Happy Meal Ban: McDonald's Outsmarts San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/11/happy_meal_ban_mcdonalds_outsm.php <comment><USER2> My class on legislation in the first year of law school (which was quite innovative, as at that time most law schools didn't require a course in legislation at all) was taught by one of the legal scholars who literally wrote the book on the subject.

[http://store.westlaw.com/eskridge-frickey-garretts- legislati...](http://store.westlaw.com/eskridge-frickey-garretts-legislation- statutory-interpretation-2d-concepts-insights- series/133287/40449808/productdetail)

Almost everyone, "conservative" or "liberal," who took that course began the semester supposing that passing a new law is an effective way to solve a social problem. By the end of the semester, hardly any of us thought that anymore.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I work in the health care industry and it's amazing how gov't regulation (well intentioned as it may be) creates incredibly perverse incentives.

If you want to read up on this type of thing, just read how ASP (average sale price) reimbursement for Medicare drugs works. Doctors and drug wholesalers make money hand-over-fist because of the system.

Capitalism creates wealth by matching buyer and seller. If kids want happy meal toys (thus parents want them too) they'll get them one way or another, regulations be dammed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This story and the comments here are quite interesting and I'm really torn on this.

On one hand, I think the government does have a job to intervene when negative externalities affect society (like obesity has). On the other hand, as this story demonstrates, they clearly suck at intervening.

On a personal level, I don't care what McDonalds does because I don't take my kids there (I have 3 kids under 7). But I care about obesity being a drain on society and a healthcare issue we all have to share. McDonalds, well, they care about profits.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if there is some political philosophy to describe my thoughts on this - but I never understood why government just didn't set up taxes on things it didn't like, and directly allocate the revenues from those taxes to the opposite side of whatever stance it took (versus going towards general expenses).

For example with this, tax the happy meal and other fatty kids foods, allocate revenues earned from that tax directly to childhood obesity prevention campaigns. McDonald's still makes money, kids still can get happy meals, and childhood obesity is reduced through funding effective programs.

<comment><USER6> They tried this with the tobacco taxes / settlements and just decided to spend it any way they wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kudos to McDonald's for circumventing a stupid law. The government needs to stop meddling in everyone's life.

<comment><USER8> Have you seen the rising obesity statistics? If the government doesn't take it on as a public health issue, who will?

<http://www.wikinvest.com/images/3/37/Obesity.jpg>

<comment><USER9> Obesity is a private health issue. It is not communicable and poses no danger to anyone except the people who freely choose to eat too much.

The only reason obesity becomes a public issue at all is because the non-obese are forced by the government to pay for the health care of the obese. This problem has a very simple solution - no medicare/medicaid for fatties, and make it easier for insurance to charge fatties and fitness freaks different rates.

<comment><USER10> It's not communicable from person to person, but it's certainly communicable from your environment to you.

edit: Is this such a controversial statement? Does it bear explanation?

What we eat is not solely a matter of willpower. It is influenced by what sort of food is available. It is influenced by what sort of food is easier or harder to obtain. It is influenced by how hungry we are. How hungry we are can be changed by how stressed out we are, or by what we ate yesterday, or last week, or how active we have been lately. It is even influenced by what we see others eat, what is culturally acceptable to eat.

So yeah - obesity isn't communicable from person to person like the flu is, but it is something that your environment has a huge influence on.

<comment><USER11> And yet somehow obesity was hardly a problem for thousands of years in human history. People need to stop making excuses for their poor eating and exercising habits and take responsibility for their actions.

<comment><USER12> I think it's awfully naive to claim that the environment you're raised in has no effect on your actions later in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The law of unintended consequences rears its ugly head yet again.

<comment><USER14> Only an unintended consequence if you accept the article's premise that a non- trivial number people actually went to McD's and only bought the toy, and those people will continue to go for the toy but buy the happy meal to get it. And feed it to their kid.

Seems dubious to me.

<comment><USER15> But McDonald's is still selling happy meals with toys in them in San Francisco. They are just selling them for ten cents more now. So the law is effectively moot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> San Francisco should respond by imposing a 10000% tax on the sale of toys from food service establishments.

<comment><USER16> Or by ceasing to make stupid laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm confused -- do kids actually clamor specifically for the McDonald's toys? Aren't there better and cheaper toys out there?

<comment><USER18> "Aren't there better and cheaper toys out there?"

I'm gonna guess you haven't spent much time around kids ;)

How much a kid wants a toy is directly proportional both to how well it is marketed, and to how much their peers want it (which, since their "peers" appear in ads for the products, is really just a proxy for how well it's marketed). See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogs#Popularity> and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanie_babies#Marketing_strateg...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanie_babies#Marketing_strategies)

<comment><USER17> How does Lego do marketing? I don't think I or my parents have ever seen a Lego ad in my life, yet I played with legos as a little kid and I still play with Legos :)

<comment><USER19> Lego seems to have plenty of ads at least in my area. If you watch kid's cartoons in the 5-9 age bracket you'll see a lot of their ads for special packs like Lego Space Adventure, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems like it would be easy to redraft the law to close the loophole. I mean, I can't just walk in and donate $.10 and get a toy. They have gone from bundling a toy with the happy meal, to bundling an option to purchase a toy.

<comment><USER3> It's tough to legislate against every possible loophole in a law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How? This sounds like a hilarious legal hack but the details were never revealed.

<comment><USER22> The article was quite clear. You have to donate 10c to charity (Ronald McDonald House) for the toy, instead of getting it for free. But you can only dontate if you get a happy meal.

Also, apparently you used to be able to buy the toys separately, which is no longer an option.

<comment><USER21> Ah thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When debating issues like this in my mind, I frequently flip-flop. I can argue both sides. On one side, I don't want a corporation taking advantage of the consumer by using immense resources to exploit a flaw in human behavior. On the other hand, I don't want the government deciding what is right and wrong for me. In doing so, the government draws an arbitrary line and uses it to promote and also defend its actions, ultimately limiting my rights.

This whole Happy Meal debate would be a non-issue if consumers didn't want Happy Meals. It turns out they do, so work-arounds work just like prohibition did not eliminate alcohol from our culture.

The government is elected to serve and represent the people. The people want Happy Meals (and alcohol) (and drugs sourced from Mexico).</comment>


Universal Basic Income already exists for the 1% - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MattBruenig/the-ubi-already-exists-for-the-1-d3a49fad0580#.74muh726a <comment><USER2> This article seems transparently fallacious to me, since the income generated for the 1% is due to investment capital. Investment capital, among a million other attributes that differentiate it vs a state backed UBI program, is exposed to risk. There isn't just some pile of "income" sitting there we can harvest every year, the income the article talks about exists due to the exchange of capital. At the end of the year, some of those investments fail (for example, bonds default) and the income streams vanish.

