No Proton Decay Means Grand Unification Must Wait - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161215-proton-decay-grand-unification/ <comment><USER2> Small technical correction:

> _For instance, SU(5) groups quarks and antiquarks together with leptons and > antileptons into "fiveplets," which are like the indistinguishable sides of > a regular pentagon._

The idea is to put the 5 particles in 5 places that are undistinguishable.

For that you need to use the vertex corners of an hyper-tetraedrum ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-cell) ). Don't get confused by the bad drawings, if you have one of them in 4 dimensions, you can put each point at the same distance of all the other points.

If you use a regular pentagon, then you must select an order for each of the particles/vertex. If you select one, some are more close than the others.

(An alternative is to use a pentagon, but consider not only the rotations and flip, but also the operations that mix the vertex/particles in any order. But then the nice identification with the symmetry of the geometric figure is gone. You can use a square with the central point.)

<comment><USER3> The talk of simple geometry reminds me of the Ptolemaic universe for some reason. Layman's comment, I know, but I just couldn't resist.

<comment><USER2> In some sense, yes. I remember the class were my physics professor explained why the SU(5) could be The Group of the universe and why it failed (IIRC the predictions were 1% off with the experiment, a good try, but enough to be discarded.) You could feel how sad he was that SU(5) has to be discarded. :(

In some sense, no. The SU(5) group includes all the symmetries of the hyper- dodecahedron, were you can rotate it in the 4-dimmensional space to exchange one of the vertex/particles with another. But it also includes more strange things, like half mixing two particles.

      a -> (a+b) / srqt(2)
      b -> (a-b) / sqrt(2)

This is more difficult to explain. Technically, it's a rotation in the plane x-y of 45 degrees. And you can rotate another angles, for example in some particles decays the important rotation is 13 degrees. And you can mix three or four or five particles. All of this is more difficult to imagine, but it's easy to write analytically.

The use of geometric shapes like the hyper-dodecahedron is more a nice visualization technique. It's easier to explain than the details of the SU(5) group and it provides a good intuition, even after studding the theory with more details. So I prefer to ignore this technical detail, specially for a popular science article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Modelling is an interesting thing. Our math is such an elegant language that it can describe such amazingly rich abstractions. On one hand, we have category theorists and computer scientists working on the more familiar modelling of computational patterns. On the other, we have physicists coming up with all kinds of equally curious patterns in particle fields. It seems many of the patterns are just abstract nonsense but there are too many coincidences to ignore. To me this hints of some underlying structure that we are completely blind to still. Oh, how i wish to study math from the future.

<comment><USER5> Study math now! With reverse ageing in the future you could potentially become one of the best in the field. There is time.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like an _excellent_ excuse to not study math now.

<comment><USER5> Aaah...procrastination. "I'll just wait t'ill I'm 150."

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of some lyrics I like:

 _Throw it away, what 's left to need_

 _When you've got infinity_

 _So much out there left to find_

 _We 'll do that some other time_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to take a moment to praise Quanta Magazine. They really are the one magazine that got me reading all forms of long form articles about science which if it were written plainly would go high above my head and/or would seem boring.

<comment><USER9> Quanta Magazine has also a good reputation among many theoretical physicists including myself. They of course do suffer from the occasional misconception, but as a whole the accuracy of their reporting is leaps and bounds above many other popular science sites or blogs.

<comment><USER8> Lifehacker introduced me to them and I've been a happy reader since then.

The thing I like the most is that don't play the "analogy game" too much and instead generally teach a small concept and then build up on it.

While other popular media outlets like Wired or Verge simply dumb it down too much or are factually incorrect. I do like WIRED's Science Blogs though even though they are a little bit inactive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article can be summarized by this line:

"Japan is considering building a $1 billion detector called Hyper-Kamiokande, which would be between eight and 17 times bigger than Super-K and would be sensitive to proton lifetimes of 10^35 years after two decades."

All this to possibly detect a single proton decay in 20 years. Now that's some serious commitment!

<comment><USER11> If it were solely to detect proton decay, yes, I agree it would be very impressive. The reality is a bit more prosaic though, as the article suggests in passing:

"In the meantime, a Nobel Prize has been won for a different discovery in the cathedral-esque water tank pertaining to particles called neutrinos."

Hyper-K is a dual-purpose detector, a neutrino detector as well as a proton decay detector. Substantial part of Hyper-K funding should be interpreted as investment to a neutrino detector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an question I've always had about proton decay: if virtual particles can spontaneously appear anywhere at anytime, why couldn't some virtual quark appear in the midst of the three that make up the proton causing it to fall apart? What keeps The constituent components of a proton immune from this behavior?

<comment><USER13> You can't have a single virtual particle appearing, it's always two, due to conservation of momentum, charge etc

So it'd be a quark-antiquark pair popping up.

The proton is the lightest Baryon (3 quark particle), there is no lighter Baryon it could decay into. The decay products have to be lighter than the original proton, by at least the mass of the virtual quark pair, to repay the energy 'borrowed' from the vacuum to create the virtual quark pair (because energy is always conserved). So the proton remains unaffected by the virtual particles popping in and out of existence around it. The virtual particles have no choice but to effectively to annihilate with one another and disappear, to pay back the energy debt.

Heavier Baryons (Sigmas, Lambdas) are indeed destabilized by virtual quark pairs, that is the mechanism by which they decay, almost instantaneously, on their own.

You could have an up-anti up quark pair that pops up close to the up quark of the proton, the up quarks could 'swap places', and then the up of the proton annihilates with the anti up of the virtual quark pair, but the the result is still a proton.

<comment><USER13> r.e. Heavy baryon decay, here is a feynmann diagram showing a delta baryon decaying into a proton and pion. The down + anti-down quark pair that appears in the middle of the diagram are virtual particles:

[https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Cottingham/Figures/figur...](https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Cottingham/Figures/figure1_3.jpeg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The thing that pop-science stories about GUT always seem to fail to explain is- what does it _mean_ for a symmetry to break at a certain point in time? In the present day physical symmetries (isotopy of space, say, or conservation laws) are just static laws of nature; what was going on in the first microseconds that could mess with the laws of physics itself?

...I'm sure my question contains within it at least several misconceptions, but let that just be an illustration of how confused this kind of article leaves laypeople.

<comment><USER15> The symmetry breaking should be thought of as a phase transition that occurs as the temperature of the universe changes, like liquid freezing and becoming ice. The universe was initially very hot, but rapidly cooled down as it expanded and went through phase transitions when it passed the "freezing temperature", i.e the temperature at which the laws of physics prefer to spontaneously break the symmetry.

<comment><USER16> I've always been curious about that as well. Suppose you took a small region of the universe and reheated it to be unification temperature today, presumably you would restore the symmetry, but presumably when you let it cool down, the symmetry would _not_ randomly break in a different way, but deterministically in the same way; isn't that a way the analogy does not hold?

To get random breaking in a different way, presumably no amount of mere heating of matter would suffice; you would have to somehow restore the high- energy false vacuum of the Big Bang itself? I don't suppose there's any way to do that in today's universe, even in principle?

<comment><USER17> > _Suppose you took a small region of the universe and reheated it to be > unification temperature today...I don 't suppose there's any way to do > that...?_

You're describing a particle accelerator. When we talk about the LHC accessing "higher energies" than the Tevatron [1] we are saying it is "baking" small parts of the universe to higher and higher temperatures.

[1] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/11/30/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/11/30/the- lhc-surpasses-the-tevatron-in-energy-but-what-about-power/)

<comment><USER16> Yep. But even if we could build a particle accelerator capable of reaching GUT energy level, it wouldn't spawn new universes, would it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > ... researchers have found a variety of other symmetry groups that the > existing particles might fit into, with extra features and variables that > can make protons decay much more slowly.

Well, "extra ... variables that can make ..." is often a sign of EOL desperation for theories. What I got from Kuhn, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER19> Assume the physical universe takes the form of a set of axiomatic systems whose statements are elementary particles and whose interactions are logical operations; i.e., metals in the presence of ions will form salts. Matter creates the gravitational interaction as a function of mass.

Why do we assume the theories are unifiable?

<comment><USER20> I think in an effort to understand exactly how the mechanics of the big bang worked and how you can go from an infinitesimal point of incredible energy to an enormous and expansive universe with the diverse laws we observe today.

From the article:

> If the forces were indeed one during the "grand unification epoch" of the > universe's first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, > then particles that now have distinct responses to the three forces would > then have been symmetric and interchangeable, like facets of a crystal. As > the universe cooled, these symmetries would have broken, like a crystal > shattering, introducing distinct particles and the complexity seen in the > universe today.

<comment><USER19> We assume the precondition that the Universe we experience and observe originated in a vacuum of...existences, for lack of a better term. This seems myopic, why should it be so?

What if the universe we experience is the product of interactions between distinct universes, which circumscribed by different physical laws, and the only universe we can sufficiently experience and observe is that which is governed by the Strong Nuclear Force?

<comment><USER21> It could very well be that way, but what is the evidence for that origin? Why not any number of other plausible explanations? It is not myopic to accept the explanation best supported by available evidence, until sufficient new evidence supports a different explanation. Right now, the Universe coming into existence as a solitary singularity is the best available theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cross out the Third (of five) Age of the universe in the 1999. Book of that name. That was era dominated by degerate stars untils all bayrons decay. Then the universe would be dominated by evaporating black holes. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Ages_of_the_Univers...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Ages_of_the_Universe)

</comment><comment><USER23> Can someone please explain the role of the tank in the detection of proton decay? Why is water the best solution to use?

