ASK: which noDB blogging framework should I use? - <AUTHOR>

I'm planning on starting a new personal blog that would become a hub of my projects and interests.
I work with wordpress everyday and I know that's not the over-stuffed platform I want to use.
I'd like something that I can style quickly (as a part-time Web Designer I'm well versed in HTML&CSS and some php/js) while learning maybe some new trick at the same time.
I was thinking of Ghost. It looks very promising, but I suspect it's still too much of a deal for what I'd like to do. Plus, node.js compatible hosting looks expensive for my purposes and I simply can't install it on my plain Dreamhost hosting account. Jekyll looks great, but I still have to understand if it make sense to use it when not coupled with GitHub pages.
Kirby looks good, but I know almost nothing about it. I'm sure there's a lot more out there I don't know about.
I'd really like to hear your suggestions and personal experiences.
It will be great if you can link some demo sites for the platforms you'll be mentioning. <comment><USER2> Jekyll has been absolutely fantastic for me. Also, hosting is free (or $7/mo if you'd like to keep the source private) via Github Pages. If you're not using GH pages, it still works just fine: simply build the site, and push the _site/ directory to your hosting provider.

</comment><comment><USER3> After trying Jekyll I decided to move on, this lead me to [http://hugo.spf13.com/](http://hugo.spf13.com/) which had the benefit of higer speed of generation as well as a more logical file structure. I also have the benefit of being a single binary install making it very portable.

I made a short performance comparison of Jekyll, hugo and wintersmith: [http://internaldeployment.se/post/2014-08-12-Jekyll-and- its-...](http://internaldeployment.se/post/2014-08-12-Jekyll-and-its- alternatives-from-a-site-generation-point-of-view/)

</comment><comment><USER4> A few months ago I created: [http://itsy-bitsy.org/](http://itsy-bitsy.org/) because I was frustrated with just how many dependencies static site generators needed - I was using Hakyll at the time and it had failed to build on my new netbook - so I wrote it to take the templates and markdown I had from Hakyll and combine them.

It boils down to a 10 line Bash script and the Markdown.pl script.

It is very very basic, but I have used it to back a blog and various other content sites.

</comment><comment><USER5> I will vouch for Jekyll as well. It works fine not as part of Github pages, just sync your local jekyll output with your FTP even on something as plain as Dreamhost.

I personally use github pages for now, to archive my writing:

[http://keerthik.github.com](http://keerthik.github.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you are into node.js also see [http://www.wintersmith.io](http://www.wintersmith.io) and [http://www.metalsmith.io/](http://www.metalsmith.io/) for static page generation

</comment><comment><USER7> Take a look at this: [http://www.staticgen.com/](http://www.staticgen.com/)

> node.js compatible hosting looks expensive for my purposes

DigitalOcean offers node.js-ready VPS for $5/month</comment>


Ask HN: How much equity for first engineer when there is no salary involved? - <AUTHOR> How much equity should you ask for if you're an engineer joining a company for exclusively equity? I would be the first engineer and present from day one (though not a founder).
This would be a part-time moonlighting thing for all involved. Still though, having no salary obviously puts me in a much more risky position. I'll be trading life / hobbies / free-time for a large "maybe." That risk should be reflected in the equity, right?
Going off Paul Graham's Equity Equation, the small skunk works aspect of project, and the fact that it doesn't get built without an engineer means that I'd expect to ask in the high range, like, 30-40%. However, it's really tough from reading around online to tell if this is reasonable or not.
What are the reasonable equity ranges for this situation? <comment><USER2> I get the idea, but in reality there is no fair equity position unless you are considered a co-founder. If you are considered a co-founder then this is workable, but basically you need to have an equal say in all things, otherwise the company needs to find a way to pay you.

To be clear, equity is a promise that is broken in all but a few percentage of cases, and even when it isn't broken entirely many times it is nowhere near what you were promised or believed would be the outcome.

I say you must be considered and treated as a co-founder because you are taking the same risk the founders are and you need to be treated equally and be able to have unrestricted equity, full voting etc. This mostly prevents them from creating a share class now or later to minimize your payout, or to dilute you first before their shares are diluted.

Whatever you do, don't do a deal like this without a lawyer helping you get it all in writing correctly to protect you. If they object to that then you should run away from this deal.

To be fair, I have done this type of deal once, where I took only equity for work (and I had most of these protections but not all and not co-founder "status") but I will never do it again without being a founder/co-founder. There are just so many ways to be screwed, even by well meaning founders who just are naive to how investors and business works. It is also easy for people to speak about being fair when a multi-million dollar payout is just a dream, but people change when the money is really there and they see themselves "losing" millions to "non-founders". Not saying all people are like this, many are great and wouldn't be douches, but you have to protect yourself from those situations no matter what. And good founders won't object to you having those protections in place because they were never going to be the ones that tried to screw you in the first place. Lots of lawsuits and insane amounts of money gets paid to lawyers because people don't protect themselves up front and get things clear and in writing.

<comment><USER3> If this person is treated as an employee (with no decision-making authority) rather than as a co-owner, they might have the legal status of an employee and be required to be paid at least minimum wage. There are definitely a lot of issues here for lawyers to work out.

<comment><USER2> Yea, something I don't think a lot of people understand, in general, equity can't be used in lieu of compensation for an _employee_ (at least in most US States that I know of, pretty sure it is all but not 100% sure). This hasn't always been true, but the laws changed when a fair number of people were getting screwed with share class changes etc where they put in years of work to come out with not even minimum wage because founders/investors got greedy. Some founders who fought for their people didn't have enough stock to control the outcome so the board would vote the changes through over their objections. Hence why when you are doing these negotiations you have to recognize the person talking to you now may not be the person making the final call in 5 years.

There are ways around equity only with specific contracts & wording, but that is where the whole issue around not being a co-founder with equal footing comes in as you are in an unprotected situation. My 2 cents is just never do it, your are a co-founder or getting paid a fair wage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Remember to get the % of equity in written. An oral agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on. Get your lawyer to read the written agreement.

How many other founders? How long is the other people working in this? How much magic does their equity have? Do they get salary?

Do they have some MVP? What happened with the previous developer?

<comment><USER3> More questions to ask: What is their source of funding (VC, bootstrapped with founders' money, etc.)? What is their business plan, and at what point do they anticipate being profitable? If they're not profitable from the beginning, how long do they think they can run the company on the funds they have? Would they expect you, as a co-owner, to help fund the company? Do the founders have any prior business experience? Have they researched the market they're entering?

If you don't know how the business works, there's no way for you to evaluate whether their equity is worth anything at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone is part-time moonlighting, but how many others are involved?

If only 2 or 3 of you then I think the range you're asking for makes sense.</comment>


Honest People Might Be Dangerous - <AUTHOR> http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=1416 <comment><USER3> I find most interesting how he is permanently banned and there is, in order to enforce this, obviously now a federal searchable record tied into his SSN noting him as a liability that should be avoided for all future secure employment.

This reminds me of the parallel system used by "health insurance companies". If you have some minor issue you later don't disclose on an application form, then if you do later become ill with something expensive to treat like cancer, your records are searched (held by private companies who collect this information), and your policy undergoes rescission, a form of legal annulment. A couple years ago I had some heart pains and got an EKG. It was nothing and proved to be indigestion after eating too many onions. I discussed it with the doctor and he agreed to take cash for that one and make no record of it with my name due to the risk of later being denied health care should I ever actually have heart disease for not reporting a possible preexisting condition.

Of course all this is only possible because of the work we engineers do for the powers that exist for profit and work the angles to make sure their systems don't provide health care and deny honest people the ability to work for law enforcement.

<comment><USER4> What's interesting in your case, and particularly frightening, is that any preventative care or examination is actually forbidden, which is the most counter-productive possible choice both for your health and the cost of maintaining it in the long term. It's strikingly brain-dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not to intend to hijack this thread with a sideline, but I find it interesting that the author's problems were caused by the mushrooms he consumed in Amsterdam, at a time when doing so was presumably still legal in The Netherlands. In other words, he did nothing illegal at all.

I spent some time in the US as an intern at a large corporation and part of the admission procedure (on the day of arrival) was a drug test. My contract clearly stated that my employment was contingent on a negative outcome of that drug test.

I happen to be from The Netherlands, a country where as an adult I am allowed to smoke weed should I choose to (even though I don't). Apart from the legality of this, would they really have sent me back for doing something that is legal in my country?

The test would actually have detected any weed consumed up to 6 weeks in advance if I remember correctly. I got the notice perhaps 4 weeks before the test, so if I would have been a regular smoker, it would have been a quite likely outcome.

Can you really be held accountable for doing nothing wrong?

<comment><USER6> Drugs are a touchy subject in the US. I imagine nobody in Europe would do a hire/don't-hire decision based on a drug test. In fact everyone I've ever worked for here in Slovenia where weed is illegal were pretty open about their history (or not so much history) of weed use.

It's very culturally accepted in most of Europe that you smoke weed or have at least at some point in your life. If you claim to have gotten through high school and college without at least _trying_ weed ... I don't think anyone will take you seriously. Even less so if it happens to be true.

Why are americans like this when it comes to drugs? I don't know, and I think most noncorporate types aren't like that in the US either.

As for being held accountable for doing nothing wrong ... would you hire somebody who drinks half a bottle of vodka a day? They're doing nothing wrong mind you.

<comment><USER5> > If you claim to have gotten through high school and college without at least > trying weed ... I don't think anyone will take you seriously.

