The internet does to the world what radio did to the world - <AUTHOR> http://meshedsociety.com/internet-does-to-the-world-what-radio-did-to-the-world/ <comment><USER2> A more in depth comparison is made by Tim Wu in his latest book, "The Attention Merchants." Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a somewhat serious casual student of Mcluhan (reading of key books, his letters, etc.) I will simply add:

1\. Mcluhan didn't "miss" the internet at all he just referred to it as electric technology and was _fully aware_ of the principles of the web as medium when he authored Extensions of Man 2\. @Avivo he really wasn't too naive - he repeatedly wrote that he had never seen evidence any society had ever been able to educate and control the effects of media on itself.

ps: @cobbzilla- Postman is in any close reading a _terrible_ interpreter of MC.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh it does far, far more than simply what radio did to the world. Radio did not take the primary engine of all economic activity and commoditize it. The Internet doesn't just enable us to communicate better. It (and the computers all around... in time, they will be seen as having arrived 'at the same time') makes it trivially easy to distribute things. And distribution as a valuable problem to solve is what led to the Industrial Revolution and basically every single aspect of our culture. Now, it's trivial. Now, what could have built you a titanic global corporation turning over trillions in revenue a month can be done by a clever 12 year old with some spare time on their hands.

The consequences of this can not be underestimated, but inevitably will be. We built factories to feed distribution. That packed people into cities near them. Because the valuable work here was solving that problem of distribution, and because 'machines were doing the work', workers were paid very little. Which led to adolescents no longer being able to get employment which would enable them to support any children they might produce. Which led to society suddenly for the first time needing to control sex. Which led to houses being built with separate bedrooms instead of common rooms where the whole family slept (and screwed). This is just one isolated consequence of the value of solving the problem of distribution (both of the product of work and work to be done) as an example of how wide-reaching it was. The consequences took centuries to unfold.

And now in the majority of cases, computers and the Internet go beyond making it a trivial problem to solve and straight into turning the extensive distribution networks and ancillary things built to serve them now actively destroy value. A musician could distribute an album directly to their listeners... or submit it into a supply chain that would involve thousands of other people, dozens of companies, delay the release of the album, and make it a worse product (DRM, restrictive formats, etc).

At first you might think this is a small issue, that it only affects a handful of industries where the product can be delivered digitally. But it is stupendously larger than that. It requires a complete rethinking of every aspect of economy itself. The drawbacks of mass-produced goods which were once compensated for by the profound value of solving distribution, both to consumers and to workers, are now uncompensated and will only become more glaring as time passes.

Socially, the Internet has more of the opposite role of radio. Rather than re- tribalizing man, it will amplify the individual and while it will facilitate collective action it will also facilitate freedom from any 'lock in' to the collective. Are you a member of Tribe X if you have participated in 4 out of 800 things done by Tribe X? If you 'join' and 'leave' within the hour? Is representative government still a legitimate compromise if it was initially created to serve a purpose which can now be achieved in a far superior manner by technology?

Radio gave a few groups the ability to unidirectionally communicate, and most the ability to bidirectionally communicate with one other person. The Internet doesn't just give everyone their own radio station. It gives them an arbitrary number of them. It can give every thought its own radio station. It will have consequences for the very notion of history, the concept of self, of society in ways we can only half-competently guess at if we throw out all of our assumptions (way harder than those not acquainted with a bunch of different philosophies presumes it is) and start examining 'necessary and sufficient' for quite literally everything.

Previously, we have rarely even considered "does this thing absolutely and fundamentally require physical co-location?" This will become the dominant, if not the only, factor which determines whether something will be rewritten. And those things which presently do require physical co-location (far fewer than you imagine if you have not specifically thought about it) will be made to not require it if the laws of physics make it possible. No other law or tradition will prevent it.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is honestly not much substance delivered in this post; it's based around a rather oblique, long-form quote that posits illiterate and sheltered people were highly swayable by radio's spoken word, much to the surprise of an educated class raised on print, and suggests that more education may be an antidote. With the quote over, it declares that education was not a sufficient countermeasure today.

I fail to see how this rises beyond a deliberately obfuscated _ad hominem_. There is so much missed potential: one could muse about why messages spread on the Internet can be used to unite and divide, why classes and cohorts of people who (accurately or mistakenly) feel marginalized are attracted to rhetoric, or how a breakdown of trust contributes to a self-fulfilling cognitive dissonance about factually untrue reporting -- but none of this happens, just a quote and a quip.

</comment><comment><USER6> Probably not intended, but the implication this argument leads to is for the development of regulation in use and censorship - like the FCC for radio.

</comment><comment><USER7> ROI. You know what that stands for? Radio. On. Internet.

</comment><comment><USER8> A lot of valid points, but then there is this sentence:

> It goes without saying that the universal ignoring of the psychic action of > technology bespeaks some inherent function, some essential numbing of > consciousness such as occurs under stress and shock conditions."

Wat.

<comment><USER9> I interpret that as follows:

The fact that nearly everyone is ignorant of the effects technology has on our minds points to the technology itself being responsible for those effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It should be pretty clear by now that the destabilization of certain old, corrupt regimes in the former Ottoman Empire leaned heavily on mobile Internet. We had the sobriquet "Arab Spring" for it, and look what it became.

Mobile Internet seems to have taken the role in this disruption that the printing press took in the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is perhaps too early to see if a subsequent Enlightenment is to follow. We know from direct historical provenance that the regions where Islam held sway were perfectly capable of a high degree of culture. Right now, however, barbarism seems to hold sway.

During the rise of Sayyid Qutb, Nasser was able to control things. He did so somewhat ... brutally, but the situation remained in control.

Libya itself was mostly a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government.

George Orwell wrote at least one thing - "Poetry and the Microphone" which expressed skepticism about radio. In my own household, it's taken considerable effort on my part to explain to people that teh TeeVee isn't always good for your brain. There is still brilliant work done on television, more than in the past. You just have to be careful.

<comment><USER11> The impression i have of this "arab spring" is that bad what harvests in Russia was the instigator, but that the net acted as a massive pacifier.

This because via the net people could keep up with what was happening without actually being pulled in. Only when the net connection was cut did the likes of Egypt flare up. This likely because people now had to get out on the street and talk to their neighbors to stay informed.

I do agree though that the middle east seems to be having its own 30 year war going.

<comment><USER10> I had no idea a crop (wheat) failure was involved. Thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's incorrect to lump the internet together as one medium. The messages that propagate over Reddit are different from those that propagate over Hacker News, which are different from Facebook.

Why draw a distinction? Because the algorithms behind those products can and do change.

Right now, hyper-partisan content is everywhere. Why? Because publishers have collectively realized that partisanship drives clicks. Take away those clicks by changing the algorithm: the medium changes, the messages change.

Facebook used to have a problem with Farmville spam. It doesn't anymore because the system changed. Perhaps the same could happen with hyper-partisan clickbait.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't really matter how you want to split it. The internet for the majority of people is Facebook. That's where the mass gets their news. Reddit/HN and other websites may use different algorithms, but they represent just a tiny fraction. Think of them as privately operated radio channels - they do exist, but their role in the world is negligible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >The step from telephone to radio has clearly distinguished the roles. The former liberally permitted the participant to play the role of the subject. The latter democratically makes everyone equally into listeners, in order to expose them in authoritarian fashion to the same programs put out by different stations. No mechanism of reply has been developed, and private transmissions are condemned to unfreedom. (from "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" in _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno)

I think this passage is brilliantly relevant to these discussions. For me the internet provides an illusion of interactivity when really most if not all of it is one-way. The internet is a place where opinions are broadcast, but it is nowhere near as radically communicative as the telephone except in actual communication media built off of it (email, IRC, slack, or whatever else etc) and even then I would argue that is mostly not subjects communicating due to the delay not present in vocal or signed communication. That we can broadcast our opinions back does not mean that the speaker and listener are on equal footing as in telephony, because the communication is indirect.

