searched for "Google" and clicked I'm Feeling Look and nothing happened! "In Computer Science we call that recursion. [...] Sergey's giving me a dirty look." And then Sergey suggested it was "idempotence"._</comment>


Programming Isn't Manual Labor, But It Still Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/04/30/programming-sucks/

<comment><USER2> In case you're wondering why this obviously interesting item has had almost no up-votes and almost no comments, it's been submitted several times over the past couple of days. It's obviously something that's come to the attention of the general programming audience.</comment>


Show HN: A distributed workflow runner with focus on performance and simplicity - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fristonio/xene <comment><AUTHOR> Xene comes with a beta UI to test out current features and play with the ecosystem. You can know more about the UI here - [https://github.com/fristonio/xene-ui](https://github.com/fristonio/xene-ui).

</comment><comment><USER2> Hi, is this similar to the Argo project? Is a scheduler included?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @Lucasoato, Yeah, the idea behind the two projects is quite similar. But while Argo is Kubernetes native, Xene is a generic distributed workflow runner tool built on top of K8S primitives and is not dependent on K8S. This helps xene to be performant but at the same time makes it simple to develop and use. Yeah, xene comes with an inbuilt Scheduler. The scheduler is quite simple at this point and various scheduling strategies are yet to be implemented for xene.

Hope this answers your question, let me know if you have any other doubts regarding Xene.</comment></comment>


Software Development: Mistakes I Made - <AUTHOR> https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2020/04/25/the-secret-of-software-success/ <comment><USER2> > However this time I didn't rush to implement, thanks mainly to the influence > of Ed Ashcroft. In retrospect Ed's first impulse when he had an idea was to > document, not implement. We produced a series of widely read papers and soon > had other researchers and brilliant students of our own working on it.

I'm not sure this actually applies to most people. The document vs implement struggle is something I see in modern software shops a lot. It certainly depends on the personality: some people just like thinking through everything and producing a coherent writeup before writing a single line of code, but for some writing code itself is an act that clarifies the still-murky concepts and helps to produce a good writeup.

But in the end, most people aren't producing novel enough technologies that the benefit of a complete writeup is there. You don't write something brilliant and have other researchers work on it; you merely write something for the benefit of a future colleague understand your code quickly. It's a very different class of software development.

<comment><USER3> > "for some writing code itself is an act that clarifies the still-murky > concepts and helps to produce a good writeup."

This is my philosophy after ~2 years of working on distributed systems. I got sick of vague design discussions where everyone has a 5 minute memory.

I am much happier to sit at my desk and figure it out by writing code, then produce a design doc once I have a solid prototype working. It feels more honest and real.

At the same time, I wonder if I'm missing out on a different way of doing things.

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of TDD arguments.

If I'm working within a system I like to code the minimum golden path, add a tests that passes, then add more checks or a new test and go back to the code, etc. Usually the constraints of the system point the way to an obvious skeletal implementation and you can learn as you go along.

On a greenfield project it is especially valuable to have discussions beforehand if people have done something similar before but talking about code at a high level tends to become nebulous rather quickly.

<comment><USER5> I think the philosophy behind TDD is really valuable in the sense of "start with a goal in mind", but I find that I get better results with running and iterating than going to the effort of writing tests all the way out.

Probably just a mismatch of our testing tools vs the types of things I need to develop usually

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had the bad fortune of taking this guy's "computer science" class a long time ago as an undergrad. He spent the entire first week covering WW2 and other history. Then during the rest of the semester didn't teach anything.

The icing on the cake was when we were handed evaluation forms he said to the class "It doesn't matter what you fill out because I have tenure."

<comment><USER7> What I meant was, say what you think, don't worry about getting me in trouble.

As for the course , you''re saying I didn't teach for the future. Guilty.

<comment><USER6> You didn't teach anything. Period. This was the opinion of all my classmates and others I knew who took your class. If you don't believe me, see for yourself: [https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=48636](https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=48636)

<comment><USER7> I clearly remember teaching the resolution proof method, adversarial graph search (games), the state of automatic language translation, Bayesian spam filtering ... maybe you weren't paying attention.

<comment><USER6> I got an easy A in your course. How would that happen if I weren't paying attention?

<comment><USER8> So, he taught topics.

<comment><USER6> Not really. I don't remember learning anything and I still got an A just like most of the other students. Teaching is more than just providing a syllabus and then lazing around in the classroom.

<comment><USER9> >I got an easy A in your course. How would that happen if I weren't paying attention?

This statement implies that something was taught, what else can help you get an A with your attention

<comment><USER6> Yes you caught me lying. "Something" was taught. How clever of you. /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey, Bill Wadge was a prof of mine! It was a topics in Artificial Intelligence course just before the Deep Learning boom. It was all about entailment and modal logics and frankly seemed really out of date. It was interesting, however.

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems to directly contradict YAGNI. I find that when I "write for the future", I over-engineer things and they get messy and bloated.

<comment><USER12> I took his meaning as "assume better hardware will be available in the future", which is not what you seem to mean, and may not be as true these days anyway.

That said, when I've seen people over-engineer things (and maybe this isn't your problem, it's just what I've seen most) it's usually because instead of solving the problem in front of them, they created a flexible framework to solve a class of problems including the one in front of them. And it usually fails because they don't actually _know_ what other problems they'll encounter - they guess and get it wrong. So their framework is flexible on Dimension X, but they actually need it to be flexible on Dimension Y.