<comment><USER24> A neutrino interaction with the electrons or nuclei of water can produce a charged particle that moves faster than the speed of light in water (not to be confused with exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum). This creates a cone of light known as Cherenkov radiation, which is the optical equivalent to a sonic boom. The Cherenkov light is projected as a ring on the wall of the detector and recorded . . .

From: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super- Kamiokande#Description](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super- Kamiokande#Description)

<comment><USER23> Excellent. So the role of the tank is detection and not a means to accelerate proton decay?</comment></comment></comment>


Traf-O-Data -- Bill Gates's Y Combinator Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/dictionary/detail.asp?guid=&searchtype=&DicID=19295&RefType=Encyclopedia <comment><USER2> "Traf-O-Data used the device to process the paper tapes generated by traffic counting boxes and produced some revenue. Eventually, the State of Washington offered free traffic processing services, ending this revenue."

And he's been against free and open standards ever since.

</comment><comment><USER3> More like Bill Gates's Artix.

<comment><USER4> Artix reference:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html></comment></comment>


Windows Phone Error Message Tells Users To Insert CD And Restart Computer - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/01/12/this-is-the-funniest-windows-error-message-youve-ever-seen/?fromcat=all

<comment><USER3> The guy was flashing his phone and ran into issues. Kinda cool to see it using that much of the Windows code base (kernel and bootmanager atleast)

<comment><USER4> That's a way less severe issue as this would hardly be a problem for the standard user then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Imagine the surprise of the author(s) of this boot loader that this code would eventually be running on a cell phone.

</comment><comment><USER6> As so often when people tinker and hack, the guy who did this probably had no anticipation about how the media and normal people will interpret this photo.

What sticks about this story is that Windows Phone will sometimes ask you - <USER2> monospace white writing - for a CD to be inserted. This one photo might have more negative marketing effect than any of their flashy Windows Phone ads on TV can make up for.

<comment><USER7> _This one photo might have more negative marketing effect than any of their flashy Windows Phone ads on TV can make up for._

No-one outside of tech blogs cares about this photo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The users was loading custom ROMs onto their device, something went wrong, and the phone displayed an error which it would otherwise never have shown.

Not really much of a story, more an opportunity to poke fun at Windows.

<comment><USER9> That's really a shame. Similar to that story on how thieves stole only Apple devices from a Microsoft campus. People love to pile on to Microsoft, but it looks like, ever so slowly, since the Xbox launched there's some actual ingenuity and design within the company that's finally pushing through their old image. (If people would let it)

<comment><USER10> The Windows RT-Only Store is as much bad publicity as any old tale about MS mischief.

They could have created a Steam-like all-kind-of-Windows-Apps store and sell Office, Adobe products, Autodesk products, Antivirus, development tools, games, etc, all in one place, and blew that chance hard.

I hope Steam wins both in Windows and outside it (the Steam Box).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Essentially a non-issue. But it is a funny message to get :)

Here's the original tweet - <https://twitter.com/rkkski/status/288956938778189824>

It's been known for quite a while that Windows Phone 8 actually utilises the Windows NT kernel rather than the previous Windows CE based one, which was used by Windows Phone 7.x and Windows Mobile etc.

I'd imagine this is just a case a generic error message (for this situation) that was coded with the assumption by the original developer(s) that it would always be a desktop based product.

Also, check out Windows running on ARM photos in this old blog post - [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building- windo...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building-windows-for- the-arm-processor-architecture.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER12> Step number 2 is especially helpful:

2\. Choose your language settings, and then click "Next."

Unix had a funny "not a typewriter" error message that eventually ended up in an Apple OS: <http://support.apple.com/kb/TA31349>

<comment><USER13> I've also had an error message along the lines of "cannot read from tape" when using tar(1) in OS X.

<comment><USER14> Well, tar is the Tape ARchiver, so that makes more sense. It just happens that everything is a file in unix, whether it's a file or a tape driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The blue screen of death jokes for Windows phones have suddenly turned into reality.

<comment><USER16> I sincerely hope the ones about heart monitors don't come true too.

<comment><USER17> Actually a certain "critical care" Welch Allyn device magically got a switch from Windows CE to VxWorks a few years ago after some "incidents" apparently.

I can't cite anything to prove this other than I know someone who worked for an agency who rented their kit out and it was gradually "upgraded" due to reliability problems.</comment></comment></comment>


Google+ 2.0 From ICS - Offers New, More Polished Interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/10/07/exclusive-download-google-2-0-from-ics-offers-new-more-polished-interface/

<comment><USER2> as a security person im always afraid those especially popular downloads have malware. specially on android as its trivial to add functionality to an existing apk. i wish all of the apks were signed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if i really like all the buttons being moved to the top.. i don't see the benefit, it's only worse to reach when using the phone one handed, imo.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does the Android world have literally no respect for copyright? This is obviously a leak of copyrighted Google Code and I highly doubt that this website has permission to redistribute it.</comment>


Tabletweets - <AUTHOR> http://rt.nytlabs.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> (NB: Annoyingly seems not to work on Chrome Dev for Mac. Fun to watch the tweets go by in any other browser though...)</comment>


Intelligence chief Clapper to set up U.S. surveillance review group - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241594/Intelligence_chief_Clapper_to_set_up_U.S._surveillance_review_group

<comment><USER2> They squeaked this one out yesterday evening. I'm surprised at how well that worked.</comment>


Contagion's Screenwriter on Watching His Movie Go Viral - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/contagion-movie-coronavirus-interview-screenwriter-scott-z-burns.html <comment><USER2> It worked out well in the movie so I feel good for this virus.

</comment><comment><USER3> Might have been interesting if it were anything more than a way to bash the current administration...

<comment><USER4> You mean the article rather than the movie?

Edit: Don't let the article put you off the movie - its very good (although it is arguably both more optimistic and more pessimistic that the situation we all currently face).

<comment><USER5> The article seems pretty good to me, and in fact convinced me to watch the movie. Back then I had dismissed it as yet another disaster movie, a bit like "Outbreak" (the 1995 film).

<comment><USER4> Sorry, personally I didn't think the article was bad - just that it makes a few political points which might give the impression that the movie took a similar approach. From what I recall, and I watched it again the other night, politics doesn't play a large part in the plot of the movie at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitLance: Top 200 JavaScript Developers on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://beta.gitlance.net/top/javascript <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a bit more about how we did this [https://medium.com/@gpitfield/gitlance-how-we- ranked-9-milli...](https://medium.com/@gpitfield/gitlance-how-we- ranked-9-million-github-developers-e274f279c0ee)

In short, it's a graph that uses repo forks, stars, and commits to generate a big graph, and a PageRank-ish algorithm to generate the rankings.

</comment><comment><USER2> Super cool to see TJ (creator of express) in the number 1 spot. I think he's mostly writing Go these days, but express is still massively popular.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting.</comment>


The Life Of A Helicopter Lineman - <AUTHOR> http://www.graybaresp.com/helicopter-lineman/ <comment><USER2> Wow, that's a seriously dangerous combination. Top shelf cool factor, though.</comment>


Show HN: Freechains: Peer-to-Peer Content Dissemination - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Freechains/README/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the author of Freechains.

Any feedback is welcome.

Francisco

<comment><USER2> First, you will get many frowns for '| sudo sh' installation. For all the crypto you use I would expect signed installers or packages,not a URL,but these are somewhat cosmetic hair-splittings.

My real feedback: I personallh despise +/\- voting systems to measure reputation, these systems can be gamed, you'll have to actively moderate fraud (if possible) and sybil attacks.

My suggestion, 1) just collect transactional and contextual telemetry and let clients decide how to measure reputation. 2) Similar to #1, require contextual inputs for transaction. Context about the user, the voter,the nature of the post or transaction (tags?) and output a network verdict but still allow clients to override network metrics. For example, a client can distrust or give a 10x multiplier for votes from a poster/user, or add a 10x multiplier on negative reps for certain types of transactions.

IMO, if you make reps a client only feature,you can adopt to threats and come up with better rep measurement by simply updating clients with a new version without worrying to much about how many people use a certain version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! To install, `sudo` is not even required, so I'll change the default script. I understand that designing any kind of distributed consensus is somewhat disputable (if not pretentious), but I'm not convinced that client- side decisions are enough. For example, local reputation would not prevent posts from new users to be linked in the dependency graphs forever. Client rules can still override the network for posts that are not blocked. In fact, this reputation system is more about preventing abuse from new users and in some cases mistakes or hacked accounts from old users. I think there's still space for experimentation on global consensus besides PoS (S=something). In this particular system, reputation/consensus is local (per-topic) and depends on its own resources (posts) as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Thunderbird 5 released - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/06/not-much-in-new-thunderbird-5-but-roadmap-looks-promising.ars

<comment> mike-cardwell Still waiting for a couple of addons to be updated before I can upgrade:

      Virtual Identity (Extends functionality for when using multiple identities)
      Zindus           (Syncs contacts with Google)

<comment><USER2> Install the "Add-on Compatibility Reporter" extension, and you can install extensions that have not been upgraded yet. Zindus works for me this way. (I haven't tried Virtual Identity.)