<comment><USER15> But in contrast with radio, everyone can easily become a global speaker.

<comment><USER14> Indeed, but this just "democratically" turns everyone into a speaker. The point of this passage is not that we need more speakers and less listeners, the point is that media which encourage the speaker-listener dichotomy are inherently authoritarian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Gee, another indirect reference to the newly elected United States President. Considering MSNBC host went as far as calling the acceptance speech "Hitlarian". I was hoping to escape it here.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the author, I can assure you that I personally do not think that Trump resembles Hitler. But the rise to power utilizing retribalization tendencies described by McLuhan that follow the emergence of new types of media might be comparable.

Anyway, I refrained from specifically mentioning Trump because he is far from the only individual who is capitalizing on the situation.

<comment> guard-of-terra But why are you assuming that "capitalizing on the situation" is a bad thing? Why are you even assuming that "the situation" is a bad thing?

What _is_ "internet fallout"? What fell out where?

You could as well praise the very thing you blame.

<comment><AUTHOR> Based on my world view, convictions and (of course limited) knowledge of humanity, I consider trends towards authoritarianism, zero-sum thinking, marginalization and glorification of the past a bad thing.

I do not see any evidence at all that this would create a better society for anyone (except the very few who'll be in power).

Of course, I might be wrong. But we have enough learnings from the history of human kind to make some rather safe predictions about the outcomes of certain directions and types of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is truly brilliant.

Why do we complete underestimate the power of intangible forces?

Nuclear weapons are BIG concern and very tangible.

Education/Propoganda are arguably equally as much of a concern for the human race...but they're intangible.. so they're taken much less seriously.

I also love the idea presented here of tribal class vs the business/political class.

It explains the current nationalism so well.

I'd argue that everyone is Tribalistic, just people in bigger cities consider their tribe to be entirety of humanity because of exposure to so many different types of people daily vs people in small towns who are in contact with fewer people thus have much smaller tribes.

<comment><USER18> >>Nuclear weapons are BIG concern and very tangible.

I'm not saying that they aren't a big concern, but are nukes really that tangible? Unless you live in Russia, where nukes are literally paraded on the red square every year, how do you feel their presence? I mean, as far as I know, the government could by lying about having any. They are all stashed in submarines or silos somewhere, luckily it's unlikely that we will ever see one detonate, for your average John Smith nukes could as well be terrawatt lasers mounted on the moon. I wouldn't call them tangiable I don't think.

<comment><USER19> > Unless you live in Russia, where nukes are literally paraded on the red > square every year

Could be America soon.

<comment><USER20> I thought you were going to switch to coal missiles?

<comment><USER21> Well if you can convince your .gov to buy them we'll happily design a coal warhead and sell you the missiles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" [1] is a great torchbearer for McLuhan's POV, bringing it solidly into the era of one-way video media (cable TV, VHS, etc) that dominated 80s/90s public discourse.

The internet, though, is kind of a different beast than radio or TV because it is so interactive. It's not just 1-way, 2-way, or many-to-many; it's all those things simultaneously. I'd love any recommendations on books/authors that pick up the torch from McLuhan and Postman, and try to cast some light on what "the medium is the message(/metaphor)" means in the hyper-connected age.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death)

edit: Just a thought, it's not only the interactivity that makes the internet unique, it's also its infinite flexibility: it can emulate print, radio, TV; but it can also invent its own versions of those media (podcasts, youtube, twitch, etc). It can invent entirely new kinds of media too: VR, AR, etc. So maybe the internet is a kind of "meta-media", which makes the analysis much more difficult; but promises some real gems of insight - if any can be found.

<comment><USER23> > It's not just 1-way, 2-way, or many-to-many; it's all those things > simultaneously.

Hmm. But isn't the internet/new media heavily balanced towards the 1-way communication model ? Does sharing, re-sharing and commenting in the void qualify as 2-way or m2m or is it just an amplifier ? The potential is here but does it really solidify into existence for the vast majority or is just for the vocal groups (NGO, journalists, lobbyists, etc.) ?

I have in mind the net delusion [0] and the submarine model [1].

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Net-Delusion-Dark-Internet- Freedom/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Net-Delusion-Dark-Internet- Freedom/dp/1610391063) [1] [http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER22> there is no question that old-school broadcast media is 1-to-many. it's physically impossible to send a signal upstream in those models (doesn't stop me from yelling at the TV, but I do know it's futile). we can quibble about how much the internet is 1:1 vs 1:N vs N:M, but the fact that we even ask these questions makes the internet a qualitatively different kind of media.

as an aside, what are we doing right here, right now? HN uses the internet as a print medium. As a blog it is 1:N, and as a discussion forum is N:M. So yeah, it's complex :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Just as we now try to control atom-bomb fallout, so we will one day try to control media fallout. Education will become recognized as civil defense against media fallout"

Written in 1964, this remains both deeply relevant and deeply naive. "Media" in this context means the impact of technology on how we perceive and understand the world (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media#McLuhan.27...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media#McLuhan.27s_concept_of_.22media.22)).

It's relevant, as new "mediums" play their part in the decline of democracy and freedom worldwide.

It's naive, as we as a society have definitely _not_ yet recognized the importance of education enough — our "civil defense against media fallout" remains very weak.

<comment><USER25> The antidote to this has been known since time immemorial and it. I'm not claiming that it is easy to achieve, but it is simple: Critical thinking, self awareness, and a healthy dose of skepticism.

Even with those tools, the flaw ultimately lies within us humans as a species. The results of the Stanford Prison experiment and the Millgrim experiments show that humans have a natural tendency to obey perceived authority figures, even if it means going against our own ideals.

It's sad, but that's why history repeats itself. We are the same species as we were 70,000 years ago. It is our institutions, modern luxuries, and collective knowledge which make us civilized. Take that away we will probably act more savagely than people in dystopic, post-apocalyptic fiction. The bestial nature of humanity slightly reveals itself int he wilds of LA traffic. People will call you the worst things and hope that all the bad things in life happen to you for simply driving slowly because you are in an unfamiliar area.

<comment><USER26> It seems overly simplistic to say that our current ills are due to lack of skepticism or critical thinking and obeying authority figures.

In fact the Internet has torn down existing authorities and given people the ability to create new communities as well as new authorities.

For example, climate skepticism explicitly posits that traditional authorities (scientists, the news, etc.) are wrong and seeks validation in creating _new_ authorities and sources of truth. You might claim that these people are lacking in critical thinking, but any act of skepticism, no matter how ill- founded, is in itself an attempt at critical thinking. Same thing with anti- vaxxers -- nowadays anyone with a crazy theory can find an online community that validates their beliefs.

The internet has also majorly eroded trust in our existing institutions based on elite opinion and one-way media, while not creating replacements for those institutions. At the end of the day, one important role of institutions is to 1) make a decision and 2) get everyone to go along with it, even if the decision itself isn't perfect.

The Internet has provided the tools for _everyone_ easily criticize and pick apart _any_ decision, without providing a viable alternative means to come to consensus.

TL;DR you think the problem is institutions and authority, while I think the _real_ problem is that the Internet is helping break them without putting them back together again.

<comment><USER27> Isn't that the strategy of propaganda? "Nothing is true and everything is possible"

<comment><USER26> It's not propagandists that are making people conclude that nothing is true, it's people putting themselves into echo chambers, aided and abetted by the Internet.

30 years ago if you had some crackpot theory, good luck finding anyone around you who agreed and would validate your beliefs. You'd watch and read normal news like everyone else and that was your source of information.

Nowadays you can come up with some strange idea, look it up on Google, and then find a bunch of other people who will tell you that you're right, the media's full of liars, and the scientists are all in it too.