The best advice I read on this was to never build a framework until you have at least 3 examples of the problem. Once you've got 3 examples, you have a good feel for which ways it needs to be flexible. I would add that you should also make sure you'll eventually have more than 3, because if 3 is the total number of concrete examples you still don't need a framework.

Also, it's entirely possible some smart guy/gal can give you those 3 examples before you even start building. A good product person can do that. If you have that, _and_ they're pretty sure you'll actually get there, then go ahead and build it.

Difficulty of changing it in the future also plays into this, but I've typed too much already. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Back in the 1990s, when I was a software engineer at a database company in the Bay Area (rhymed with "PsyBass", if you pronounce "bass" as a musical instrument :), there was a joke among some of the architects along the lines of, "I __DREW __the boxes and arrows! If you can 't implement it, that's you're fault!" Now, as a "software architect" in a really, __really __small shop, I basically just try and lead by example, and make sure my ideas work as code before inflicting them on anyone else. But that sorta sounds like keeping it all to myself until I am sure it works, per the article. I like to document (more than most), but have found over the years the only person who reads my documentation tends to be me. So writing docs or writing code, either way, tends to help me refine my ideas.

</comment><comment><USER14> Write for the future sounds great until you remember hindsight is 20-20 and predictions aren't.

<comment><USER15> Yep. You can write for a future where desktops boast single-core speeds in the 10GHz range. That's how you get Crysis, which still has performance issues on the latest CPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lovely stories hamstrung by the perceived need for a moral.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was a CS student at Warwick (UK university) in the late 80s, and clearly remembering doing functional programming with Lucid. Never heard of it since.

</comment><comment><USER18> Everyone makes mistakes, the key is to find ways to avoid making them over and over.</comment>


Placeholder images and Gravatar integration with Cloudinary - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/placeholder_images_and_gravatar_integration_with_cloudinary

<comment><AUTHOR> This blog post describes how to easily display placeholder images when accessing remote images that might not exist, such as Facebook & Twitter profile picture. You can also automatically transform the placeholder images to any required size and format. In addition, this post explains how to use Cloudinary to easily embed Gravatar images while dynamically resizing them, applying face detection for better thumbnail generation and fast cached delivery through a CDN.</comment>


Announcing: Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta - <AUTHOR> https://mojang.com/2015/07/announcing-minecraft-windows-10-edition-beta/

<comment><USER2> > You'll recognise some Pocket Edition features in Minecraft: Windows 10 > Edition Beta, along with potpourri of cool extras.

Interesting. Sounds like they're working from the C++ code base of the mobile port, rather than starting again from scratch in C#.</comment>


42 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zhuangya/42

<comment><USER2> What's that supposed to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> i want write a function called _42 in kinds computing languages which implement this functionality: accept anything(parameters), and return nothing but 42.

:)

Just a simple idea here, nothing special.</comment></comment>


Who Whom Hoodoo - <AUTHOR> https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/mcintyre/bs-ed-mcintyre-20190916-u7ab3iscqff45oojosvu55eliq-story.html <comment><USER2> Personally I've never had any trouble with the distinction between who and whom.

I like the fact that the English language contains all these little shibboleths that tell you about the class and/or education level of the person speaking.</comment>


Ask HN: Javascript Animated Icons Becoming Mainstream? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed more and more the use of animation of CSS, instead of gif icons. For example, on Google's Chrome OS page (http://www.google.com/chromeos/features.html), mousing over brings pretty animations done (almost) purely by rotating or swapping images.<p>Is it feasible to do this to your own website? Has anyone done it? <comment><USER2> I like the example from the Chrome OS page, it looks really cute. Unfortunately, if JavaScript is deactivated no icons are visible. Some kind of fallback would have been nice.

I have sometimes experimented with JavaScript based animations in the past. But most of the time I decided against putting the animations on web pages, if the page is not about the JavaScript animation itself. Sometimes less really is much better and less distracting. So I think that animations like in the example from the Chrome OS page will not become mainstream.

You could also use SVG embedded in XHTML for animations. Fade-in effects and movements of objects and much more are possible. Unfortunately Inline-SVG does not work in Internet Explorer: the pages will have to be delivered with an application/xhtml+xml MIME type to browsers that can understand it (Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari). Internet Explorer will just show a download prompt for such a page. And the XHTML pages must be valid, otherwise the compliant browsers display an error page instead of the (buggy) web page. This is a huge difference to normal HTML pages.

With SVG it is possible to construct vector graphic animations without JavaScript for browsers that support SVG animations. Additionally, you can use JavaScript for more complex effects. This is an alternative to animations with image files and JavaScript. It is also possible to use images in SVG.</comment>


The Eternal Return of BuzzFeed - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/04/the-eternal-return-of-buzzfeed/390270/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I banned Buzzfeed as much as I could from Twitter and Facebook. This article made me warm up to them again for a bit so I went to their homepage. After the main content here's a few of the top articles as I see them:

      Which Porn Star Should You Date? (Get ready for your big D…ate)
      12 Gross Smells Every City-Dweller Can Relate To
      20 Times Disney Accurately Described Course Registration
      This 11-Year-Old Kid Produces His Own Music And It's Insane
      The One Big Clue Bruce Wayne Gave Gotham That He Was Batman
      21 Celebrities That Defintiely Put The "F" In DILF

I must be getting old. This is some low-value (but I'm sure highly profitable) content that is good for 99% of the web but me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Buzzfeed is disrupting the news/entertainment industry and has found an extremely effective way to entice readers and promote virility among its stories and videos. In any other context people would champion this sort of strategy. Extreme growth hacking coupled with a psychological approach to user acquisition.