EDIT: For Zindus, the version you add is for the older Thunderbird, but if you check for updates after installing it, it will upgrade the extension to the latest version, which is compatible with Thunderbird 5. I'm not sure why it does not simply add the latest version by default.</comment></comment>


Global problems need social science - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00064-x <comment><AUTHOR> This rings true so deeply. Best piece I've read in ages. I wish more governments, tech entrepreneurs and (hard) scientists understood the importance and power of the social and behavioral sciences.

"Environmental issues are not just technical challenges that can be solved with a new invention. To tackle climate change we will need insight from psychology and sociology.

[...] In diverse cases, social factors — cultural norms, educational understanding, kin and social networks, power dynamics, or simply the layout of a building — must be accounted for before policy can succeed."

and then this:

"Blind faith in data science without an understanding of what data are missing, or how algorithms can exacerbate existing biases, can lead to policy failure. In a democracy, expert advice must be balanced with considerations such as public opinion, financial costs and political demands. Still, without the humanities and social sciences, hard science and technology can do little to resolve complex societal challenges. Wise governments will find ways to incorporate that insight."</comment>


A tale of two users - Twitter, early adopters, and lead users - <AUTHOR> http://danieltenner.com/posts/0010-a-tale-of-two-twitter-users.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting take on things. One thing that gets me though is when people try way too hard to convince you to use something. That can sometimes backfire. You start wondering if there's a cult involved or if they're on commission.

Examples would be git,twitter,rails,etc - basically all the 'hip cool so hot right now!!!' stuff.

I think the other thing is that 'early adopter' can be confused with 'shameless fashion follower'. The difference there is easy to see in hindsight, but a little trickier when you don't yet know how big something is going to be.

There's no doubt though that this industry has tons of 'fashions', with people being in the 'in crowd', using the 'in tools', then a couple of years later ditching all that and moving onto the next hyped up thing and starting again from scratch.

Perhaps I'm just getting old ;)

<comment><USER3> Getting olds ok, after all with all that living you may have learned something axod ;)

I'm looking really hard at applications for p2 (Matt Mullenwegs twitterlike app for wordpess) and google wave (can't get the developers version yet...)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> PS: Self-serving experiment. I wonder if this can make it to the front page of reddit without using a subreddit... if you'd like to help with this bit of shameless self-promotion, please vote it up at [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8sopv/a_tale_of_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8sopv/a_tale_of_two_users_twitter_early_adopters_and/) :-) (If you don't, please feel absolutely free to completely ignore this comment)

<comment><USER3> The experiment was worth the try, but folks here dislike links to other crowd sourcing sites in comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I know... :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still don't get it. The author didn't actually explain what the benefits of Twitter were for him. I know people use it for a lot of stuff.

But how does it make you happier, smarter, a better person? How does make your life easier, pleasant, or fulfiling?</comment>


Labeling Ourselves for Others - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesvandyne.com/labeling-ourselves-for-others/

<comment><USER2> I do anything from front-end design, styles and scripts to back-end programming and server management and I've always just said "developer".

Folks within my field get a sense of what I'm about from that or ask further questions about the specifics, and those who aren't and maybe aren't familiar with the term don't stick a label on me that may be too specific.

It's been very interesting to me, having done mostly web work for nearly 13 years, to see the labels change. Whether it's "front-end ninja" or "full-stack developer" it's usually very general. Everyone seems to want a label but no one wants to commit to something specific.

A plumber wouldn't usually say, "I'm a plumber and do mostly joint fittings, but I also specialize in X, Y and Z" \-- they just tell folks they're a plumber.

Stick with something simple and give the details when asked.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is why, when describing or introducing myself to others, I often avoid using the words "I am" at all. Compare:

"I'm a C++ software developer, computer graphics/desktop application programmer, and hobbyist game developer."

To:

"I work as a software developer. I have thorough experience with C++, particularly in computer graphics and desktop consumer applications, and I enjoy doing some game development as a hobby."

Which one of these people seems more flexible? More capable? More well- rounded?

This idea is powerful, because the more you internalize things like this as part of your identity, the more you limit yourself. You end up pigeonholing yourself, both in your own eyes and in the eyes of others. Describing myself with the second method also allows me to go on about other things I've done: how I have some experience with Python, Ruby, Clojure, Javascript, and even Prolog, how I've dabbled in AI, machine learning, signal processing, and web design, or even how, although I work as a software developer, I have an interest in the arts, like music and graphic design, and a broad background in many science and engineering disciplines. Not so with the first method—it comes across like I'm defining the absolute extent of my character.

And this doesn't apply just professionally, either. You start thinking yourself as "an X", and chances are your behaviour will align to what you think "an X" should do rather than what is right or best for you specifically. And "X" can be anything from "C++ developer" or "front-end web developer", to "liberal" or "conservative", to "atheist" or "Christian", to "American" or "European". Each one of these puts a straitjacket on your identity, and doing this can tangibly influence not only your self-image but also your actions.

Some further reading on that last note: [http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/10/05/the-benjamin- franklin...](http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/10/05/the-benjamin-franklin- effect/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I like this idea of getting people to questions the labels they use to describe themselves: think about what "tribes" you're in, and why.

It also gets to a deeper issue that OP starts exploring at the end: ultimately, what really matters, is who are we helping? Who are our customers and what do they need?</comment>


Blogging Forefather Seeks to Re-Invent Blogging, Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blogging_forefather_seeks_to_re-invent_blogging_ag.php

<comment><USER2> While Winer certainly deserves respect for all he's done, that Twitter squabble with Arrington et al. certainly didn't help his public image. Arrington has a well-established reputation as a master troll, and it was rather sad to see Winer take Arrington's bait hook, line, and sinker.

</comment><comment><USER3> _His near-absolute disinterest in visual design, his chronically caustic personality and his apparently principle-driven burning of bridges haven't helped either._

Ouch.

</comment><comment><USER4> Other applications have tried to address this already. An example I can think of on the top of my head is Hellotxt, but I'm sure there are others.

</comment><comment><USER5> He thinks he invented cross-posting?</comment>


Less.js, a CSS pre-processor, releases 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/less/less.js/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

<comment><USER2> I'm kinda out of the Less loop of late, but plugins look like a nice new feature.

> Plugin Support - it is now straight forward to add AST manipulations (see > less-plugin-inline-images), file managers (see less-plugin-npm-import) and > post processors (see less-plugin-clean-css and less-plugin-autoprefix).

Quick NPM search:

[https://www.npmjs.org/search?q=less- plugin](https://www.npmjs.org/search?q=less-plugin)

</comment><comment><USER3> Are there any good tools to check the style (indentation, whitespace etc.) of .less files and/or automatically reformat them?

I've looked a few times and never found anything useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there an AST-level mechanism to convert between less and sass yet?

</comment><comment><USER5> wow. this still exists?!

<comment><USER6> Yeah, why it wouldn't?

It's in fact one the 3 dominant CSS preprocessors (the others being SASS and Stylus.</comment></comment>


Simulating Physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2017/018547/simulating-physics <comment><USER2> In this case, it looks like the goal was to demonstrate the power of quantum computers rather than to use them in order gain a new insight into the physics of the otherwise well-known phenomenon (the so-called "Anderson localization", which is a "quantum-mechanical part" of the effect that impurities have on the conductivity of a metal).

Speaking of the "non-goal", I am left wondering how much information is there to be gained from looking _this closely_ (albeit by means of simulation) at things that have been or, if not, perhaps could be described well enough following the more traditional lines of statistical or phenomenological investigation.

<comment><USER3> Anderson localization and many-body localization are distinct. AL is a single- particle phenomenon, considering wavefunctions and eigenstates of a single electron at a time. MBL involves ensembles of manifestly many-electron/many- body eigenstates. If you take a subsystem (a small window of eigenstates or energy if you are in the microcanonical ensemble) and resample it, if you are in the thermal regime it will recover the entire distribution of the extensive quantity being sampled for the whole system (let's take entropy as an example).

The goal is to eventually see how many-body localization scales (does the experimental appearance vanish at large but finite time scales as is common in implementations of the Bose-Hubbard model) and see if it can be harnessed as either a form of passive quantum information protection/error correction and/or useful in assisting speedup in solving certain adiabatic quantum computing problems (this last has nothing to do with the Google experiment at hand and more with the intersection of the problem with spin glasses)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I worked with the UCSB team on some of the thermalization calculations that didn't end up making it into the paper (I am at a different university). It's really cool to see how quickly phenomena we study in simulations came to the forefront of experiment. The actual paper can be found here - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06678](https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06678)</comment>


Keyboard Shortcuts for Mac and Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2011/04/02/keyboard-shortcuts-for-mac-and-chrome/ <comment><USER2> The one you can't afford to miss:

        Command-`	Activate the next open window in the frontmost application

<comment><USER3> On a related note: Use BetterTouchTool to re-bind four-finger upward swipe to tile/untile open windows in the frontmost application, and re-bind four-finger side swipe to activate the next/previous open window in the frontmost application. The default actions for those gestures are useless, IMO.

I didn't see him mention Control-L for putting focus on the location bar in Chrome and other web browsers. I use that constantly.

<comment><USER2> I have exposé mapped to my middle mouse button, which i find very useful. But you cannot do this on the Magic Mouse (or whatever it's called) last time I checked, although I'm guessing there's a plugin to fix that. Still, it seems such an obvious feature to me, can't believe it's not included by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many of the Mac shortcuts don't work. For instance,

      F9 - Tile or untile all open windows

does nothing on my Snow Leopard. Perhaps he's referring to an older version of Mac OS X?