Of course, this happened historically too before the Internet, but the difference is that in the past movements usually only happened in cities and college campuses and the like, because people had to talk face to face. Nowadays, _everyone_ with a smart phone and some free time can self- radicalize.

Eventually society will notice this trend and people will adjust to it, but until that happens you're going to see a more fractious society with more people who won't believe anything anyone else says (at least about particular topics).

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding critical thinking, I found this quite an interesting line of thought: [https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy- backfire-7...](https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy- backfire-7418c084d88d)

Basically, it might be the taught habit of critical thinking which actually makes people give up on the values which have been beneficial to modern civilization.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chorded keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard <comment><USER2> Why did these never take off, even in a 'big niche' way? Is corrected typing on a smartphone sufficiently speedy for it not to matter? Is the skill required more at the 'musical instrument' level than the 'touch typing' level? Something to do with voice recognition always getting better?

<comment><USER3> Price, availability. For instance, steno software costed thousands of dollars. But this is about to change:

\- Plover is a free, cross-platform steno software: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZGuBV1xe64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZGuBV1xe64)

\- This Canadian guy develops cool, quality steno and ergonomic boards. The Georgi is $95USD - significantly less expensive than alternatives. There aren't any official reviews yet, but Plover users on Discord seem to really like it.

[https://www.gboards.ca/product/georgi](https://www.gboards.ca/product/georgi) (web site appears temporarily down though - was up yesterday.)

I'm planning to buy one this week - trying to get my boss to cover it since it will help with my mild RSI.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget the QWERTY mode! Steno requires a huge time commitment to learn, chorded QWERTY much less so.

And if you don't like it, it's a QMK based board so it can be reprogrammed!

[http://docs.gboards.ca/Unboxing-Georgi](http://docs.gboards.ca/Unboxing- Georgi)

<comment><USER5> There's also the more traditional Ergodox-like Gergo that is mostly a normal QWERTY board with some ergonomic improvements.

[https://www.gboards.ca/category/gergo](https://www.gboards.ca/category/gergo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a daily Emacs user, I find the key-chord package [0] very useful. For example, to save a buffer all I have to press is "hu" (at the same time). It's a simple thing, but saves a little time and lessens "emacs pinky"; I use it hundreds of times a day.

[0] - [https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord)

In my .emacs.d - [https://github.com/celwell/.emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#L261...](https://github.com/celwell/.emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#L261-L274)

<comment><USER7> Isn't that awkward though? I type H and U with the same finger. So now this involves some strange wrist / arm rotation - or changing the way I type.

<comment><USER8> Probably elwell is a Dvorak user. hu is pressed with both index fingers in their home positions in Dvorak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's a chorded keyboard that I bought to use with a NLS/Augment clone I bought for my PC: [https://www.infogrip.com/bat- keyboard.html](https://www.infogrip.com/bat-keyboard.html)

Just in case anyone's interested.

<comment><USER10> I've been reading a lot about NLS/Augment (and Engelbart in general) lately. Any more information on your setup?

If you're interested in bragging/chatting more about it, my email is in my profile. I'd love to learn about what you're doing.

<comment><USER9> The program I am using is here: [http://www.ndma.com/resources/ndm8543.htm](http://www.ndma.com/resources/ndm8543.htm)

However, it doesn't seem to be updated beyond 1994. And it's missing some things from Augment like the journal. But the system itself is nearly identical with augment regarding the commands and stuff. Which is why I bought the chorded keyboard so I can experience it engelbart-style.

Toying with the idea of making a version of this in pharo smalltalk because I think one of the things that makes augment great is the customizability of it. Like emacs, if it doesn't do what you want, you change the code inline while it's running.

<comment><USER10> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few similar keyboards used as gamepads

1\. Belkin nostromo n52 - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo_SpeedPad_n52](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo_SpeedPad_n52)

2\. Razer Tartarus V2 - [https://www.razer.com/gaming-keyboards-keypads/razer- tartaru...](https://www.razer.com/gaming-keyboards-keypads/razer-tartarus-v2)

3\. Razer Orbweaver - [https://www.razer.com/gaming-keyboards-keypads/razer- orbweav...](https://www.razer.com/gaming-keyboards-keypads/razer-orbweaver- chroma)

<comment><USER12> These are all the same product with different switches and labels on the box, interestingly enough.

<comment><USER13> But how is this related to chorded keyboard? Those are just smaller keyboards, with much less buttons.

<comment><USER11> If I recall correctly, the macro software lets you switch to a color directly which would be like a single chord [0]. On top of that you could use also have other buttons mapped to the standard modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt, and Meta.

[0] [https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5TkmS5Cyz80/TYkb47wkGzI/AAAAAAAAA...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5TkmS5Cyz80/TYkb47wkGzI/AAAAAAAAADA/jnS6D0fYCnQ/s1600/normal_mode.jpg) from [https://sc2mechanics.blogspot.com/2011/03/configuring- belkin...](https://sc2mechanics.blogspot.com/2011/03/configuring- belkin-n52-for-starcraft-2.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I built one some time ago. [https://medium.com/@tartavull/thor-your-next- keyboard-20b9ce...](https://medium.com/@tartavull/thor-your-next- keyboard-20b9ce7dd2b1)

<comment><USER15> Do you still use it? If so how does your WPM compare to a standard keyboard these days?

I've always wanted to try one of these out but I'm not much of one to make it myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are many comments about the pros / cons / learning-curves / customization-payoffs involved for chorded keyboards.

I'm struck my how similar this is to a discussion about using vim.

</comment><comment><USER17> Emacs supports chorded key combinations.

[http://melpa.org/#/key-chord](http://melpa.org/#/key-chord)

<comment><USER18> For vim users, there is a plugin called arpeggio: [https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2425](https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2425)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of this app for mobile:

[https://www.dotkeyboard.com/](https://www.dotkeyboard.com/)

I've tried it a bit; not bad, but I can still type faster on my phone with my thumbs. One guy at my school (I think he helps develop this keyboard) has reportedly gotten up (or past) 60 wpm.

<comment><USER20> >With users reaching typing speeds of up to 65 wpm or more on their phone or tablet, DOTKey has unlocked the potential of mobile devices

I just did a typing test on my regular phone keyboard and got 60. But maybe this will bring me up to desktop speeds. And if I get a physical corded keyboard, I'll go interstellar!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems like the concept behind the Tap strap: [https://www.amazon.com/Tap- Bluetooth-Wearable-Controller-Sma...](https://www.amazon.com/Tap-Bluetooth- Wearable-Controller-Smartphone/dp/B07BVVFZYY)

<comment> 0-_-0 I like this idea the most, where you wear a ring on each of your fingers. Ideally you could map individual muscles in your hand to keys, which could give you a keyboard on 1 hand that you could use with any device: phone, desktop etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is quite modern take on this, but doesn't seem it took off: [https://www.tekgear.com/twiddler3.html](https://www.tekgear.com/twiddler3.html)

<comment><USER22> I own one, but never did manage to get much fluency with it. The build quality is good, though keeping it positioned in your hand right is tricky. I hold it with the bottom on my thigh so it doesn't slip down. The mouse joystick isn't analog and therefore basically useless.

That said, the ergonomics of it are stupid amounts better than any keyboard. You can just wheel your chair back a bit and sit however is comfortable. Changing position while using it is much easier too since you're just holding it in your hand.

I should get back to practicing on it I think. The advantages would be enormous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I use JetBrains IDEs a lot, and on my full size keyboard (kinesis freestyle pro), the key combinations are an uncomfortable for my small hands. Haven't done anything about it yet (and I'm not sure what I'll change), but I could really benefit from shortening how far I have to reach.

</comment><comment><USER24> A little bit of (self-)hypnosis goes a long way with these, for picking up the motor patterns and then using them automatically (touch typing). Because you don't have to move your hands you can go really fast, achieve the illusion of direct mind-to-machine input. YMMV.