I am not a regular buzzfeed reader, but I have tried to become less cynical about the company. They really are the best at what they do. Hopefully with Dixon's $50mm investment via AH, the company will focus a little more on content.

<comment><USER4> > In any other context people would champion this sort of strategy.

Context is important. A middle-school teacher who finds their kids aren't paying attention during a presentation might attract more interest by including a few porn slides. Imagine the virility through the school. There might be an increase in "user acquisition" using this "psychological approach".

At the end of the day, it's horseshit. Fucking horseshit.

<comment><USER3> look, i'm not here to champion buzzfeed. Context is important, but to be clear I wouldn't compare buzzfeed to sexually assaulting a classroom full of minors.

<comment><USER5> He didn't, because that's not sexual assault. Also because it was an analogy about using titillation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Expound endlessly on the virtues of buzzfeed's journalism if you must. It cannot remove the stench of native advertisement. I will give them no intentional clicks.</comment>


Should I use a Swift struct or a class? - <AUTHOR> http://faq.sealedabstract.com/structs_or_classes/ <comment><USER2> There's a ton of discussion in the Swift world about when to use structs and when to use classes. And I just don't understand why.

Use structs when you want value semantics. Use classes when you want reference semantics. Boom. Done.

All the confusion and discussion and fighting seems to be because people don't understand the implications of value versus reference semantics, and instead of learning they try to come up with ad hoc rules and guidelines that will let them decide without understanding the actual differences.

<comment><USER3> "And I just don't understand why."

I think you've correctly identified the source of confusion -- value vs reference. To you, that might be plain as day. But, to many iOS devs, they really couldn't explain the nuances.

I mean, look how much trouble beginner programmers have with the concept of Pointers for pete's sake.

But, I think you're right -- weird rules and guidelines just confuse the issue.

Andy Matuschak's functional swift talk puts the ref vs value discussion in practical terms of a Khan Academy drawing app:

[http://2014.funswiftconf.com/speakers/andy.html](http://2014.funswiftconf.com/speakers/andy.html)

<comment><USER4> The other issue is that too many programmers these days don't have a solid computer science background... I'm all for people being self-taught and learning programming on their own... But the downside of that prevents individuals from learning how things work at a lower level.

I've never written a line of Obj-C or Swift in my life, but all you have to tell me is "struct = value based, class = referenced based" and I immediately know how it works...

<comment><USER5> I'm going to take issue with this. This has nothing to do with having a solid computer science background -- in fact, I've seen _way_ more architecture astronauts with CS degrees.

It has to do with learning stuff on a lower level -- whether or not you attend a school to do so. Us autodidacts who grew up on assembly language and C code will beg to differ on your use of the word "prevents".

<comment><USER6> I presume he's not talking about long-time autodidacts. He's talking about the many programmers who have six months of JavaScript experience from a bootcamp and are learning Swift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Functional programming isn't about eliminating state. You can't write programs without state. Functional programming is about eliminating hidden state changes.

State changes are fine! They just aren't allowed to be hidden.

Despite all that - I agree that move semantics are _weird_. He's got a point there.

<comment><USER8> In the presence of concurrency, shared mutable state is a disaster. There are two ways to fix this:

1) Make it not mutable 2) Make it not shared

But these are still "state", so I'm not really sure what the hell the article is on about.

<comment><USER9> 3) synchronize correctly, which is fraught in nearly all languages. Rust has some very nice facilities for this, however, that make shared mutable state very usable indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing I've learned, if you want to convince people you're right, best to insult them and tell them they're "on crack".

Guaranteed to work.

</comment><comment><USER10> This post is basically saying "I don't understand programming and I won't even try"

</comment><comment><USER11> Surprisingly salient and cogent points for an article that's so hostile and willfully ignorant.

The author is correct about when to use both, and I'm glad he doesn't discount structs entirely like I've seen from some OOP strongholds.

"The way they write functional programs for decidedly non-functional problems is through a trick called a monad, which I will not explain and nobody understands anyway,"

Maybe you'd be less hostile if you actually took the time to learn about generic abstractions and how they can greatly simplify a codebase.

Hint: Optional is a monad, and you can use it as such.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not sure though why you justify the fact that you should'nt use singletons embedded in a struct because they are copied by reference? If it is a singleton, you want it to be copied by reference. And you actually expect it to be since you want all the structs to refer to the same object?

You should not use an embedded class in a struct if it is not a singleton, as in the UIBezierPath example, where when you copy the struct, you expect to do a copy-on-write of the class to avoid mutating all copies in all structs

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a pretty good article, but as a blog, his site is violating the "put a date" principle: [http://www.observationalhazard.com/2014/09/put-date- on-your-...](http://www.observationalhazard.com/2014/09/put-date-on-your-blog- post.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> If your understanding of functional programming regarding state management is monads, I'd argue you don't understand. Monads are the guided nuclear missile of functional state management. If you don't know why you need them _you don 't need them_. There are simpler ways to manage state in FP.