<comment><USER5> If you are on a laptop, or a keyboard with global application shortcuts on the f buttons, you might need to hold down the 'fn' key at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome list, shift+tab is going to save me so much time in Mail.app its not even funny.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had to read the title three times to not see Mac and Cheese.</comment>


ACT-R: A cognitive architecture - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT-R <comment><USER2> ACT-R is used for malware analysis, determining the task a given piece of malware is designed to perform.

Paper: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.01930](http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.01930)

<comment><USER3> My main beef with the ACT-R community is that they do not regularly provide the source code for their models. It drives me nuts. You can claim anything that your model supposedly has achieved. If there is no source I am not able to evaluate that claim, and I cannot make real use of this progress, also because the papers contain rarely an explicit algorithm.

This paper here is a notable exception inasmuch they do document their algorithm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Download available: [http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/software/](http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/software/)

<comment><USER5> In addition to the software, many (most?) of the important papers relating to ACT-R are available for download as well.

[http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/publication/](http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/publication/)

This is a good one: "How Can The Human Mind Occur In The Physical Universe" [http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/wordpress/?post_type=publications&p...](http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/wordpress/?post_type=publications&p=14305)

and

"A Spreading Activation Theory of Memory" [http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/wordpress/?post_type=publications&p...](http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/wordpress/?post_type=publications&p=13730)</comment></comment>


Snapchat Spectacles – here's what it's like - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/products/snapchat-spectacles/preview/ <comment><USER2> > _No one was sent any Spectacles to review, and they 're not in stores. > Instead, pop-up dispensers have become the only way that early adopters can > line up and grab a pair to try. A single yellow "Snapbot" vending machine > that looks like a minion emerged in Los Angeles, and is now moving around > the country to undisclosed locations. People had to line up to buy one > before the supply ran out._

Savvy, modern marketing job.</comment>


Freedom-loving laptop discovered how to make Intel CPUs boot witho closed firmware - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2860446/this-freedom-loving-laptop-discovered-how-to-make-intel-cpus-boot-without-closed-firmware.html

<comment><USER2> I bet the people over at me.bios.io will be excited.</comment>


Secrets of a Serial Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6996517466645098754

<comment><AUTHOR> My takeaways

Starting is the hardest part.

Nothing succeeds like a working demo, so find a galvanizing event =YC DEMO DAY= that forces you to get a prototype built. Otherwise you will think about it to much.

There are customers that everyone else will follow zero in on them.

Excel threw other peoples resources.</comment>


Elon Musk to unveil a 'solar roof' product to revolutionise the roof industry - <AUTHOR> http://blog.propertypal.com/elon-musk-unveil-solar-roof-product-revolutionise-roof-industry/ <comment><USER2> I'd like to see Elon Musk cut back on his public speaking and focus on his CEO responsibilities. Speaking as a shareholder and a potential customer, I really want Tesla to mass produce the Model 3 next year as promised. Everything else needs to be placed on the back burner for now, including new PV solar projects.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best interview questions you've been asked? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A very senior guy comes in the room where I am with a very concentrated look on his face and my resume in his hand. On my resume its mentioned that I have a lot of experience bringing security relevant concepts to inexperienced people.

So he describes a problem hes actually working through when he was "interrupted" to come interview me. He was trying to terminate an SSL connection, modify the stream (for video manipulation) and send it along to the client. I explained public key and how what he wanted to do was called a MitM attack and how he couldn't continue on the stream without the private key of the server. We had a real conversation with me explaining (to a very smart guy) so he could completely understand everything he "needed" to know to solve the problem he was working on.

I got the job. It was the only interview I've had where I really felt they were asking me something relevant to the work and the kind of work I would be required to do. I ended up having to write Symbian OS code, which I had no prior experience in.

TBH most of the comments so far are the interview questions I hate as they have no relevance to anything I care about or will ever be asked to do.

<comment><USER3> A very senior dev had to be explained he couldn't do a man-in-the-middle attack on an encrypted stream without the server's private key? With all due respect and I don't know much about security but something seems off, maybe you haven't explained the whole story or maybe I'm getting something wrong.

<comment><USER4> senior means different things in different places. More and more developers are considered "senior" just because of experience building basic web apps, doesn't mean they have a deep understanding of http/s, public/private key cyrpto, etc...

Not a good thing, but thats how it is some places.

<comment><USER5> This doesn't require a deep knowledge of https or public/private crypto though. It requires a very basic knowledge of how encryption works. Although to be fair, you can go a long way without that knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a sys admin, devops, sre or whatever you want to call us this week, I like the following question for senior level people

What has been your biggest screw up to cause a production outage and what did you take from that?

If they say they never caused an outage or give some answer that isn't a screw up, I know one of two things

1) They arent senior level to be put in charge of handling major changes on production

2) They are the type of person that tries to hide screw ups from the rest of the team.

<comment><USER7> I like this, but I want to follow up by asking what your idea of a "good" answer is, what a "bad" idea is and how you would see through a bullshit answer.

<comment><USER6> For me a good answer is a story about a human screw up that took down production and then the follow up is talking about steps they took to make sure it never happened again.

The big thing I'm looking for is mistakes are good learning experiences for people and if you make a mistake its time to reflect on the mistake to make sure it never happens again.

So I want to hear how they made sure that mistake or anything like it won't happen again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Consider two directed acyclic graphs where each node has a hash that depends on its value and its parent's hashes. Suppose you have a slow connection and one of the graphs is remote, how do you figure out as efficiently as possible which nodes both graphs have?

The trick is to sample random nodes from the remote graph. If you get back a node that has the same hash as a node in your graph, you know that local and remote have all the same ancestors of the node too. Otherwise, you know that local doesn't have any of the children (on remote) of that node.

Turns out that is basically what mercurial does [1].

[1] [https://www.mercurial- scm.org/repo/hg/file/tip/mercurial/set...](https://www.mercurial- scm.org/repo/hg/file/tip/mercurial/setdiscovery.py)

</comment><comment><USER9> "We're going to build Google Maps using these satellite images. How would you do it?"

This is the sort of open, large architectural question that I love and think really helps to understand a developer's skill set. It's great to be able to start very broad, but focus down into detail like CPU caching and the possible on-disk layout.

<comment><USER10> Any recommendations on sites where one can read about stuff like this? High Scalability (highscalability.com) is one resource I'm aware of (for people who are familiar with the site - any "must read" posts?). Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My personal favorite "How much will it take for you to join our team?"

<comment><USER12> Damn yuppie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is both sad and unsurprising that we bash algo-centric interviews in every other thread (rightly so) and yet so many of the answers here are focused on abstract algorithmic questions. We really do this to ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER14> Majority of the interview questions for software developers are retarded. It's either too academic (reverse a linked list) or too specific (What is the difference between StringBuffer and StringBuilder in Java?).

To answer your question - none.

<comment><USER15> Being too specific is only bad unless you have not listed as your experience in the domain.

But being too academic is actually good. The academic questions are constants irrespective of the domain in which the coding is done.

<comment><USER14> Put it this way - If you ask academic questions to a senior engineer during an interview, you might as well hire a college student. It will cost you less money and the student might even be a better fit, based on your evaluation.

<comment><USER15> No. That's not the intention. A senior who skill is superset of a college student.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Here are 4 projects we're currently working on and that you might be involved with if you work here. On a scale from 1-5 how interested would you be to work on them. Briefly explain your reasoning"

Or any variation on "here's a real problem we are actually having. Do you have any ideas about how one might go about solving it?"

and bonus worst question:

"do you have kids/what does your family life look like?"

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure that last question is illegal in the USA

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> one i really enjoyed solving: given an array of size (n - 1), containing all but one of the numbers between 1 and n, find the missing number in linear time and constant space.

<comment><USER19> "All the integers between 1 and n should add up to (n(n+1) / 2) so just iterate over the array keeping a running sum, then at the end subtract from (n(n+1) / 2) to see the integer you are missing. It's constant space and requires just a single sum you track.

But hey you know what, actually, fuck these requirements, they're pretty bad.

This is a stupid and wrong solution and the actual correct way to do it (which is guaranteed to work) is to sort the list in-place (or into a copy, if you need the original), then iterate through from the beginning, making sure it starts with one, that every value is in there, and that it is missing one and only one number. On the second missing number or if after sorting it does not start with 1, or if any value is not an integer, or if any value is repeated, then say that the array does not meet the promises, and you can even error with the exact way in which it fails. This is much better and in-place sort is pretty fast. Quicksort, which I will use, requires pointers and is not actually constant space (despite being an in-space sort) but because it's better and we should use it.

So, with all due respect, fuck the requirements, that is going to be our solution. I realize it misses both your linear time and constant space requirements, but I really feel these requirements are stupid and lead to a brittle solution - this solution is better and is the one I stand by. Sorry. :)"

How'd I do? Would I get the job? (Probably NOT.)

<comment><USER20> If I were looking for a junior dev, probably not. Don't like your attitude, son, and you're probably not a good fit.

But if I'm looking for a senior position, you're probably in. Senior people _do_ push back on bad requirements, and they know when to do so, and why. If I want experience and leadership, what you did is exactly what I'm looking for.

