Software crisis: the next generation (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://habitatchronicles.com/2016/10/software-crisis-the-next-generation/ <comment><USER2> > Anybody who's seen the systems inside a major tech company knows this is > true. Or a minor tech company. Or the insides of any product with a software > component.

Anybody who's seen the sun rising east and setting west knows that this is true: the Sun rotates around the Earth.

The other, less-obvious alternative, is that software is NOT crap, we just like to complain a lot. And it's just so easy & fun to blame everything on the software we work with.

Most software that doesn't immediately die does its job fairly well. In fact, better than whatever alternative that existed before said software.

<comment><USER3> > Anybody who's seen the sun rising east and setting west knows that this is > true: the Sun rotates around the Earth.

Just small remarks: technically it's not East and West, it changes.

Well, according to the basic physics laws: also yes. Yes because it depends on the observer. No, because it depends on the observer. The Copernicus book was about a theoretical model of an observer outside the planetary system (he didn't even claim that it was true "it was just a theory" \- that's why he had no problems with the funny Catholic guys who burnt people for less).

But back to the point: both claims a true: Sun travels in space around Earth... and at the same time Earth does the same around Sun. All depends on the observer.

Maybe with the software it's the same?

<comment><USER2> > technically it's not East and West, it changes.

technically I only talked about a subset of people :)

> Yes because it depends on the observer. No, because it depends on the > observer.

This gets metaphysical. If the observer's viewpoint is all that matters, the earth is flat (maybe not for you, but for me, and by definition you can't argue with me on that!). An argument that "I find software to be crap" is completely uninteresting and not worth engaging. If that's the only thing he meant... yeah, sure, more power to him, for all I care he may find all news to be fake too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The reason this stuff is crap is far more basic. It's because better-than- crap costs a lot more, and crap is usually sufficient.

... ... ...

Every dollar put into making software less crappy can't be spent on other things we might also want, the list of which is basically endless."

Software is crap because humans on the whole have an extremely difficult time reasoning through all the possible logic flows.

Software is also crap because in order to design good software a lot of insight, experience and empathy is required, and as it turns out, people writing crap don't have any of those prerequisites.

Finally, most software is crap because most people writing it don't care about getting it 100% correct, since it turns out that getting the last 5% correctly functioning is exponentially difficult, and those people would rather collect a paycheck than feel proud and content about what they wrote.

All other industries manage to deliver complete, working products; we are the only industry which doesn't; computers and software never work 100% correctly. What does that make us? It makes us jerk-offs, that's what it makes us. I understand now why Keith Wesolowski ditched computers and went to work on a ranch. And damn it, he is right!

<comment><USER5> > All other industries manage to deliver complete, working products;

Ha. If you were more heavily involved in those industries, I believe you would find that they all have similar problems because the article is right: we make tradeoffs all the time, in everything, so very little is ever as good as it could be. You just don't notice it because you don't have a lot of knowledge about it, their products are "good enough" for you and you don't think about it beyond that. Sound familiar?

<comment><USER4> No, it does not sound familiar because I'm a hardcore do it yourself guy, and one of the reasons that is so is because I seek masters in other professions to teach me. That's how I know what trade-offs they do or do not make, and following an insight by a family member that we (as a profession) can never get these damn computers to work correctly I'm becoming more and more discusted by the truth of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is cultural. The Walmart-ification of the worlds products. Planned Obsolescence. The short term profits to get the stock prices up by the end of the quarter mentality. The credit card mindset.

How fast society moves, and how cutthroat capitalism is becoming...its all about short term gain because the future feels chaotic and unstable to most of the world.

I personally think its the fact the money is getting more an more difficult to obtain because more and more is being hoarded in the upper strata of society. So short term mindsets on financial gain take over because financial opportunities don't come easily.

This is reflected in software development.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well we would expect no different from medicine, or home construction, or automobiles without some basic guarantees:

1\. High visibility of problems (people die, building collapse, crashes)

2\. Regulation and inspection (some standards for evaluation and lines that should not be crossed)

3\. Certification (you wouldn't let an uncertified random person do heart surgery on you, or build your house).

But for this to be possible, we as a whole would have to agree these are priorities and impose these limits. We're still in the time of the "surgery without anasthesia" or "no building codes" or "just let the factories emit whatever they want". Understandable due to the short time that software has been really "important" in day-to-day life, but now its time to slow down and make sure we do it right.

</comment><comment><USER8> We have some formal verification, it's called typed systems. Very limited, I know. But some people are still praising dynamically typed languages for their "speed" and "lack of compiler errors".

<comment><USER9> Good to see the strict typing of C has saved it from most security issues. i think it it is quite facetious to put it down to type systems.

<comment><USER10> An unsound type system doesn't prove anything about type systems. Doubly so if you don't actually _use types_ and you're just exploiting that unsoundness with pervasive casting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> More precise understanding of faults and how to deal with them can go a long way before suggesting formal verification. Bug is not a fault, but it may cause faults though. You can try to find this bug beforehand or you can deal with the faults at runtime. In practice not just bugs cause faults, but also hardware failures, natural disasters, human mistakes and so on, so you kind of have to deal with faults either way.

> But we can certainly arrange to radically limit the scope of damage > available to any particular piece of crap, which should vastly reduce > systemic crappiness.

Now, this is the big idea behind supervision trees. Where you split everything into the smallest possible isolated processes and supervisors that watch over them, so that in the event of any process failing it can just get restarted, limiting the scope of the problem to only that one tiny process for the shortest possible time. This idea might even reduce the cost of software development compared to some more popular software development practices. But it does require an easy to use actor model in the language.

</comment><comment><USER12> TFA mentions Google's Caja and Secure EcmaScript (SES). Does anybody know if that's still in development or under consideration by ECMA or others?

<comment><USER13> Caja is only getting security fixes for now, one of the GitHub issues from March 2017 states: "New features for Caja are pretty much on hold for the time being. However, if you'd like to write a patch to add this one we'd be happy to review and incorporate it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And then, hardware is crap too...

</comment><comment><USER15> >And still, this wouldn't be so bad, if the crap wasn't starting to seep into things that actually matter.

>A leading indicator of what's to come is the state of computer security. We're seeing an alarming rise in big security breaches, each more epic than the next, to the point where they're hardly news any more. Target has 70 million customers' credit card and identity information stolen. Oh no! Security clearance and personal data for 21.5 million federal employees is taken from the Office of Personnel Management. ...

I'm not a fan of this type of article, the article where we find a group of bad things and then go find something to blame for it. It's easy to say all this stuff was caused because "we just don't make stuff like we used to", but I think it's wrong-headed.

Or more probably it's used in the wrong sense. It's true that we don't make things like we used to. We have made giant leaps past anything we've ever done before. We have hundreds of thousands of companies online and millions of devices online, a level of interconnectedness that the planet has never seen before. We also have more accessible software development tools and many more people writing software than ever before.

Increasing numbers of security breaches are a sign of our progress not a sign of our failures. It's just a sign that there is a lot more stuff attached to the internet and that unfortunately includes people with the intention to commit crimes.

Should we tolerate security breaches? No. Should we celebrate them? Of course not.

But let's see them for what they are and search for a solution instead of something to vilify.

<comment><USER16> I didn't get the impression this post meant to say we just don't make stuff like we used to, but that the crap we've been taking as normal is going to have terrible consequences if we don't mitigate it somehow soon.