<comment><USER14> Monads aren't nouns. When you build a state transformer you can choose whether or not to recognize that it is a monad (or maybe strong profunctor, depends upon your design) but it always just IS one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> or: how I stopped worrying and accepted making programs that are hard to reason about

<comment><USER16> If you want to contribute, write why you disagree instead of attacking the author as a person.

<comment><USER15> Wasn't trying to attack; sometimes trying to create a perfect mathematical model for your program can get in the way of having a program at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Also why no mention for the enum, the other value type that allows for pattern matching?

</comment><comment><USER18> Ah, an excuse why two almost identical language constructs exist. Welcome to the list of cluttered programing languages.

</comment><comment><USER19> So ios devs, who supposedly need to write in a memory unsafe language because that's just better, don't understand the basic difference between pass by reference and pass by value.

Nice. What can possibly go wrong?

Looking forward to seeing the questions in the swift SO site.

</comment><comment><USER17> What a stupid, long blog post</comment>


WeWork Is Changing Its Name, and It's Totally Insane - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/wework-is-changing-its-name-its-totally-insane.html <comment><USER2> related where the name change was discussed, too: "WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18855680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18855680)

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickbait. But totally accurate.</comment>


Richard Hamming: Learning to Learn - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30 <comment><USER2> I watched through the series a couple of months ago. I will do my best to provide a couple of the highlights that I really liked. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a detailed journal of the course as a I watched. I really should have.

General Concept:

Richard Hamming is a Turing Award winning Computer Scientist and Mathematician. He spent a long and illustrious career at Bell Labs. As with many other promising scientists of the day, Hamming took part in the Nuclear Bomb effort and worked in Los Alamos. He refers to himself throughout the series as little more than a scientific janitor at Los Alamos. However, he realized during his time at Los Alamos that he had the rare opportunity to observe and interact with some of the most famous and brilliant scientists in the world. He decided that he wanted to join their ranks. However, after the war, he found that his effort was blocked by the fact that he didn't really know how to become great. There was no instruction course in become a great scientist. Thus, he set out to find the principles for himself. This series is his summary of the decades of investigation and personal experience in becoming a great scientist.

\</comment><comment>--

Principles:

The following are a list of things that stood out in the series. Hamming had a number of principles that he constantly harped on. I will try to do my best to note some of them here and explain the context:

"Luck favors the prepared mind"

The longer you stay with a problem the higher the likelihood that you are going to find a creative moment somewhere in the mix. This idea reverberates throughout the entire series. In some sense, Hamming is trying to break apart the luck part from the preparation part of the equation throughout all of his talks. Interestingly enough, he declares that he doesn't believe that there is a formula for creativity (or at least a formula that any of us can use or know about). Instead, he harps on persistence as a part of this equation. You have to go after a problem for a long period of time. Once you have spent long enough with the problem that it has mades its way into your dreams, you know that you are approaching the point were rare epiphany moments are possible.

"With that which you learn from other you will follow, with that which you learned for yourself you will lead"

This is another quote that you hear time and time again throughout the series. By this he means that you actively have to work through practice problems and concepts yourself. He has found a vast difference in his understanding of topics that he passively soaked up and those subjects that he active dug into and made sure that he understood. In some sense, he used the Feynman technique. He pushed himself to being able to understand the concepts well enough that he could explain it fully and confidently to others.

"Find the people who are doing important things and help them do those important things."

The series is full of examples of thus. Hamming made it a habit to go after interesting problems with other people at Bell labs. He sought out opportunities to contribute to other people's work. It was clear the Claude Shannon was a genius, so Hamming made every effort to help Shannon out by providing computing assistance for Shannon's projects.

One of the fascinating habits that Hamming had was to grab lunch with different departments at Bell Labs. He would make friends but lose them quickly as well. He was constantly pursuing people with the question: "What are the big problems in your space?" He would then follow up with: "Well, why aren't you working on them?" This made people uncomfortable. However, Hamming made the decision that he was going to do 'grade-A' work, as he refers to it. Hence, he knew that he needed to associate with people who were doing grade-A work. If they weren't then those people were useless to him. He laments that fact that many brilliant people at Bell Labs went down as making no significant contribution even though they were far smarter than Hamming because, for what ever reason, were hesitant to tackle big problems with other people working on big problems. You don't get the feeling at all in the series that Hamming was apologetic for aggressively pursuing big problems. He wanted to do great work...period.

"If things are changing slow, listen to the expert. If things are changing rapidly, experts are only good for providing historical context."

This is one of the gems from the series. Hamming says that he used this as a rule of when to listen to established experts and when to ignore them in favor of the possibility for something else. I wouldn't say that Hamming advocated rejecting expert opinion in the situation that things are changing rapidly. Rather, he viewed their opinion as carrying just as much weight as everyone else's. One of the examples that Hamming brought up numerous times was the switch from analog to digital. He had a lot of co-workers who got stuck on analog computing. They were brilliant men who fought the the move to digital computing. The analog experts had countless reasons why digital computing would not succeed. So, Hamming tried to judge it by how quickly computing technology was changing. He realized that things were simply changing too fast for anyone to claim some sort of supreme expertise on the subject matter. Hence, he didn't discard the expert opinions, he took them as just another data point that weighed just as much as all the other data points. He didn't make any 'decisions' he simply refused to take a hard stand on the subject- matter until it was resolved through history. In other words, this principle is more about staying open to possibilities rather than rejecting them outright and putting all your chips in one basic based on an expert's opinion.