Interestingly, I know a lot of people in The Netherlands who have not and will never smoke weed, whereas in the USA I had the feeling that nearly everyone (especially the college crowd) was a stoner. If I were to give my non-expert experience, I would guess that about 50% of the people I met in the USA had ever smoked weed, compared to 25-30% in the NL.

> As for being held accountable for doing nothing wrong ... would you hire > somebody who drinks half a bottle of vodka a day? They're doing nothing > wrong mind you.

Someone who drinks half a bottle of wodka a day is doing something wrong. They are alcoholic and probably not able to function in any job, let alone a job that expects someone to behave responsibly. Wrong <> illegal.

<comment><USER3> I'll assume a bottle is a fifth gallon, or 750ml. Half that is 375ml, about 12 ounces, and thus about 12 shots.

I have often enough drunken half that, 1/4 bottle a booze, three double-shot drinks over the course of an evening 4-6 hours. It's definitely not enough to be drunk at that rate or even tipsy. I function just fine. Double that I would be rather tipsy and not enjoy it. But I have known people that polish off a half and even a whole fifth in a single evening. I suppose those are the drunks. They usually function perfectly fine at work and are often top contributors.

I've never smoked pot myself but I know plenty who do and a lot of them are really fine developers, even though they get completely wasted every single evening.

The people that seem to be negatively affected in work are the amphetamine and narcotic users, both of which are often legally prescribed to them for ADHD or back pain. Those folks can get a bit edgy.

As far as flashbacks, I did know one LSD user who had them. But this guy had been very irresponsible and done several dozen hits one day which landed him in an insane asylum for over a year, after which he remembered nothing. He was definitely messed up. Casual users I know of hallucinogens have told me they've never had a flashback. I have noticed though that long term casual users tend to become more and more flaky so I would consider that a negative in a job interview, except that I don't ask such questions of people in that situation. I am skeptical of the claim the authorities made that the person in the referenced article is genuinely at risk of flashbacks because of a single incident of mushroom use years ago.

<comment><USER7> FYI a shot is actually 1.5 ounces, so half a bottle would be about 8 shots, not 12.

<comment><USER8> Actually, a _jigger_ is 1.5 ounces. A shot is 1 ounce.

<comment><USER7> I guess it depends on the country. In the U.S. it's 1.5 ounces.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_glass#Sizes>

<comment><USER8> More likely it has changed over time.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=135...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1354&bih=531&q=what+is+difference+between+jigger+and+shot)

I'll admit, I'm old and my learning (through bartender's school, no less) reflects that. Most shot glasses will hold a jigger, but you don't fill it for a shot. Further down the page you linked, under "jigger," shows a tool we use(d). A "shot" was a drink, the "measure" was a jigger (1.5 oz) or a shot (1.0 oz). In programming terms, the word "shot" was overloaded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hate being THAT GUY, but I can tell you with authority that the quickest way out of PLC is an Integrity Violation. The Marine Corps will work with you on youthful indiscretions like drug use. Integrity Violations? Yeah...not so much. That will get you an all expense paid ticket out of Quantico, from Reagan I think.

So...I don't know...police in California may think honesty is less than useful, but I would be careful about painting all law enforcement, military and intel agencies with too broad a brush.

The only thing one can reasonably conclude from your experience, is that there is a chance that certain California police forces could be corrupt. Which, frankly, comes as little surprise to people outside of California. Though I can understand the consternation it may cause to people in California.

<comment><USER10> What exactly is an integrety violation? Cheating on you spouse?

<comment><USER9> Yes and No. Basically it is ANY kind of lie.

Saying you didn't do drugs when you did. Etc, etc.

<comment><USER11> I assume that it's the same sort of thing as talking to a federal officer - even an accidental lie would count against you? Such as, say, getting blackout drunk in college and taking a hit off of a joint, and then passing out in your bed with no memory thereof - but the incident being clear in the memory of someone they're interviewing about you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great quote by an Australian immigration officer:

"You give us the papers _we_ want. We give you the papers _you_ want."

Meaning:

"Just make the form look the way you know we want it to look, and we'll give you the resulting documents you want."

<comment><USER13> When making jokes about bureaucracy, or constructing poorly-written fiction about bureaucracy, or - most dangerous of all - attempting to implement a bureaucracy as a computer program, there's a tendency to take the risk of deadlock too seriously. If you get the system into a state of logical contradiction, the theory goes, it will grind to a halt, or possibly explode.

But in the human world _deadlocks don't happen_ , at least not for as long as you think. They resolve - sometimes peacefully, sometimes fitfully, but they resolve. The vast majority resolve so quickly that you barely notice they happened, because once a person has tried a particular deadlock-resolution strategy once or twice, and nothing has blown up as a result, they make a _habit_ of that strategy and get really good at it. Eventually the strategy might even get _institutionalized_ ; it becomes part of the on-the-job training that everybody gets but that nobody ever talks about or writes down.

(And, sometimes, eventually something _does_ blow up. But the proximate cause of that explosion won't look like a deadlock. If you investigate it, however, you may find that the root cause _was_ a deadlock, one that got resolved in an unhappy way. So maybe it's wrong to say that the risk of deadlock is less than it appears; instead, we say that deadlocks are very risky, but the risk is not that the system will halt, but rather that it will grind forward in the wrong way.)

There are rules that are on the books that everyone pledges to follow, but that nobody actually follows. There are forms that everyone knows must be filled out a certain way, regardless of the surrounding circumstances. There are signatures that are consistently signed by underlings, but almost never by the person whose name is being signed. There are shortcuts that, if the engineers knew about them, would be cause for suspicion, but they make the job go faster, and the engineers _don't_ know about them, perhaps because whenever they see one in progress they cover their eyes and mutter "oh, wow, I didn't see that", so let me just show you this trick very quietly, and please don't talk too loudly about it.

And obviously this can become pathological - I'm heard that, in particularly corrupt societies, bureaucrats can make a living by explicitly and openly _manufacturing_ deadlocks which they will resolve for you for a fee, and everyone understands this and just travels around with a stack of bills - <USER2> it's also the essential lubricant that makes bureaucracy work at all. I'm not sure we have any evidence that, say, an enterprise on the scale of a corporation can work _without_ such quintessentially human intervention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is actually research showing that police officers are vastly more likely to lie about their past drug use than the general public. In fact, this is one of the reasons we know that surveys of drug usage are generally accurate.

Erowid explains it here, I think in part 2 of the article:

[http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_ar...](http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_article1.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER15> Going into college, I had a scholarship with the Air Force ROTC program. I was honest about one specific allergy I had, and was denied my medical exam, thus I couldn't join the Air Force. I still did it for one semester, while applying for a medical waiver, and found out that several of the other cadets (especially those wanting to be pilots) had lied about particular issues. Several of those who did came from military families, who more or less knew how much you could fudge, and what you could get away with, and were open about lying about several more severe issues than mine.

Also one of my friends was rejected, because he was honest and said he smoked weed more than their arbitrary limit of 10 times in the past.

</comment><comment><USER16> Fortunately for me, I have led a boring life and therefore I didn't find it difficult to tell the truth when I joined the Army.

On the other hand, I did have a friend who was told by his recruiter to be "honest." My friend didn't pick up on the recruiter's sarcasm so he told the entire truth about his past adventures with narcotics. He even told them that he has acid flashbacks a few times a year.

They still let my friend enlist(Hell, we were in the middle of a war), but it took him nearly all of his 4 year enlistment to get the Top Secret clearance he required to do his job. All of our supervisors acted like he was an idiot for actually telling the truth.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ah yes, the eternal argument by anecdote.

So let's say you've shown that 'Honest People Might Be Dangerous'. How about a few anecdotes where a trivial lie led to a disaster? There, I've proven that 'Dishonest People Might Be Dangerous' too. What does this add up to? The ever- insightful 'People Might Be Dangerous' lemma. Now, given a choice between the 'Honest' and 'Not-entirely-honest' model of human, which one would you choose to work with?

<comment><USER18> Well, that's not what he's saying, did you read the article? His point is that these employment questionnaires are designed to filter out people who tell the truth about fairly common drug activities, which creates a bias towards hiring liars.

The title "Honest People Might Be Dangerous" is sarcastic and tongue in cheek. He did not argue that they are actually dangerous.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't say it's designed to filter out honest people, it's designed to filter out people whose past drug use could be a liability. Is it really so ridiculous to assume that anybody can honestly answer no to those questions? While marijuana use is certainly common where I've lived most of my life, I'm well aware it's not as common in other places, and I know plenty of people who have never used it.

In any case, the article says nothing to imply that the author's past marijuana use was the problem. The issue was with hallucinogens and I would assume that most people can honestly say they've never taken any.

<comment><USER20> It's ridiculous to assume that such a screening will reliably exclude drug users. It's also quite plausible that the screening will increase the number of heavy drug users you hire. Consider:

1\. Some people haven't ever used drugs. These people can safely answer honestly.

2\. Some people have experimented with drugs in the past, but were never heavy users. These people may naively assume that your screening criteria align with modern societal norms that smoking pot in college is forgivable, but you shouldn't continue to use drugs once you move into the real world. These people will answer honestly and be excluded.

3\. Some people may be current users, or former heavy users, and expect that they would not be hired if they answer honestly. Given that they are already active criminals (drug users) they may be more likely to lie.

Net result is that you exclude only 2, and your workforce is populated only by 1 and 3. I think most people, even those who created these policies, would prefer a workplace populated by groups 1 and 2.