The difference is that the senior person is going to do it when they know that the spec is a bad idea (and know _why_ it's a bad idea), and the junior person is going to do it all the time because they're a show-off know-it-all and a hothead...

<comment><USER19> thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I tend to ask about the technology and architectural choices candidates made in their projects. If they were not involved in the decision making, what they thought of it. What they could do differently. What's the testing strategy. What challenges they enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER22> A paid-for ticket to solve from their real codebase. Best interview question for me. No bull, no gotchas, just "Will you be able to do the work?"

</comment><comment><USER23> One that I've been asked and now use routinely is:

"If you were to start on Monday, what do you feel most confident about, and where will you need help?"

</comment><comment><USER24> Here are a few questions that I was asked in a Microsoft interview:

Write an interpreter for first order logic.

Define an algorithm for reordering the x87 floating point stack.

</comment><comment><USER25> Always the non-technical questions. HR is usually staffed with psychologists, and they try to find questionable personalities, "good fit".

I talked with one hiring lady 30 minutes about movies and surfing.

The technical questions are usually superfluous if you have a proper resume and published work online. Nobody needs that crap.

</comment><comment><USER26> I liked one that involved implementing a graphing library for a memory-mapped bitmap display. It started with drawing a circle of radius R with origin X, Y but involved several iterations of optimization. You can get into a lot of interesting performance areas (caching, reuse, loop unrolling, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER27> I like to ask people to tell me about good software and how it's made. A surprisingly high number of people have never put any thought into this. I also like to ask about bad software and lastly what makes a good developer. If a candidate blanks on all 3 questions, it is not a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER28> Final interview - this one with the CEO, Mr. Big runs a $4B company.

I know you've met with the senior leadership team. What questions do you have for me?

It's a brilliant question, both disarming and straight to the point. He's looking for how I think. Can this guy solve my problems?

</comment><comment><USER29> "What are your bank requisites? We will transfer money upfront."

Contracting job, but still... That was the first "question" I got from the company. I was expecting at least to talk about my past experience, and maybe do some irrelevant CS riddles...

</comment><comment><USER30> Tell me something that's true that very few people agree with you on.

(I haven't been asked this)

</comment><comment><USER31> "I have all the time in the world for interviews. Is there anything more you'd like to say, ask or discuss that you've not had the chance to so far?"

</comment><comment><USER32> This Quora page lists some interesting interview questions: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-programming- intervie...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-programming-interview- questions-youve-ever-asked-or-been-asked?share=1)

</comment><comment><USER33> Find the minimum value in the stack in O(1) both time and space complexity.

<comment><USER34> Make another stack with the latest minimum, then when you pop that top value, you also pop it off the minimums stack. Then you have the last minimum before that one.

Is that it?

<comment><USER35> What if you added values that are greater then the minimum at the top of the minimum stack but less than the next value on the minimum stack?</comment></comment></comment>


One Inviolable Rule - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=439 <comment><USER2> The problem with this "inviolable rule" is that it's circular:

 _if you have a legal question, you should ask a lawyer, and only a lawyer_

I agree, but what is a "legal question"? Only lawyers are qualified to answer that!

Many of those who pose legal questions to the web, rather than to a lawyer, do so because _they don't recognize_ that their question crosses the boundary where they need a lawyer. It's not as if such edge cases are particularly rare, nor are they easy to resolve. Every post that I make to news.YC is a potential libel action; every quote that I cut and paste could be the subject of a copyright suit. (Just ask the folks who post about Scientology... and note that I just substantially increased my legal risk, and YCs, by using the word 'Scientology' in this context. Perhaps my lawyer would have suggested a different example...)

Everyone who writes software tiptoes around legal issues of patent and copyright. Should I consult lawyers every time I use Pastie?

Everyone who downloads a piece of software risks a lawsuit. Click a link that installs Firefox: legal. Click a link that installs a P2P client? Depends on what you do with it. What about HD-DVD ripping software? If I install it, am I committing a crime?

Yes, the ultimate arbiter of all of these issues should be a lawyer. I'm certainly not qualified. But we can't afford to pay lawyers every single day. In the end, we all have to develop our own sense of when we need professional legal advice and when we don't -- and the web is helpful for that, even though any individual anecdote (even the ones told by _bona fide_ lawyers!) may be unreliable or inapplicable to your individual situation.

<comment><USER3> "I agree, but what is a "legal question"? Only lawyers are qualified to answer that!"

I don't think you need a lawyer to know what's a legal question. Should I incorporate and if so, what type of entity is obviously one. What should be in my terms and conditions? Etc.

<comment><USER4> How can you be sure that any question related to your business doesn't have legal implications before first talking to a lawyer? You just gave examples of questions which obviously do require legal counsel, but what about examples of those which obviously don't?

<comment><USER3> You can't, and it's clearly a judgment call on your part. I was referring more to the obvious legal questions, which are the ones I generally see here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can I take your word for it that I should ask a lawyer for legal advice? I mean, you're not a lawyer? Why should I trust you?

<comment><USER3> Don't trust me. Ask a lawyer. :)

<comment><USER6> you can trust all lawyers the same way you can trust all programmers design mission-critical software

you simply can't

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Problem: can lawyers be trusted? They can easily tell me that I need to spend infinite amount of money on them. I might spend all my money on lawyers without ever getting any product off the ground.

I see how much money is wasted on IT consultants, why should it be different with lawyers? Except with IT consultants I can tell when shit is happening, with lawyers I can't.

<comment><USER8> Lawyers are perfectly well aware that a) if they try to screw you, another lawyer will happily screw them right back on your behalf and b) their social position is precarious enough as it is; no jury would convict an anti-lawyer lynch mob.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, this is a legitimate concern. You can't really sue someone for giving you subpar legal advice. It has to be really, really bad. And you would be surprised at how rare it is for a lawyer to lose a malpractice case. Doctors, sure, lawyers, not so much. It turns out that juries actually respect the work lawyers do when you get them in a courtroom.

On the plus side, if you really do get screwed, a lot of states have funds set up to compensate you. But if you pay for some legal work that might not have been completely necessary, you're on your own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The audience does not ask legal questions related to marriage or asset management or mortgage. Their questions are startup related and they know a few entrepreneurs have already been through a similar situation and it makes sense to ask, but one should always consult a lawyer before making their final decision.

If you go to parenting site they ask questions about the best schools and those who answer are not teachers. Visit teenagers sites and you will see a lot of questions from young girls who are very confused with their bodies and want medical advices, those who answer are not doctors.

</comment><comment><USER11> Black and white statements such as this are almost always wrong. While I would never trust a non-lawyer's legal advice over a lawyer's legal advice, there could certainly exist a person in the world whom I trust more than any given lawyer, that also has an experience pertinent to my situation. You'd be foolish to bypass that person's opinion. Just take it with the knowledge that that person isn't a lawyer.

<comment><USER12> Fine, construct some hypothetical edge case "There *could exist..." and then try to apply some reduction ad absurdum to conclude that Matt's advice is wrong.

Only, Matt's advice is correct. You should not ask for legal advice on HN, even if it is possible that in one of the many parallel universes there exists an entity you trust more than a lawyer.

<comment><USER11> I concede that HN is not the place to solicit legal advice. The level of trust that I was referring to most likely does not exist between users of this site.

Nonetheless, I believe it is incorrect to state that one would be putting one's self in harms way by discussing legal matters with a non-lawyer, as the article implies.

Here's an example: My neighbor has a large tree bordering my yard, from which a branch is hanging over the fence and interfering with my shit. Is it legal for me to chop the branch? Maybe in some jurisdictions, but who knows? Should I call a lawyer right away? Let me see what my wife thinks.

Me: "Hey honey, what should I do about this branch? Should I call a lawyer?"

Honey: "A lawyer?!?!? For God's sake why would you do that? That's just Ethel's tree. Just cut the damn thing down."

\-- or --

"Umm, Johnny Cochrane, Jr. lives there. Call five lawyers."

<comment><USER12> I agree that you are not putting yourself in harm's way by discussing legal matters with non-lawyers, even HN non-lawyers.

I have often discussed legal matters with experienced businesspeople and investors. Of course, when the conversation turns to "Ok, what is the next action step?" the consensus is nearly always "Talk to a lawyer" :-)

<comment><USER3> You don't put yourself in harm's way as long as you realize that what you are giving or getting is not a substitute for legal advice. Unfortunately most people tend to forget that very easily, as humans are often misled by confident, and often confident that they know more than they do.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. One should always differentiate "legal advice" from "advice about a legal matter."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think it's so bad to ask after other people's experiences and advice as long as you keep in mind that 1) free advice is worth what you paid for it 2) who they are and what their credentials are. Someone who's started 5 successful companies probably _does_ have some insight into the legal part of it, even though he's not a lawyer.

<comment><USER14> But part of the insight they are likely to have is that every case is different and that the differences matter, and that the legal judgments are best left to a lawyer.

Would you post a question here asking for medical advice?

<comment><USER13> This site isn't remotely about doctors or health, so obviously not.

I don't believe every case is _that_ different though, and there are some common threads, as can be seen in the recent advice-wanted article (LLC's are cheap and easy, definitely get a lawyer if there's more than one person). Would anyone here recommend that people use Cobol or Forth to make a web site with, unless the user has some really outlandish requirements?