"In order to do the work that you want to do, you have to do it on your own time at the beginning. Only then will others give you time to do it."

This principle is quite possibly the one that arises more than any other through out the series. Hamming found it frustrating in his early years that they wouldn't let him research what he really wanted to research. It was a catch-22 situation. In order to show the importance of the work that he wanted to do, he would have already had to have done the research. Otherwise, his directors wouldn't give him the time to do so. One night he was reading a random magazine and realized that he was wasting his time that he could have otherwise been using to conduct the research that he wanted to conduct. Thus, from that moment, he decided to not waste any more time. No one was going to give him permission to start his desired research. He had to give himself permission and take the lead. He had to start by doing it in his free time. He cut magazines and TV out of his life. He spent less time with friends and on leisurely activities. Instead, he devoted his spare time to doing the research that he really wanted to be doing. In the end, he was able to do enough in his spare time that he took it to his directors at Bell Labs and they then gave him the time to continue pursuing the research on the company dime. However, he didn't stop there. He took that opportunity to fill his newly spared time with other projects. He kept it up for decades.

"Stay abreast of new things"

There were so many new things arising everyday in computing that it felt overwhelming for Hamming. However, he knew that he needed to stay aware of what was happening. He didn't take that to mean that he needed to become an expert in everything but he needed to be aware of it. Hence, a lot of his spare moments in the day were filled reading about new developments and talking with people who were working on interesting projects.

"Friday afternoons were for big ideas"

Hamming had the habit of setting aside friday afternoons for thinking about big ideas. He was religious about this time. He would avoid everything else that he could so that he would have friday afternoons free to think about where the future might lead.

I wish I had the time to pick out more principles that I gleaned from watching the series. There are countless nuggets throughout the series. He spends a lot of time talking about the details of the different projects that he worked on. However, those are nothing but stories to frame the principles that he is trying to communicate. The above principles that I have listed at only a few examples. His stories certainly help give more context and make it easier to remember the principles. It would be easy to write a full commentary on his lectures.

EDIT: I've added a couple more principles that I remembered. However, nothing replaces actually hearing Hamming tell it in his lectures. I watched them at 2x speed on YouTube. It is easy to follow even at that speed. Hamming speaks relatively slowly at normal speed. So, 2x speed just feels like a quick conversational pace.

<comment><USER3> Hamming did not win a Nobel Prize. Perhaps you meant the Turing Award?

<comment><USER2> Yes, I did. Sorry about the mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case anyone is interested in a tl;dr, PLOS Computational Biology just published a "Ten Rules" article on Hamming's talk: "Ten Simple Rules for Lifelong Learning, According to Hamming"

[http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1004020)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think that genius takes extraordinary intellect but also a penchant for timing. Solve interesting problems, but also at the right time.

A way to overcome this is the Erdos approach: have a backlog of problems in your mind and allowed them to be solved naturally as you learn and new discoveries are made. Maybe that is why he was such a prolific mathematician.

</comment><comment> andhof-mt One of my motivations in building videos for: [https://www.youtube.com/user/devfactor](https://www.youtube.com/user/devfactor)

Was just this. In school you can listen, and be taught. But learning how to learn is an entirely different skill. Foundational knowledge is really important, but eventually you need to know how to pick up things on your own.

Understanding the learning process, and the process of seeking out relevant information is almost more important than being able to memorize text and lectures. If you can only be taught, that you rely on schooling. If you can learn, than your limits are only based on time :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can someone who already watched this comment? Anything particularly great about it?

<comment><USER7> I haven't watched it either, and would like the same answer.

The book on the topic is at [http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming- TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEn...](http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming- TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEngineering.pdf) .

I read Hamming's "You and Your Research" some years back, and recall that it was quite appropriate. See [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html) for the text. It's the penultimate lecture in the video series.

<comment><USER6> Thank you! And I can't help but notice a couple more interesting titles in that directory: [http://worrydream.com/refs/](http://worrydream.com/refs/)

<comment><USER7> Ooo! That's quite the collection of classic works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would really appreciate a short summary to get a few more of the basic ideas taught in this class or book.

</comment><comment><USER9> Fantastic! Thank you for this.</comment>


Ask HN: HN On irc.freenode.net? - <AUTHOR>

Why no irc channel? I am sure most use it, I propose #hn - #ycombinator on freenode <comment><USER2> #startups

<comment><USER3> This, been up for awhile I think.</comment></comment>


Adobe's response to Flash Crash - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/emmy/archives/2010/02/flash_bug_repor.html

<comment><USER2> Things that have happened since Matthew Dempsky reported this crash bug, which Adobe has yet to release a fix for:

-Mozilla Firefox 3 had several alpha, beta, RC, and final releases, moving from late version 2 to version 3.6.

-Google Chrome was initially released and ported to Mac and Linux

-Safari evolved from version 3 to version 4

-Apple developed and released a new version of the iPhone, announced the iPad, and released a new version of Mac OS X

-Windows 7 was betad, improved and shipped

-Apple's market capitalization nearly doubled from 93 billion to 177 billion

-The entire global financial crisis came to a head, with multiple banks and other large firms either collapsing, being acquired for their assets alone, or being bailed out by national governments

-Barack Obama was elected president, sworn in, and served his entire first year of office

-Sarah Palin, then a surprise pick at running mate, made a series of media gaffes, resigned as governor of Alaska, and parlayed her fame into a television deal with Fox News

</comment><comment><USER3> So, they verified the bug over a year ago and haven't pushed out the fix because it's slated for an as-of-yet unreleased point upgrade?