I agree that common practices are gradually getting better, but I don't think that's enough. Re: solutions, the author wrote "What are capabilities?" which got discussed here the other day.</comment></comment>


Zynga CEO Mark Pyncus, scolds new HBS dean on ethics (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2006/04/open_letter_to_.html <comment><USER2> I tried to read this, really I did, but the lack of capitalization makes me want to die a swift death. You're writing to the Harvard Business School. Man up and use the shift key already.

<comment><USER3> The lack of a blank line (or any vertical space) between paragraphs is what makes it particularly unreadable for me. It looks like the source does separate the paragraphs, so seems like a bad choice of CSS.

<comment><USER4> Thank God for Readability: <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

Doesn't fix everything, but it sure helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An ethics lecture from a man whose company sells spyware (Zwinky toolbar) and highly profitable add-ons to games under the pretext of charity (Farmville "donations" to Haiti)?

EDIT: oh, and whose company essentially ripped off the idea of Farmville from someone else. Forgot about that one.

<comment><USER6> >> An ethics lecture from a man whose company

This was written a year before Zynga was formed. I still think he's hypocritical, but let's be clear about the context.

>> sells spyware (Zwinky toolbar)

I have no idea where you got this idea from. Zynga does not make Zwinky, Mindspark Interactive Network does.

>> highly profitable add-ons to games under the pretext of charity (Farmville "donations" to Haiti)?

A 50% charity split isn't shabby. Sure, Zynga should have given 100%, but there are higher profile initiatives with MUCH lower splits. Product (red) is a great example where buying a $150 iPod nets a whopping $10 for The Global Fund.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Disclosure: Current Zynga employee.

<comment><USER7> > Zynga does not make Zwinky, Mindspark Interactive Network does.

But they need distribution, and they got that through Pincus - See: "I did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues" : [http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark- pinkus...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus- faceboo/)

> Product (red) is a great example where buying a $150 iPod nets a whopping > $10 for The Global Fund.

You really can not compare the two. The BOM and cost of production on an iPod is probably $120. The incremental cost of a Farmville credit is thousands of a cent.

<comment><USER6> > But they need distribution, and they got that through Pincus

Point conceded, I didn't know about that.

> You really can not compare the two.

A fair comparison isn't far out of reach - Shazam (red) only donates 20% of its iPhone app sales. My point isn't about these specific deals, it's that charity-share deals aren't uncommon and a 50% share is above industry standard.

And for what it's worth, Zynga did spike their contributions to 100% after the earthquake hit. Through the sales of items in Farmville, they raised over $1.5M for earthquake relief, more than most NGOs, private companies, and countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Btw its old 2006, the Dean of HBS is now someone else.

</comment><comment><USER8> I never understood the pursuit of ethics by all business schools. I mean business schools select and reward people with questionable ethical practices. They should at least stop putting up all this hypocrisy at least. I mean Harvard considered Jeff Skilling as the best student ever until he came out as a complete sham.

At least everyone in oil industry and academia has guts to speak out against climate change and to deny it. in similar fashion i expect HBS and others to show how unethical behavior is good for human kind. A la The Selfish Gene or something.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pincus in title is spelled wrong, FWIW.

</comment><comment><USER10> This type of mentality is the reason that I stopped halfway between my HBS 2+2 application when I was able to apply. MBA culture is that of stagnant, tepid growth with a fortune 500 company. I was attracted to business from a social sciences background because I could see that some companies positively impact the world- but not the kind a high-level MBA sets you up to fit in with.

</comment><comment><USER11> It may be a little one, or a big one but "Behind every empire there is a crime".

I would like to know examples of companies that are significantly successful today where the founders did not do anything unethical at some point to fuel growth.

<comment><USER12> how about examples of failed companies where the founders did not do anything unethical at some point to get ahead? Or hell, examples of individuals who did not do something unethical at some point to get ahead?

I'm not saying this makes it okay or anything... but all of us are guilty, at one point or another, of doing something unethical. we are all human. Really, I think this is one of those things the Christians got right. we will all screw it up. (I'm not sure I agree with the way the Christians go about seeking atonement, but I agree that atonement is a very human need, and that this idea that we should be able to forgive ourselves for past misdeeds while still working hard to do the right thing next time is a good one.)

So, really, I don't think your question is particularly fair... yeah, we've all done things that we shouldn't have... but I think it's a mistake to always credit our successes to our misdeeds; in fact, I've found the opposite to usually be the case. Maybe it's just my skillset, but nearly every time I've attempted to act in a deceitful or unethical way, it came back to bite me but good. - really, this is the origin of my own "keep as few secrets as possible" policy. Openness just seems to work better, at least when you have my skillset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> just a typical MBA - ramping up to comfortable number of millions by "I did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues" and changing business model to preaching after that.

I especially like that "donations" business. Some years ago, a recent immigrant, i was surprised by how actively everybody would be harvesting donations ... until i learned that it is only (100-x)% that makes it to the charities, where "x" can be whatever donation harvester deems "expenses"

</comment><comment><USER14> Does this letter really capture the attitude towards ethics at HBS? Any alumni/student care to elaborate?

</comment><comment><USER15> Most (or all) cynics start out as dewy-eyed optimists.

</comment><comment><USER16> Followed by a template reply from the dean, which completely ignores any points maid in the original letter.

<comment> brown9-2 You're reading it backwards. This blog post reads like an email reply to an email blast from the new dean to all alumni. The >'s are the quoted message.

<comment><USER17> Nice, who said top-posting was more intuitive ?</comment></comment></comment>


NetHack 3.6.6 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nethack.org/v366/release.html <comment><USER2> Most of those security bugs have been found by using [http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/) for fuzzing the config parser of NetHack.

Also read the hilarious account how neglecting the integer range of parsing a number lead to a config that gives you an almost invincible character from the start:

[https://dpmendenhall.blogspot.com/2020/03/nethack-366-or- how...](https://dpmendenhall.blogspot.com/2020/03/nethack-366-or-how-to- glitch-nethack.html)

<comment><USER3> The great thing about NetHack is that even a +127 cloak of magic resistance still won't protect you from cockatrice stoning, disease from major demons, choking on food, drowning, nymphs stealing the cloak, poisoning, starvation, drawbridges, disintegration, brainlessness due to mind flayers, angry gods, or level drain.

In short, there's plenty of ways to die in NetHack!

<comment><USER4> Also, be aware that today happens to be Friday the 13th, which will make your luck decrease by 1 and increases the difficulty a little bit ;p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's famous in the roguelike world but I dislike that it is practically pretty much impossible to win without spoilers [0] (which means you have to read about it in wikis and co. to find a strategy that works).

[0 I know there are _some_ people who managed to ascend (win) without reading up, but they are probably in the < 0.01% so it's definitely not the norm.

<comment><USER6> Nethacks like most traditional roguelike is amongst these games I like to call checklist tickers, which is to say with a moderate amount of luck, if you plod through the required amount of trivia and perfectly follow the winning moves checklist you should succeed. It kind of ruins the fun for me - playing feels more like a chore than an actual game - but it seems really enjoyable to some.

<comment><USER7> I would submit that those who enjoy the genre most are probably those who largely attempt to uncover the "winning moves checklist" for themselves.

<comment><USER8> I enjoy games like this (and also other genres, like city sims or turn-based strategy games) because I enjoy seeing what happens. It's a process of discovery and interaction.