In other words, advice here may be good for getting the 'gist' of how things are or ought to be. Clearly, when you want to get serious, at that point you should consult a lawyer. For example, I think pretty much anyone can tell you that forming a partnership instead of an LLC or corporation is likely to be a bad idea, or that people aiming for investments are likely better off with a C corporation. Of course, there are lots of underlying details that need to be looked after by a professional.

Furthermore, I like learning about this stuff, and it's not rocket science. Complex, in some cases, certainly, but this isn't a group of people that shys away from tough or complex things. The important thing is to keep in mind that we aren't experts in it, simply learners.

<comment><USER14> I hear what you're saying, and I understand the desire to tackle complex and tough things-- but some things are best left to professionals, believe me.

I can think of a few times where a lack of proper legal advice cost me more than a million dollars.

Once burned, twice shy.

<comment><USER13> Look at it as a way to learn about what you're about to buy. Informed buyers are likely to get a better product for less money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Excellent advice.

The law is not logical and the outcomes are not reasonable. This is a hard thing for the engineering mind to come to terms with given how much these seemingly random outcomes can affect peoples' lives.

The law is a system that's nearly completely hacked at this point. Think of it as a RedHat linux 5.0 system with wuftp enabled that's been running on the net since '97. Do you really think that _ls_ is still _ls_?

<comment><USER16> Whilst I agree with Matt's advice, I disagree that the law is not logical. It is fundamentally logical and shares many of the ideas found in logic: evidence, probability, relevance, reasonableness, precedent, presumption, proof, explanation, plausability, etc. That legal outcomes are not always considered reasonable may be due more to the fallibility of a judge, jury, expert or process. Further, drafting a legal document and programming are not that disimilar.

<comment><USER12> You know the expression "security theatre"? My cynical experience is that the part of the legal system that concerns evidence, probability, relevance, reasonableness, precedent, presumption, proof, explanation, plausability, etc is _reason theatre_.

Although the decision may not always go to the side with the deepest pockets and the most theatrically convincing lawyers, that's the way to bet.

<comment><USER17> Hello, Raganwald, and welcome to my quotes file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Summarizing many of the comments and the linked post, it seems the only good legal question to ask on HN is "how can I find a lawyer I can trust?"

<comment><USER19> The only 100% way is to become your own lawyer. Barring that, the best thing to do is educate yourself and research the area in which you need legal advice. Once you can get a feel for the intricacies of the situation the less you'll have to blindly trust the advice of your lawyer.

<comment><USER20> This is very impractical advice. A good lawyer, like a good VC, is not out to "screw" you. They want to see your company get really big and give them steady M&A business for the next 30 years.

Only choosing a non-sharky Lawyer is much easier than a non-sharky VC. Go to some reputable law firms, tell them about your company, listen to them, and go with the one you like. If you haven't figured this out yet then it probably means that you have very little to be "screwed" out of anyways so you won't have to worry about them doing that.

Mentally masturbating over legal issues you'll never understand in a bootstrapped startup is just as impractical as not trusting landlords and insisting on building your own office.

If done right you will get a rough feel for legal issues as you go. And it will come from your lawyers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well said.

Jack Sheridan's talk at startup school (<http://omnisio.com/startupschool08/jack-sheridan>, a good talk that's not a sales pitch) was an eye-opener for me -- I've become much more disciplined about simply documenting agreements.

</comment><comment><USER22> Heh, I like the first absolute rule. It's obviously in response to the ID/'evolution' debate, and consequently says absolutely nothing since neither side argues evolution (broadly defined as change of species over time) doesn't happen.

The only argument is about what mechanisms can be considered scientific explanations. If you don't believe me, read what the key ID thinkers actually say, instead of what the media says they say. The ID people explicitly make this point in Expelled.

So, even though Matt picks out this position to show his clear thinking skills in a controversial matter, it doesn't really pick out a controversial position. Matt's position on evolution is just empty rhetoric for those who don't know the debate. Alternatively, Matt doesn't get it either.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's really experience that matters here.

 _Lawyers go through a lot of schooling to learn how to examine your situation and come up with the right answer_

I guess that's relative. As far as graduate programs go, the law degree isn't really that long. They have probably haven't had many specialized courses; their expertise will come from experience.

Often, the work that's done in their office is done by someone without much training at all. You learn about business entities and how to form them in a sophomore undergraduate class.

But while the law can be hacked, it is rather complicated. Whether or not the person you asked had an understanding of _precedents_ in your particular area would be a key factor in getting a quality response.

<comment><USER24> This is a classic underestimation of the expertise afforded by non-PhD graduate programs. Three years is a fair length when compares to quite a few graduate programs. Expertise does come through experience, like in almost anything else, but I am hesitant to accept the ease with which you wipe away legal education's value.

Many of the comments here are underestimating the technical (although perhaps not technological) training a lawyer receives, at least a good one. If you look at the first year of law school, it is often about learning how to think like a lawyer. That, to respond to the comment below, is logical thinking, but within the legal system. Legal research, even the use of LexisNexis or Westlaw is an ability not easily mastered by the novice, no matter how brilliant their startup idea or programming acumen.

The truth is that almost everyone underestimates the difficulty of other's expertise. I could point to (hundreds of) thousands of blog posts about individuals who think it is easy to whip up a good website, program, etc and how stupid those people are. The parallel to that is programmers who think the law is easy.

Matt's key point, to address other comments, at least in my view, is not necessarily that you have to go to a lawyer when you have no money, but 1) when you have some money, go to a good lawyer and 2) know that you're ignorant. Know that you, your friends, the people you often talk to, likely have no idea what they are talking about where the law is concerned, and do not under any circumstance forget 1) because you did not realize 2).

<comment><USER23> Ummm... The length of the JD, a doctorate, is 3 years; Ph.D.s tend to be 4 or 5 (or 6 or ...), and an MD, 4.

Short of someone who's done all three degrees, my estimate is probably pretty good. I had room-mates and friends in graduate school (Ph.D.) who were law students, and a friend of mine went on to get a JD after his Ph.D. My wife is an MD. You could say I have a bit of knowledge about this.

Perhaps you didn't mean to reply to my post, but rather to someone else's. I am not saying the law is easy, I'm saying that being a lawyer is not enough of a qualification for getting your hard questions answered. _Experience matters._

Consider accounting: you can do the numbers yourself, but an experienced accountant can bring more to the table than just how to classify expenses.

(You could, of course, make the same arguments for the other degrees in various situations.)

<comment><USER25> A newly-minted MD is just as useless as a newly minted JD, only more dangerous. Which is why MDs have to go through rotations and interning, because the medical system recognizes that a doctor with zero experience should _not_ be dealing with patients without a few years' worth of supervision.

Law firms often work the same way, with junior lawyers spending a few years 'learning the ropes' before they get put in charge of anything truly important.

I think I'm supporting your post, but I'm not sure. :)

<comment><USER23> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Like anyone else, when I read the title of this post, I guessed what the rule was before I reached it.

My guess for the one inviolable rule was, "Have enough cash to pay your bills each month or die."

Could there possibly be two inviolable rules?

<comment><USER3> I know some people who have lived for many years without even once having enough cash to pay their bills.

<comment><USER27> I personally went for almost a year once, this century, without spending a penny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Your rule is a good one, mattmaroon. I agree with it.

Unfortunately, you've tripped on Paul Buchheit's rule. You are overgeneralizing from your own risk profile. There may be some real cowboys on HN who are optimizing for different values and may be willing to accept significantly more legal risk in their lives in the process of launching their businesses.

(I'm not one of them.)

</comment><comment><USER29> "...if you have a legal question, you should ask a lawyer, and _only a lawyer_ " [emphasis mine]

Because lawyers are magic people who never make mistakes? Who are completely trustworthy? Because the act of simply discussing a legal matter with friends will somehow cause irreparable harm?

I'm leery whenever someone tells me what I can and can't discuss with whom.

Let's say I'm having car trouble. I'm not stupid, I know I'm going to have to take it to a mechanic. But, first I discuss the problem with some friends and family. I get a couple uninformed opinions on what it _might_ be, what it _might_ cost to fix, etc.

When I take the car into a mechanic am I worse off for getting a few uninformed opinions?

<comment><USER3> There's a tremendous difference in likely possible outcomes between getting bad advice about a car and bad advice about the law.

It's more akin to feeling a sharp pain in your chest and asking a friend rather than a doctor.

<comment><USER29> You mean to say that every legal issue is life and death?

There's no variability? There are no minor legal issues? I should consult a lawyer about, say, a parking ticket?

<comment><USER29> It occurs to me that I've strayed from the point I wanted to make. I'm not arguing that advice from non-lawyers can or should be used as a replacement for a lawyer's advice. I'm arguing against the idea that advice from non- lawyers is worthless and should be avoided at all costs.

<comment><USER3> The only reason I think it should be avoided at all costs is that it's near impossible to pick the good advice from the bad. If you knew enough to do that, you wouldn't be asking the question in the first place. How does getting a bunch of advice whose quality you have no way of judging help you at all? The best case scenario is that you ignore it and go get qualified advice, and the worst case is disaster.

<comment><USER29> How do you know what questions to ask your lawyer? How do you know what info might be pertinent to helping your lawyer to give sound advice?

Let's say I were to ask for advice about X. Someone posts, "Oh, when I went through X, my lawyer advised me to do Y and I think it really helped." So, then when I talk to a lawyer I can ask about Y. I don't see how opening a dialog hurt anything?