<comment><USER25> Can you explain more, or point us to a document on the subject? I purchased a twiddler 2 some time ago and found it to be a frustrating experience, although something that I'd like to utilize more.

<comment><USER24> Well, on the subject of hypnosis I recommend two books: "TRANCE-formations" (sic) by Bandler and Grinder, and "Monsters and Magical Sticks" by Heller

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/956297.Trance_Formations](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/956297.Trance_Formations)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/447454.Monsters_and_Magi...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/447454.Monsters_and_Magical_Sticks)

If you're going to learn to operate your bio-computer, please don't stop at typing faster, eh?

\- - - -

One of the basic "exercises" or "techniques" that people often do with (self-)hypnosis is to set up a simple binary yes/no signal from the subconscious mind to the conscious mind, e.g. a finger twitches for yes, wags for no (non-response is a kind of "does not compute, please rephrase" message.)

From there you can "leverage" the connection for more structured communication. E.g. the Six-Step Reframe algorithm [https://gist.github.com/calroc/4719702](https://gist.github.com/calroc/4719702) (deprecated in the 80's BTW.)

In re: these chorded input devices, the basic idea is that you set up with your unconscious motor programs to wiggle the chorded keyboard the right way, letting your conscious subjective experience be that of "pouring" your words from your inner voice (or imagery) directly to your machine.

Once you've got good communication with your subconscious mind, it's pretty easy. I used to do it w/ a just a Dvorak layout.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The coordination needed to type fast on this keyboard seems like it'd be an issue. Additionally, defining "simultaneously pressed keys" seems hard and would oppose typing speed if it were to be more permissive and cause typing errors if it were tighter.

</comment><comment><USER27> I used a twiddler and a frogpad for wearable computing, but decided on inputing through morse, voice or on screen keyboard (like oculus go/quest or daydream) and do the rest with a regular tweaked dvorak keyboard

</comment><comment><USER28> All the security experts on HN say you should use a passcode instead of a fingerprint for unlocking your phone. However, it seems fairly easy for someone to just watch you over your shoulder input your passcode (i.e. "shoulder surf"), or have it be recorded on increasingly ever-present surveillance cameras (e.g. buses, subways, food courts, etc.).

What about putting buttons along the sides of your phone and using chorded combinations as your passcode? Seems squeezing those buttons would be much harder to observe or record (intentionally or unintentionally).

<comment><USER29> On my Galaxy S9+, I have 4 buttons: power, vol up/down and a stupid useless bixby button. Ignoring how to put it into 'password' mode, each of these buttons is effectively a bit. I assume you need at least 1 key to register an input (otherwise wait for a pause which I won't consider), so you get 15 possibilities. I think you could make a reasonably strong password using 4-8 chords (15^4-15^8 possibilities). Anyways, it's certainly better than those swipe passwords with an effective length of 9 Cr 4 == 128 which are readily seen and copied by nearby people.

<comment><USER30> Do you mean to say there are 9 choose 4 == 126 possible combinations for a 3x3 pattern? I think this would only be true if you could use a maximum of four dots in the pattern, which isn't the case.

Although calculating it this way will double-count some patterns which include long lines, I would say that there ar far closer to 9! == 362880 passwords. Even if long lines cut that space in half, 150000 more than meets your minimum of 15^4.

<comment><USER29> You're right. I goofed on my analysis. Instead of chose, it's indeed a factorial. You're also right, you can chose up to 9 dots, so indeed it is up to 9! combinations. Thanks for catching that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can genetic algorithm get "sick"? - <AUTHOR> ok, my question might be stupid but I was wondering if my genetic algorithm get "sick", how can I find a cure for it? <comment><USER2> By sick, you mean can it become bias to a subspace in the solution space, if so you would "cure" it by re-defining your fitness function to not get "stuck", or fooled by a local maxima.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand what you mean by "sick". There are a few different ways a genetic algorithm can "fail to converge" though (or converges on a solution that is not a global maxima).

This could be caused by having too high of a diversity, causing the algorithm to give up on promising avenues of evolution too early.

Another risk is having too high of selective pressure, causing the algorithm to get stuck on a "good" solution, but not a global maxima (best solution). A high selective pressure will reduce the total breadth of the search and create a deeper, more focused search on a smaller area (in general).

There are other factors to consider, such as bloating (esp. in genetic programming, where syntax trees can become unmanageably large) and the need for an accurate "fitness" function, less you select for something other than the actual solution.

</comment><comment><USER4> You may want to look into poisoning attacks or the no-free-lunch theorems for interesting technical aspects of reinforcement learners</comment>


Did Trump win because Russia hacked the election? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/a-truly-fancy-bear-2384f413df1c#.uou71i77q <comment><USER2> He just flat out won, word on the street is apparently HRC did not ask for a recount because it would show the extent she cheated.

</comment><comment><USER3> There has yet to be any credible evidence connecting any particular nation- state or group to any of these 'hacks', possibly more correctly called leaks in many cases. Seriously. As tech people we should know better than to take that as a base assumption to grow any meaningful conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is nonsense. As Nate explained, polls can have errors +/\- 3 points, and those errors tend to be correlated across polsters, time, and space. If something happens 1/3 or 1/4 the time when sampling from those polls, it cannot be considered shocking when it happens in real life.</comment>


What Can Be Done About The Growing Broadband Gap In The U.S.? - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/11/08/what-can-be-done-about-the-growing-broadband-gap-in-the-u-s/

<comment><USER2> Is there a demand for broadband among these people? Isn't dial-up about the same cost as low-end "broad"band these days?

Another thing to consider is that _broadband_ might not be the problem, it's actually having a computer. There are quite a few people I work with who don't even have computers at home.

Hmm... that would be a fun thing for some geeks to do, grab up some of the old spare parts we all have laying around and build computers for people that need them. I'll have to bring that up at the next hacker space meeting :)</comment>


Sudoku for the terminal - <AUTHOR> http://jubalh.github.io/nudoku/

<comment><AUTHOR> A sudoku game writtein in C with ncurses. It's just a small pet project to learn C and get familiar with ncurses and make/autotools.</comment>


What happens when you sell your startup? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/what-happens-when-you-sell-your-startup/ <comment><USER2> He forgot the part where some of the executive team is offered a big payout for retaining employees for a period of time. At which point they at incentivized to straight up lie about how great it is to be bought and sold like cattle. That sweet, sweet stock vesting will make it worthwhile. And then it never quite seems to work out, but the horror only settles in after they get theirs.

Man, do I have some latent resentment...

<comment><USER3> I respect and trust my founders, but I also believe The Machine can corrupt amd manipulate anyone. At a certain point I wrote off all my stock options as a free lottery ticket, and have valued them at $0 in my big picture life ledger. I work for a combination of money today and love for what I do, but not for the promise of ritches one day.

There's always a chance I'm being foolish or paranoid, but this approach is the safest.

<comment><USER4> You don't really value them at $0. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a binding contract saying you'll transfer them to me for $100 paid now.

Hey, that's $100 for free! Only it shows you don't really value them at zero. It's only a slightly smaller lie than founders who insist their startup is worth hundreds of millions.

The truth is somewhere betweem the two...

<comment><USER5> "I value them at zero" is shorthand for "I am not planning my life around them having any value, such as buying a house with a mortgage so large that the only way I can pay it is for those stock options to be worth something significant." Yeah, technically that's not what it means _exactly_ , but when you're making your life plans as if them cashing out at $0 is the most likely outcome, it's not _entirely_ wrong either.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. In my head I like having the free lottery ticket more than having $100. But in my ledger they are not present as an asset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is also a third option for making money with a startup: To get your startup profitable without selling or going public.

<comment><USER7> What's the point of that? If you're an employee with stock options you aren't going to see a dime of the profits. You need an IPO or acquisition to make all those extra overtime stock options pay off.