In the case of NetHack, though, it's mostly about how much hilarious stupid stuff happens, like the time I started a dungeon, took my first step, and my kitten triggered a boulder trap and killed my instantly. Thanks, kitten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been playing--and sucking at--roguelikes for years, and I wanted to chime in to suggest "Caves of Qud" for anyone that likes this genre. It's a modern roguelike that's still in active development with a really imaginative universe: "The game features a mix between a post-apocalyptic and a fantasy setting, and is heavily inspired by the pen-and-paper role-playing game Gamma World and Dungeons & Dragons."

<comment><USER10> Agree! Caves of Qud is quite fun. It can be difficult, so I often turn off permadeath just so I can wander around and enjoy the crazy worlds it has to offer on each run

Very neat what it has done with ASCII-style interface too

<comment><USER11> I'd also recommend Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead for a good post- apocalyptic/zombie themed rougelike.

[https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm- DDA/](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am still a hardcore fan of Angband:

[https://rephial.org/](https://rephial.org/)

Different types of information (inventory, map, monster info, etc) can all be put in separate windows, so my screen is plastered with Angband windows when I play. Makes for great immersion, and the windows all retain their position and size between program starts.

It may even be older than Nethack.

<comment><USER13> Angband is 1990, Nethack is 1987

<comment><USER14> If you dig into the version history of Angband[0] you will find that it was derived from the Moria[1] code, which was released in 1983. So depending on what your concept of "origin" is it might or might not be older.

[0] [http://www.thangorodrim.net/history/version.txt](http://www.thangorodrim.net/history/version.txt)

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

<comment><USER15> Nethack, in turn, descends from Hack, released in 1982, but first published to Usenet in 1984. Hack and Moria are likely simultaneous.

<comment><USER16> I mean, if we're going to play this game, they're all roguelikes and thus they're all descended from Rogue. Which, in turn, descends from Colossal Cave Adventure and Dungeons & Dragons, which is descended from traditional war- gaming, and if we continue down far enough we're back at the Royal Game of Ur.

<comment><USER2> It's more than that. Both Angband and NetHack are forks of their ancestors.

There is an unbroken line of continous development of the same code base coming from the 80s. Hack and Moria OTOH were clones of Rogue and didn't share any source code with it.

There is still non trivial code from 1984 in NetHack: [https://i.imgur.com/H4HpjYf.png](https://i.imgur.com/H4HpjYf.png)

With Angband, the case is a bit more complicated as the original Moria was written in Pascal but it was already converted to C in 1987 and Angband decends from that code.

<comment><USER17> I seriously love this whole discussion. It's "well, actually"ism at its best—and actually useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love Nethack, and have returned to it time and time again since the 80's. However, much as I love it, for about 6 years now I've been drawn away to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup[1], which has in some ways evolved past Nethack.

One of the main draws to DCSS for me has been its autoexplore feature, which makes exploring the dungeon much less of a chore than it was in Nethack. It also has much better use of color in text mode (the only mode I play both games in). Then it has an enormous variety of gods, powers, races, classes, and spells.

Unfortunately, it does have some downsides compared to Nethack. The interactions with gods, shops, and pets tends to be richer and more complex in Nethack. The things you can do to and with items is as well. The trend in DCSS has been to kind of dumb it down over the years, taking away friction points that made it more complex and thus (arguably) less fun for a certain kind of player. My own taste is for more complexity and more options, so I'm not a huge fan of going in that direction, but I still stick with DCSS because it's great despite that.

You can play and watch other people play the game by ssh'ing in to crawl.akrasiac.org, with a username and password of "joshua" (a reference to the classic 80's hacking movie Wargames).

Another game, in some ways very different but in other ways very much in the spirit of both of these games that I've really enjoyed has been Path of Exile.[2] It's not minimalist like Nethack or DCSS, but it definitely has a lot of roguelike elements and is pretty complicated for a mainstream, modern game of this sort, and is a worthy successor of both of these games, in my eyes. It's free to play too, so if you have the slightest interest, give it a go.

[1] - [https://crawl.develz.org/](https://crawl.develz.org/)

[2] - [https://www.pathofexile.com/](https://www.pathofexile.com/)

<comment><USER19> > The interactions with gods, shops, and pets tends to be richer and more > complex in Nethack. The things you can do to and with items is as well.

Agreed about all of these except for gods. In NetHack you can't easily choose your god during the game (though you can sometimes not-easily choose your god during the game) and the difference in behavior from one god to the next is minimal. In Crawl, you can usually choose your god and thereby get different abilities, status effects, and effectively mini-conduct challenges based on what each god disapproves of. I think that's more interesting than the NetHack religion stuff, although it's true that NetHack has a slightly more complex model of gods' feelings toward you.

I've been gradually writing up a document about differences between Crawl and NetHack and I think the items behavior you mention is a huge one.

NetHack has a substantial minigame about item identification, plus various ways that items can be damaged, destroyed, or modified (beyond magical enchantment), plus ways that they can be combined with one another (including an entire "alchemy" system of mixing potions to get other potions), plus ways that one item can be turned into another item. Also, some items give status effects when _carried_ , while others must be equipped, or applied or invoked. Also, some items have a nonintuitive or humorous use -- one of many examples is that some harmful potions can be used offensively by throwing them at monsters or by hitting the monsters with them. Monsters can also often make intelligent use of items against you.

In Crawl, every item has essentially one and only one appropriate use, and every item is immediately fully identified when used or equipped. (Item identification is still not completely trivial because some items are harmful to use, or are consumed by use, so you might not want to use everything you find.) Items can never be permanently changed¹ except by enchantment or curses, and items can't be damaged, nor can they be destroyed except by using them up or dropping them into deep water or lava. Also, monsters make comparatively minimal use of items and don't pick them up.

You can see where various people might prefer one style or the other!

¹ The one counterexample I can think of is the dragon-slaying lance that becomes more powerful every time it kills a dragon.

<comment><USER18> _" Agreed about all of these except for gods. In NetHack you can't easily choose your god during the game (though you can sometimes not-easily choose your god during the game) and the difference in behavior from one god to the next is minimal. In Crawl, you can usually choose your god and thereby get different abilities, status effects, and effectively mini-conduct challenges based on what each god disapproves of. I think that's more interesting than the NetHack religion stuff, although it's true that NetHack has a slightly more complex model of gods' feelings toward you."_

In Nethack you can do a ton of different things at altars. In Crawl altars are useless except for converting to that god's religion. After your conversion you can pretty much safely ignore altars in Crawl unless you want to change your religion. The options are much greater in Nethack.

<comment><USER19> Good point, I wasn't thinking about altars. They absolutely have the character that you mention.

Conversely, in NetHack you can pretty much ignore _which specific god you worship_ over the course of the game, which is less true for Crawl.

<comment><USER20> I don't know, cannibalism for chaotics is pretty good. But so is having peaceful angels on the astral pland as lawful. Neutrals get shafted, as ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My first experience with NetHack was in college, when my roommate convinced me to give it a try. I took about 10 steps in and saw "a rock falls on your head. you die." After several more failures (who knew eating kobolds was bad for you?), starvation, and death, I found the most fun in gaming the character creation system until I got a ring of teleport, going to the nearest shop, taking everything I could, and escaping without paying :D

</comment><comment><USER22> Nethack is great, is there a server where people can watch someone play the game and have a (audio) chat while watching?