How does a little extra knowledge lead to disaster? Note: I'm _not_ talking about forgoing a lawyer's advice in favor of listening to an internet nutjob.

You seem to be advocating ignorance and/or blind faith lawyers. How do you recognize a bad lawyer if you don't make any effort to educate yourself?

<comment><USER3> Ask your lawyer the question you posted here. They aren't machines, they don't simply answer the question you asked and then stop. They'll dig around and ask you for any pertinent info. You don't need people on Hacker News to help with that.

Weeding out bad lawyers is not something that posting here will help you with (unless maybe you ask for recommendations, which I would encourage). Every legal advice post here gets 100 differing opinions. If you assume any lawyer who tells you something other than what you heard here is a bad one, then all of them will be.

The best route might be to do what you do with a doctor or any other professional: get a few opinions. Do a few consultations. They're generally free, and at least will give you some idea.

The problem with "extra knowledge" is that you're getting some amount of information and some amount of misinformation, and you likely have no good way to choose between them.

I don't advocate blind faith in anyone, but legal advice from a lawyer is orders of magnitude more likely to be correct than legal advice from a non- lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Somewhere there is a lawyer board where right now posters are asking "So If I wanted to form a startup for legal advice, is there some kind of web thingy I might need for that?"

</comment><comment><USER31> Sometimes one just needs to know in general how the law looks like, and cannot be bothered to ask a lawyer. For example, let's say you want to know if it's legal to sleep with a 17 year old girl. You ask your friend who has experience with such things. You don't go calling up a lawyer straight away.. it makes you look suspicious.

<comment><USER32> If you were going to ask shady questions and worried about looking suspicious, a lawyer would at least be professionally bound to keep your inquiries confidential, your friend isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> youtube founders managed to exploit a law for their growth and they werent lawyers.

almost certainly they must have asked for professional opinion, but equally certainly if they weren't sufficiently aware of the legal knowledge required they probably wouldn't have exploit it.

<comment><USER33> When I see arguments like this, I can't help but think that the thought process is akin to: "I don't get into car accidents, so I shouldn't have to wear a seat belt."

<comment><USER34> I see this a bit more like the motorcycle helmet laws in some states: they're not required, but a very very good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amen, brother.

(I hate to post something that is essentially "+1", but in this case I think it really needs to be said.)</comment>


Town of Deer Trail considering hunting licenses for unmanned aerial vehicles - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/eastern-plains/town-of-deer-trail-considering-hunting-licenses-for-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-bounties-for-drones

<comment><USER2> This was discussed _(read: good-naturedly ridiculed)_ on DIYDrones: [http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/colorado-town- consid...](http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/colorado-town-considers- licensing-people-to-hunt-drones)</comment>


Italy to dig for ancient Roman treasure sought by Nazis - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11936505/Italy-to-dig-for-ancient-Roman-treasure-sought-by-Nazis.html <comment><USER2> Maybe this will help get the Poles to hurry up and start digging on the Nazi Gold Train.

What an awesome year for buried treasure a head, Nefertiti in Egypt, Nazis in Poland and now Ancient Romans, at least one of them should contain some pretty awesome stuff

</comment><comment><USER3> > he could be as valuable to Cosenza as Romeo and Juliet are to Verona or the > Loch Ness monster is to Scotland, he argues

That is, as valuable as two things that never existed? Not very promising

<comment><USER4> Two worthless ideas that generate millions in tourism. ;)</comment></comment>


Time Machine for Unix - <AUTHOR> http://blog.interlinked.org/tutorials/rsync_time_machine.html <comment><USER2> IMO this misses the point of Time Machine.

1\. Time Machine is easy to use. 2\. Time Machine doesn't grind your disk as much as rsync because it uses FSEvents. 3\. Time Machine backups are faster and use less space because HFS+ allows hardlinks to directories.</comment>


Everything is illuminated: ARM buys games lighting outfit Geomerics - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/12/13/everything-is-illuminated-arm-buys-games-lighting-outfit-geomerics/ <comment><USER2> Going by their recent announcement of Mali T760, it seems global illumination is coming with it next year:

> Other features of the ARM Mali-T760 GPU include YCrCb frame buffer output > and _hardware assisted global illumination_. Both are designed to increase > fidelity and balance memory bandwidth to the system.

[http://malideveloper.arm.com/engage-with-mali/introducing- th...](http://malideveloper.arm.com/engage-with-mali/introducing-the-arm- mali-t700-gpu-series-innovated-to-efficiently-power-the-next-generation-of- devices/)</comment>


How I got sued by Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/04/how-i-got-sued-by-facebook.html <comment><USER2> "my lawyer advised me that it had never been tested in court, and the legal costs alone of being a test case would bankrupt me."

This is a very real problem with law surrounding emerging business practices, esp here in the US.

Ultimately you can only pioneer whatever you can afford to defend in court. Facebook, or any other BigCo for that matter, can assert that you can't do X and it's up to you to fight it in court... Even if there is prior behavior such as with this case. Clearly Google does the very same job and doesn't have an agreement with Facebook to spider their site.

But if you can't afford to defend it and bring up the prior examples in a court, then Facebook - or anyone else for that matter - can stop you.

<comment><USER3> They probably have some clause in the terms and conditions about the automated interaction with the page (e.g. point 3.2, but there might be more)... but I hope it would be very hard to enforce. Especially when you can download the public pages without accepting the terms and conditions document or even seeing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Their contention was robots.txt had no legal force and they could sue anyone for accessing their site even if they scrupulously obeyed the instructions it contained. The only legal way to access any web site with a crawler was to obtain prior written permission."

This is ridiculous. Can someone release the data so this can be tested in court? EFF?

<comment><USER5> There's nothing ridiculous about that. There's a clearly visible link on the bottom of each Facebook page that links to the Terms & Conditions of accessing Facebook pages. Some relevant parts:

"If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it."

"You will only use the data you receive for your application, and will only use it in connection with Facebook."

"By "application" we mean any application or website (including Connect sites) that uses or accesses Platform, as well as anything else that receives data." - note that by this definition a Facebook crawler is an applicatiom

"You will only use the data you receive for your application, and will only use it in connection with Facebook."

"You will have a privacy policy or otherwise make it clear to users what user data you are going to use and how you will use, display, or share that data."

"You will not transfer the data you receive from us (or enable that data to be transferred) without our prior consent."

"You will make it easy for users to remove or disconnect from your application."

etc.

These things are easy to look up, it took me about five minutes to find them. In fact, they have the right to limit the way even publicly faced content on their site is used. Things like copyright and data protection laws come in mind. You might not agree with that but it is absolutely in their right to do so.

The FB Terms & Conditions don't mention robots.txt at all.

<comment><USER6> As far as I can see, they weren't creating a facebook application, so I'm not sure why the Terms & conditions are relevant.

If you run a public website, you have to accept that people may crawl your website. If you want to prevent it, don't let them crawl it. That's what robots.txt is for.

<comment><USER5> As far as I understand, the problem was not crawling the website, it was the way he used to data he gained by crawling.

<comment><USER7> I think it's quite ridiculous.

If I buy a map, can I use it to be a guide, giving people directions and make a living?

If I buy a story book, can I use it to read to children and collect money from their parents?

Or, if I spend some time to index all the books in the library, can I sell the index and make money? Or did I violate the rights of either the library or the books' copyright owners?

I think crawling and making use of the crawled data is not offending the copyright law because it's not actually a copy of the data. Rather, it's a service to transform the data and help other people get to the original data in an easier way.

Technically, they can crawl the data on the spot when receiving a request from their clients. In order to speed up the process, they somehow cache the data crawled from earlier occasions. But that's technical details, which is encapsulated. Otherwise, they could have stored URLs and offsets in the pages, rather than the data itself. I don't think that breaks the law, or there will be no way to avoid breaking the law to refer to anything.

<comment><USER5> A couple of examples: if you rent a DVD from one of those DVD rental places, normally you can't play it in public places like bars and places like that. If you buy a CD you can't broadcast it on your radio station, you need a special licence for that.

Another possible related issue is the question of derivative works (e.g. the index of a library). There's a Wikipedia article about derivative works, it's a bit too complex to summarize here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work>

<comment><USER8> Two extraordinarily poor examples!

Both films and music (plus songwriting too) have been explicitly enshrined by US copyright law as having separate rights for home use and public performance. Each has multiple spheres of statutory licensing organizations with special exemptions from anti-trust law.

<comment><USER5> I was referring to the copyright laws of the United Kingdom which is the country where I live (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988). Here, public performance infringement is not limited to solely films and music (Section 16.1c).

I'm not very familiar with US copyright legislation but I assumed that the copyright laws there are similar without checking any sources - which was a mistake apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Facebook was founded by an outlaw scraper. Game recognize game, they're just neutralizing a threat, don't worry about the legal window dressing.

Read about Zuck's wget magic here, and how he illegally scraped (guarantee it was a TOS violation) all the Harvard online facebooks in 2003: <http://www.scribd.com/mobile/documents/538697>

As Balzac said, behind every great fortune lies a great crime :)

<comment><USER10> He also wrote software that scraped and archived AIM status messages. Apparently he has a long history of scraping content in various forms.

<comment><USER11> Not to mention the fact that he 'scraped' the idea of the concept of facebook in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Legal precedent: "Copiepresse (Belgian Newspaper Conglomerate) v. Google (Read more.. ). Filed in August, 2006.