<comment><USER21> "I think most people, even those who created these policies, would prefer a workplace populated by groups 1 and 2."

The people that created the policies... sure. Most people? Why? I have no problem with current drug users. Silicon Valley is chock full of semi-regular to regular pot smokers. And who knows how many take a few hits of ecstasy or mushrooms at their annual Burning Man or Coachella outings. You really see this as an issue? To be honest, I actively prefer to work with these people. You wouldn't have hired Carl Sagan?

As long as it's not affecting the quality of their work, why do you even care?

<comment><USER22> did you bother to read the article? we're not talking about hiring for startups. We're talking about hiring for police/emergency services. Having a selection bias against hiring honest cops sounds like a problem to me.

<comment><USER21> I read the article, and I still disagree. I shouldn't have limited myself to the startup scene. A good friend of mine is a paramedic in training in Austin, and not only has he done hallucinogens a fair amount of times, but many of his coworkers have as well. Yet I'd challenge you to find someone more reliable or dedicated. He's since stopped smoking pot, but primarily because of drug- testing, not because it affects his on-the-job performance. He'd never work high, of course.

I get the liability issue, even if I think it's dumb, but I honestly don't think occasional drug use should have any bearing on even emergency service jobs. Yes, I am ok with my potential ER surgeon smoking a spliff to relax after a long stressful day.

If we as a society were more open and accepting of this, responsible users wouldn't feel the need to lie and we wouldn't have this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is not legal advice or anything, but if anyone ever asks you whether you've broken the law or consumed drugs etc in the past, you say no, regardless whether you're telling the truth or not.

<comment><USER24> I wouldn't do this if that person were a federal agent. Lying to a federal agent is a serious felony. (Of course, you shouldn't ever say anything of substance to a federal agent without a lawyer.)

<comment><USER25> > Lying to a federal agent is a serious felony.

Not legal advice or anything but lying to protect one's own ass is a very special case of lying and gets much more protection than plain vanilla lying.

<comment><USER26> Depending on the situation you should either just decline to comment, or answer truthfully. Lying is usually bad.

<comment><USER27> I remember reading that federal agents are a special case.

You're screwed if you lie. You're screwed if you tell the truth. You're also screwed if you choose to remain silent, as that's used against you.

The only safe answer is "I cannot discuss that until I discuss it with counsel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The fear of hallucinogens is widespread in the blue universe. I've been told that former LSD users aren't allowed to be pilots in the U.S. because of the fear of "flasbacks"

You know there's some psychiatrist in Isreal who has diagnosed thousands of cases of "post hallucinogen perceptual disorder", probably because PHPD disqualifies a person from service in the Isreal armed forces.

<comment><USER14> HPPD isn't the same as flashbacks, it just consists of seeing things like floaters, slightly breathing walls, and fringing where there are straight lines. It probably wouldn't be safe for someone with HPPD to fly a military plane though. When treated correctly the condition normally presents few or no problems in everyday life at least after the first few months, but things like stress, sleep deprivation, and all psychoactive drugs (including caffeine) can make the symptoms much worse.

<comment><USER28> Given that one doctor diagnoses most of the cases in the world and that it happens in a country that has a draft for a self-destructive war, I've got a suspcision that HPPD is a form of malingering.

<comment><USER14> While I'm sure some or even many in Israel are faking it to get out of service, there's no doubt that it's a real condition and there are hundreds of threads on the Internet about it. It's fairly uncommon if you only do psychedelics once or twice a year, sleep properly before and after, don't mix them with other drugs, are eating healthfully, and don't expose yourself to any other major stressors. But once you start doing them 5 or 6 times a year your chances of getting it seem to be 20-30%, and only go up from there. Here are some Google links for you:

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ix=...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ix=sea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#sclient=psy- ab&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=site:bluelight.ru+hppd&pbx=1&oq=site:bluelight.ru+hppd&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=3711l6240l2l6413l8l8l0l0l0l2l131l631l6.2l8l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=cd966fbc5ee5cb60&ix=sea&ion=1&biw=1413&bih=727)

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ix=...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ix=sea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#sclient=psy- ab&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=site%3AReddit.com%20hppd&pbx=1&oq=&aq=&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&fp=cd966fbc5ee5cb60&ix=sea&ion=1&ix=sea&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=cd966fbc5ee5cb60&biw=1413&bih=727&ix=sea&ion=1)

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ix=...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ix=sea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#sclient=psy- ab&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=site%3Aerowid.org%20hppd&pbx=1&oq=&aq=&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&fp=cd966fbc5ee5cb60&ix=sea&ion=1&ix=sea&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=cd966fbc5ee5cb60&biw=1413&bih=727&ix=sea&ion=1)

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ix=...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ix=sea&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#sclient=psy- ab&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=site:shroomery.org+hppd&pbx=1&oq=site:shroomery.org+hppd&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=4002l11103l0l11267l10l10l0l0l0l3l153l784l6.3l9l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=cd966fbc5ee5cb60&ix=sea&ion=1&biw=1413&bih=727)

For what it's worth it's also in the DSM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I had my moment of zen when some secret service agents came to my house to question me about a 6-month-old Slashdot comment. They looked around for guns, and finding none, needed to administer a "metal health exam". As they started asking the questions, I realized "wait. these people are not doctors. they don't give a flying fuck about my mental health. they need me to say the correct answers so they can close their case." I answered the questions correctly and they closed their case.

The moral of the story: many questions are asked to see if you know the right answer, not because they actually want to know the answer to the question.

<comment><USER30> Sorry but what in the world kind of /. comment could justify a search and interrogation?

<comment><USER29> The thread was "things you can't say on the Internet." My contribution was, "I am going to kill the president".

Turns out, I'm right.

<comment><USER31> Get ready for another visit son.

<comment><USER29> The problem was that there was no context in the /. post. Once I showed them the context it wasn't a problem.

So hopefully if the context is very close to the unmentionable remark, federal agents are not dispatched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You have to be honest because you want to be. Because you dont want to project what you're not, and because you dont want to remember for the rest of the life the lie you said in order to be consistent.

Honesty is for yourself, and not for other people. In my opinion, it was right that you said the truth, and that you failed. You should argue that you shouldn't have failed, not that you dont need to tell the truth.

IMHO, and probably the contrarian view. But the contrarian view is of value because it makes you think. Please think of that before you downvote/upvote the comment.

</comment><comment><USER33> Yup. The ability to deceive and manipulate is the most marketable skill on the planet. Security forces don't want folks with principles beyond doing what they're ordered to do. A cop that isn't willing to lie in court is going to win a lot fewer convictions.

</comment><comment><USER34> The point of these questions is often to get you to lie. Oftentimes this is a felony in and of itself (for instance, in federal background investigations), which gives the organization requesting the information leverage over you (and also over any references that have falsely attested to your sobriety).

</comment><comment><USER35> There's a bit more going on here.

Some companies give "honesty-integrity assessments" to predict whether candidates may steal from the company, sexually harass employees, etc. How do they predict whether someone would do that?

They simply ask.

People who steal gratuitously will often rationalize the behavior by convincing themselves that "everyone steals something." When they see the questions, they'll think that, if they mark that they would never steal anything, they'll be flagged as a liar. And then they're caught.

The drug questionnaire presumably acts under similar principles. The people who mark "Hallucinogens -- once in my life" tend to be the people who pop a pill every week.

</comment><comment><USER36> It is a shame that America sets the tone for much of the world when it comes to drugs.

<comment><USER37> It's more of a United Nations thing, rather than the US.

<comment><USER38> It is most definitely is a US thing. I say this as an American.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The point is not to admit liars. They genuinely _don't_ want stoners in the service.

Now, you can argue till you are blue in the face that you will simply get more dishonest members, and this greatly outweighs the benefits of throwing out a few occasional users. But, ultimately speaking, these admission conditions are designed by committees, and there's always someone on the committee who doesn't want stoners at any cost.

</comment><comment><USER40> Unlike most jobs, being a police officer requires a lot of lying, from "We have proof you did it, so confess now" to "I stopped and searched him because I saw something suspicious". Other jobs, like being a researcher on classified projects have different requirements, and admitting to a bit of drug use there won't get you in trouble.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is an example of a rule that is intertwined within the fabric of American society - Never take the blame.

At least not in a public place or where it will go on record. Even if its your fault, you regret what happened and want to make amends. Even in that case its better to push off all blame and then go ahead and make amends.

This goes for everything from car insurance to dealing with any government body to dealing with corporate workplace issues to dealing with Americans in general.

Recently I was struck by this thought when Rex Ryan took the blame for the JETS awful season and in doing so a lot of sports writers questioned whether that was wise because it could mean that another losing season would mean the end of his tenure. A lot of writers mentioned casting the blame on others was a better action for the coach to have followed. Or even to have said nothing at all.

</comment><comment><USER42> My take on honesty:

I'm not comfortable being incongruent (ie having a mismatch between my inner state and outer communication).

Even a relatively small amount of incongruence (ie minor sucking-up to unworthy bosses, things of that nature) causes me to become cynical and jaded.

I think this is a good thing AND a bad thing. Good thing because people know that I am less likely to be a fake-fuck and just nod along with their bullshit, bad thing because sometimes life requires some machiavellianism and/or smarminess.

Solutions for this dilemma?

PS. Sebastian Marshall is my new favorite blogger these past couple of months. I love his style. I would recommend everyone get his book: <http://www.amazon.com/Ikigai-ebook/dp/B006M9T8NI> (full disclosure: I want to gain some brownie-points from Mr Marshall).