There's so much stuff to learn, I'd love to chat with an experienced players while they are venturing deeper into the dungeons.

<comment><USER16> Check it out:

        ssh firstname.lastname@example.com

EDIT: no audio, obviously, but you can send mail to players you're spectating

<comment><USER23> OT: Why can't I put ssh://firstname.lastname@example.com in my browser? Why isn't the browser a ssh client?

I'm sure there's an extension or some such, and I know there are a lot of admin portals that have ssh accessible from the browser.

edit: for instance here's is one such extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell- app/p...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell- app/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo)

<comment><USER24> Personally I would like to see s[http://](http://) (http over ssh) as a valid protocol.

Realistically, I know this would end up being just as bad and broken as every other web tech.

However due to the superb openssh implementation I tend to view ssh as the superior transport technology vs tls

<comment><USER25> Different audiences mean very different constraints, policy and technology for success between TLS and SSH.

Most obviously for trust. TOFU is simple and while not fool-proof it's at least easy to think about the consequences. Using SSH with certificates (which somebody is bound to mention) is an afterthought and it shows.

There's also a very different default thinking about who is authenticating to who and why. In TLS the server must authenticate and clients largely do not. In SSH the server's "authentication" is often limited to just proving possession of some private key corresponding to a public key, but the client must provide a username and state up front how they're planning to authenticate before proceeding.

This is why that FIDO OpenSSH integration results in a file on your laptop (or whatever client) with local information whereas WebAuthn (FIDO integration for HTTPS) doesn't do anything like that.

As you'd expect although the underlying primitives aren't dissimilar (Diffie- Hellman style key agreement, AES encrypt everything, bind identity to encrypted session using public key signatures) the details are tailored to their application. TLS isn't a better SSH and SSH isn't a better TLS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://www.nethack.org/security/CVE-2020-5254.html](https://www.nethack.org/security/CVE-2020-5254.html) Never considered nethack as part of my security model

<comment><USER27> There were (and probably still are) some shared *nix systems that allowed you to connect and play/spectate Nethack games.

<comment><USER4> I often play with ssh firstname.lastname@example.com . Multiple variants available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just wanted to say, the nethack and unnethack android ports have probably the best controls and interface you could have for a roguelike as complex as them. They're smooth and easy to play, well as far as nethack goes and honestly probably my preferred way to play them these days.

And as far as mobile games go, can't think of any others that offer so much depth, gameplay and replayability without iap's and bullshit for free.

Sorry if this sounds like an ad, but I love nethack and getting to carry it around in my pocket and have it play well is just fucking awesome.

</comment><comment><USER29> How is Nethack like the Grand Prix? Anyone who says they won without a spoiler is a liar.

</comment><comment><USER30> So, if you were wondering what to do the next, say, fourteen days...

</comment><comment><USER31> See also:

Brogue — [https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/](https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/) — colorful, user-friendly rogue-like available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Streets of Rogue — [https://streetsofrogue.com/](https://streetsofrogue.com/) — with online cooperative play also available for Mac, Windows and Nintendo Switch.

<comment><USER29> Love Streets of Rogue,

[https://crawl.develz.org/](https://crawl.develz.org/) \-- is my personal favorite. Good combination of punishing but easier to pick up.

<comment><USER32> DCSS is also my favorite. More polished than others in the early game, but still absolutely brutal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm just impressed they managed to go from 3.6.5 to 3.6.6 during a leap year, in fact not too far off from Feb 29.

</comment><comment><USER34> I love NetHack. My only gripe with it is that the AI is dumb most of the times and the context of some levels is simply bizarre. The Castle, for example, is just a huge pile of different monsters all trying to kill you just because :)

<comment><USER35> Random shark in moat: "Okay, what's my motivation for this scene?"

<comment><USER34> If you haven't played through The Castle yet, you don't know what I mean! It's like a crowed music concert, but with gnomes and orcs piled up with dragons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The nethack codebase is so old school. Functions are KNR syntax

</comment><comment><USER37> [https://www.nethack.org/v366/release.html](https://www.nethack.org/v366/release.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> Anyone here ever play IVAN? (Iter Vehemens Ad Necem) It's a pretty fun roguelike with a unique fluid system.

</comment><comment><USER39> I had completely forgotten about this old chestnut. Have they made a multiplayer version yet?

<comment><USER40> I think multiplayer would completely wreck the strategic / thoughtful gameplay of NetHack. When I'm playing, if I get into a sticky situation I'll frequently make perhaps one move per minute, because until I _act_ the monsters can't act either, so I have lots of time to look through my potions and spells and decide on a plan. How does this translate in multiplayer?

<comment><USER41> The nethack faq [0] agrees with you, with the exact reasoning you describe.

0: [https://www.nethack.org/common/info.html#not](https://www.nethack.org/common/info.html#not)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This game taxes my graphics card like a mofo

<comment><USER43> Stop trying to train a Neural Net to ascend for you. The gods don't take it kindly, Plus, the Amulet of Yendor runs a cryptocurrency miner when picked up by AI's. /s</comment></comment>


Open source project management app hits 500K downloads - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.com/feature/138457

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but why is this such a big deal? I'm not referring to the fact that's listed here, but rather why is it headline news that a particular not- so-special FOSS program has reached 500k downloads?

I've had my free software reach the 500k, and 1MM marks; but didn't think to make such a big deal about it.. can someone enlighten as to when it's considered a news-worthy accomplishment verses when its meaningless self- praise?

<comment><USER3> I think it's a big deal for all the wrong reasons. Why would anybody want a replacement for Microsoft Project? I thought the whole point of Microsoft Project was to act as a warning to others!</comment></comment>


PDP-10/X in FPGA - <AUTHOR> http://fpgaretrocomputing.org/pdp10x/ <comment><AUTHOR> Done by David G. Conroy, who is the author of MicroEMACS, which has been reincarnated as 'mg'.</comment>


Vuejs 3.0 Plans - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gustojs/vuejs-3-and-other-top-news-from-q-a-event-with-core-vue-devs-c9834946ae7b <comment><USER2> Please be careful when truncating submission titles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Fixt.</comment></comment>


USA FREEDOM Act Requires Government to Declassify Any Order to Yahoo - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/usa-freedom-act-requires-government-declassify-any-order-yahoo <comment><USER2> Isn't it a little convenient that the backdoor was installed _after_ the data breached that supposedly happened before that, according to Yahoo, and also that the backdoor was installed _after_ the USA Freedom Act passed?

I'm starting to have serious doubts about whether it's even true the backdoor was installed in 2015 and not earlier.

Also, Yahoo started implementing email encryption early 2014, so I would imagine the government would want a workaround as soon as possible. The data breach supposedly happened in the fall of 2014, after Yahoo had started implementing encryption.</comment>


Listen to AOL's CEO Fire Employee in Conference Call With 1,000 people - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/11/audio_recording_aol_ceo_fires_employee_during_conference_call.html <comment><USER2> I think anyone that survived the dotcom boom and crash has stories like this. Pud's F-ed Company was full of them.