The analogy to UBI completely fails. Honestly this is probably one of the most transparently dumb UBI articles I've seen posted on HN. (Disclaimer: I support the idea of UBI pending research outcomes.)

<comment><USER3> Risk is always relative. If you have enough capital, you can afford to focus solely on the long run, and plan positions accordingly. In general portfolio theory managers aim to optimize an objective - for short term hedge funds that's typically Sharpe ratio or just net return, but for long term focus (e.g. a rich family), you focus on minimizing the probability of shortfall.

That is, your family is going to spend some x% of your wealth every year. Then you only need to return x% on the fund (approximately) on a yearly basis. There is very little real risk associated with this strategy, if you're rich and needing to earn a small percent of your total assets, say 3%. Now, if your family _isn 't_ rich, you're probably going to need to spend much more than 3% in income, and your probability of shortfall increases dramatically.

This is similar to how college endowments work - do you think Harvard's endowment has a high chance of going dry anytime soon? Tangentially, their tax-free status is tied to spending 5% of the assets each year, which actually makes their job a lot harder, and is why they need to still raise money.

<comment><USER4> "There is very little real risk associated with this strategy"

Once you get to inter-generational wealth there is catastrophic risk that is almost uninsurable; managing that risk is extremely difficult. It is not as simple as "buy bonds", you have to deal with things like confiscatory tax rates, hyperinflation, default, being targeted by the government as a juicy source of funds, fall of a government you had previously been associated with, a dumb heir coming into control of the fortune and getting swindled...

If being rich was easy everyone would do it.

<comment><USER3> There is diversifiable risk and there is non-diversifiable risk. Everyone is subject to non-diversifiable risk, and there's plenty of risk associated with being poor, such as not having enough food to eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in favor of trying UBI to see the impact, testing it properly.

I'm not a fan of this article however. While we are reasoning by analogy, It's fairly well documented that most capital wealth does not survive past an initial generation or two. There's something about creating the wealth/passive income that creates a different behavior than being given it.

This article does nothing to discuss that. The analogy included feels like it's just there to support a punchy headline.

This is why I'm more excited to see some real tests and results in various countries and communities.

<comment><USER6> It's easy to test. Find someone and start paying them.

Let us know how it works out.

<comment><USER7> This is in fact what people are doing.

[https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash- transfers](https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/01/02/finlands-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/01/02/finlands- basic-income-experiment-starts-really-its-testing-the-laffer-curve-for-poor- people/#53229bbd76af)

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic- income/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income/)

<comment><USER8> We already did this in the 70s as well.

[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002169251](https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002169251)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While, overall, I enjoyed reading this post, I feel that this statement -

> 1 in 10 dollars of income produced in this country is paid out to the > richest 1% without them having to work for it.

is misleading. I think this type of attitude makes it more difficult to find common ground. Yes, that income is not produced through recent work, but it is produced as a bi-product of previous work.

The issue is that once a person accumulates enough wealth, the difficulty to generate value falls while the opportunities to do so rise.

<comment> crooked-v You've overlooked how much of this wealth is inherited across generations.

<comment><USER10> That means they're preserving it and reinvesting it so more wealth can be created. This is a good thing.

<comment><USER6> If we consumed all of that nasty wealth, there'd be none to borrow to get a house or education. None for startups.

People get rich by not consuming everything as soon as they get it. This is a great thing for everybody.

And it's not just rich that accumulate. A person making minimum wage and just saving the same amount withheld by the US social security tax would have hundreds of thousands of dollars accumulated if they kept it in the stock market for their entire working career.

I was curious about this a few years ago and put together this spreadsheet, using this tax rate, rate of return and minimum wage over a 40 year period.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RlSfkW- DKXAXtXKvZJR5...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RlSfkW- DKXAXtXKvZJR5avibx_DqZEXIZk-Wd9SpSIc/edit?usp=sharing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Don't tax labor to give money out to UBI loafers. Instead, snag society's capital income, which is already paid out to people without regard to whether they work, and pay it out to everyone._

Also known as nationalizing all investments.

I think the author may not quite have a grip on capitalism.

<comment><USER12> Did you finish the article? They're not literally suggesting that all capital income be redirected by the government, but instead suggesting that the government should build up a fund that owns capital assets.

> _The US federal government would employ various strategies (mandatory share > issuances, wealth taxes, counter-cyclical asset purchases, etc.) to build up > a big wealth fund that owns capital assets._

Sure, wealth taxes does mean effectively redirecting some of the capital income earned by other people, but that's basically what all taxes do anyway. And I'm not sure what "mandatory share issuances" or "counter-cyclical asset purchases" mean. But the end result is they're suggesting that the government should own a set of capital assets rather than just relying on taking money from citizens that own capital assets.

<comment><USER13> > Did you finish the article? They're not literally suggesting that all > capital income be redirected by the government, but instead suggesting that > the government should build up a fund that owns capital assets.

To provide a UBI of say 12k for every adult in the country (as opposed to just a few hundred or thousand), such a fund would need to own a large part of all the corporations and housing stock in the country. Didn't work well for the countries that tried it in the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, essentially, abolish property rights? Just have government seize the capital from people who currently own it, or rather, seize the proceeds of the capital which is effectively the same thing, because why would you bother owning the capital if you weren't going to have access to the income it produces?

I'm all in favor of Universal Basic Income, but what happens when everyone who currently invests their money to produce this passive income decides to simply spend it instead since they wouldn't get to use any return from their investments?

<comment><USER15> Seems like if the folks hoarding money via investments were to spend it, we'd see much greater wealth equality.

<comment><USER6> That's true. We'd all be much more equally poor.

There's also be no capital accumulating for innovation. No annoying technology to enable people to make high salaries. And none of the annoying tax revenues collected from them.

<comment><USER6> This has been tried many times. It's called communism.

And people always try to escape it. And its eventually abandoned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a total straw man argument.

I think very few are against the idea of free money for everybody because of the fear of moral decay if people aren't working. I think the opponents are worried about where that money to fund UBI will come from.

Taking away people's assets to be redistributed is obviously kind of a touchy subject.

<comment><USER17> I've actually seen a lot of folks argue against UBI out of the assumption that if people don't have to work, no one will ever do anything with their lives and we'll all go to hell with no production whatsoever. This article is targeted at that argument. If that's not an argument against UBI you want to make, that's great, but it's still worthwhile for the author to write something here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> UBI is a well intentioned but misdirected goal. Ask for minimum social infrastructure. Not money. Minimum social infrastructure that involves food, education and medicine safety to a good degree (without any hint of lavishness). We achieve that, we will solve arising problem meaningfully in my opinion.