</comment><comment><USER43> Buddy of mine was getting a job where he needed to be heavily, heavily interviewed by CSIS.

Lots of polygraphs forms, etc. Detailed political interviews. Anyways, they get to this really thick form and the female CSIS interviewer says "please provide me a rough explanation of your history with illegal drugs," buddy says "Never. Not once." "Never?" "Never." One check box checked on the form the rest left unfilled.

Oh and my buddy was being truthful, but if you have to lie do it like that. "Never. Not once."

</comment><comment><USER44> There is one great movie about this: Gattaca (1997) - <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/>

</comment><comment><USER45> More like Stupid People Might Be Dangerous. If you don't know to navigate a bureaucracy, don't expect to be anywhere near a position that might generate liability.

</comment><comment><USER46> No police officer has ever smoked weed, yet they all instantly know and can identify the smell?

I doubt they disqualify ex military members because of the potential for flashbacks.

<comment><USER14> The idea that psychedelics can cause flashbacks is a myth in the first place. It's completely impossible.

<comment><USER47> Half right. They don't recur indefinitely, but they can happen within the first week or two after the trip.

<comment><USER14> But that isn't at all relevant to hiring, since past psychedelic use can't cause future flashbacks as long as the person doesn't keep using those drugs. And plus the flashbacks that happen in the first week usually only happen if one smokes weed or else is sleep deprived or otherwise stressed out, it's not something that commonly happens at random. And that's being generous and assuming that flashbacks is even the right term, since it's really just your consciousness temporarily reacting differently to other neurological stimuli rather than being purely endogenous.

<comment><USER47> _But that isn't at all relevant to hiring_

Agreed.

Having had a flashback once -- 30 years ago, I hasten to add, for benefit of my future employer who has dug up this comment :-) -- I think it was endogenous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Good old Hypocrisy, the Human Race's favourite past-time.

I'm not saying the article is hypocritical, I'm observing the greater issue here. Sad, but true.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's good to stay away from an organization that rewards lying. You're lucky to have found this out before working there.

</comment><comment><USER50> If you've broken the law, why should you be allowed to assume a position of trust with respect to the law?

<comment><USER51> To a first approximation, 100% of people have broken speed limits at some point. Where do you suggest we find the unicorns who have never done so?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Democracy at work. The majority of Americans support putting you in jail for smoking weed and doing mushrooms in Amsterdam. Wake the fuck up.

</comment><comment><USER53> welcome to life

</comment><comment><USER54> Honesty is seen as a liability in modern life. We never see it from politicians, bankers or public figures and people lie constantly about their CVs, jobs, income and so forth.

Why even bother _asking_ if someone's ever done drugs? The chances are they will not be telling the truth anyhow, so you may as well rely on gut instinct and make the assumption everyone is lying all the time.

Sadly, today in every walk of life, its just a matter of making the "right" noises at the appropriate time to the right people. And that's not good. For anyone.

Tell the truth, shame the devil, take the consequences, one time. It often works out better than you might think.

</comment><comment><USER55> Taking advice from Sebastian Marshall is dangerous. Seriously, are his articles being upvoted by trolls or are there actually that many morons in this community now? The kid wouldn't know the difference between a billion dollar business and a steaming bag of shit, and 30 seconds on his blog will prove I'm right. Shirtless homemade videos of yourself scribbling "business strategies" on a whiteboard and insulting every major company you've come in contact with? Classy.

I would say I pity him, but it's hard to feel sorry for someone who publicly ridicules his colleagues by repeatedly calling them all "fucking jokers" in a 10,000 word rant on his blog.

Downvote this if you're stupid enough to take advice from a tactless wannabe with the business sense of a doorknob.

<comment><USER56> > Downvote this if you're stupid enough to take advice from a tactless wannabe > with the business sense of a doorknob.

I happened to have read a bunch of his articles(shirtless video, joker, pro- win). I disliked all of them. I read this one - this is just an anecdote about bureaucratic dance, with a cheesy title.

I can make my mind about something based on its objective measure, and your vile comment is totally unnecessary.</comment></comment>


iPadOS - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/03/the-ipad-finally-outgrows-ios/ <comment><USER2> > Apple Pencil latency is dropping from 20ms to 9ms,

This is why I respect Apple. Most tech forums would have been flooded people whinging about how mere humans can't perceive such low latencies and how improving them is a waste. Meanwhile Apple knows not to leave anything on the table for UX.

<comment><USER3> Actually I think it highlights how well Apple manage their message and keep people focused on them: most people probably don't notice or actually care about the difference in latency, and 9ms is not the best in the market, yet it becomes a 'good news story' validating Apple

<comment><USER4> Latencies bellow 16ms require a refresh rate higher than 60Hz.

For 9ms you need at least 90Hz. Don't know many who do that. Specially if you take in consideration the battery hit that the faster update rate requires.

<comment><USER5> Don't those latencies add up?

In the worst case 60Hz + this new pen will add up to (16 + 9) 15ms of latency, right?

If the screen refreshes at T=0,16,33,50 and you create input at T=8 then the input will be processed at T=17 (8+9), so you will need to wait for T=33 before it show up for a total latency of 25ms (33-8).

Which is a lot better than the potential total latency of 36ms with a 20ms pen.

<comment><USER6> People seem to be down voting without explaining.

Refresh rate isn't latency. Though you are right that you do have to wait for the screen to redraw.

There is screen latency as a completely separate number though, and those would add up. Many lcd monitors can have up to a 20ms latency. And those numbers would add up like you suggest. It's why gaming monitors can charge a bunch for their 1ms latency at 60hz.

It is also possible to have 120hz and 20ms latency. The numbers are not related.

I don't know what the iPads screen latency is.

<comment><USER7> No, refresh rate directly affects latency. At a refresh rate of 60Hz (without gsync/freesync), with input arriving at arbitrary times, you have an average of half a frame (and a maximum of a whole frame) of unavoidable latency, above and beyond whatever other latency may exist.

If you have enough control over your devices, you can arrange for your input to arrive at just the right time to be included in each frame without extra latency, though.

The kind of latency you describe is that internal to the display; it could be called the video-signal-to-photon latency. The parent you're replying to is explaining the action-to-video-signal and compute-to-video-signal latency, and its effects on the action-to-photon latency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Will there be a multi-user mode? Perfect for separating work from home or multiple clients... It would make iPad so much more usable as a single device for both work and fun.

<comment><USER9> I'm hoping for this. If you have little kids in your house you cannot safely use the iPad Mail client, for example

<comment><USER10> Settings->General->Accessibility->Guided access.

This is pretty cool. It keeps them within the app I want them to be in. you can even set it up so that when they're watching a movie, you can disable taps so they can't exit the video accidentally.

<comment><USER11> It took my 3yo niece about a week to learn how to escape guided access. At that point it became more of a hassle then a help. It might be fine for toddlers but for any kids over 2 you need a fully sandboxed profile if you're not handing them a dedicated tablet.

<comment><USER12> She guessed your pin?

<comment><USER11> Yup, she brute-forced it. This was back before touchID and faceID and IIRC GA pins were only four digits. The game quickly changed from let's watch cartoons to let's figure out how to change apps.

<comment><USER13> I mean, I just checked and now the pin is 6 digits long, and there's a 10 second time out between attempts.

Your original comment implies there's some kind of fundamental flaw with GA that makes it useless, which apparently couldn't be further from the truth.

Even with a 4 digit pin it takes 5 seconds to change it if it's figured out, and if the child has enough time to brute force 10,000 possible combinations without you being able to intervene and rebuff that behavior, I'd say that's it's own problem.

<comment><USER14> 10,000 combinations aren't required. The child stops when the answer is right. And if they've ever noticed one or two digits when watching the parent unlock the iPad for them to use, it drops to 1,000 or 100 max.

<comment><USER13> Maybe you're not aware, but technically you can guess any number in one try, saying you brute forced something with 10,000 combinations doesn't mean it took 10k tries.

10k is a representation of the fact it's not likely to guess it easily, and the new GA lock increases that number to 1 million combinations with 10 second lockouts.

Not to mention, you should yes, generally avoid showing a pin to the person you're keeping out.

You don't need to enter the pin to use GA. It's also not the same pin used to unlock the iPad as your comment seems to imply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yay! I am sick and tired of crappy iPhone ports to the iPad where it wants to turn my iPad pro into a ginormous phone screen. At least now I hope that crap goes away.

It has been fascinating to watch the evolution of the iPad version of iOS and the desktop version of Windows 10 to better support a screen/pen/detachable keyboard sort of world.

<comment><USER16> I don't think this will do anything to help with the "crappy iPhone [app] ports to the iPad", at least not for a while. Those apps will still be there, and they'll likely still be approved in the future.

From my understanding, "iPadOS" is essentially just a marketing signal that the iPad-version of the OS will have more features unique to iPad. For developers, Xcode will still have the option to compile the same codebase for iOS and iPadOS. It's up to the developer to take advantage of more screen real estate when available, though SwiftUI will probably make that easier on the developer (i.e., more likely to show up in the apps you use).

<comment><USER17> The biggest plus here is going to be that we can use desktop-grade web apps on the iPad. That has single handedly been the biggest hurdle!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This feels like it could become a repeat of Android Honeycomb, but iOS is a much more mature operating system now than Android was at the time, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.

<comment><USER19> What happened with Honeycomb?