We had the meeting where only half the company was invited and the half that wasn't invited was let go. We had the VP that found out he was let go when his card key stopped working in the middle of the day. We had the employee lock himself in the office and refuse to leave. We had the contractor that was "let go" that laughed and just kept showing up for work. My boss that "let him go" was fired 3 weeks later. We had the guys that were let go but slipped through the cracks and nobody told them until HR sent them a packet. I saw the CEO fly into town just to fire my boss but she panicked and left before he got to the office and refused to answer her phones. Most of us kept all of our stuff packed in cardboard boxes, ready to walk out the door or change offices whenever people left. One friend kept a wall of ex-employee nameplates in his cube. The day I quit, I handed him my nameplate on my way to meet with my boss to resign, so everyone else knew by the time I walked out of his office.

The winners were two I didn't get to see. In some customer crisis, we hired a new guy with some special expertise on a platform and put him on a plane somewhere with a VP / Director of Development. They start talking on the plane and by the end of the flight, the VP realized he was so full of crap that he fired him, told him to not even leave the airport and go rebook his return flight back home.

The same VP hired another new guy but on his first day he went to lunch with other developers and somewhat joked about how he realized that it isn't what you do but what they think you do that gets you ahead in this business. He was fired 30 minutes after lunch.

<comment><USER3> >>VP realized he was so full of crap that he fired him

That's strange, because VP's are themselves full of crap. Its exceedingly rare that you can find a good VP.

Most VP's haven't done anything 'real' in years. And generally never have context on what they are doing, why they are doing, or even why its necessary. Two to three difficult questions in a row and they many not even be able to explain why they or their title should even exist.

Most VP's get hired through their network and survive by means of their network. The middle to senior level management is generally the most hopelessly inefficient part of the whole hierarchy chain, while being the biggest money sink in terms of the compensation and benefits.

<comment><USER4> This is completely opposite of my experience in the industry.

Stephen Sinofsky is famous for sending people bug reports with the line of code that was causing the windows bug. My presentations to Harry Shum were the highlights of my time in Bing, as he was both interested and insightful. My conversation with Satya Nadella about incentives and alignment of the OSD organization taught me a lot about how the businesses operated.

I've met and worked with vice presidents in Microsoft, Google, and Facebook and every time I been impressed with their levels of interest, insight, and passion for the product.

There may have been a time with being a vice-president was a parking title and reward for a lifetime of work, but that time has passed.

<comment><USER3> I never said every single VP ever was like that. But exceptions only prove the rule.

>>but that time has passed

Hardly!!!!. You have worked at nearly every outlier company, there is. And you think culture you've seen there is the norm.

If there is any famous company with awesome executives, you will hear about them. You will never hear about those that crash and burn because of bad executives. Which are far more common than the ones that win.

<comment><USER5> [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rul...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "We spent 100s of millions of dollars the board is committed, I am committed"

Choo-choo, everyone jump on the fail train. No really, this is what is wrong with big companies. They pick a failed direction and they can't stop. It is a giant rusty ship heading to its grave, the captain waving his big dick around "Doesn't matter what everyone says, this will be successful!"

I think most people there know it is failure that is why the explicit warning not to joke about it (there is probably enough of that to warrant that comment). Critics who don't believe in the failed cause are pushed out as non- team players. It leaves the desperate and the brainwashed. ... Yes, patch will be the next Facebook if you just work an extra night no matter if your daughter fell of the stairs and broke her leg.

<comment><USER7> Well, this is the first I've heard of Patch, so I went and had a look at [http://www.patch.com/](http://www.patch.com/)

...

Er, is this supposed to be a news site? There's not a lot of actual news, but I can go and see what's happening at "Propwash Junction". Which isn't actually a real place but a Disney ad. Real news is at least two clicks deep.

Doomed!

<comment> mh- is it purposely avoiding major cities? (and all the neighborhoods in or near them?)

I can't find any coverage in SF. And I checked for LA, Boston, Austin, NY (each borough)...

<comment><USER8> Yes, I think Patch's 'point' was local news for smaller communities - if I'm remembering right, with a focus on affluent areas that could support ad sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used to work for a high level executive that would throw around the words "you're fired" as a joke sometimes during all hands meetings. The fact is, using those words on someone in public (joke or not) is embarrsing and cringeworthy for all.

I've also had the "get on board or leave" speech thrown at me. More times then not, those words are a sign to run away as fast as possible.

This guy is a joke and his product is a joke.

<comment><USER10> > I've also had the "get on board or leave" speech thrown at me.

I'm going to get this speech in about 48 hours (flying to HQ at the moment). What's your advice?

<comment><USER11> As hard as it is, leaving in the mid-term may be the best option. i can only talk for myself, but when my supperior doesn't think I'm on board I can't go "on board" or fake it realistacally. Well, I can long enough to find something better.

For the meeting itself, not so easy.

Part one: Come up with a plan for the meeting. Best if you know what "on board" means and come up with some believable actions or things you can do in the future showing you ARE. Find some explanations why you were not in the past, even if it means to only find expalnations why your boss thinks you're not "on board". Maybe you even know what kind of agenda your boss has for himself, this adds a lot of usefull context to the points mentioned above.

Part two: Use the time you bought yourself to find something better elsewhere. There are people that can addopt enough and get "on board" (whatever that really means), but I'm none of those.

In cases like this, it's all about how a situation is percieved and not how it really is.

Hope it helped a little bit. And even if it's not easy, don't worry or even panic, stay calm and polite. Be prepared, but don't argue any points before they are brought up by someone else.

Disclaimer: Had one meeting like that myself, came up with a defense a couple of weeks later, left 4 months later. Teached me to be prepared for meetings like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> fsck--off A quote from the Business Insider article linked to in this thread:

      This source tells us that Lenz always took photos at Patch
      all-hands meetings. He would later post them to Patch's
      internal news site.

There isn't enough background to understand why this happened. AOL may have a clause in their employee contracts that makes picture taking at certain meetings a "firing offense". The source says that Lenz "always took photos", but it's possible that Lenz might have been warned not to take any more photos at meetings. Lenz's silence about the matter is also ambiguous.

Nevertheless it is odd that an employee was fired for taking pictures of a meeting when the audio was leaked to the media.

<comment><AUTHOR> His silence could easily have something to do with a non-disparagement clause in his severance. I'm sure they are giving him a decent one (assuming this whole situation can be taken at face value) in order to mitigate this wave of bad press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds bad. But almost certainly was not simply a spur of the moment decision, but rather that Lenz was on the list of people to be fired later in the day and had done things that Armstrong knew about (like leaking Patch information). Still bad to do it like that on a call where people are getting fired for real, but this gives some context.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-ceo-tim-armstrong- appeare...](http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-ceo-tim-armstrong-appeared-to- fire-this-man-in-front-of-1000-coworkers-2013-8)

      A few minutes later, Armstrong complained about leaks to
      the media. He said the leaks were making Patch seem like
      "loser-ville" in the press. He said, "That's why Abel was
      fired." "We can't have people that are in the locker room
      giving the game plan away."

<comment><USER13> From the recording in the article (@ 1:15)

"I also want to clear up the fact that leaking information or anything around Patch isn't going to bother me. Doesn't bother me. I'm not changing direction."

So what you're saying is, Armstrong also gives inconsistent directions to his employees?

<comment><USER14> "Won't bother me", meaning "won't stop me". It still hurts the team/the project and is considered an offence.