<comment><USER19> The following is a non-value judgement. We see generally better outcomes when we just hand people cash than when we make them jump through hoops, and partake in non standard services to acquire resources. It also generates more administrative overhead than if we just hand them cash.

I don't know if this would hold for a universal social services infrastructure.

My personal analysis is that I would tend towards decentralization via cash payments, so as to enable choice, and not have the state takeover the potential economic activities enabled by such cash payments. Nobody wants to be given food from a government kitchen or government food box, but most people, I would think, would not mind getting $X per week/month/year to supplement their other income from the government.

<comment><USER18> I think your statement is spot on in context of giving cash to people in resource stripped geographies. As charities handling social programs are detached from ground realities.

But in context of democratic, developed states and cities; UBI/welfare is not a good solution. Minimum social infrastructure is what we should strive towards. So, when people fall from safety nets; that fall can be contained. With passage of time; we can work towards elevating that net further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thinking about it, basic income would be better than increasing credit as a way to increase the money supply, but it is probably not particularly good either.

</comment><comment><USER21> What "universal" in UBI means actually? If we pay to some of people then it's not universal. No matter if it's the top 1% or the poorest.

<comment><USER22> It means taking the massive chunk that goes to the 1% and instead redistribute it evenly to everyone (including the 1%, but this time they get a much smaller piece)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I didn't realize investments were the same as being payed. It is a revelation that people who have enough money to live off of investments don't have to fight to survive?

</comment><comment><USER24> I have an idea. Can't we make national lotteries pay out in UBI, and use the results for studies? That way, those lotteries at least serve a useful goal.

</comment><comment><USER25> Society still benefits if those "unearned" dollars are spent domestically.

<comment><USER26> You're right. The problem is that rich people don't spent much money, they tend to already have most of their needs met.

Poor people on the other hand are much quicker to bring their income back into circulation. If you want a lot of money to be spent domestically, you need to redistribute the money to the poor.

<comment><USER27> I feel like this implies that the rich hoard money under a mattress. Most money held by the rich is invested in some way or another.</comment></comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's Holocaust comment isn't the only thing he got wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/ <comment><USER2> It's a sad state of affairs when the _Washington Post_ is advocating censorship of wrongthink. One might even call it double plus sad...

I don't even want to waste the energy on explaining all the potential pitfalls of a corporate entity (or anyone!) acting as judge, jury and executioner of censorship. Maybe we all need to re-read Fahrenheit 451, 1984, etc...

<comment><USER3> Facebook curating posts is very different from the government regulating information.

<comment><USER4> It`s different, but if they`re the information channel used by the majority of people then it has the same effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well I couldn't disagree more. Good on Mark for not choosing to censor those views. Misinformation needs to be combated with information not censorship.

The correct way to deal with a Holocaust denier isn't to tell them how evil and anti-Semitic they are. It's to point them to the evidence they're wrong. Try to understand their world view and dismantle it with truth. If you just shut these people out of society the only interaction you can have will be conflict.

To write off someone with different beliefs is at the very least arrogant and counter productive.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bad link?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post- partisan/wp/2018/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post- partisan/wp/2018/07/19/holocaust-denial-isnt-the-only-thing-mark-zuckerberg- got-wrong/)

<comment><USER2> Bad bad link?

[https://outline.com/dcvPUK](https://outline.com/dcvPUK)

<comment><USER6> Well, yes, that's how I prefer to read it myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Zuckerberg`s Holocaust comment is one of the few things he`s got right: there is no place for government regulating Free Speech. Not because Holocaust deniers are anything but deranged and odious, but because any such power placed in the hands of government can and will be abused.</comment>


Motivation Trumps IQ. What now? - <AUTHOR> http://strategyprofs.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/motivation-trumps-iq-what-now/

<comment><USER2> "In one striking study researchers measured the children's IQ and split them into High, Average, and Low groups. They reran the test offering the low group an M&M for every correct answer. As a result of this simple incentive, the low group's score went from 79 to 97 – on par with the average group."

I always suspected that sufficient amounts of sugar could could transmogrify the borderline intellectually functioning brain of small children, leaving them hyperactive... but otherwise regular kids. Oh, wait... they got their buzz on after the second test!

What did the study demonstrate other than the fact that bored kids didn't want to expend any real effort to fill in their dots?

Motivation may dramatically affect the curve on the low end, among those that were previously making no effort. Talk about low hanging fruit. It takes really inspired management to get those kinds if performance gains out of people that are already reasonably smart and reasonably motivated. "What now?", indeed. 18 M&Ms?</comment>


Won't get fooled systematically (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://gashlin.net/blog/pages/2010-12-22-wont-get-fooled-systematically.html <comment><USER2> Oh, surprised to see my old post up here!

The closest to a game I ever got with this was dwim: [http://hcs64.github.io/dwim-game](http://hcs64.github.io/dwim-game) (keyboard controls)

It has the basic idea of figuring out what the symbols mean, but I took the "deception" part out.

</comment><comment><USER3> The opening concept reminds me of Cogito[1], an old Apple IIgs game where all the controls were a lie.

There's a 9x9 grid of black/white stones, and you have to make it look like a target pattern by sliding the rows/columns. In level 1, the controls work just like you would expect. In higher levels, the controls are always consistent within the level, but they're not predictable. Clicking the button to slide the top row to the right, for example, might instead move the 4th column down by 2 spaces. Of course, there's no undo, and clicking the button to slide the top row left probably does _not_ move the 4th column up by 2 spaces. I'm not sure if you were even guaranteed that every control had an inverse.

I think in one of their later trailers/demos they admitted that it was just "too hard". It didn't really have a gradual tutorial system like this webpage suggests, though.

[1]: [https://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/cogito.html](https://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/cogito.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> The Apple ][ game "The Prisoner" had many deceptive moments like this -- I think at one point it rearranged the I/J/K/M directional keys. It even simulated a BASIC crash to get you to type in your secret 3 digit code, which the game had warned you not to reveal.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_\(video_game\))

<comment><USER5> That sounds awesome! Is the game available anywhere?

<comment><USER2> You can find a link at the bottom of this article: [http://www.filfre.net/2011/11/the-prisoner- part-2/](http://www.filfre.net/2011/11/the-prisoner-part-2/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a bit reminded of _Portal 2_ , which took the trolling sprit of the series to extremes by having on-screen prompts tell you that the jump button is a talk button in the tutorial. And yet -- any time the game tells you (for example, in "the part where he kills you") that there is no way out, a way out will become apparent.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pretty interesting idea. I could see it applying to an RPG like Skyrim or Witcher ... when your character drinks too much ale, the minimap and other UI features lie to you.