Confidence inspiring.

<comment><USER4> They did at least say they messed up on that.

"The mistake we made was marking this bug for "next" release, which is the soon to be released Flash Player 10.1, instead of marking it for the next Flash Player 10 security dot release."

The 0.1.0 releases are for actual player upgrades and the 0.0.1 releases are for security fixes. The 10.1 release is actually a pretty big upgrade to the player that will be out some time near the CS5 release that features iPhone native app export, woot!

Besides that, I reviewed the Flash Crash code and the situation that causes this bug and it doesn't seem like a common situation where you load a single unique URL that sends two different Flash version files (7/8) when requested one after another. I know my own QA department would be tickled pink if they could recreate this problem in any of my applications but even then I'd first say "who the hell would do something so crazy, this isn't on the top of my pile of stuff to do, I'm still working on making the player run well on the Mac, awesome bug though we'll get to it later"

<comment><USER3> The bug is capable of completely locking up modern browsers (to say nothing of the situation back in 2008 when the issue was discovered). Esoteric or not, this should have been on the _very_ top of the work pile and dropped into a security patch immediately.

Yes, they admitted a mistake, but they wouldn't have done so if their actions had been at all defensible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Adobe is really feeling threatened now, no doubt about it. They are starting to see an eventual Flash-free web as a real possibility.

I wonder if Lotus, Borland, CompuServe, and the other mini-monopolies of their day saw it coming, or just blithely rested on their laurels until they were irrelevant. I was in the tech scene back then, but without something like the internet to keep us informed, it was hard to know what those companies were up to.

<comment><USER6> So true. Let's hope Adobe's fear motivates investment in improving (and possibly open sourcing) Flash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So in <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358815,00.asp> the Adobe CTO says:

"Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs"

and here the Flash Product Manager says:

"The team is actively reviewing all unresolved crash bugs in JIRA and will reach out to the submitter if we need their help."

That gives me a _great_ deal of confidence they're not lying to me...

<comment><USER8> That says to me that "We have several outstanding issues we need to resolve before we next ship". It doesn't say that they're leftover from previous versions.

And so I find myself defending Flash. Strange things are afoot.

<comment><USER9> Yes, except "ship" to most people in most contexts means "make available", not "cut a point release". Say there was an egregious typo in an O'Reilly manual—if their spokesman said "we don't ship books with typos," would that imply to you "we're not selling another copy of this book until we fix it" or "we're going to keep selling the version with the typo until we get around to publishing the next edition?"

<comment><USER8> That's a different situation, as pulping and reprinting books represents a significant outlay. I would interpret that as "we'll give the publisher a new PDF and instruct them to print with that instead, effective immediately".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "it is a tenant of the Flash Player team that..."

Facepalm.

I think "tenet" is the word you were looking for.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, some of the grammar in the post could've used some proofreading. There were a lot of places where the author used a comma when they should've used a period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A company that lets crashing bugs accidentally slip through the cracks like that isn't taking security very seriously yet. That's pretty scary, considering Flash's market share.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm probably the only one, but I find this somewhat hope-inspiring. This response by their CTO gives the Flash team permission to go back and fix all of the crashing bugs and improve performance.

If Adobe is like most other large companies, I'd bet those same engineers have been stuck in the downward-spiral feature crunch to support more codecs, more language features, more more more. It takes a pretty high-level push -- like this one! -- to reverse that trend.

A good analogy is MSFT and the turnaround on security in ~2001/2002.

</comment><comment><USER14> In related news:

The truth about user perception of Flash finally emerges: <http://i.imgur.com/xbA8W.png>

</comment><comment><USER15> Sure, I have complete confidence in using a beta product, prone to crashing, to solve a bug that's two years old.

</comment><comment><USER16> To paraphrase their response: "The bug was filed right before release... sorry guys we have a lllloooonnnnggg release cycle"

<comment><USER17> This is not what I read at all. They just did a bookkeeping mistake, that prevented the fix from coming in the security releases, which I can only assume has a quick release cycle.

> The mistake we made was marking this bug for "next" release, which is the > soon to be released Flash Player 10.1, instead of marking it for the next > Flash Player 10 security dot release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The way Adobe handled this issue just goes to show how terrible their QA and bug triage processes are.

Personally, I've been withholding from using Flash blocking plug-ins because I always thought that it would take away from my experience of most modern web- sites - that is despite Flash being a big pile of crap in terms of full-screen HD video performance on a gaming-grade laptop that plays Far Cry on maxed out settings.

I believe my cup of anger just overflowed - I will be installing Flashblock today.

And until Adobe learns how to truly test performance of their software on a variety of machines (oh, don't get me started on GPU acceleration problems in Photoshop CS4 when it first came out and perf issues with Flash HD video playback on specific GPUs) as well as how to properly respond to security issues, Flashblock will be kept enabled.

</comment><comment><USER18> Weak. "It's not our fault you don't keep up with our beta cycle."

<comment><USER19> Too bad it still crashes with 10.1b2 for Mac..

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Instead of working within the confines of native OSs Adobe has managed to dupe us into installing essentially an overlay OS with Flash/ActionScript/Air. They have a responsibility to manage it as such.

They have the same problems as Java. They develop a complete OS without regard to core OS code and hardware changes. It's irresponsible curating that no one is reporting on.