<comment><USER13> That's certainly one way of interpreting his statement, and I agree with you that it's an offense to the team..

but.. I don't think it exactly helps Armstrong if instead of giving inconsistent direction.. he instead gives unclear and ambiguous directions. He's the CEO.. he should be able to communicate consistently and clearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would leave that company immediately if I worked there. This isn't a TV show. You don't fire people that coldly and abruptly regardless of the circumstances, especially not in public.

<comment><USER6> > This isn't a TV show.

rdtsc's law of failing large companies: "a large enough failing company, with a power crazy CEO is indistinguishable from a TV show"

<comment><USER16> Well done! And especially true in this age of reality TV. Let me add my own bastardized quote: "We're a race so primitive that we still think reality TV is a pretty neat idea."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Off topic, but if Armstrong is serious about wanting people to leave the company if they're not committed, why not offer buyouts? That would remove one reason why people may decide to stay even if they don't believe in the company.

I know Zappo's offers new trainees a cash bonus if they decide to /not/ join the company after completing the training program. That way Zappo's can be more sure that their new hires are not /just/ financially motivated but also are excited about the company itself.

Buyouts are commonly used during downsizing, but any thoughts as to why this isn't more widespread - i.e., used during 'normal' times as well? You could imagine companies offering a cash bonus (or health insurance for a certain # of months, or something) to anyone that quit but didn't have another job lined up.

That, presumably, would have the effect of empowering people to leave their job. So people who were not aligned with the company itself or otherwise dissatisfied could leave, improving the culture of the company as well.

On a more meta level, pleas like Armstrong's, to "leave if you're not committed" reminds me of the quote from North Dallas Forty [0] (A movie about professional sports): "Every time I say it's business, you say it's a game. Every time I say it's a game, you say it's a business." Leaders of businesses can try to pull the same thing; they alternate between appealing to your sense of mission, and then make decisions under a different logic.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dallas_Forty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dallas_Forty)

<comment><USER6> > they alternate between appealing to your sense of mission, and then make > decisions under a different logic.

When things go sour they also falsely blame a scapegoated 3rd party. "We would give you bonuses and severance packages but those pesky lawyers/accountants can't let us do it", as if those entities are forces of nature outside of CEO's or board's control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What an awkward time to take photos.

My company was interviewing a candidate once. He was spectacular during the interview, but then he stared taking pictures of our office and our employees, which made us all uncomfortable, and that's the only reason we did not offer him a job.

What may seem like normal behavior to one person may be offensive or intrusive to someone else.

<comment><USER19> Except: it came right after Armstrong talking about not being bothered by "leaking information". And that according to Business Insider, this same employee "always" took photos during meetings/conference-calls, for internal publishing.

It's possible that in the stressful moment, with his mind on the "you're with the plan or should leave" theme, Armstrong misread or overreacted to the photo-taking. (Perhaps even, the "you're fired" was a reaction to a momentary facial expression from the photographer, in reaction to the first "put that camera down" command.)

Or maybe there's a history, and Armstrong already viewed the employee as insufficiently serious about Patch. Either way, an odd occurrence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if this was a publicity stunt to get people to go check out patch.com?

I'm only half-kidding.. I had never heard of it before, and I went to look at it after reading the article. Anyone else?

I'm not an American so I'm not in the target market, but a lot of these kinds of sites live and die by early adopters and tech influencers who start using them and advocate to their networks.

<comment><USER6> Crossed my mind. I sure went and checked it out. I've used it once by accident and didn't know it as AOL. But, if anything, this just made it worse. Now it has a bloodstain on it.

So if it was meant to be a publicity stunt, it sure as hell backfired. But then again, if they were good at marketing and publicity stunts, they probably wouldn't be firing people on the spot or extolling how great it is for employees to sacrifice their nights and weekends for the cause even after their children break their legs falling off the stairs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It does not matter what the circumstances, to fire someone in any sort of public setting is a since of profound ineptitude and immaturity. I was surprised that AoL even still exists, I do not know who this person is, but if he is in charge of AOL then it is only a matter of time before it is no longer in existence.

</comment><comment><USER22> If Aol is still making most of its revenue by charging monthly fees to people who have forgotten it exists, I find that more reprehensible than anything on this call... and I'd be happy to see them go out of business.

<comment><USER14> I don't know about their profit structure right now, but I think they've been moving away from this for quite a some time.

It bought Techcrunch, among other things.

<comment><USER23> I can't wrap my head around how you can still have an aol dial-up subscription in 2013.

<comment><USER24> Except AOL provide high-speed broadband subscriptions now, just like all other ISPs...

<comment><USER23> I can't find anything about offering broadband directly from aol here:

[http://get.aol.com/plans/index.php?regtype=client&offergrp=w...](http://get.aol.com/plans/index.php?regtype=client&offergrp=webreg)

Only some crappy "security" software for broadband users (I wouldn't call their subscription model for broadband users scam buts it is a bit shady to take 12 bucks a month for some discount coupons and "$750 Extended Computer Protection").

they seem to offer only 56k dial-up service.

?

<comment><USER25> "AOL provides broadband offers through partnership with Digital Landing, owned and operated by Acceller, Inc."

[http://broadband.aol.com/broadband/getting- broadband.adp](http://broadband.aol.com/broadband/getting-broadband.adp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have on occasion used Patch (I live about 30 miles outside a metro area on the border of suburb vs farming land). I don't read the site, but instead read a twitter feed of the local corespondent. She happens to be fairly good at filtering good community news. I'll be keeping her in my twitter stream (assuming she isn't let go) but I will think about that recording every time I start to click a link to patch.com from her feed or anywhere. I will probably just query the main terms from her tweets in a Google news search from here on out if I want to know more. Somethings should be handled privately even when the opportunity may be presented publicly. There is no value to any point that was presented by firing someone in that manner.

</comment><comment><USER27> To me this is just arrogance and probably even irresponsible. If I employed someone in my company and if I could fire the person at a moments notice, then I believe the employee and his skills were not leveraged to the benefit of the company in the first place. I agree company's shouldn't create exclusive dependencies with employees but if nothing is affected by letting an employee go suddenly or if the employer didn't have to think twice before doing so, then the employee probably wasn't needed in the first place. Both the company and the employee should be invested in each other in terms of skill, effort, time and compensation. Not to mention that you just burned a bridge that you didn't have to.

</comment><comment><USER28> I doubt that this call and the exchange that we're shown is all that there's to it. Having said that, if you're on a conference call and you say such a thing without context, you can expect it to get interpreted in ways it might not have been meant.

<comment><USER29> I jumped into another thread and said this already - the guy that was fired was responsible for a poor UX that was hated amongst all and ended up failing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm curious.

For those of you who have lead and managed teams of 100 or more, would you ever resort to firing someone spontaneously in front of their peers?

<comment><USER20> Never, not even in front of a team of 10, or 5..

If you have to let someone go, you do it in private.

<comment><USER31> How about if you're a psychotic asshole looking to spread terror in order to quell opposition? Random violence is a staple of terrorist tactics, and random firings is certainly comparable.

<comment><USER32> Someone like that needs help, not a firing in front of everyone on the planet.

<comment><USER33> I think the CEO is the random asshole, not the person being fired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What a dirtbag scum. What can you learn from a leader that loose it because someone was taking his photos. This CEO made a fool of himself and I can bet some people wont work with someone like that in the future.

This was not only embarrasing but unprofessional too. What was the reason he got fired? Real reason?