</comment><comment><USER8> how about you get six different guides and you end up somewhere based on your choice, it intermingles with your previous choices, as your guides change come and go.</comment>


Igor Sysoev skeptical about V8 JavaScript engine on servers... - <AUTHOR> http://www.sysoev.ru/prog/v8.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this article by the creator of Nginx from September 2010... I am curious if he still feels this way as more people are doing things with Node.js

Edit: Google Translate URL [http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sysoev.ru%2Fprog%2Fv8.html&act=url)</comment>


2.8M Simultaneous Connections /w Erlang [slides] - <AUTHOR> http://www.erlang-factory.com/upload/presentations/558/efsf2012-whatsapp-scaling.pdf

<comment><USER2> Our stack uses a ton of Erlang. If you have many simultaneous connections, it's one of the few languages that doesn't lose potency as it scales.

Http://2600hz.com check it out if you have some time :).</comment>


Ask HN: How do I get my girlfriend to see the beauty of computer science? - <AUTHOR>

My girlfriend works in the arts and has never had any experience with computer science or dated an engineer before.  Recently she said that it's impossible for her to understand the mechanics of programming and therefore she finds what is "under the hood" of her iPhone or browser completely uninteresting.  We have all had moments where we found an algorithm or piece of code beautiful in implementation, but what is a good way to express to a non-technical person the delight of something so abstruse?<p>I once had an introductory CS professor who was particularly good at this, but at least he had the benefit of requiring us to complete assignments! <comment><USER2> This is a battle not worth fighting, IMO, unless she is asking/encouraging you to do it. My wife is an artist and she doesn't care at all about CS and never will. She doesn't want to know about it therefore she won't begin the process. I tried for the first year or so to explain this or that but it just wasn't where our interests crossed, so I stopped. She appreciates my enthusiasm for it and is happy that I get so much enjoyment from it but that's where it ends. We have other interests that cross and that's where we spend our time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you're fighting an uphill battle getting her to appreciate the end result (e.g. the code), but most artists can appreciate the value of the creation process itself.

So maybe focus on the craftsmanship and exploration by drawing comparisons to something like woodworking or sculpture or print making.

<comment><USER4> ... and in addition, point out that the end result is not simply something to evoke emotion, as art should, or to be useful, as a piece of beautifully sculpted furniture would, but something that is active and interactive.

Almost alive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Richard P. Gabriel has something to say about this. <http://dreamsongs.com/Essays.html>

Having said that, I'm not sure how effective it can be. I've read some of Gabriel's essays, and I'm a bit into Patterns of Software, but I don't think anything there would mean much to me if I didn't write code.

Something else you might consider is to not even mention "computers". Dijkstra says use "computing", but screw that, too. For the last few years[1] or so, I've tried to sort of start by mentioning computer science, and then spending a bit of time qualifying the term and trying to dislodge the images that comes into my conversation partners' heads. I don't think I've ever been successful.[2] It's hard getting people to think "computer science" means something besides either technophilia or sysadmining.

1\. To be fair, a "few years" ago, it's fair to say I wasn't even in my position to appreciate that I am now.

2\. I might've gotten close one time, by pointing to Luis von Ahn's talk on human computation, but I can't be sure, and you don't always have the benefit of an hour to spare. <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143>

</comment><comment><USER6> I definitely think that an artist should be able to relate to the idea of creating things. Its quite possible that her statement of finding what is under the hood to be "uninteresting" is actually a way of saying that she finds it complex and intimidating. I think that rather than showing her complex beautiful code that does crazy things, I'd have her actually try something simple so that programming is no longer some complicated abstract concept. Maybe get her to do tryruby.org, or even help her create a basic HTML site.

While I agree with someone else's comment that you shouldn't force her to do any of this if she isn't interested...I do think that as your girlfriend she should be interested in learning more about what you do all day and what you are passionate about.

Just my two cents...

<comment><USER7> Nah, I don't think she (or you) should be required to be interested in your job.

I sometimes try to explain things to my girlfriend to see if I actually understand them. If I can make her understand the concept--then I feel like I know what I'm talking about. She'll listen and play along, but it's boring to her. Thats fine. She's a law student and I do the same for her, but I think contracts and crap are as boring as she thinks algorithmic trading is and that's fine too.

We both spend all day with people who love that stuff. After recapping our days, there's plenty of other fun stuff to talk about and do. The key to making it work is we are both able to tell when the others eyes are starting to glaze over. Before you try forcing it, try to imagine a two hour discussion about paint brush selection or something you could really care less about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If she's in the arts, she already understands computer science. She just calls it by a different name: art.

It's no more different than how a poet differs from a sculptor: their ways are drastically different, but in the end, both are artists. So is a good computer scientist.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree with this.

It's true. My girlfriend is into arts too. She never understood my work but when I showed her paper.js and some other awesome scripts, she got to know the beauty of it :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do you like the arts? I find it completely uninteresting.

Why, particularly, does your girlfriend have to understand the beauty of Computer Science? Just keep making cool, useful, possibly world changing shit, and I'm sure she'll see the beauty there!

</comment><comment><USER11> Clarity. Artists seek a way to define the world through their art. We define the world through logic. When we make a simple connection between two complex ideas, we have a moment of clarity that we find beautiful. In the same way a painting captures the emotion of the image it pictures, a clever piece of code captures the true, logical connections of the machine it creates. That may not be the best way to explain it, but it's the way I see it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Visual Artists often take inspiration from nature. I've read a few articles on how someone used primes and other mathematical principles that are observable in nature and used them in programs to generate tiled images with a more natural flow to them that is more easy on the eye. Sometimes the best way to get someone to appreciate something is to frame it in the context of something they love.

</comment><comment><USER13> From none other than pg: <http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> Try the concept of recursion. Then move on to fractal images. That might grab her attention. (I don't know -- maybe reverse the order of introduction I suggested?)

Don't bury her in the details. Look for the concepts you already share -- albeit in different media.

P.S. Maybe she'd find something like Edward Tufte's work interesting/appealing.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's uninteresting because it has no application to her.

Knowing how an iPhone works does not help her to make better art anymore than knowing how an internal combustion engine works. If you want her to be interested in it you need to relate it to her goals and objectives.

Also, most artists are extremely concerned about what makes the art relevant to them, that is to say that they are not producing art for mass consumption, but primarily for the adulation of themselves, and from their peers, and possibly their patrons.

What makes code interesting to us is the same thing that makes flowers interesting to botanists. Start by becoming interested in the arts and applying the skills you have (coding) to the artistic field. I guarantee you if you make art that interests to her she will become interested in how you made it.