Claims: to remove all the content indexed by Google's crawlers on the newspaper's websites."

[http://www.infoniac.com/offbeat-news/google-list-of-class- ac...](http://www.infoniac.com/offbeat-news/google-list-of-class-action- lawsuits.html)

Google's response: "Of course, if publishers don't want their websites to appear in search results (most do) the robots.txt standard (something that webmasters understand) enables them to prevent automatically the indexing of their content. It's nearly universally accepted and honoured by all reputable search engines."

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/about-google-news- cas...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/about-google-news-case-in- belgium.html)

May be you can get Google to file an amicus brief...

"Outcome: Google had to remove the plaintiff's newspaper content from its database within 10 days or face fines of 1,000,000 Euro per day. Google had to publish "in a visible and clear manner and without any commentary from her part the entire intervening judgment on the home pages of google.be and of news.google.be for a continuous period of 5 days within 10 days... under penalty of a daily fine of 500,000 Euro per day of delay". Google had was awarded the costs of the expenses of 941.63 Euro (summons) and 121.47 Euro (costs of thy proceedings)."

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been beaten into oblivion before for speaking out about the way I see the future shaping up re Big Corporations owning our information but I'll take my chances and use this opportunity to speak out against Facebook again. In truth, I did invoke Orwell...

I'm no Facebook hater, I actually use Facebook often but when they pull these kind of stunts it really upsets me. I would imagine it would upset most freedom lovers on this site as well. When Facebook decides to take a smattering of our data and make it "Public" how then do they decide to control that data after the fact? Since when did Facebook re-define the word "Public"? It's like your cell phone provider and ISP redefining "unlimited". This stuff has to stop. Getting back to Facebook, since when does merely browsing to a URL(I) enter you into some sort of binding contract with the publisher?

<comment><USER14> Whilst i agree with you, the devil's advocacy in me says,

"what happens when Facebook gets sued for this data exposure?"

And there are two avenues that might happen - investors suing as to loss of potential revenue, and user(s) suing over privacy violations.

Bear in mind, FB have already had class actions against them.. i don't think setting aside another 10m+ (conservative) just to defend yet another nuisance lawsuit is something they're going to be up for.

So, as Pete Warden described, they bullied him into shutting it all down with threats that they could just as easily lose in court - based on the principle that it's cheaper for them to sue Pete and lose cred amongst us than it would be for them to face a class action from users who are led to believe that their privacy has been violated by the data set via an ambulance-chasing lawyer.

Facebook should have instead invited Pete in for a chat and a job, but instead they took the full frontal lawyer bulldog approach. Sometimes that happens. Hopefully next time it wont- and i've already poked my friends at FB to raise the issue internally if possible -- and so should you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wait, from reading the article it appears he didn't get sued by Facebook (they just threatened to sue).

There's a difference.

<comment><USER3> Yes... a difference between a lawsuit and a "legal extortion".

<comment><USER16> It's not extortion, they didn't settle for anything other than him deleting all copies of the data that he had access to. Hyperbolic statements are unnecessary.

<comment> loup-vaillant They extorted the "right" to aggregate data from their site. Also note that such right could imply monetary benefits, so this is indeed extortion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Tel...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service)

</comment><comment><USER18> How about crawling search engines? For example, instead of crawling directly on facebook, crawl on a search engine with "site:facebook.com".

In that case, your data is gathered from the search engine and has nothing to do with facebook any more. And I doubt the search engine will sue you for using their service.

<comment><USER19> It's still Facebook's data (by which I mean "data that originated at Facebook"), and I guarantee you that their lawyers will still threaten a lawsuit. _What do they have to lose?_

<comment><USER20> You could then claim that the lawsuit is against the wrong person or would they argue that the original scraper was in the right and the secondary person was in the wrong?

<comment><USER19> Well, it's your use of the data, not so much the scraping itself. But way more importantly, the search engine has money and you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised that shutting up about this wasn't part of the agreement, either that or he's violating it. I've never heard of a settlement that didn't involve keeping your mouth shut.

I'm glad he posted about it though, that legal issue regarding robots.txt is good to know.

<comment><AUTHOR> They never asked me to keep quiet about it, and they've been willing to comment about it too, eg

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18721-data-sifted- from...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18721-data-sifted-from- facebook-wiped-after-legal-threats.html)

I'd imagine they want to deter people from following in my footsteps, so publicizing their actions serves as a warning.

<comment><USER22> _I'd imagine they want to deter people from following in my footsteps, so publicizing their actions serves as a warning._

If anything, I'm encouraged to start a publicly-available database based on crawling Facebook. Don't associate your name with it, crawl from your Ipredator account, and make sure your data is spread far and wide. Then they can sue the Entire Internet like the music companies are having so much success with.

Information wants to be free.

(Also, what's the worst that could happen? You get sued, and Facebook gets a few thousand bucks from your savings account and your used mattress? OH NOES.)

<comment><USER23> > Information wants to be free.

I think the full quote is something like "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive". As I recall, it was about the dichotomy between the fact that you could copy bits for free, and that information was very valuable.

<comment><USER22> I thought it meant that Mr. Information was locked in a dungeon, yelling "Hellooooo? Can anyone hear me!???" to any passerby inside the walled garden. He wants to be free. He wants you to free him!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> He is not publishing the data as is. he is publishing his work done over the data.

or am i wrong?

Now can't i publish my thesis because it contains information i got from copyrighted books?

<comment><USER25> He offered to distribute the data as-is to whoever was interested.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Side project / startup focused slack group? - <AUTHOR> Anyone interested in joining a small startup/ side project focused Slack group?
I recently finished the new Spielberg[0] documentary and he mentioned the importance of being surrounded by great folks—in his case, Lucas, Scorsese, et al.
The positive effects of a peer network is a commonly observed pattern. It might neat to try something similar over the internet.
I've been a part of larger communities that try to do something similar but it doesn't seem to scale well. Hence starting and keeping it small.
The focus will likely be on building, growing and scaling a project and having like minded folks to share the ups and downs with.
If you're interested feel free to email me and I'll send you an invite.
0: [https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/spielberg] <comment><USER2> [https://gitconnected.com](https://gitconnected.com) is a community for developers and software engineers and features a Slack group. The users are very active and incredibly supportive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet, thank you for sharing. Will check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested. But your email isn't in your profile. Can you add it, or post it here?

<comment><AUTHOR> My mistake, for some reason I thought I included it. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this already exists :

[https://onlinegeniuses.com/](https://onlinegeniuses.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, looks a little large but will check it out as well.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: What size display do you use? - <AUTHOR>

Currently, I am trying to switch from a 19 inch to a widscreen 24 inch.  What I like about the 19 is that you simply maximize all windows and use alt-tab, and then you never have to move or resize.  Also, on the 24 inch my eyes are distracted by the non active window (editing in emacs, but can still see a terminal window).<p>I'm sure I'll eventually adjust to the larger screen, but nonetheless I'm curious what people use. <comment><USER2> Not to highjack the question, but have you (or anybody on Unix) tried using any tiling window managers? They seem to be particularly good when one maximized window becomes too much.

      * dwm - http://www.suckless.org/wiki/dwm
      * XMonad - http://xmonad.org/
      * wmii - http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii

I prefer dwm, but they each have advantages -- dwm is very minimal and written in clean C, XMonad is written in Haskell, and wmii is turned inside-out, so to speak: it has an internal filesystem and hook-based architecture (like plan9), so you can script it in any language. For example, here's _why talking about extending it in Ruby: <http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/aFewWmii3Hacks.html>

<comment><USER3> I use a tiling WM and a 24" monitor and I love the "minimalism" of it. It took quite a bit of getting used to, but not constantly seeing IM notifications and new email alerts has measurably improved my productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to use a 20-inch Dell that rotated vertically -- it was great because I could see a lot of code at once, but I noted that I didn't usually view more than one window at a time because I'd just keep one maximized.

Then I switched to a Mac, and found that no matter what size screen I use, I've grown comfortable with multiple windows on the screen.

I saved my money for a LONG time to buy an HP 30" monitor, and I love it. I can keep several open side-by-side at the same time, which I've found extremely useful. It seems to have helped my productivity a lot.

That said, you don't need a 30" screen to see the benefits of a (relatively) larger monitor. A 24" monitor would be great as well IMHO -- that is, if you can get used to the side-by-side window effect.

If you prefer only seeing one window at once, perhaps consider two smaller monitors instead, and then you can have one window maximized on each.

YMMV, of course. It really depends on your workflow and how you like to focus on things.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've got a Dell 24", and opted for the more expensive version aimed at graphics designers, because the optical properties of the LCD are quite a bit better than the 'consumer' line. That, and it replaced a ten-year-old 19" ViewSonic PF790, so this goes to show you how often I buy monitors.

My advice is to go for quality over size. There are cheap 30" monitors that cost as much as my 24", but I can work on this thing all day and not feel fatigued.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use dual 19" lcds. Even with the lcd farther back i still have to turn my head to see everything so I usually sit staring at one of them and keep what ever I'm not working on the other other one. Itunes, a web page, stats or something with a status bar.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use dual 24" monitors

</comment><comment><USER8> Dual 22s</comment>


Oracle should relax Sun's Java Community control grip - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/04/sun_oracle_java/

<comment><AUTHOR> If Oracle wants to make Java more hackish they should open up it more to the community.

That would attract real hackers to program with Java and would improve the language too.</comment>