</comment><comment> martin-adams Wait what?! Am I being thick or something? He mentions several times that he doesn't care about information leaking, then fires someone for taking out a camera.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, that left my head spinning as well.

<comment><USER36> Powertrip vs leadership. Spends significant time telling people why they should leave instead of why they should stay.

Maybe a new term should be invented: "Got patched".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Gotta love right-to-work, eh?

</comment><comment><USER38> Wondering why there was no shouts of derision at the CEO when he said that? The others at the meeting should have spoken up in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER39> I am getting lots of AOL job ads on linkedin for my location and expertise. Won't be applying there in a hurry

</comment><comment><USER40> \- The tone of "Arrogance" is striking.

\- Ahh "Humility" is such a wise trait.

</comment><comment><USER41> I love the way he only dropped maybe two beats in executing that one.

</comment><comment><USER42> Relevant older post from a different source: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6195996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6195996)

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder if TechCrunch will post this story...

</comment><comment><USER44> really? a site that is centered around local news that doesn't have miami or fort lauderdale as an available area for florida?

you'd figure the first thing they would do is have all the major markets covered

</comment><comment><USER45> AOL is still a thing?

</comment><comment><USER46> :yawn:

Who cares what AOL is doing?

<comment><USER47> AOL staffs around 5500 employees, posts incomes of around $2.5 billion, and owns -- amongst other things -- TechCrunch and HuffPo.

If you don't think they're an important company, I suggest you talk to more people who are outside of the tech industry.</comment></comment>


This Is What It Looks Like When a Lithium Ion Battery Explodes - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/watch-a-lithium-ion-battery-explode-from-the-inside

<comment><USER2> "To trigger the failure, the researchers aimed a concentrated heat gun at over 200 degrees Celsius on the rotating batteries." ..so it was exploded via external conditions not apparently related to a failure during their normal function? and/or how is this distinct from what would happen to any encased heated object? I've no doubt that this is discussed somewhere in this expensive study, and i somehow missed it?</comment>


South African ISPs must have 30% ownership by black people – draft regulations - <AUTHOR> https://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/339607-south-african-isps-must-have-black-owners-draft-regulations.html <comment><USER2> Quote: The draft regulations propose to set new BBBEE ownership requirements over and above the targets that apply under the ICT Sector Code. These include:

Licence applicants and licensees applying for approval to transfer, amend or renew an individual licence must be 30% owned by persons from historically disadvantaged groups (HDPs), which category includes but is not limited to Black people.

Licence applicants must then also maintain 30% ownership by Black people and achieve level 4 BBBEE status.

Livia Dyer, partner in Bowmans' Technology, Media and Telecommunications sector group, said it appears that these requirements may apply to applicants for individual licences as well as registrants for class licences.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you separate true, equity based owners, from homeless people(who are black) who sign a form? This is commonly done all over the world and when the shit hits the fan, the real directors and officers all resign retroactively - as supported by retro board meets and resolves etc., etc,, leaving the court officers the task of serving summonses on street people, who usually fail to appear and get a default judgement against them - good luck collecting on those judgement... in the mean time, in a Swiss bank, the money proclaims it's innocence...</comment>


Critical Personality Traits  - <AUTHOR> http://www.dorsethouse.com/features/excerpts/expsych8.html

<comment><AUTHOR> A short extract from a book called _"The Psychology of Computer Programming"_ by Gerald Weinburg <http://www.dorsethouse.com/authors/weinberg_gerald.html> I found the reference via the article comments on this post ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=431011></comment>


Show HN: Hatjitsu, a free distributed scrum planning tool built with AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://hat.jit.su/

<comment><USER2> Is it normal if I see a green dot blinking in the top right corner ?</comment>


Free Money (Sarah Perry on Basic Income) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/02/04/free-money/ <comment><USER2> Experiments limited in time (and in too small a space too) are no good to determine what would really happen if universal perpetual income was established.

The two predictions made in this 5-year experiment are indeed obvious.

But there's a big difference between a 5-year subsidies, and a life-time guarantee.

As there is a big difference between universal perpetual living income and any variant. Any tampering changes completely the nature of the psychological effects obtained.

Imposing any condition distorts the results because now people can make choices about fulfilling those conditions or not, in order to obtain the income or not, depending on what's best for their own situation (and not what's best for the society at large).

Imposing time or "space" restrictions obviously distorts the results. To the limit, I'll give you a universal living income just for you and just for one day. Will you change anything to your life choices? No way. At most, if you're already not enslaved (by an employer, by customers, whatever), you might take a day off, but nothing will change. Limited to 5 years won't change your long term prospects (as getting a well paid job that will not last won't change your long term prospects either). For "space" restrictions, what is actually meant, is the set of people who would receive this "universal" income. That is, if it is not universal. If you restrict to one person, (even if you make it perpetual and otherwise unconditional, and a living income or even better), then it won't change anything for the society at large. Actually it may even be deleterious for the single person, as we can witness with numerous "experiments" of lotery winners, or even, inherited fortunes (but perhaps here the problem is more in the "way beyond" living income). Limiting it to the people in a village is problematic, because again, there's the question of choice given to people to come into that village, or get out for something else. At the level of a country it might be more feasible. But not in the European Union, and not in the USA, since they are basically sets of borderless countries, that cannot prevent anybody to come in and get this "universal" income. Again, altering the notion with a condition that allows for a choice to fulfill this condition or not to benefit from it or not changes completely the outcome. At least, with real countries meaning with real borders, if people are prevented to migrate in great distabilising numbers, then this could be arranged. But eventually, it would need to be really universal.

And of course, amongst the tampering a lot of people would want to apply on the notion to break it and to discredit it, would be to make it not a living income, that is, not an income enough to live with dignity, and not just to survive. That means that beyond food, clothes, house, it should be enough to provide a minimum of cultural and social access. Thankfully, nowadays with tools such as the Internet, television and telephone, which are rather cheap, it can be afforded by everybody. (Don't expect to buy the latest top-notch iPhone each year, but you can get the equivalent culture and social access thru devices 20 or 30 times cheaper).

This is when you enact this full, untampered, _universal_ (at least coutry- wide with borders with strict migration controls), perpetual, living income, that you switch to a different situation where a different living psychology and life choices can be realized.

Basically, my prediction with the untampered universal perpetual living income will be something like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9eVz4wBBgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9eVz4wBBgU) big time. (You can see the importance of cultural and social access).

It looks to me rather silly to ask oneself whether people will stop working, become enterpreneur, or other questions like that, because they're about current categories. UUPLI would actually change radically those categories.

The important questions to ask would be whether that would make for a stable system, whether people would be happier, and how a system establised based on UUPLI would react to intents of tampering and altering it.

For example, one direct effect UUPLI would have is that it would change the balance in the current employer-employee negociation, notably in the lowest salary categories. I would consider it a good thing for the society and for the concerned people (even indirectly concerned), that cheap jobs be harder to fill. Either the cheap job is useful and needed socially, and then it should be better retributed, or automatized (notably for dangerous or slog work), or it should not be done. But one small category may not be happy about it: the 0.1% who are profiting from those jobs. They may try to negociate even lower salaries, but this can work only if they have a leverage in this negociation, like if the basic income is insufficient for a decent human life, and therefore if people are forced to accept such a job for even less pay! (Hence the living income must not be tampered and must be enough (or slightly more than enough) to have a descent life.