I was painting with a friend who was an artist and I had a desire to make a mondrian inspired piece so I took a ruler and started marking geometric shapes with a ruler and calculator in hand and measuring the dyes according to various ratios in an attempt to produce complementary colors. She became extremely interested in my methods and remarked at what a systematic approach I had to art and we started talking about algorithmic beauty such as golden ratios, fibonacci, fractals, color theory, all the way to the expression of general relativity in some of Dali's later pieces and the kinds of quantum effects that produce color.

If you provide her with opportunities to learn more about a field she's already interested in you will have no problem getting her interested, if you start out trying to get her interested in your field you will have no hope.</comment>


Improving Security for Bugzilla - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/09/04/improving-security-for-bugzilla/ <comment><USER2> So this is about how someone hacked Bugzilla, extracted sensitive information about a vulnerability in Firefox' PDF engine, wrote a weaponized exploit for it, deployed it as malvertising and stole some of the most sensitive files you can get out of a user's computer...

...and then the FAQ document linked is a _PDF file_ with no styling beyond something that could be done with HTML <h1>, <p> and <a>, hosted on a domain "ffp4g1ylyit3jdyti1hqcvtb-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com".

Did I just get trolled?

<comment><USER3> It if not a vulnerability in the PDF.js engine themselves.

<comment><USER2> The original advisory certainly seems to implicate the PDF viewer component? [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/security/advisories/mfsa2015-7...](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/security/advisories/mfsa2015-78/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, but it has been fixed a while ago though. No one using up to date Firefox would be vulnerable to that issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Takeaway:

> We believe that the attacker used information from Bugzilla to exploit the > vulnerability we patched on August 6...The version of Firefox released on > August 27 fixed all of the vulnerabilities that the attacker learned about > and could have used to harm Firefox users.

I find this an interesting attack vector for a capital-O Open Source project. In the spirit of openness, how does a community correctly label bugs versus vulnerabilities?

<comment><USER6> A: They don't. [https://lkml.org/lkml/2008/7/15/705](https://lkml.org/lkml/2008/7/15/705)

> IOW, when we fix security issues, it's simply not even appropriate or > relevant to you.

\- Linus

<comment><USER7> Include full quotes of relevant information - because context is important.

The very next sentence following your quote:

 _> More importantly, when we fix them, your vendor probably won't have the fix for at least another week or two in most cases anyway._

... ...

 _> We'd basically be announcing a bug that (a) may not be relevant to you, but (b) _if_ it is relevant to you, you almost certainly won't actually have fixed packages until a week or two later available to you!_

<comment><USER6> Well I didn't want to reproduce the entire thread. The basic summary is Linus feels that labeling bugs as a security threat should not be pointed out as such, rather keep such information private, even though the fix is public.

Because life is short. If you want security patches, find a vendor to help filter the bad bugs from the big bugs for you.

In the meantime, hackers see the fix, recognize the security risk, and build exploits long before your vendors even recognize it as a potential security risk (probably only after it is exploited in the wild would they understand it as such). Good luck with that.

<comment><USER8> Mozilla _is_ a vendor. Very few people get a Firefox rebuilt by a third party. (And, in fact, Mozilla takes steps to make that more cumbersome to do legally than just redistributing the upstream build.)

Linux is relatively unusual among security-sensitive free-software products in neither being a vendor nor wanting to be a vendor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My, that sounded like a very boring title. I suppose saying something positive like "Improving security for bugzilla" is a better way to present a story than "someone has managed to attack Firefox users since August 6".

</comment><comment><USER10> How valuable is a Firefox vulnerability? On one hand, it seems very high: It gives you access to hundreds of millions of computers. On the other, maybe the supply of vulnerabilities that provide such access is high enough, unfortunately, that they aren't worth much.

I ask because, if they are extremely valuable, I wonder if Bugzilla can be adequately secured against the attackers it would attract. Perhaps it would be best to store this information elsewhere until they are ready to make it public.

</comment><comment><USER11> So this is basically sinking without a trace, likely thanks to the anodyne title and the release on a Friday. Mozilla is going corporate.

<comment><USER12> Having worked in many places and with many projects:

100 out of 100 corporations and most open source projects I know of would simply have never ever told you about it.

So, while I'm sure Mozilla is more corporate than before in a thousand ways this is not one of them.</comment></comment>


How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html <comment><USER2> This piece makes an important argument, but if you look around Twitter for the academic reaction to it, it is not unanimously positive. In particular, you can find neurogeneticists taking issue with a thesis built from "there has been enough time for natural selection in human populations" _and_ "genes probably play a role in intelligence"; the story is apparently not that simple given what we apparently know about genes and intelligence (polygenic, impact multiple other things besides intelligence).

So while it may be the case that "race is purely a social construct" is an untenable and unproductive position, it does not necessarily follow that a solid case for "achievement and behavior is strongly genetic" has been made.

Since intelligence and genetics is the third rail of population genetic studies, isn't the author's specialty, and isn't at all clear, it's a little confusing as to why he went out on this limb. Pinker sure is happy about it though.

A good next read:

[https://gcbias.org/2018/03/14/polygenic-scores-and-tea- drink...](https://gcbias.org/2018/03/14/polygenic-scores-and-tea-drinking/)

<comment><USER3> David is arguably the the most influential geneticist alive today. In my opinion he is plenty well qualified to discuss this topic. And, absolutely nowhere in the piece does he say anything to the effect of "achievement and behavior is strongly genetic". I really don't get your second paragraph at all.

<comment><USER2> The entire second half of the piece rebuts the implicit notion that there is little science to support a genetic relationship between races and intelligence. But: there is little science to support a genetic relationship between races and intelligence.

Has Reich published significantly on neurogenetics?

<comment><USER3> The negation of "there is little science to support a genetic relationship between races and intelligence" is not "achievement and behavior is strongly genetic". I suggest you learn about heritability. And yes, he has published extensively on the genetic risk factors of MS.

<comment><USER2> That's rude, and also doesn't respond to my question, which is pretty simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This concept of a "race", in terms of genetics, makes sense for classification purposes, just like all taxonomical classifications of living things.

The difference here, is that people are taking this genetic concept of "race" and trying to prove their racist points, which always misses the point entirely. It would be a non-issue if the word "race" wasn't so politically charged.

Quick edit for 2 easy examples: People with African descent are more likely to have sickle cell anemia, due to the resistance the gene provides against malaria.

People with European descent are more likely to have cystic fibrosis, due to resistance it provided from cholera and typhoid.

<comment><USER5> You hint at this, but I think it's worth explicitly mentioning that "race" as most people understand it, and "race" as an objective, genetic categorization, are two extremely different things.

Examples: there is more genetic diversity among Africans (and thus ought to be more races among them) than in the rest of the world combined. A large number of "African Americans" have more European ancestry than African. The previous President was almost always referred to as "black" even though his mother was white, echoing the old "one drop" rules.