<comment><USER8> See: the SAS Institute model of profit sharing, which they began shortly after forming the business. It has endured in an extremely successful manner for four decades as SAS has remained private.

To put this into context. Facebook will likely hit ~$17 billion in profit for fiscal 2017. They have 20,000 employees. If their only obligation was to employees as owners, they could very safely distribute half a million dollars per year perpetually to every one of their employees (while distributing billions to the early shareholders). This model would have vastly outperformed the IPO model as far as the VC firms are concerned (specifically as far as their institutional capital suppliers are concerned). Most VC investment gets liquidated early on, shortly after the IPO (the same happened with Google, most of the early backers bailed not long after the IPO, or their returns to date would be comically higher; Peter Thiel made the same choice with his Facebook position, selling a lot of it early after the IPO).

<comment><USER9> It's only better in hindsight, with a prior knowledge that Facebook is a mega- unicorn.

But VCs make decisions with limited information, based on probabilities, and in this case going for an earlier payout via IPO or selling the company is a more rational option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Unless you're one of the lucky few who start and take a company public in an > IPO

Not like I have much to draw on, but to me it seems that a huge acquisition is probably more bang for your buck than going public (which is by definition a gamble).

I don't think I'd ever want to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Being at the whims of finicky investors on top of shady market forces 24/7 just seems awful when compared to getting acquired for a pretty penny (WhatsApp or Tumblr come to mind).

<comment><USER11> I would say for the median engineer, a buyout is better because valuable employees will be put on a retainer, which is where the real money is for the little guys.

<comment><USER10> True, but I meant as a founder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> @DHH thoughts on selling your startup [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY&feature=youtu.be&t=15m55s)

</comment><comment><USER13> The buyers rarely understand what they are getting. Because of that they will use different marketing approaches and customer service. The good buyers will be lucky to keep 50% of the customers. Other buyers may decide to take the idea and tangibles such as domain names, and rebuild from scratch. In either case it sure is hard watching your baby get sold off and changed.

</comment><comment><USER14> How likely is it though that the board would have accepted the deal in a real scenario? The VC returns in the example aren't exactly home runs. Wouldn't they be incentivized to block the deal and wait for a better one?

<comment><USER15> I guess quite likely? In this scenario, it sounds like the goal of Series C was just to get some, any return. And getting back your initial investment sure sounds better than getting nothing back.

<comment><USER16> I doubt that was the goal of series C as any investor in that round would have been throwing good money after bad. If you're the VC in that case you're probably better off investing in a growth operation that trying to salvage a previous bet</comment></comment></comment>


Randomly generated dungeons - <AUTHOR> http://www.rosipov.com/blog/randomly-generated-dungeons/ <comment><USER2> Random structure generation really is a big thing to do. There are way too many parameters and possible things to happen so all it comes down to is the imagination of the developer.

I have tried generating a simple city, which took quite a while to accomplish, while I am not 100%ly happy with it, I think this is as simple as it can get: [https://github.com/iMarv/CityGenerator](https://github.com/iMarv/CityGenerator)

</comment><comment><USER3> no github?</comment>


Covid-19 vs. the Economy - <AUTHOR> https://austingwalters.com/covid-19-vs-the-economy/ <comment><USER2> Couple things 3M is 1 out of 100. Also, if we do nothing were talking and surge past hospital capacity we're probably looking at 1 out 10 or 15(reference the numbers referenced at the top of the article).

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate it, and fixed. 1/10 to 1/15 is fair, I'm assuming a 20%-30% infection rate. Reducing those numbers to somewhere around 1/100\. 1% of total US dying, essentially.</comment></comment>


AIM will be discontinued today - <AUTHOR> https://help.aol.com/articles/aim-discontinued <comment><USER2> _Unfortunately you are not able to save or export your Buddy List._

 _Your data associated with AIM will be deleted after December 15, 2017._

 _Yes, you can manually save images and files to your computer until the morning of December 15, 2017._

Whatever you thought of AIM, it's stuff like this that makes you realize just how important software freedom is. Insane that there is just _no way at all_ , without outright hacking the program (to the extent that hacking it is possible), to export your data, that you generated, and should by rights be yours to at the very least save (and not have to comb through potentially decades of chat history to export pictures and files one-by-one).

<comment><USER3> I, for one, am happy to see all my old AIM conversations deleted and lost forever.

<comment><USER4> Ok, but that should be your choice, not AOL's.

<comment><USER5> It is your choice to save it locally. They are just saying that their copy will be deleted.

<comment><USER6> > Unfortunately you are not able to save or export your Buddy List.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I'll miss about AIM is that it's a communication modality that doesn't exist right now.

It was everywhere, and on MacOS it was integrated into the OS. For most people I knew, they had it set to join when they got on the computer. So it meant that you knew when your friends were at the computer, and you knew when you could have long "in the background" conversations with your friends.

It was just a different level of intimacy - I had so many longer and interesting, sometimes deep conversations through AIM (or through iMessage hooked up with AIM).

On a Mac at least, that's unlike anything we have now with facebook and Messenger.app. Now when you look at your buddy list, you have no idea whether they're at their computer or if they're busy or running around with their phone. I try to get my friends to join a Slack room with me, but we don't always have it started, or we're in a different Slack room. At any rate there just isn't that critical mass where you know someone is online and chattable.

<comment><USER8> I find Discord to fill this space in a slightly more effective way, although I don't believe they differentiate from mobile vs. computer use quite yet. However, I find a majority of my friends (and I personally) use discord mainly on desktop. I don't even have discord on my phone.

<comment><USER9> I use Discord, but I only have it installed on my phone. More convenient that way.

<comment><USER10> Do you actually use it for gaming?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Truly sad. So much of my young social life was experienced through AIM. Screen names are still part of the identity of some of my friends. For some folks that have already passed, our last conversations are on AIM. Don't know what else to say, but it definitely feels like a link to another era of my life is fading away. Nothing is permanent.

RIP running man!

<comment><USER12> Nothing is permanent, exactly so.

Our ability to slog around drives full of data lets us gloss over this fact, but when we're dead, are our kids gonna keep slogging around our drives? Nah.

Better way to get permanence in your life is to do things that people will remember you for, if permanence is what you're after. Crowd-sourced in other people's memories.

<comment><USER13> That's why you need to keep it on some kind of cloud storage drive arranging an annuity or trust to keep paying the bills. Then, you have a script on a cloud server that posts on Craigslist once a year or month, hiring someone to duplicate your setup on a new cloud provider, opening a port for one of your existing nodes to connect to and verify, and also ask that person to modify the reproduction script of the clone, so that it will post on a Craigslist equivalent but not Craigslist. You'd also need some logic so that the rate you add clones is limited to the rate at which your fund to pay for the clones increases.

<comment><USER12> Haha, a never-ending hell for the kids you leave behind when you die. Love it. It should email them monthly messages, too. "Your dead parents data is STILL SAFE."

<comment><USER13> I'd include in that email an estimate of how much money has been spent on the preservation campaign so far.

"If your ancestor hadn't decided to dedicate X dollars (inflation adjusted Y dollars for current year) to this project you would have inherited calculateInheritant(tauntEmailRecipient, currentYear, familyTree, preferredCurrencyDenomination). PS - please reply to this email with contact information for any new descendants. If email is going out of style as a communication protocol, please reply with a program that, when executed, will take from standard in a filename that contains a message, and as a second parameter a contact address. Attached to this email you'll find a project spec describing this program more rigorously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Something I'll miss about AIM and older chat clients is how compact they were. Most of these newer chat programs seem to assume you're going to have their application take up the entire screen.

<comment><USER15> Most modern audio players have the same issue. WinAmp/XMMS took up very little of your screen, while most modern players will assume that full screen is what you want.