Others would want to impose conditions (eg. having a working condition, where they would force you to have a working activity to get the income). Given the current conditions of unemployment, this would basically be forced labor for the unfortunate, (and I'm wondering what they'll make them work at, if they cannot find the jobs on the free market already, will they have them dig holes to fill them back???)

So beside the only relevant questions worth studying are how to prevent the perversion of the project by the immediate tampering attempts from the obvious "enemies" of the project, and once established, how to ensure the stability of the system and how to have it react against attempts to pervert it later.</comment>


Real Ultimate Programming Power - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000856.html

<comment><AUTHOR> You can skip down to his point which is to abandon highly marketed programmer junk and do:

1\. DRY

2\. KISS

3\. YAGNI (you aren't going to need it)

Sure, OK. To me, this is like saying skip the Nutri-Slim and learn how to exercise and eat right.

But under all this (including being healthy) is the challenge of harnessing your will and thinking clearly and independently. It takes self-awareness and effort. Being a clean and effective programmer falls out from this, not from learning "oh, ok, keep it simple stupid. Check."

</comment><comment><USER2> This crap is still going on?

Also, did anyone notice that Jeff didn't bother to link to the responding blog? It may have been a mistake, but still an oversight that merits correction.</comment>


Android Based iPhone Case (Dual Screens and SIMs) - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boboseye/eye-take-your-phone-to-the-next-level <comment><AUTHOR> I don't know whether to be impressed or scared.

It's certainly an interesting concept but I'm having a really hard time trying to imagine how I would really use it (and how I would really make the most of it).

That being said I'm well over the average age of the smartphone user and there's probably a market in the 13-24 year old crowd.

</comment><comment><USER2> Personal and Business phone "in one"</comment>


Ask HN: What email client do you use? - <AUTHOR> What email client do you use?<p>Thunderbird users, are you looking forward to Mailpile or would you rather stick with a thick desktop client like Thunderbird? <comment><USER2> I personally just use Gmail's web interface when on my computer and the Gmail apps when on my phone or tablet. Even when I worked for an enterprise facing company where everyone used Outlook (and had for years) I used the Gmail web interface/apps since the company used Google Apps.

I've just always felt that a desktop client just adds another layer where things can go wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since apparently everyone uses nothing but gmail, I think I am in minority by using Thunderbird consistently through years.

I use gmail, yahoo mail (through an extension), connect several pop3(I tell it to leave messages onn server), imap servers for work (for which emails are occasionally harvested and sold to spammers somehow..) and my own mail server (Hey, I am a web developer. No excuse to not have a el cheapo vps with webserver and an email servers combo), local maildir and mbox delivery for testing crap I write, several newsgroups and a shitloads of RSS/Atom feeds. It also has some xmpp integration of dubious usability. I also have Lightning extension which is supposed to behave as a calendar but I am a disorganised person and rarely check email by contemporary standard of every five minutes, whole day. Oh, and local spam detection.

Sure I look forward to Mailpile (just checked the marketing blurb) which promises to not show me ads and perform faster than "cloud" while offering all the features that should exist in practice to justify calling itself an email client. Competition is good and thunderbird is going senile by every passing day anyway.

I hope they won't spin off their custom web server as a standalone project too.

</comment><comment><USER4> I ssh into a remote VPS, where all my mail is delivered into ~/Maildir.

From there I read it with lumail, if I have problems I revert to mutt.

I've got webmail setup for those times when I'm travelling and cannot use ssh.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ooooh this hits a sore point with me this week.

I have used gmail to date simply because I _must_ have a synched service between laptop and mobile. So gmail was just _there_ as a IMAP/SMTP server for the iPhone mail reader

However as pg has pointed out, and the pretty good ActiveInbox implemented (hey ActiveInbox - apply for YC!) a mail inbox is really a task list.

And it must be linked to a contact book. All of which must be integrated at the event level.

So which mail client I use is less of the question than how do I solve

* capturing and synching contact details, contact events, email messages and tags across all these

I have a workable solution in gmail now, but I cannot capture events on my iPhone. Android appraently does so I will switch but its not all tied together neatly.

I have played with mutt and goobook but frankly I can see a good couple of weeks disappearing down this rathole. Yet it _should_ be a solved problem. VCards, iCal, X-Headers, the solution is there. It just seems there is no RFC we can agree on

my rant on this subject: [http://blog.mikadosoftware.com/2013/09/17/help-i- cannot-find...](http://blog.mikadosoftware.com/2013/09/17/help-i-cannot-find- a-contact-manager-that-manages-my-contacts/)

Edit: am I just ill-informed (!) or has there really been no successful standardisation for "managing contact details events and tasks in a mailbox?"

</comment><comment><USER6> Mainly Gmail web (and android) interfaces, because it's by far the most intuitive and furnished client I've tested. I also use Thunderbird and Horde for a non gmail account, but I'm far from being happy with them. Actually, I feel more like if I'm back at stone age with them ... NB: I'm actively looking for alternatives to gmail

</comment><comment><USER7> Thunderbird, version 3, and you'll get me to upgrade when you pry the mouse out of my cold dead fingers.

Thunderbird was the first client I found that let me manage multiple separate accounts through the same interface, receiving and sending mail from each in a logical way. There's probably other ways to do that now, but I'm terrified of upsetting a system that Just Works.™

</comment><comment><USER8> emacs + mu4e [1]

Since it's within Emacs there's great GPG support, familiar keybindings, and less contextual shift than switching to a browser. It's also fully searchable, usable offline, and non-blocking to other emacs operations.

[1] [http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html](http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I haven't found anyone else who uses it surprisingly, but Gmail Offline (Chrome App). I use it when online. It has amazing keyboard shortcuts (faster than Gmail proper), and then of course you get the perk that the data is offline once you hit the train. Actually, I think the keyboard shortcuts might be the only reason I use it...

</comment><comment><USER10> Apple Mail, because it's nicely integrated, just works and there's a neat GPG plugin. I have no use for webmail interfaces, I'd rather use mutt in a shell than those.

Especially not Gmail, as every time I look at it, some other bullshit feature got added and the UI got more horrible.

</comment><comment><USER11> Outlook. Gave up on gmail after getting more email accounts. Generally speaking Outlook and OneNote are my two favorite Microsoft programs that I have no viable replacement for.

</comment><comment><USER12> Thunderbird just works. Not looking for an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER13> On my mac I eventually replaced Sparrow with Airmail, it's good though can be a little buggy at times. On my iPhone I use Mailbox

<comment><USER14> I still use sparrow; love that app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mutt son - Mutt.

</comment><comment><USER16> Claws-Mail. I found web-based clients slow.

</comment><comment><USER17> Outlook at work(no choice), k9 mail on Android, & Thunderbird on personal computers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Gmail for reading / sending email and thunderbird for backups on my mac.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sparrow on my Mac and Mail on my iDevices. I like simple and light clients.

</comment><comment><USER20> Emacs+Gnus

</comment><comment><USER21> I use gmail (google apps) for now, but am excited by MailPile(.is)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems like a lot of people like the Gmail interface.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sparrow on my macs, and on my iPhone. Soon, when I will acquire the Nexus 5 I don't know what to use. ¿Any recommendations?

</comment><comment><USER23> Eudora

</comment><comment><USER24> mutt

</comment><comment><USER25> Airmail on OS X.</comment>