<comment><USER6> > "race" as most people understand it, and "race" as an objective, genetic > categorization, are two extremely different things.

Yet they seem to match in 99.86% of cases:

 _" Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity."_

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/)

<comment><USER7> The problem is that they are using the existing boundaries. We'd construct different labels if we started with genetics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have no idea whether the overall pendulum is swinging back from "race is a purely social construct". I hope so, because it has always seemed absurd to me, for the very reasons the author cites, just as absurd as the idea that race is a hard determinant of anything.

But what I can say is that in molecular biology, working scientists have completely ignored this politically charged debate and continued to use the concept this whole time. In one example I am directly familiar with, researchers have continued to use and stratify genome-wide association studies by self-reported race/ethnicity in the search for variants causal for lupus. This is important not only because as with many diseases, there is a difference in likelihood of getting the disease between "races" not attributable to lifestyle, but also because it is entirely possible, even probable, that the mechanisms causing the disease are somewhat different between ethnicities.

Actually, therefore, the understanding that there are real differences between "races" in the context of disease is actually helpful for the smaller groups because it means that special attention is paid to the etiology of their disease apart from the general etiology. In the same way that, for many years, most biology research was done on males and it was just assumed that the findings would always apply to females. That was incorrect, and now studies are done to determine gender differences in treatment and disease etiology.

IMO this whole debate has dragged on as long as it has because too many in the public are seemingly incapable -- or unwilling -- to understand basic concepts about population means and variances, and in particular that in a situation like this where population means are very real but usually small, and the variance is high, knowing what "race" you are _usually_ conveys little information about some other attribute of interest. Usually, but not always, as is particularly the case with many diseases.

I have grown particularly tired of the argument that, because a taxonomy, like any clustering, is fuzzy and the number of clusters is somewhat arbitrary, the whole thing conveys no useful information. It is patently false.

<comment><USER2> Is it not the case that biologists are simply on firmer ground working on the premise of causal genetic relationships with populations and genes, and far shakier ground when they try to correlate genes to behavior?

<comment><USER8> The typical path to determining causality for a variant is: Variant -> (Gene expression or some other molecular-level phenomenon) -> Phenotype. Actually, associating a variant with a phenotype is the easy part, determining what happens in between is much harder. Another hard part is determining _which_ variant does something since variants are highly correlated with each other.

I am not sure I understand your question exactly so I'll give a few different answers. One is that I see no difference whether the phenotype is behavioral or some disease occurring below your neck. It all depends on the statistics and effect sizes of the phenotype and how good a predictor "race" is.

Another is that actually it is much more difficult, obviously, to determine causality than a correlation, regardless of what you are correlating with what.

And a final answer is that we generally consider a causal relationship between genetics and a phenotype proved with acceptable levels of error if the two are correlated, and we control for all the environmental variables we can, and the correlation remains. You can also look at heritability with twins separated at birth and raised in different environments and other such experiments to control for environment.

<comment><USER2> I'd probably start with the question of: isn't it easier to understand the causal relationships in a lot of diseases than it is to understand behavior, the biology of which we barely understand _without_ bringing genetics into it?

<comment><USER8> Except for Mendelian diseases, not really. The sad fact is that for the so- called "complex diseases", we have very little idea what is going on inside the black box. I won't presume to guess whether we know less about them or about behavior, but the ignorance level is very high in both cases. They are called "complex" because we don't understand them, and because they seem to have many causes, both individual genetic loci and environmental variables, each contributing a little bit rather than something like sickle-cell anemia which has one big cause.

However, I think our techniques are quite sufficient right now to say X% of the variance in phenotype P is attributable to genetics (i.e., genetics partially cause P). That is a totally different thing from explaining _how_ the genotype causes the phenotype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading between the lines; using genetics to justify racism against group X is dreadfully wrong, but let's not close the door on our ability to use genetics to justify racism against group Y.

</comment><comment> apk-d There is no race, it's all just brains doing overactive classification. I wish that we got over this as a species already.

<comment><USER10> I'm afraid this view is completely incompatible with the findings in population genetics. Two papers to get you started:

* Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/)

* Genetic Structure of Human Populations [https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/popstruct.pdf](https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/popstruct.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Glancing at your first citation, nothing in the summary seems to challenge the idea that people of all races see much bigger differences among races (for example, when someone like James Damore start dogwhistling IQ tests in their footnotes) than actually exist genetically.

Sure, there are genetic distinctions among groups of people. But as soon as someone mentions black or white people, the discussion isn't about these kind of fine genetic distinctions. They're about stereotypes that are much more social than they are genetic.

Now in the political realm, the significance of these terms and the groups is completely different because of the way groups have been treated historically on the basis not of these fine genetic distinctions but rather these crude social racial/ethnic identifications.

I'd prefer we avoided using footnotes pointing to scientific publications to oversimplify more complex political discussions or to justify the economic and social marginalization of historically disadvantaged groups based on purposeful misreading.

<comment><USER12> I agree with you, but I would also note that the original person being replied to seems to be committing a common colloquial misunderstanding in regards to social constructions; just because something is socially constructed does not mean it's not real. Race is absolutely real, regardless of the degree to which genetics does or doesn't correlate with it, because we make it real in our day to day interactions.

But your point is succinct: just because you can group people using genetic markers into clusters that align well with our society's typical social categorization of race does by no means validate a genetic basis for all the other sociocultural baggage that we associate with those categories. The most it seems to do particularly in regards to the social category of race is show that genetic markers useful for identifying kinship (I'd file that under "duh"). It's interesting to note, for me, that the analysis of the first paper works just fine for 2 clusters as well (basically East Asian and everyone else), but those super-racial groupings don't exist in the US to my knowledge.

<comment><USER13> Right, but this opens the door to there existing, in theory, racial genetic differences causing variation at the human scale; whether or not these map to racist stereotypes, it becomes harder to argue against them because people can no longer discard them by just denying the concept of racial variation altogether. So they actually have to put the work in to demonstrate that they're untrue, invalid or inapplicable.

Anything that makes it harder for people to attack the enemy is interpreted as aiding the enemy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The idea that race is a social construct is simply dumb.

Race: Genetic characteristics common to humans with a shared geographic origin, and that differ from humans from other geographic origins, sometimes distinguishable by appearance.

If our collective memory was wiped today, tomorrow we would distinguish humans by what we call 'races'. But it would require science to clarify what distinguishes a race at the genetic level (physical differences being a decent proxy but often wrong and clearly primitive) and to map the distinct differences between each race.

Why is this controversial?

<comment><USER15> Irish and Italian people were previously considered separate races but have merged into the "white" race. Have the genetics of Ireland changed drastically in the past 100 years? Or was it the social construct of "race" that changed? Why do some countries consider certain groups a different race and other countries view them as a socioeconomic class e.g. gypsies? Humans migrate and interbreed with different genetic groups and have been doing so for a long, long time. We are really a spectrum of genetic differences and not really a bunch of grouped individuals.