<comment><USER20> Gingerbread, Android 2.3, was released December 2010 for phones.

Honeycomb, Android 3.0, was released Feb 2011 for tablets. It was a radical new UI and introduced several new APIs. It was the largest Android update ever, except that no devices were updated to it. Android tablets didn't sell very well and developers had little to no reason to support Honeycomb.

Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0, October 2011. This refined the Honeycomb changes and was appropriate for use on phones. It did work on tablets but wasn't really optimized for them until 4.1/jellybean.

Honeycomb wasn't a fork or anything, but the strong divergence and poor sales of Android tablets meant that no one wanted to target Honeycomb until they were actually targeting Ice Cream Sandwich, and then at that point it was barely worth supporting Honeycomb tablets, but still work supporting Gingerbread phones.

I don't think it's particular relevant to the iPadOS situation.

<comment><USER21> Technically, there was at least one device updated to Honeycomb - the HTC Flyer was originally released with Gingerbread and was later upgraded. I know, because I've still got mine, as handed out by Google at workshops where they tried to persuade everyone to use Fragments for everything. I think they've largely stopped trying by now...

Also relevant, that Honeycomb wasn't released into AOSP until ICS, which meant there were no third-party builds or even support from off-name brands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> the multi-tasking/multi-window looks incredibly complicated, full of hidden gestures/commands that aren't really discoverable

<comment><USER23> The one multi-window functionality I need is the ability have the iPad in portrait mode and split the screen horizontally. That way I could have a book or movie on top and notes on the bottom. It seems that iPadOS _still_ cannot do this very basic thing. It's frustrating beyond belief knowing that this device could be so much more useful with that tiny basic functionality that has existed in GUIs for decades.

(And why on Earth does iOS allow me to split a portrait mode vertically, creating two thin strips that are seemingly useless for any work?)

<comment><USER24> Not to mention the inability to split the keyboard - on iPad sized devices, trying to thumb type without a split keyboard is a huge pain in the ass.

<comment><USER25> I've used split keyboards in iPads since I bought them 3 yrs ago. Split keyboards were there forever.

<comment><USER26> iPads Pro, at least the largest one, don't have the feature for some inexplicable reason.

<comment><USER27> Except it does: [https://www.cio.com/article/3042242/ipad-pro-how-to-use- the-...](https://www.cio.com/article/3042242/ipad-pro-how-to-use-the-split- keyboard-in-ios.html)

<comment><USER26> ...sorta.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Honestly these new changes (esp. the second monitor for MacOS support, if it works well) will probably finally get me to buy an iPad. This all looks very good to me. Real file system browser; much better multi-tasking; closer integration with macbook.

<comment><USER29> I think we've crossed the point where, for most people, an iPad (or surface) makes more sense for personal use than a laptop. I have one of the recent iPad Air models and find it more enjoyable to use for everyday tasks like web browsing, light photo editing and sharing, goofing off on youtube, etc. Had I known I was going to like it so much, I probably would have sprung for the more expensive iPad Pro model with face ID, the new pencil, etc. My personal laptop mostly sits unused these days. Admittedly there are some tasks, like booking travel for example, where I still prefer to use a laptop - but those seem to be less and less of an issue over time.

For development work, I don't see my MacBook Pro going away any time soon. But I do see the iPad becoming more incorporated into my professional workflow. It sits on my desk while I'm working and I use it to run things like iTunes, email, slack, and personal reminders - where they feel like less of a distraction than when I run those things on my desktop. Integration between my macbook and ipad is already pretty great when it comes to handoff, airdrop, messages, notes, etc - and Apple seems committed to continued improvement as I think they realize that seamless integration is one of the things that makes people stick within their ecosystem.

<comment><USER30> This has been exactly my experience. If I'm working out of an office (I do a lot of on-prem consulting) I often leave my laptop at the desk during the week and use my iPad at home - it cuts down on the weight in my bag and has a small side benefit of helping me be better at separating work and personal time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> More info in the press release [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/the- new-ipados-powers...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/the-new-ipados- powers-unique-experiences-designed-for-ipad/)

<comment><USER32> Thanks! So it runs on iPad Air 2 and up. That's nice! The iPad Air 2 was released in late 2014!

<comment><USER33> My iPad Air 1 is just now being sunsetted. Well It's been a good 5.5 years with continuous updates.

It's been my most dependable device ever. No battery replacement, daily use, LTE still works great.

<comment><USER34> I have an iPad 3 from 2012 that still gets a couple of hours of Youtube between charges

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So much for the prevailing rumor that Apple was going to create fewer platforms by merging macOS with iOS.

<comment><USER36> Oh, I dunno, it wouldn't surprise me if iPadOS is a step in that direction, and some future laptop runs... iPadOS and there is no more MacOS.

<comment><USER35> So a Chromebook move

<comment><USER37> With the ability to run full Google Docs in Safari, I don't really doubt this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What's old is new again! Mac OS became Mac OS X became OS X became macOS. iPhone OS, whatever it was called on the iPod touch and iPad OS merged to be called iOS, and now there's a new iPadOS.

<comment><USER39> No, the OS on iPads and iPods Touch was always called iOS - the OS was only called iPhone OS for a very short period of time.

<comment><USER40> Your comment contradicts itself. It wasn't always called iOS if it was called iPhone OS "for a very short period of time."

And the period of time was not "very short" by my definition at least.

According to [0]:

> Apple announced iPhone OS 1 at the iPhone keynote on January 9, 2007, and it > was released to the public alongside the original iPhone on June 29, 2007. > > Apple announced iPhone OS 2 at the iPhone software roadmap keynote in March > 2008, and it was released to the public on July 11, 2008 alongside the > iPhone 3G. > Apple announced iPhone OS 3 in March 2009, and it was released > to the public on June 17, 2009 alongside the iPhone 3GS. > Apple announced > iOS 4 in March 2010 and it was released to the public on June 21, 2010 > alongside the iPhone 4.

It was called iPhone OS for roughly 3 years. About 25% of the time since the OS was released it was called iPhone OS.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#iPhone_OS_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#iPhone_OS_1)

<comment><USER41> The iPod touch and iPad were not released when iOS was called iPhone OS.

<comment><USER42> The iPod touch launched 2 months after the original iPhone launched, and they both ran iPhone OS. Why are you so stubborn over something that can be easily searched and debunked?

iPhone OS existed until iPhone OS 3.2.2 when it was renamed to iOS in iOS 4. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history)

<comment><USER43> IOS (and iPhone) were trademarks owned by Cisco so Apple had to license them. As far as I remember for iPhone they just released it and then bargained using the exclusive vpn client being Cisco's. I don't know what they gave for iOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Will iPadOS include a calculator app?

<comment><USER45> iPads still don't have a calculator app? I find that baffling.

<comment><USER46> It's probably because the iPhone calculator app is a four function calculator, and porting that as-is to the iPad would look absolutely comical.

<comment><USER47> If you turn it to landscape you get a scientific calculator.

<comment><USER46> Huh. All these years I've never thought to do that, always thought it was just a four function calculator.

Even the scientific calculator would look pretty silly blown up that large though.

<comment><USER48> IIRC phone-mode apps that allow it can run on an iPad in a framed mode so they don't look too weird. I get why they don't do that with the calculator because it'd be "poor UX" but "what do you mean I spent $1200 on this and there's no fucking calculator, my Apple phone and laptop both have one, you mean I gotta go sort through the app store to find something that's not gonna show me ads, then probably pay some more money on top of that $1200, to get a calculator, I mean there was one in Windows 3.1 FFS" is even worse UX.

<comment><USER49> You can just pull down the universal search bar and type your sum there (as I just learned in this thread).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Apple in 2009: Web browsing on a desktop is cumbersome and painful Apple in 2019: We've brought the desktop browsing experience to the iPad

I mean I get it, they're maturing the platform. But window snapping and home screen widgets seem very "Windows Vista". That combined with the new swipe keyboard and finally adding storage support... it really just seems like playing catch up for things that have existed for over a decade now.

I would personally never use a device for professional work unless I had full control over the software on that device. Being locked in by the app store is still a non-starter for me.

<comment><USER51> > it really just seems like playing catch up

At the surface level, it does. However, at the implementation level, I think Apple is slowly reimagining all of these things for a new paradigm — and the new paradigm has needed time to evolve slowly, for Apple to see what directions its users and developers wanted to go in, and to take the time to decide how to do things.

For example: the sidebar on Vista was next to useless because (A) its widgets didn't tap into any data people wanted, (B) the widgets weren't the right size to show any useful information, and (C) didn't fare any better on Windows 7 because they were buried under windows. iOS widgets, on the other hand, directly tap into applications, can come in variable sizes, have a somewhat uniform presentation style, and one visits the Home screen many more times than one clicks the Show Desktop button on Windows.

Windows Vista gadgets and OS X Dashboard widgets seemed to be little toys, the styling to look like a little desktop accessory being more important than their actual utility. The way that iPadOS integrates Today Widgets with the home screen is more like putting useful information directly at users' disposal. Pair this with widgets like Shortcuts, Launch Center Pro, or Pythonista, and you also have a means for quickly starting workflows.

iPad's multiple windows isn't really window snapping in the same sense as on Windows. That's just an implementation detail. The actual concept, at least as of iPadOS (as opposed to iOS 11 and 12), is more like macOS' Spaces or Mission Control.