Forget fixing the bug. If we combine our resources and create a Flash killer that plays nice with native OSs, we won't have to care about Adobe's reckless development.

</comment><comment><USER21> Could someone plase chime in for me on this: Does Flash have a way of directly patching the current level of software like, say, Google Chrome does? Does Flash 10? It really should.

Secondly, a high-impact pervasive problem which allows a plug-in to crash the entire platform should not be marked fixed in next release.

</comment><comment><USER22> Knowing that adobe uses this type of a development cycle, I have to agree more with Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER23> allowing plugins to take down the whole plugin environment is clearly a faulty software design. Sure adobe is lazy/incompetent, but the mozilla/safari teams are no better for not isolating plugins better. Back to school id say learn something about reliable software engineering and sandboxing.

<comment><USER24> Safari 4 on Snow Leopard doesn't crash when flash crashes. You get a nice little blue box with a question mark on it where the flash used to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This & similar response time from Adobe for bug fixes = great excuse for Apple to block Flash from iPhone / iPad

</comment><comment><USER26> Let us not forget their inability to write a flash plugin that doesn't freeze / stutter while playing video in current firefox and safari on a new macbook pro with tons of available ram and cpu. Their ceo is a liar -- if he actually used a macbook pro as his daily machine as he claimed on tech crunch, he'd be screaming at people on his engineering team until they fixed this.

<comment><USER27> I worked there ... lots of people are using Macs inside Adobe, including people in upper-management.

I also own a 2 year old MacBook Pro, and while I did had some problems with some badly written advertisements, in general Flash works fine (including video on Youtube) ... although HD content is not rendered as well as on my home Windows box ... but it's watchable ... I watched The Office on Hulu and it was OK ;)

This whole thing reminds of the browser wars, only now it's between 3 camps ... the freetards, Adobe's fanboys and Apple's fanboys. I found myself to be in all 3 camps, depending on my mood :)</comment></comment>


Fractal wrongness - <AUTHOR> http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fractal_wrongness

<comment><USER2> I assumed this phrase came from the blog post "PHP: a fractal of bad design" but TIL that it's even older than that.

In any case, AFOBD is highly recommended reading for PHP developers and the unafflicted alike:

[http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad- design/](http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/)

For the unaware, this post is also responsible for giving the world the "PHP hammer":

[http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php- singularity/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/)</comment>


Royal Astronomical Society kills dark energy - <AUTHOR> http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2968-explaining-the-accelerating-expansion-of-the-universe-without-dark-energy <comment><USER2> I love how "a Hungarian-American team" from the article is turned into "Royal Astronomical Society" by the poster.</comment>


Web Development Trends For 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.webdesigndev.com/web-development/21-web-development-trends-for-2009

<comment><USER2> I see a confused mess of buzzwords and old news.</comment>


Pivots are for the lucky. There's a better way.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbledmba.com/pivots-are-for-the-lucky-theres-a-better-way

<comment><USER2> Pivoting is when something rotates around a fixed point.

If you take the product you already built (your fixed point) and apply it to a different market, that's a pivot.

Pet Peave: If you rename your company and now it's doing something completely new with a new codebase, it's not a pivot, it's starting over!

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, if you're walking along and you pivot, you may only have changed your direction slightly.. but you are now headed in a totally different direction towards a new destination.

It's possible for a small pivot to make a major different, it's also possible for a pirvot to be 180degrees, i.e. a complete turn around.

That said, I'm with you, it irks me when a company "pivots" and is basically a new company with the same people behind it - but from the point of view of the definition of "pivot", it does fit.

<comment><USER4> At the end of the day, people are picking hairs about the "definition" of a word. Pivot is an easy term to remember instead of having to describe at length the change a company made. I think the bigger concern is throwing the word pivot around to the point it becomes an annoying buzzword, rather than arguing about semantics.

<comment><USER2> What bugs me is when folks use "pivot" to avoid having to confess that an idea failed or was poorly conceived. It's really hard to learn and get better at something without moments of reckoning where you take stock after something fails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> High level concepts like this have their place, but what really makes or breaks a company is the hundreds of details that you have to get right. I'd love to see way more discussion of the details and less business guru pontification.

</comment><comment><USER6> This really isn't a novel concept. It's called _adapting_ , and every business must do it in order to survive.

<comment><USER7> That's the exact point I was going to make except I would call it _evolving_. Either way, same thing. Not really a new concept.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, the idea of exaptation in biology might be relevant, too; a resource first developed in one context is often useful in different contexts. While evolving or exaptation might not be a new concept, it is an important one that bears thought when executing a startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would you consider facebook's move to the news feed a "pivot"? They certainly changed the fundamental way you interact with the product and shifted its purpose (a directory of your friends vs. updates about what they are doing) Most tech businesses that has survived, one could make the argument, have "pivoted". No matter what you call it, it's just good business. A lot of people are calling the Stickybits move to turntable a "pivot" - but wasn't their purpose this entire time to create a new way for people to interact with media? Different interface, same purpose. Make stuff people want, right?

</comment><comment><USER10> And I've thought the talk would've been on QSORT.

</comment><comment><USER11> tldr; "Listen to your customers and try to make a big but not 180-degree change in direction. I'm going to call this a veer. I know of a company doing this, but I can't tell you the details. But they are awesome."