[https://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/white13.htm](https://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/white13.htm)

<comment><USER14> > Irish and Italian people were previously considered separate races

To whom? Outside of America this is ridiculous. Maybe that's it - The US has so many hangups about race they changed the definition.

Race: "differences in genetic ancestry based on different geographic origin". Just because people exploited the term and used it incorrectly does not mean it does not have an exact definition.

In the middle ages people who carried out trepanning claimed to know about medicine. People who called the Irish non-caucasian claimed to know about race. They didn't (or in the latter case, they did but were prejudice).

Neither medicine nor race need be discredited by past ignorance.</comment></comment></comment>


Giveffect (YC W15) Has Built a Shopify-Meets-Salesforce for Non-Profits - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/10/giveffect-nonprofits/

<comment><USER2> I run an agency that works exclusively with NGOs (marketing, design, development). This is an interesting solution, but I am curious about if you offer an API? The link in the site footer doesn't go anywhere.

The problem I see, is that all-in-one solutions do a lot of things but are really masters of none. Does the CRM allow integration from the NGOs website automatically? Does your email marketing support list segmentations? Is PayPal the only payment option? Most NGOs have long standing contracts with merchant service accounts.

I like the idea, but I am not sure I could recommend it to our clients based on the information from your website. Lots of potential for this type of system.

Right now we usually setup clients on Salesforce, super great discounts for nonprofits, and lots of out of the box integration already available.

<comment><USER3> Hey there, I'm one of the technical cofounders of Giveffect. Good questions!

The reason why our clients are choosing the "all-in-one" solution is because they are fed up with disjointed systems. Why shouldn't their fundraising pages on the frontend automatically talk to their CRM on the backend? Our solution is integrated in the "NGO's website automatically" as we are a complete white labelled solution powering the entire fundraising/crowdfunding/campaign-style experience on their own website.

The email marketing solution is something we're still building out, and while still in the early stages we have integrated with some cool patent-pending technology that provides deep insights and analytics. We can gather data such as which subscribers have read the email, how many times, duration spent reading the content, on which device, location opened, whether or not they clicked through any links, and furthermore converted. All of this feeds back to our integrated CRM to further segment high value, highly engaged contacts.

Currently we use PayPal as our payment gateway because they were the only ones to offer a low NGO rate for our clients. Plus they have a long standing trust with nonprofits and donors, and most NGO's already have a PayPal account with many using it as their donate button, making it an obvious choice.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the response.

I would still be interested to understand the CRM part more. I agree that it makes sense to have the front-end talk to their CRM, but is it a full fledge CRM? The fundraising page leads are not the only relationships NGOs need to track.

We find it fairly easy to automate everything for leads to CRM via Zapier. And the NGO can scale and add in pieces as needed.

Also, I find that finance/donor relations teams are usually in a different location/country than the comms teams. All with different budgets and money to spend on a system. It's a complicated mess. :)

I guess I am curious, from your view, what is the target size of the NGO your system benefits? It looks like you are giving it away to anyone with less than 250k a year in donations, which is great, those small NGOs need a solution like this. But is it the $1-3 million a year? $3m+ a year?

I'm not asking these questions to pick apart your offering. I am all for systems that help NGOs. If this is a fit for our clients, it would be a nice place to point them to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Above $1MM (our ave clients are generally around the $3-6MM rev range). And yup, it is a full CRM solution for nfps that focus on fundraising (not just contact management but also takes into account other relationship mapping such as org, institutions, unique grouping, leads etc). Additionally, the back-end includes newsletters, volunteer tracking and placement, skills mapping, fund allocation (this is a biggie apparently) customized tax-receitps, event/tickets/perks management, etc. We offer easy export integration for QuickBooks integration as well. Examples of our clients include United Way chapters, Big Brothers Big Sisters, SPCA's, etc

<comment><USER2> Actually one more thing, are there plans for affiliate or parter programs? We get asked to advise on this stuff all the time.

<comment><USER4> What's your agency? I'd love to chat.

<comment><USER2> Sure, shoot me an email: jesse at glean.net

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any community organizations or non-profits in need of a CRM/Salesforce solution should check out CiviCRM. It's free as in freedom, and free as in price. No $200+ monthly fee and 1-3% commission.

<comment><USER6> I did my PhD dissertation on open source CMS and related systems, and one of the questions was sustainability. For those that can sustain the issues with a system like CiviCRM, it might be appropriate. Alternatively, an enabler like Greenleaf could help an org -[http://greenleafadvancement.com](http://greenleafadvancement.com)

Or, a product like Giveffect might be helpful.

<comment><USER7> > I did my PhD dissertation on open source CMS

That sounds really cool! I work with CMS's all the time and will be teaching a class on them -- is your dissertation publicly available, and/or do you have any interest in sharing or chatting about the topic? (my contact info is in my profile)

<comment><USER8> I think this is it?

Sustainable multilingual communication: Managing multilingual content using free and open source content management systems by Kelsey, Todd, Ph.D., Illinois Institute of Technology, [http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/906782853.html?FMT=ABS](http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/906782853.html?FMT=ABS)

<comment><USER6> Yeah that's it - thanks - there's also a Google presentation with the high points at [http://tinyurl.com/gomultilingual](http://tinyurl.com/gomultilingual)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anything that helps non-profits run better so they can focus on their mission is a good thing. Best wishes.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This feels like its solving a real problem that the founders understand. Great work all around. Minor nitpick: I see why "Shopify" was chosen in the tagline but I think its more confusing than helpful at first glance. After reading up, one gets it but a tagline should work before reading the article. Teespring/Kickstarter/Indiegogo seem closer and have the added benefit of being related to what one might associate with a nonprofit i.e. fundraising. What do you think?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback! I can see how this can be confusing if you browsed the Giveffect marketplace first.

The reason we chose to use the Shopify analogy is because we power the nonprofit's frontend fundraising experience, much like an online storefront does for ecommerce. An example of this is [http://donate.campwinston.com](http://donate.campwinston.com) which is powered by Giveffect.

The Giveffect marketplace is the aggregator/hub whereby any client licensing our software can push their fundraising campaigns for discovery. This is just an added extension of the solution to provide clients with a venue for campaign marketing and donor acquisition.