<comment><USER14> That's the reason I'm still using Winamp. Its aged surprisingly well and it has more features than a lot of modern media players.

<comment><USER16> It really whips the llama's ass.

<comment><USER17> There's also [http://aimp2.us/](http://aimp2.us/), which, AFAIR, in some respects whips Winamp's ass. Sadly nothing comparable to either on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The part that was IMHO completely un-thought-through:

> Can I save my Buddy List?

> Unfortunately you are not able to save or export your Buddy List.

\--

> What happens to my data?

> Your data associated with AIM will be deleted after December 15, 2017.

\--

> Can I save my images and files?

> Yes, you can manually save images and files to your computer until the > morning of December 15, 2017.

> _(Instructions to manually open each chat then scroll through looking for > images and files)_

<comment><USER19> I expect it was thought through, and the thought was "a few hundred thousand people use this service still, it's running under one employee's desk* and is completely unfunded, no effort above the minimum is to be expended."

*Not sure if this was explicitly said or someone's joking claim during a past discussion of the shutdown.

<comment><USER20> The final user numbers were way less than you would guess. It was a service built to handle tens of millions of users serving thousands. Scaling down that much is as labour intensive as scaling up. It's not just a launching all the services on a handful of VMs. The time had passed to make it a WhatsApp etc competitor.

<comment><USER21> >Scaling down that much is as labour intensive as scaling up.

Could you elaborate on this? I'm very interested to understand the challenges of downsizing a cloud service as I've never heard of that happening, and am surprised to hear it's difficult.

<comment><USER22> 1\. Everyone that wrote the code has probably left the company, or is working on more important projects.

2\. The code was written in 90s and 00s.

3\. I wouldn't be surprised if AOL owns the hardware AIM is running on. Deploying on smaller servers would mean a complete system replacement, which always requires large amounts of regression testing.

4\. Big services usually have more dependencies than small services. Each dependency adds complexity and costs.

It probably is as hard to down scale an old service as it is to upscale a new service. It's probably less hard to downscale a new service than upscale a new service.

Also, if your users are dwindling (and not paying) it's less important to give that software attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's amazing how temporary things are. I never used AIM much but if I had I would have a lot of history in my life with a particular service and now they would pull the plug. Ditto with Facebook these days. Or hosted software like Google Reader.

In contrast, I still have most what I grew up with. Disk images of my old computers, binaries of games and applications, fully usable in emulators. There's IRC -- while the networks I used then have died a long time ago IRC probably never dies. I still use IRC on some networks and interface some other chat services by using a proxy frontend that you can connect with an IRC client.

But most importantly, I can launch early computer games from my childhood. It's like having your old toys on a shelf at your parent's house. Not only I can still try out the game I never could finish (and observe that I still can't finish it because games in the 80's were often both stupid and ridiculously hard), but I can put my kids at the controls and tell them this is what their parent used to play at the same age. It's not just history and culture but an origin. This is where I came from. For a human being that is a very concrete, if not tangible, thing, and of value in itself. Now think that you can't fire up Instagram or Facebook or even Angry Birds in 2035 and tell someone hey this is how we shared pictures, messaged, and gamed back in the 10's.

<comment><USER24> I share your sentiments but I don't think AIM is an example of this. I haven't used AIM in 8+ years but there was an easy-to-find checkbox in the official client (and unofficial ones too) to save all history as simple text files on disk. I'm pretty sure I still have records of AIM conversations from back in ~1999 in my backups.

Actually the linked article mentions this. Look for "Can I view and save my chat history?". It sounds like the checkbox I mentioned is enabled by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Goodbye. :(

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Z2CklSxM0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Z2CklSxM0)

Since everyone is sharing their AIM memories: When I was in college (1995-1998), AIM was the #1 way to flirt with people. Today the kids worry about whether they got a like or not.

Back then, you'd sit and stare at your buddy list waiting for that person you liked to come online so you could say something witty, and then stew with worry if they didn't respond but remained online.

<comment><USER26> I was under the impression that in 1995-1998, flirting irl was still number 1.

<comment><USER25> Maybe in some places for some people, but for us Berkeley nerds it was definetly online. Of course you had to flirt in person to get their screen name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of doors suddenly slammed shut, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

</comment><comment><USER28> RIP.

Browsing friends' creative AIM away messages were the precursor to that Snapchat status(?) feature I hear about.

<comment><USER29> AIM Status messages were the original inspiration for Twitter, then twttr. See : [https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360) \- twttr sketch by founder Jack Dorsey.

<comment><USER30> It's amazing (disheartening?) to see Twitter evolve from the website where you could tell your friends that you were eating dinner, to a website where the President of the USA makes real policy announcements.

<comment><USER31> well, theres about the same amount of thought put into either tweet

<comment><USER32> I dunno, I used to spend a lot of time making my status messages really clever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is AOL Time Warner, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." Nothing beside remains._

Seriously though, it is amazing to look back on the utter dominance of AOL in the late 90s-early 00s, and it's almost complete disappearance shortly afterward.

</comment><comment><USER34> > Why is AIM shutting down?

> We know there are so many loyal fans who have used AIM for decades; and we > loved working and building the first chat app of its kind since 1997. Our > focus will always be on providing the kind of innovative experiences > consumers want. We're more excited than ever to focus on building the next > generation of iconic brands and life-changing products.

Corporate BS-speak at its best. Three sentences and 0% answering the question.

<comment><USER35> so shitty, they didn't give a SINGLE REASON

<comment><USER36> I can give you the reason.

Everybody at aol stopped using it years ago for internal communication and switched to slack.

The team had also been cut down to a skeleton crew a long time ago and they stopped development on it.

The reason why they are killing it as opposed to letting it hang around for ever is that aol has been in a multi-year long process of moving everything to AWS and due to the way aim is architected, it would be a major development effort to make the move, and they just don't want to spend the money.

I'm going to guess the mail product will also face a similar end for similar reasons.

<comment><USER37> I was amazed the other day to discover my favorite board game publisher, Rio Grande Games, has the email address (posted in their games as of 2017) of email@example.com, which really surprised me. I wonder if they're still making money off of AOL email accounts?

<comment><USER38> Verizon bought AOL in 2015 [0] and has recently started discontinuing their ISP provided @verizon.net email addresses and servers[1] in favor of @aol.com addresses.

0: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-buy-aol- for-4-4-bill...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-buy-aol- for-4-4-billion-1431428458) 1: [https://help.aol.com/products/aol-mail- verizon](https://help.aol.com/products/aol-mail-verizon)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Goodbye, AIM

You're not dead. Just set to away

</comment><comment><USER40> While I completely understand why this is being done, it feels bizarre to me. Since I was 11 years old, AIM was one of those universal constants to me, not radically different than death or taxes in my mind.

I will really miss the fad of `xXxXmYcOoLsCrEeNaMexXx`, and the cheesy-yet- charming profiles and away messages.

AIM, I sollute you farewell. Without you, I wouldn't have as many good memories of my teens, and I wouldn't have the nickname "tombert"

<comment><USER41> Away messages... haven't thought about those in years. Back when you might occasionally find yourself away from any internet connected devices. Truly the 00s were a strange time.

<comment><USER42> I don't generally bother with away messages but I, for one, am routinely away from Internet devices for hours and even days at a time. Not everyone is plugged in 24/7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I used AIM entirely through Trillian and that's what I associate it with. I remember having it alongside ICQ, Microsoft Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger, all running under Trillian.

It gives me a "Those were the days..." moment.

<comment><USER14> Same here! I'm really sad they never added anymore chat protocols, and now most of the ones I used are obsolete or don't work.

I stopped when all my friends switched from Skype (which I used Trillian for) to Telegram, but I missed how compact Trillian was.

<comment><USER44> I get the impression that Pidgin, Trillian and the other one I can't really remember just gave up at some point.