All in all, to appreciate something, you have to appreciate all the little details. To me, Today Widgets on the Home screen have the potential to offer productivity improvements similar to Alfred. I'm sure there'll be apps with widgets specifically crafted to take advantage of this.

<comment><USER50> I completely get what you're saying. Thinking about it more now, I was pretty off. Yeah, those were the reasons that Windows widgets failed and Dashboard Widgets on OS X were always hidden which made them pretty unusable. But, on Android I've got a ton of options for widgets and I still don't use them.

I think the only useful one I've really found is weather. Maybe that's because I don't use my calendar. Just going through the list of the ones I have available, I don't see any that really bring any value to what I'm doing.

What's replaced what I've used widgets for in the past is more context-aware tasks. I've got tasks in tasker for doing things like when I plug into the headphone jack, either my podcasts app or music app pops up (depending on which was accessed last).

Obviously I'm more of a power user, but I really think iOS/iPad OS could benefit from a workflow subsystem. Things like activities in Android and the AppleScript system in macOS are insanely powerful for professional users. Unfortunately, it seems like most Apple apps in macOS seem to be doing away with AppleScript API's.

<comment><USER52> You haven't heard of Shortcuts I guess? Read this and the following pages: [https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories- rev...](https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories- review/9/#content)

With iOS 13 it gets added as a default app and the shortcuts can be run automatically by triggers, so it's like a more user friendly and natively integrated version of Tasker.

It seems like the triggers in iOS 13b1 are Time of Day - Alarm (Stopped or started) - Apple Watch workout - Arrive/Leave Location - Connect to CarPlay - Airplane Mode - WiFi - BlueTooth - Do Not Disturb - Low Power Mode - NFC Tag - Open App (ex. "When I Open Reddit")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I am nervous this means Apple will hold back features from iOS to get people to buy an iPad. For example, they announced the new Files app with iPadOS but there is no reason that shouldn't all be available on an iPhone.

<comment><USER37> iPhone doesn't have a screen large enough or a USB connector…how would you use the "new Files app"?

<comment><USER54> It has a USB connector with the appropriate adapter.

Pixel 3A comes with a USB C to A (female) adapter in the box which makes it seem like this kind of thing is going mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> > you'll be able to grab files from USB-C flash drives

That sounds useful. Reaching NeXTSTEP functionality soon enough.

<comment><USER56> Well, for that it would need Xcode. And multi-user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Finger cross this includes a first class calculator...

<comment><USER58> Just buy PCalc and support an awesome indie developer.

<comment><USER59> Are there any other options? Pcalc actually has many people complaining about lack of features.

<comment><USER60> It's an untraditional calculator, but I love Soulver from Acqualia. It is always one of the first things I install on a new iPhone or Mac.

[https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/](https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/)

<comment><USER61> Alternatively, I use a lot for a long while Tydlig. Sadly it has been stagnant for a while (I'd like to be able to save "sheets", for instance). But its interaction mode (akin to a spreadsheet, in a sense) is very refreshing.

[http://tydligapp.com](http://tydligapp.com)

<comment><USER62> +1 for tydlig, among the first apps I install on every new iPhone

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> As a web developer, what on earth does this mean?

> desktop sites are now the default in Safari

Surely it's not some kind of meddling with the device width to make responsive web design even more confusing. That would be very odd.

My hope is that it's some kind of user agent manipulation that thwarts device sniffing so you don't see a mobile phone stylesheet or get redirected to a mobile site while using your iPad.

<comment><USER64> Yep, that's it. Even major websites have this problem, with YouTube being a particularly bad one. If you have an iPad handy try loading up YouTube, then do a long-press on the reload button and request desktop site. It's a much better experience.

I don't have the betas, but I expect Apple is applying this automatically based on viewport size. Full screen Safari instance? Desktop page. Narrow viewport in split or slide-over multitasking? Mobile page.

<comment><USER65> "long-press on the reload button"

Wow. I've somehow missed this little gem. I usually requested the desktop site via the share sheet option but this is far nicer. Ditto for a quick way to disable content blockers. Thanks!

<comment><USER64> The other Safari pro-tip: long press the new tab button to reopen recently closed tabs

<comment><USER66> Im always fascinated by program shortcuts almost no one knows about. How did you learn about long pressing in safari?

<comment><USER67> This is what always confuses me when people say "macOS/iOS is soooo intuitive!" \- discoverability of features is well, horrible. You have to long/3d/long 3d press all manner of elements to discover, not to mention single/two/three finger swipes in differing directions, from screen, from edge.

<comment><USER51> Because these gestures are akin to keyboard shortcuts — they're not the only way to do achieve something, just a convenient shortcut. One could always request the desktop site via the Share sheet.

<comment><USER64> It's worse because keyboard shortcuts you could learn from the menu bar. Mac convention has been that all shortcuts should be discoverable there, and you even see the menu title flash when you hit it.

To your point about request desktop site being in the share sheet, that's true. But recently closed tabs are not.

Advanced iOS features are definitely less discoverable. But it's a trade-off for how easy the essentials are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> No information on whether the iPad Pro keyboard is fully compliant in terms of arrow keys, etc. This really gets in the way of things like Cloud 9, hosted VS Code, etc.

<comment><USER69> As much as people (myself included) wish we could do native development on the iPad, I would quickly settle for just supporting Cloud 9. The only reason I have to bring two laptops and an iPad with me when I travel instead of just one laptop and an iPad is because Cloud 9 doesn't work on an iPad, for absolutely no good reason.

<comment><USER70> Off-topic: "Opening workspaces (including access to databases and app frameworks) will be disabled on June 30, 2019. Cloud9 will stop working on December 31, 2019." [[https://c9.io/login](https://c9.io/login)]

<comment><USER69> Yes they were bought by Amazon, so c9.io is shutting down but AWS Cloud9 is the replacement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Looks like they ran out of time for all the features, but MOUSE SUPPORT!!!

[https://twitter.com/reneritchie/status/1135643633690992640](https://twitter.com/reneritchie/status/1135643633690992640)

<comment><USER71> yes, finally!

voice control (an accessibility feature for now) lays the groundwork for more pervasive computing for all, but mouse support fills a hole until that happens.

i don't think voice control will replace physical controls, but do think it will grow in usage over time to become an important augment to physical controls.

now i'm just waiting for pervasive handwriting input with realtime OCR and indexing (for instant search), which can replace all sorts of note-taking and annotation workflows (and the requisite printing to paper that now often entails).

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I hope iPads (and iPhones) also get support for the 3rd party gaming controllers like Xbox or Playstation (like they announced for Apple tv)

<comment><USER73> They are getting it: [https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features/](https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Pencil latency drop to 9ms is best I've seen.

<comment><USER75> Is that for both gen 1 and gen 2 pencils?

<comment><USER76> The small print on the page that mentions this stat says that the measurements were taken on a new 12.9 inch iPad Pro using the Gen 2 Apple Pencil. Not sure what latency reductions may make their way to the other iPads, but nothing is stated right now.

<comment><USER75> I have the 10.5 in Pro and Apple Pencil 1. I wonder if the 20 ms vs 9 ms is detectable by the human eye.

<comment><USER25> It can be very detectable, I'd say. Try watching this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4) It shows the difference between from >100ms to ~1ms. It's mind baffling.

<comment><USER77> I wonder how did they manage it. Even the Screen itself has a 1 - 4ms latency. That is excluding the Input latency and Software in between.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some of the features look pretty great but I can't help but fear the day when they decide to discontinue the Macbook.

<comment><USER78> MacBooks are selling well and it is their gateway model so crucial for the overall ecosystem.

Far more likely is that you see a MacBook with ARM CPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Interesting development, I'd had the impression that they were moving towards MacOS on all devices, but I suppose it comes down to naming as very much is shared, though it would be nice if a small macbook was actually the same as a large ipad with a keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER79> It seemed like they were on a path to make everything iOS including the laptops. Granted it was more of a iOS-ification, but seemed like the general direction. Now I'm curious if this is a shift in direction if they are going to split ipads from ios.

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm having a hard time finding any info about how this affects iOS / iPadOS app development. Do you still just build & submit once and it targets both platforms?

</comment><comment><USER81> For awhile apple was trying to "bring iOS features to the desktop", thankfully now they've realized each device form requires a special user interface.

</comment><comment><USER82> I wish they'd introduce multiple accounts on the iPad. That, and let me directly and securely access files (and in particular my humongous photo library) on my Mac over WiFi, without all the iCloud bullshit. I know it's not going to happen, and Apple will continue to pretend this is not something users want, but one can have dreams, am I right?

</comment><comment><USER83> As if compiling hybrid mobile apps across all platforms wasn't enough of a pain already ;)

Anyone know what this might mean for Cordova users?

</comment><comment><USER84> So Apple goes the opposite way compared with Purism: making different OS for every device. What's the point?

<comment><USER85> Maybe we'll be able to discuss this more concretely once Purism has actually shipped a mobile device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I remember when apple was lauded for unifying the forked os for ipad into iOS.

i guess they changed their minds.

<comment><USER51> It's just marketing. It's still iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Would've loved to see XCode for i(Pad)OS. Or any kind of developer support.

</comment><comment><USER88> The most exciting aspect of this is the resizable text / view port zoom in Safari. Productivity is going to go through the roof!

</comment><comment><USER89> now that both the mouse and the local storage work, can we finally code on this thing with a real local codebase and server?

</comment><comment><USER90> Was kinda hoping for trackpad / mouse support and maybe a laptop form factor.