<comment><USER9> "we power the nonprofit's frontend fundraising experience" This is it right here...as well as the custom domain

So "Shopify for nonprofit fundraising", while limiting, would have been completely clear. But "Shopify meets Salesforce"...now that's confusing :) Trust me I know how hard it is to come up with these so definitely not trying to be negative. If your customers get "Shopify meets Salesforce" without further explanation then it's probably just me being slow :)

<comment><AUTHOR> but here's the thing, we also 'power the backend with full admin and CRM features for online/offline giving" \- hence the salesforce reference (not my choice comparison btw). So, 'Shopify for nonprofit fundraising' has our clients immediately reacting, "oh, so there's no data management system?". To be clear, we NEVER describe GE as either when speaking to a client (we simply say fundraising,, volunteer and donor management software). So, given this, I'm curious to ask - how would you tagline us?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I work for a nonprofit, and this looks interesting. However we do already get Salesforce at a ridiculous discount, as salesforce has a great nonprofit pricing scheme.

That said, the real price of salesforce is in hiring people to write apex code or whatever else you need. Or worse, me having to write apex code myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey there, would be happy to chat and show you a bit more of our solution. One thing to clarify: our solution isn't just the back-end CRM, it is also front- end fundraising (like crowdfunding, ticket sales, marathons, galas etc) as well as volunteer admin. The part clients love most about our system is that the CRM is automated - meaning all the donor data is automatically collected and imported into their CRM powered by us. I started my journey in the nonprofit space as a Dev Director before starting Giveffect. The inspiration behind GE was to create turn-key, streamlined software for nonprofits, with a true understanding of the sector's needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats Anisa!</comment>


Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Set Up OpenVPN Server in 5 Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ubuntu-20-04-lts-set-up-openvpn-server-in-5-minutes/ <comment><USER2> Personal opinion: consider going with Wireguard instead.

<comment><USER3> My personal opinion is going with ZeroTier instead, had more trouble with wireguard then its worth (V likely issue on our end, Ds-lite users couldn't connect, handshakes not working until wireguard server /firewall restarts etc) meanwhile ZeroTier was on all devices 0 setup apart of setting dns servers (+ busted through all firewalls the users had /corporate it's)

<comment><USER4> I can't figure out how it works, any links?

<comment><USER3> Do you mean this? [https://www.zerotier.com/manual/](https://www.zerotier.com/manual/)

<comment><USER4> Yes thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Launching a startup? Here's what you need to know. - <AUTHOR> http://rivierapartners.com/2012/07/10/startups-seeking-bay-area-offices/

<comment><USER2> Surprising that more people aren't coming from the Eastbay</comment>


Parallel compiler maker Cilk Arts bought by Intel - <AUTHOR> http://www.cilk.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This should finally put an end to their licensing wankery (which has been toned down several times): [http://www.cilk.com/multicore-blog/bid/7191/The- Case-for-a-N...](http://www.cilk.com/multicore-blog/bid/7191/The-Case-for-a- New-Open-Source-License)

<comment><USER2> Yes, but Intel may "fix" the license by just making it proprietary like most of their other development tools. IMO the worst part about the Cilk++ license is that I just don't understand it. (I suppose if I actually used Cilk++ I could ask them for a clarification.)

Sometimes I think it's too bad that the Open Source Definition pretty much marginalized any innovation in open source licensing; OTOH most licensing "innovation" is evil anyway.</comment></comment>


Opera 9.5 released (with "DragonFly" JavaScript, CSS & SVG debugger) - <AUTHOR> http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/

<comment><USER2> Just a note to save a moment for folks like me who were using the 9.5 beta on osx and were a little suprised to see their old bookmarks didn't get automatically imported after installing the new version, your old bookmarks are probably in "~/Library/Preferences/Opera Preferences Beta/Bookmarks"

</comment><comment><USER3> on ubuntu it doesn't work as well as the beta 2 (for me anyway)

<comment><AUTHOR> Working brilliantly on OpenSUSE 10.3 here. Define "doesn't work"?

<comment><USER3> I had to uninstall beta 2 to uprade to start with cause it wouldn't recognize 9.5 as a higher version than 9.5 beta 2. I stupidly did a sudo apt-get remove opera (instead of a dpkg -r opera).

I then installed opera_9.50.etch-qt3_i386.deb using GDebi, went well but DragonFly doesn't work (Opera does but not DF). Something is fucked up with the windowing. It worked "well" with beta 2 ...

My mistake, I love Opera and fucked up the installation :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn, their packaging is clearly better for OpenSUSE, as it had no trouble recognising the higher version number, and I'm using DragonFly _this minute_. I had some trouble with beta 2 as it didn't import my 9.27 profile correctly and crashed halfway through. (I backed it up before trying 9.5 at least) Release version's working fine. It's nice to have Flash working again properly.

By the way, as far as I know, DragonFly is just some javascript that hooks into the interpreter/VM, so you might be able to download it from their developer website to fix the problem.

<comment><USER3> Fixed by doing a sudo dpkg -r opera then dpkg -i with a freshly downloaded .deb.

DragonFly not finished yet but worth a look ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does doing a first class job differ from doing a good job? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A first class job is one that anticipates what the user might actually need, not what he asked for, or finding a more efficient way of accomplishing the same result. This is different from gold plating. My elderly mother-in-law is constantly asking me to take her to the post office and the bank. If I just did what she asked, it would be a lot of wasted driving on my part. Instead I ask what she needs to accomplish. If it is to buy stamps or deposit a check, we can accomplish that without leaving the house.

As an example pulled from work, say there is a bug in an app where users input their zip code and get pricing from an API. In the US, zip codes are 5 numeric digits, but it validation is failing for zip codes like 06010 in Connecticut. You realize that the leading zero is being stripped when the zip is interpreted as an integer.

A bad job would be to hard code 06010 in a white list. You'll get another bug report when someone tries 06011.

A good job would be to treat the zip as a string to preserve the leading zero and use regex to check for 5 digits. The downside is that "00000" passes validation but is not a real zip code.

A first class job would be to integrate an actual zip code validation API, like the one from USPS where you feed it a zip and it returns data about it. 00000 would fail, but 00501 would pass. The advantage is that if the US ever updates zip codes to include letters or an additional digit, you don't have to update validation rules on your side.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep yourself organized? - <AUTHOR>

What do you use to remember wtf is going on? Orgmode? RTM? Yellow paper notes? How do you do it? <comment><USER2> Get an open source, portable, future-proof, simple list: <http://todotxt.com>

If you need a bit more complexity, keeping with open source tools, <http://www.redmine.org> takes care of the job, easily. Plugins are a way to easily tweak it your way.

But falling for SaaS is easy, with <http://trello.com>, made by the guys at Fog Creek Software - which you might know already through the resounding name Joel Spolsky - is an awesome simple yet powerful tool, both for business and personal use.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best way I've experienced is using a kanban board even for projects of one person. I use agilezen.com (free for 1-person projects) but there are a lot out there.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Redmine with the Backlogs plugin and a lot of custom issue types.</comment>