I'm using Pidgin, mostly out of nostalgia, but the default configuration basically can't connect to any mainstream messenger these days (Facebook, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype or Viber). Plus the UI is so dated, especially regarding emojis.

Before anyone asks, it's in C and I'm nowhere competent (or interested enough in gaining the required competency) to contribute.

With stuff like Pidgin you notice what mindshare really means. A "crappy" Electron based app is nicer to use than the "native" one. In the end, it's all about coders polishing code. No hours put in, no end result coming out.

<comment><USER45> > I get the impression that Pidgin, Trillian and the other one I can't really > just gave up at some point.

> I'm using Pidgin, mostly out of nostalgia, but the default configuration > basically can't connect to any mainstream messenger these days (Facebook, > WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype or Viber). Plus the UI is so dated, especially > regarding emojis.

Pidgin supports Telegram and Facebook. Well, it did support Facebook, Facebook is constantly changing their API to prevent that.

Someone also wrote a WhatsApp backend.

WhatsApp forced GitHub to take down the code, and sued the dev.

In this modern world, open chat software is impossible.

<comment><USER46> I have it in my head that Apple started this (or at least gave it the major push to mainstream), with iMessage. My impression is that with a major chat provider with other lock-in (the phone, which has it's own lock in, the app store), Apple was able to provide a good chat experience, add extras hard to do with a more heterogeneous ecosystem (facetime, automatic evasion of SMS fees for iphone-to-iphone messages), and keep the protocol closed without losing too many people.

Google, who was really the main chat in town at that point with gchat, had to either choose to extend XMPP some more or go closed. Closed starts to look really good when you realize that once you have a competitor with Apple's strength, market and lock-in, being open starts being a detriment, since anyone can write a client for your app for any platform, but you still can't support iMessage. Proprietary hangouts chats allow for Google to control where and how their chat platform is used.

What I'm wondering is how much of this I'm getting wrong because I'm not seeing the other forces at work. Anyone have counterpoints or corrections?

<comment><USER47> i would widen the scope a bit. pidgin is a good example of the modular, open source model that used to be somewhat common in consumer software.

looking back, there certainly seems to be a correlation between the rise of Apple and the death of those kinds of programs. these days it seems like only products that target developers follow that model.

personally though, i think it was the transition to mobile that really did it. almost overnight people's expectations for UI design got way higher, and most of them don't really care about modularity or open source. they just want something that mostly works and _looks_ designed. aesthetic appeal has never the strong point of OSS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> In 1998, I built a computer (her first) for my girlfriend so that she and I could chat while I was at work. We've been married 18 years now.

Thanks for the memories, AIM!

<comment><USER49> I'm in a similar boat. I met my wife on a website with a mutual game interest, and we started chatting on AIM. Come to find out she's not too far from where I lived and I started visiting her once a month. Now we're married.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's a shame they couldn't open source the original client and server software, would be interesting to preserve.

<comment><USER2> I had the same thought. Now that it's dead, maybe releasing/leaking the source would be legally defensible as fair use in the name of historical preservation.

<comment><USER51> The source is pointless. You can build a much better chat system on modern technology in a weekend. The lost value is in their centralized servers with thousands of existing accounts. I'd always thought services like AIM would be replaced by more decentralized systems, but instead we have even more segmented walled garden chat apps where you don't even get to use your own client.

<comment><USER52> I will say this: XMPP is far from perfect. But I recently came back to it from a five year absence or so, and I must say, it's gotten really good. I set up a server with relatively little difficulty, and since in my circle, it's common to have multiple messengers on the phone anyhow, asking someone: hey, I want to use this other one, wasn't a big hassle.

Conversations for Android is really good, and on iDevice ChatSecure works very well. Much better than what I expected. With filesharing and everthing. And then there's a bunch more that also work, but not of them at the same level of Quality.

Marketshare is super-low of course, but I like that it's possible to use an open protocol.

<comment><USER53> Just plugging Tox.

[https://tox.chat/](https://tox.chat/)

Decentralized, DHT-like, no phone numbers.

I've researched all others and Tox is the best choice ATM if you want YOUR data to belong to YOU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I had one of the coolest experiences with AOL Instant Messenger. I think it was 1998 ... my dad and I could communicate over this new and virtual wave of the future. I could send him a short thought, and like magic, his thoughts would appear back on my screen accompanied by a cool sound. Even though he was all the way across town, I felt very close to my dad that day.

<comment><USER55> I remember a similar experience when my dad and I tried it out back in the day. We weren't even that far apart but I remember as a 10-12 year old (can't remember exact time) asking him to use it to talk to me from the next room over. I wish I had kept those AIM and other services' messages since they're mostly lost to me due to either the service shutting down, lost passwords, or my own mistake of deleting them around the time he died - in my grief I thought I'd never want to see them again.

It was one of the things that got me into computers. Although it doesn't directly affect my day to day as I no longer use AIM, it was the first place I registered my screen name that I still use everywhere. Yes, my screen name is just my name, but it has significance to me all the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I just tried to sign in via Adium and got "Received unexpected response from [https://api.screenname.aol.com/auth/clientLogin](https://api.screenname.aol.com/auth/clientLogin): Invalid DevId" so I guess it's gone.

</comment><comment><USER57> When I started using aim, my password was 4 characters, and was a dictionary word, and I never got hacked. I spent days chatting with friends, chasing girls. I feel sad.

<comment><USER57> By the way it was "took" I thought that's how you spelled tukee (the exotic bird ). Hopefully no one can use this password against me.. Not sure if I ever changed it!

<comment><USER58> I wasn't sure what bird is that, so I googled for "tukee bird". Google says "Did you mean: _turkey_ bird", but it shows me pictures of toucans. I'm confused.

<comment><USER57> Lol, apparently I still can't spell it. Is that just a toucan? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixec55yXhKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixec55yXhKs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I wish I could be omniscient for a few minutes just to know what happened to all the people I've A/S/L'd during childhood. Or maybe I don't want to know - I imagine some of them probably died from old age.

<comment><USER60> Checking in! I was a huge AIM user. I've had the same screenname since I was 12. Now the only two left in my circle who use it are me and my wife.

I'm really nostalgic about AIM. I met a lot of really cool people on there, but its time is definitely passed. Luckily having used Pidgin for years will make the transition for gchat or something similar pretty seamless.

Still sad, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I still used AIM up until today. My friends and I just switched over to a private XMPP server, and we've been using Pidgin/Adium anyway, so it's not a huge change. AIM has been extremely reliable, I've been able to use it on every platform I've ever owned (usually with free software), and it's easy to end-to-end encrypt messages.

My friends and I just never saw a reason to move away from AIM. Everyone just decided to switch to things that were newer for novelty's sake, and transferred their friendships and conversations into non-private, non-free systems. Even Google, which at first used an open protocol, moved to a siloed system while adding nothing of much value (as evidenced by Google's low share of the messaging market). And now to talk to people I have to switch between Google, Skype, Apple, and Facebook, _all_ of whom inter-compatible systems, all of whom reneged on their promises, and none of whom offer me any value whatsoever.

This is not a happy day for me.

<comment><USER9> You'll still be able to use AIM if you setup a private server? I need to look into this.

<comment><USER61> As nyolfen mentioned, XMPP is just a competing, decentralized protocol for AIM-like chat. It has a similar feature set and works with most third-party AIM clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> RIP

On a side note, it would have been great if rather than discontinue AIM, they open sourced it and put it in the hands of the community. It feels somewhat wasteful to close the doors on such an iconic piece of software.

<comment><USER42> It takes effort (ie $$) to open source software including making sure it doesn't include libraries or other code licensed from third parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I am one of the dozens of daily users that will be effected

</comment><comment><USER64> As of yesterday, they were sending an announcement every 5 minutes about the impending shutdown. Now when you try to connect, they send the announcement and then disconnect you. I guess they want to see 0 traffic before they pull the plug.