<comment><USER91> They didn't announce it. But they added mouse and trackpad support under Accessibility.

[https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/11356536361455902...](https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1135653636145590273?s=21)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> On the road to phasing out MacOS?

</comment><comment><USER92> SIDECAR!!

<comment><USER93> That looks like a fantastic feature, especially due to the fact that you can use Apple Pencil to control your Mac. I wonder if that will cannibalize Wacom sales. Having used both Apple Pencil + iPad Pro and a Wacom tablet (separately), I found it real hard to draw on the Wacom table without seeing what I'm drawing under the pencil.

<comment><USER69> Wacom is one thing, but I'm wondering how quickly Duet [1] will shut down.

[1] [https://www.duetdisplay.com/](https://www.duetdisplay.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> What about mouse support?

</comment><comment><USER95> But no mouse support. :(

<comment><USER96> USB-C/Bluetooth Mouse and Keyboard support, including on extra screens when plugged in, would have been a killer feature.

I guess Apple thought it would cannibalise Mac sales too much?

<comment><USER97> Wouldn't Apple be okay with everyone switching over to their own iOS based ARM products? They wouldn't have to deal with Intel for processors regular CPU's anymore and they wouldn't have to support an extra software architecture on the development side of things.

<comment><USER96> I think the Apple of old that was willing to make bold decisions, even at the expense of part of its own product range, is gone. Soon Apple will start selling printers again!

Its exactly as Steve Jobs predicted:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBma82g3Uag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBma82g3Uag)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Why are we as developers giving this company any of our business when they've thumbed their noses at us for decades?

<comment><USER78> Weird. As a developer I haven't found Apple to be thumbing their nose at me.

Many of their features are genuinely useful for my development e.g. TouchBar.

<comment><USER99> Genuinely curious: how have you found TouchBar useful for development? I think you're the first dev I've seen say that.

<comment><USER78> Because I can fully customise it using something like BetterTouchTool.

And so in IntelliJ I have custom buttons for executing common commands. I never remembered what each function key does in each app so it's useful for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why can I just shut the lid on a Macbook and not think about it? - <AUTHOR> ...but even with Windows 10 a laptop will refuse to do anything sane with regard to sleep, hibernation or even thermal management.<p>(I've got a high-end Windows laptop that I'm fairly sure will burn itself to a crisp if I don't do the right thing every time I stop using it) <comment><USER2> I agree with Windows - it's screwy. Closing lid and putting it in backpack - 50% of that simple action resulted in laptop being hot like a frying pan when i take it out few hours after.

I traced it down to wireless mouse - it apparently "wake up" laptop as soon as mouse pointer movement detected and it "awakens" itself and boots itself with lid closed in a backpack.

So my sequence to close lid on Windows laptop:

\- Disconnect all wires coming to it.

\- Turn off wireless mouse.

\- Close lid.

<comment><USER3> My Windows 10 desktop has similar issues. It'll fail to lock when idle most of the time.

My theory is the mouse is kept active by minute vibrations from a nearby fan among other sources, but I haven't tested it yet. Either way, how Microsoft's idle detection code can be so poor give the implications is breathtaking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because Apple have worked out a fairly good mechanism to prevent the system from not falling to sleep when the lid is closed.

Open a Terminal and type:

        pmset -g assertions

You will get a list of all processes and which kind of sleep mode they are preventing currently.

Having said that, it doesn't work well _always_. I remember that I had issues with btsync once, which was actively preventing sleep even when the lid was closed. This turned out to be a bug, but it was really annoying. An issue with modern MacBooks is that you cannot see anymore whether the device is sleeping or not as Apple decided to remove the status LED.

So it _can_ still run hot in your bag, but it usually does not and good App developers test for this when it applies to their applications.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but shutting the lid of my MBP is not a good idea if I'm not planning to use it soon. The battery will be dead in ~1 week. Granted, it doesn't stay put for a week very often so I mostly "do not think about it" either, but it does drain the battery.

<comment><USER6> Do you have Power Nap enabled? That feature lets the Mac turn back on every so often to check for updates and other stuff, and can be a pretty big drain on your battery.

Otherwise, this is basically the difference between "sleep" and "hibernate". Hibernate shuts down and takes no power, sleep does require the computer stay powered on. When you close the lid of a Macbook, it sleeps, not hibernates.</comment></comment>


René Laennec: Inventor of the Stethoscope - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Laennec <comment><USER2> Good read. Here's the best part:

In 1816, I was consulted by a young woman laboring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of fatness. The other method just mentioned [direct auscultation] being rendered inadmissible by the age and sex of the patient, I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics, ...

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember reading an old Reader's Digest Medical Compendium type book in high school that I had found at a thrift store and they had this story in there. If I can find the book I'll share how they wrote it in there (but he was self- conscious about putting his head on her bosom if I remember correctly so he came up with his alternative method because of that so as not to make her feel uncomfortable).</comment>


Apple, Spotify Discuss Siri Truce, as Antitrust Battle Looms - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-spotify-discuss-siri-truce-as-antitrust-battle-looms <comment><USER2> Spotify is big enough to take Apple head-on and get Apple to negotiate. But most companies aren't big, and cannot challenge the hegemony of Apple. Hope hopen against hope that Spotify doesn't concede, for the sake of the ecosystem. The only language Apple understands is that of anti-trust, and it is high time that it went through the cycle of self correction that Microsoft went through in the late 90s/2000s</comment>


An Unelected Monarch Is Shaping Our Public Life. His Name Is Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/an-unelected-monarch-is-shaping-our-public-life-his-name-is-mark-zuckerberg-d7c571bd42d2 <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a comment I made a while ago on Facebook and the necessity of moderation:

"~Thought exercise~: Let's say you were the mayor of a large city. There are multiple areas in the city where you can shout whatever you want during certain hours. Would you let someone hook up an internet-connected megaphone in each area and pipe in hate speech everywhere simultaneously? And what if we were in a future where there were physical bots indistinguishable from humans that crowded into those public spaces, vociferously indicated their agreement, and cheered him on?

That future is now.

In reality, Facebook owns those public spaces. No one actually goes to that spot in the park anymore. Mark Zuckerberg is the mayor. Oh, and it's not just one city, he's everyone's mayor, everywhere. If you don't use Facebook but you're on Whatsapp, you're still in his jurisdiction. As for the "during certain hours" part? Nope, those internet-connected megaphones are blasting 24/7\. Those bots are nodding their heads 24/7\. Our mayor also collects megaphone usage fees for himself. He gives you dopamine points, likes, and social validation each time you come back for more. Freedom, yeah."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206155)

<comment><USER3> Ok. Lets enlarge youre analogy. So, its ok to censorship any public speach?

<comment><USER2> That's a big jump from what I said.

Here's an expansion of what I said, in my own words. The only people who wielded the "massive megaphone everywhere" before the advent of social media were traditional media organizations (and organizations with disproportionate access to traditional media). These media organizations were relatively professional, with relatively high standards for reporting. They undoubtedly had biases which led to problematic filtering and distortion of the information that they presented. However, with the democratization of media comes to new problems. We no longer have a professional class synthesizing and filtering the information that we see.

Any one of us can wield the massive megaphone now, but there is a huge heterogeneity in that usage. The most passionate partisans, the most nefarious nation states, the Dunningest of Dunning-Krugers,...will use the megaphone the most. Since most people are at least somewhat impressionable, this presents a problem. Whereas before the media would impress upon people with (somewhat problematically) filtered information, now social media is impressing upon people with radically unfiltered garbage misinformation.

We have to admit that this is an existential problem for our democracy. Only then can we begin to solve it. I am not asking for mass-censorship. I am asking for the system of social media to be redesigned in such a way to mitigate the above problems.

<comment><USER4> This is the inevitable, unavoidable course of human progress. Letters to telegram to telephone to TV to email to blogs to social media. Eventually we'll all have some wearable device and constantly sharing one-to-many in that way, and later it'll be driven by neural implants.

The more you connect people and enable one-to-many communication and information distribution, the more you increase the chance of "viral" ideas propagating, be they (in one's view) good or bad ones. The harm imposed by Facebook mostly has to do with the fact that they're a for-profit company, and particularly a for-profit company that doesn't charge users, causing them to acquire revenue in ways that are extremely prone to perverse incentives.

More people gaining the capability to be exposed to more information from more people isn't the problem. I mean, sure, it causes problems and isn't what we're evolved to properly handle, but it's not inherently a bad thing or something that necessitates megamayors policing the distribution streams. (Barring some exceptions in extreme scenarios where death has a high chance of being imminent.)

At some point we'll probably have at least one popular decentralized P2P communication medium / social media platform, backed by cryptography, and there'll be no central authority able to control communication in any way, besides governments arresting people or taking other security measures. Zuckerberg-like figures will be irrelevant in these systems, but they'll still exhibit the same properties you describe. It won't be possible for anyone to redesign these systems to mitigate what you see are issues inherent to unrestricted democratization of communication and information.

Shouldn't we prepare for this eventuality and accept that this is the asymptote of human civilization, rather than asking gatekeepers to clean things up during this interregnum where the gatekeepers happen to hold a lot of power? It's like growing up with helicopter parents you cling onto despite the fact that you're going to have to face the world on your own when you turn 18.