<comment><USER11> Felt to me more like "check out this company" than "let me explain something new to you."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> tldr; Don't start over unnecessarily. Try to listen to your customers and implement reasonable changes to satisfy important needs.

<comment><USER13> Sometimes you pivot because you don't have any customers to listen to in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> the story would be more educating with some more details. may be it's really 16 degrees pivot, how do we know.</comment>


YC News Facebook Group - <AUTHOR> http://bristol.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2253411233&ref=mf <comment><USER2> Are there some features I could add that would make YC News itself do what you need in this respect?

<comment><USER3> I'm sure pg has thought of this already, but it seems like there is a demand for more community features surrounding YC news. Unlike everyone else creating social networks for the sake of creating a social network, it looks as though you might be able to grow one organically here.

<comment><USER2> That is what I'm thinking about right now. We said explicitly when we started news.yc that one goal was to get to know founders before they applied to us. I think I'll add messaging next. If anyone has suggestions about how it should work, or other community features we should add, just let us know in this thread.

<comment><USER4> I second jwecker's idea to allow a single photo avatar for each member.

It would be very beneficial to attach faces to the personalities, especially in light of the upcoming Startup School.

<comment><USER5> What sets this site apart for pg is that he can use it to guage peoples comments for when they apply for something. One thing that sets this site apart for me, though, is that I think most people here intend to meet one another in person at some point, sooner or later. That makes a big difference in the feel of the place. Using first names in posts, not acting like children in our debates, a real desire (from the first day in the feature request discussion) to see what other people look like and know what they're really up to, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Feature suggestion:

A page in our profile that indicates recent activity pertaining to us, such as someone replying to your comment. Sometimes I reply to comments in older discussions and it's likely the person I am replying will never see it.

<comment><USER2> This is definitely coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Facebook is open for everyone but mainly used by students. I created the group after noticing how many people joined the startup school event.

Feel free to move over to shuzak, looks like it could become a great community and it matches the YCN demographic perfectly.

<comment><USER6> Does shuzak have a YCN demographic? From browsing the site briefly I found it hard to tell if it was for me or for people who collect Star Trek christmas tree decorations.

<comment><AUTHOR> 'collect Star Trek christmas decorations'

Isnt that YCN? Kidding! It's a social network for geeks which sounds like us. Addmitedly I've barely used shuzak so I may be mistaken.

<comment><USER7> I estimate that 85% of the people on there are hackers. In fact, there are a number of users involved in actually coding the social network. Moreover, there is a chatroom there so we may converse in real-time.

Here is the YC community: http://shuzak.com/Community.php?ID=6472

<comment><USER6> 0 users for the YC community, 5 for star trek

Kidding. I'll check it out if its really 85% hackers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isnt facebook only for college students? Why dont you put it somewhere else so that the rest of us can also join?

<comment><USER7> YC represents a good demographic of undergrads, grads, and recently graduated students so I think it's a pretty good place to start it. Moreover, Facebook opened up to everyone two months ago.

Alternatively, if Danw prefers, we can start a YC group on my social network instead (Shuzak.com). People don't have to register to post there.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Not sure what to do with my side project. - <AUTHOR>

I've built a Twitter photo sharing service which has survived through Twitter's API changes and even when they started to allow photo uploads directly.  The service is still used with 5000-7000 photos uploaded daily with 4mm pageviews per month.  There's just under 4m photos stored on S3 and just under a million tokened users.  There's a Safari, Chrome and Firefox browser plugin, iOS app and Android app in the wild.  It runs 100% on auto-pilot.
I've been paying for hosting out of pocket as most users are outside of the US, banner revenue barely covers the costs to host it.
Any suggestions on what I should do?  Thoughts are:
- Rebrand and relaunch it
- Sell it
- Shut it down
Any ideas on what I should do? <comment><USER2> Move from S3 which is ridiculously expensive for an image host, to something more suitable such as imgur:

Looks like you could go with the $25/m plan: [https://www.mashape.com/imgur/imgur-9#!pricing](https://www.mashape.com/imgur/imgur-9#!pricing)

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't even realize imgur had that as an option. Most of the costs of hosting goes to S3 storage and that would cut it significantly. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You are stuck in the monetization part of your side project. Its not that your side project has stalled, it is that you have auto-piloted it without adding alternative monetization strategies.

As relix mentioned, you also need to cut costs too.

If I owned this project, I would probably pick it up again and try to add some new niche to it and find some other revenue sources.

"just under a million tokened users" I don't know if this is means almost a million users or not, but that is a massive audience already.

<comment><AUTHOR> After thinking about it last night I'm leaning towards picking it back up and putting some new energy into it.

<comment><USER3> Keep us updated. Although I am not personally intrigued by photo-taking apps, a lot of people are, so you should be able to turn it into a cash-machine somehow (if not, then you should consider doing what that other guy did with "ViralNova").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> is it costing you money? is it growing? if not what could you do to make it grow. maybe allow people to add accounts and post comments. if there are heavy commercial users look at charging them. Are the banner ads retargeted adwords? that might help conversion.

<comment><AUTHOR> About $150 a month in hosting

<comment><USER5> Are you net negative or net positive when you say "barely cover the costs to host it" or just about break even. What is the stack?

<comment><AUTHOR> Net negative. PHP , MySQL, memcache, s3 for storage and cdn

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How about trying to sell on flippa.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with flippa is that most offers will be based on some factor of net rev.</comment></comment>