<comment><USER2> "At some point we'll probably have at least one popular decentralized P2P communication medium / social media platform thing, backed by cryptography, and there'll be no central authority able to control communication in any way"

There's not a chance that would ever get traction with a majority of people. The "normies" would be revolted by what they find on there, and trolls would have no one to troll but other trolls. Only the biggest trolls enjoy trolling other trolls. That's what 4chan is for. What you described is a more sophisticated version of 4chan which will have such gruesome content that half of 4chan's userbase would turn away in shock.

<comment><USER4> Will it happen in the next 10 years? Probably not. But will something like this exist within 100 years, especially as the public grows increasingly wary of shady for-profit social media companies? I think it probably will, and I think it'll probably be used by at least 30% of the population, and perhaps much more.

I'm not suggesting this would function like an anonymous imageboard (though there'll still be plenty of things like those for people who want them), either. Imagine using the app Signal without having to rely on Signal's servers or having to own a mobile phone. You'd use it just like you do now; there'd just be no middlemen between you and the people you talk to. The same can be true of Twitter or anything else. People would still have some control over what they see and don't see; they're not going to see everything from everyone at all times, unless they specifically decide to use such an app. We just need to wait a few decades for those alternatives to become much more polished and user-friendly for the average person.

The trend towards mesh-like, blockchain-like, decentralized, distributed, P2P networking seems pretty clear. I think the majority of things will probably still remain centralized even in a century, since there are many advantages to centralization, but these alternative mesh worlds are only going to get bigger and bigger.

It's definitely a complex issue, and many of these future decentralized apps may end up re-implementing some aspects of centralization through elections of volunteer moderators or some other kind of democratized system, but in those cases at least the mayors will actually be elected and have limited terms and could be recalled, unlike Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER2> I think we can both agree that we can't shoehorn all discussion regarding social media's current flaws into a "Free speech vs. Censorship" paradigm. The amplification of post-truthy discussion, whether nefarious or otherwise, is problematic. If you were the CEO of a corporation and you found that some of your employees were addressing corporate work in a post-truthy way, you would want to promptly address the issue. A company run in a post-truth way wouldn't be in business for long. Facebook is no exception.

Imagine the following discussion between Zuckerberg and his director of engineering:

Zuckerberg: "Hey why did we miss the deadline for making a new Tiktok-style app?"

Director: "well, we were going to code it in React Native, but then I realized that React Native is Illuminati George Soros trash so we started from scratch again. Also, deadlines are just a construct, you can never truly know how long it will take to complete something"

Zuckerberg: "have you lost your mind? This company played a large part in creating React Native and it has always worked well for us. And deadlines are indeed a construct, but they are a very useful one!"

Director: "I'm not sure you deserve to be CEO. I believe you are a satanist."

Zuckerberg: "Watch your mouth."

Director: "Free speech, I can do what I want. You said so."

Zuckerberg: "You're fired."

Director: "Am I really fired? I can't be fired by an invalid CEO."

Zuckerberg: "I can tell you what's real: Those guards behind you whom will escort you out of the building. The money you will no longer make. And the restraining order I will file if you report back for your now non-existent job. Goodbye."

If only Facebook tolerated pervasive post-truth for its userbase to the same degree that it tolerates post-truth in Menlo Park...

<comment><USER4> Reddit staff probably aren't sharing porn with each other all day, but their users are, and that's not an issue. If I were CEO of Facebook and a director was playing Farmville all day instead of working, I would fire them, but it wouldn't matter at all if users were doing the same thing. Reddit and Facebook are platforms, not publications. How their customers use their product to talk to others has no relation to how they might run themselves.

Additionally, it shouldn't be their job to nanny their users and judge what things they say are true or untrue and remove the untrue things, unless something's both untrue and likely to cause direct and imminent harm (like saying drinking bleach is proven to prevent COVID-19). Allowing third-party fact checkers to add commentary to consequential political posts is a reasonable and balanced compromise on Zuckerberg's part.

"Post-truth" is meaningless and completely subjective; impartial analysts should be able to address potentially true or false claims based on the evidence. "Post-truth" is "whatever you claim to be true and I claim to be not true". Truth isn't subjective, but judgment of truth is. One can cherry-pick cases where some surrogate says something clearly false and defends it with "we have a different view of what the facts are", but in the general case, having different views of the facts is the natural state of humanity and discourse.

I like Snopes, but I definitely do not want Zuckerberg to start acting like he's Snopes or enforcing what content can exist based on what Snopes says. I think (99.9% of) conspiracy theories are absurd and a scourge of society, but I don't think they should be classified as thoughtcrime or removed. I would fire an employee who was a zealous conspiracy theory proponent, but I would never sanction a user for being one, or for holding any other view I disagreed with or considered ridiculous. Snopes' voice should be given exposure but opposing voices shouldn't be kept from exposure unless there are extreme circumstances.

In my opinion, we should be asking ourselves how we could possibly improve the general public's epistemological faculties and approaches, rather than trying to tug-of-war-style yank their epistemological conclusions away from them. The former will help unite the US and the latter will continue to further divide it. Let's work at the meta level instead of the object level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, he has been elected, people has chosen to use facebook.

I don't use facebook because I don't want all my private info controlled by an external company.

But most people has chosen to use it, and have chosen to continue using it because the pros outweigh the cons for them.

The first monarch is usually elected. The offspring are the unelected.

</comment><comment><USER6> I deleted Facebook years ago and Zuckerberg has had little effect on my life since. I don't seem to remember citizens being able to unsubscribe from Louis XVI or the Romanovs.

<comment><USER7> True. But, if you're a US citizen, you live in a country where the President is elected in no small part due to his efforts.

<comment><USER8> Congratulations, you've discovered the existence of media in a society with free speech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surely, it's not a monarchy until he hands the company over to his eldest son. This is just vanilla plutocracy.

<comment><USER8> Yes, surely any time the owner of a company hands their ownership to their heirs,we are all living in an oppressive monarchy.

<comment><USER9> Well no, there's obviously a hierarchy here. If zuckerberg is king, then your family business is the holdings of a minor barony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of words to convey that Zuck has a lot of power due to his ultimate oversight on content presented on Facebook. Interesting concept at least. Kind of scary.

</comment><comment><USER11> Everybody who is dumb enough to use his crap is electing him. Monarchs do force you to obey, nobody is forced to use FB.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, we all vote when we use Facebook (or don't use Facebook)

</comment><comment><USER13> What is interesting is how much power the owners of the newspapers in the past had. William Randolph Hearst of "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war" literally got America involved in the Spanish-American War.

More recently, the NY Times was a big proponent and probably helped drive a lot of the consensus that got America involved in the war in Iraq.

Compared to these, where Zuckerberg is not actually pushing an opinion but refusing to censor opinions, Zuckerberg is an amateur.

I think a lot of the hate that Facebook gets is from the old media that are seeing their influence wane and are blaming Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER14> while i don't immediately agree with everything you said, you raise an interesting point about the power dynamics of old and new media, and i find it disheartening that it's being buried rather than discussed. at least you spent more than 2 seconds formulating a response, which is more than most on this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oddly, we don't hear about the other "monarch": Dorsey.

<comment><USER16> Twitter is a much more niche product in my experience.

Everyone and their literal grandmother is on Facebook.

Twitter is mostly restricted to news junkies and the tech crowd.

<comment><USER15> In terms of shaping public perceptions though, because the media feed from its trough it has oversized influence --I think bigger than facebook. Like, you don't hear about outrage mobs from Facebook as you do from Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All monarchs are unelected

<comment><USER18> Not true. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's amazing how words work. If you use a word to mean a thing that is directly in opposition to its original meaning, you can form sentences that sound bad without worrying about reality.

</comment><comment><USER19> Been thinking about this in various contexts recently: if corporations wield enough power to be country-like [0], would it be fair to say they can only be democratic if the workers have the power to elect and replace the board of directors?

[0] not necessarily in all regards: "monopoly on violence" will be absent, but having the power to define rules and ban sub-communities or to _actually_ negotiate with governments rather than just do what they are told

<comment><USER13> > if corporations wield enough power to be country-like [0], would it be fair > to say they can only be democratic if the workers have the power to elect > and replace the board of directors?

That seems like the wrong model. The power that we are worried about them exercising is over their users and the general public, not their workers. Your statement is like saying government workers should be able to vote who runs government because it is so powerful. The people we are worried about is the general public, not the workers.

<comment><USER14> anti-suffragists tried to make those kinds of arbitrary distinctions too. a democracy doesn't need to be narrowly defined by its workers. as a company grows, its stakeholders grow to encompass more and more of the public. so especially for large companies, that distinction is immaterial. a democracy should be composed of the affected, not just some aribirarily-defined in- group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Zuckerberg was elected in one of the most democratic processes possible.

Voting is a very fascinating topic. If a person publicly endorses the mayor of Miami (or the CEO of Pepsi, or the President of Ohio State University) for President of the US 2020, many will criticize that person for throwing away their vote. Then half the country laments what terrible leadership we have, and how did these bozos get elected? It's always the fault of the other half.

Well, you have more liberty to vote about Facebook than you have to vote US2020. Just log off and never go back. Otherwise, don't complain about not getting a vote. If you did log off and never went back, complaining is kinda like always blaming the other half for the bozos in office.</comment>


The Greatest Web Pages - <AUTHOR> http://gariety.xxx/journal/the-greatest-web-pages

<comment><USER2> Jesus. That change-when-you-scroll profile picture is annoying. When I scroll, the motion in my peripheral jerks my attention away from the content of the page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anybody care to make sure your blog works right in all mayor browsers anymore?

[http://imagebin.org/316692](http://imagebin.org/316692)</comment>