<comment><USER65> Adium just got disconnected about 1:20am EST and shows an error when trying to connect. Were you using the official client?

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> End of an era... I remember buying a helio ocean over an original iphone because it had support for AIM.

<comment><USER67> I had AIM-to-SMS set up so I could keep my chats going even on my flip phone, and then on Windows Mobile even if I didn't have data service. These days I can't even check Facebook unless I have LTE, if the phone says 4G I know I have no service.

Man how things change.

<comment><USER68> LTE equals 4G.

<comment><USER69> LTE is an extension to 4G. That said, I'm pretty sure he meant 3G.

<comment><USER70> So I'm an iPhone user as well, and what he said is correct. The phone normally displays LTE when full LTE service is available. In my experience. when you're in a normal LTE area, the 4G display usually indicates a really bad signal, as in it can't establish a full LTE connection, so it's trying to fall back to an old protocol, and thus your data performance is really bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> meanwhile slack grows and requires a much heavier desktop client, and people use fb chat like wildfire

clearly the issue is product mismanagement rather than cultural shifts away from 'this type of service'

<comment><USER72> I don't think it was mismanagement - chat followed where people stored their identities online. One's online identity was for many years their aol screen name - now, for many, it's facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Well this was the actual only way of contacting one person I knew back from my counterstrike days. CSMario who invented surf maps in counterstrike if you're out there, drop me a line!

</comment><comment><USER74> While I haven't used AIM in ages, I remember it fondly. There was a cool addon/hack for AIM that gave it more functionality such as combining all chats into one window and the ability to adjust the windows so that you could see through them. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? If you do, do you remember the name of the addon/hack?

<comment><USER75> DeadAIM [1] was one such hack. I remember it also provided the ability to manually change your status to anything, including invisible.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeadAIM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeadAIM)

<comment><USER74> That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks! I remember that hack fondly. It made things so much easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> When AOL bought ICQ, there was a lot of concern that they were cornering the IM market. And now AIM is dead.

</comment><comment><USER77> I tried to login with several of my old accounts months ago, but they blocked the reset password option.

</comment><comment><USER78> A few months ago I was playing around windows 98 in VM for fun. I installed an old version of Netscape that had AIM integration built right in. It still worked perfectly, and I even was able to talk to a few high school buddies.

RIP

</comment><comment><USER79> A/S/L?

</comment><comment><USER80> Toying with the idea of building "SAIM", an AIM clone (As close as we can without getting sued by AOL). Anyone want to team up?

<comment><USER81> I suspect that if AOL still cares about their AIM trademark, "SAIM" would be too close.

Pidgin was originally called "GAIM".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software)#Naming_dispu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_\(software\)#Naming_dispute)

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> brb

</comment><comment><USER83> List of product deaths of the 90s this year:

1\. Hotmail.com

2\. Half.com

3\. AIM

4\. ?

Rest easy old friends

<comment><USER84> Hotmail died this year? How?

<comment><USER85> It didn't, it became outlook.

<comment><USER84> It became Outlook like five years ago, unless I missed something.

<comment><USER85> Yeah I don't know what that dude was talking about. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER86> First it became live.com

<comment><USER53> Where does "MSN" and "Passport" fit in this orgy?

Hotmail->Live->Outlook

Hotmail - young rebellious teenager with 2 MB of storage

Live - "experimenting" phase, "monopoly conviction? I do not recall!"

Outlook - Older YUP, approaching middle age, quite cynical, but still might change, albeit with reluctance and complete lack of enthusiasm

<comment><USER87> Passport was what is now your Microsoft account (aka .NET account, Live Account, etc)

For a while hotmail was MSN hotmail and Windows Live Messenger was previously MSN messenger. Now MSN is just Microsoft's portal page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> I nearly crapped myself. I thought it meant the London AIM stock market (bang go my investments!).

</comment><comment><USER89> I remember when my friend introduced me to AIM (and "instant messaging") in the 90s.

"It's like email, but faster"

</comment><comment><USER90> good i've been locked out of my account since 2002 anyway. my poor neopets are starving

</comment><comment><USER49> Has it already been pulled? I was hoping to do something tonight before it was shut down.

</comment><comment><USER91> Remembers 90's when I would hooked on AIM to chat and make friends....make me cry

</comment><comment><USER92> Goodbye AIM, you were the catalyst to my Information Security career. Good times.

</comment><comment><USER93> Rolecall for your former screen name. Mine was:

Tdogg5388

Shows what age I was during peak of AIM.

</comment><comment><USER94> That's a last minute warning...

I never used AIM... is ICQ still being used...

<comment><USER19> They posted about it over a month ago (perhaps up to three), and if you used it you were getting regular pings about its upcoming demise.

As for ICQ, last I knew a Russian company bought it from AOL and it is still operational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Press F to Pay Respects

</comment><comment><USER96> The end of an era.

</comment><comment><USER97> Anyone else having troulbe connecting to ICQ?

</comment><comment><USER98> R.I.P.

</comment><comment><USER99> sk8naked19

</comment><comment><USER100> RIP

</comment><comment><USER101> You see what happens when you repeal title II!?!!

<comment><USER101> too soon?</comment></comment>


Jimmy Wales quietly launches Wikianswers - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/jimmy-wales-quietly-launches-wikianswers/

<comment><USER2> Even if the new site is not at all better, it may still find an audience if users unfamiliar with existing Q&A sites can be directed from Wikia. Surely users cannot have perfect knowledge of every possible site out there, and will be highly influenced by what is pushed at them?</comment>


Disney, others spy on kids with zombie cookies - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/lawsuit-disney-others-spy-on-kids-with-zombie-cookies.ars <comment><USER2> So the Flash-based cookie is basically spyware or am I wrong?</comment>


A Tiny Home on Wheels for £20,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/6670/a-tiny-home-on-wheels-for-%C2%A320000 <comment><AUTHOR> Video tour is great:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSzgh3D7-Q0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSzgh3D7-Q0)</comment>


Wage Theft Across the Board  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/opinion/wage-theft-across-the-board.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _Data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute show that in 2012, the Department of Labor helped 308,000 workers recover $280 million in back pay for wage-theft violations — nearly double the amount stolen that year in robberies on the street, at banks, gas stations and convenience stores._</comment>


Exploiting the Exploiters - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@curtbraz/exploiting-the-exploiters-46fd0d620fd8 <comment><AUTHOR> While I don't work on a red team, it does seem to me that an organization should vet software used by their red teams via the same processes that they use to make risk determinations regarding any other software run on organization systems.

Is it a trend to just "let red teams go to town" without their strict compliance to existing security processes? Are software titles to be used usually included in a statement of work or when negotiating the scope of an engagement?</comment>


The World Wants to Break Up with America's Internet - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-world-wants-to-break-up-with-americas-internet <comment><USER2> Asses.

Everyone. Everywhere.

Unconscionable asses.

Outside the US the internet is under the worst sort of attack. Filtering, censorship, and worse. Even in the most free countries in Europe or Asia the idea of an unrestricted, unfiltered, uncensored is under forceful attack. In countries like China, India, Turkey, or Russia the internet is already censored or filtered. In other places like the UK, France, and Australia plans for filtering and censorship are gaining steam.

Meanwhile, the idea that other countries are not pervasively snooping on all manner of internet communications is simply a fiction. Indeed, many such programs outside the US have been well known since before revelations of NSA internet surveillance came to light.

I'm not sure which is more deserving of ire. The assholes in the US government who abused and overstepped their authority and in the process validated every single fear (rational or not) about the US being so central to the internet. Or, the fools who are running away from one threat, US surveillance, right into the arms of a vastly more serious threat, local government censorship.

The idea of a free and open internet still existing a decade from now seems to be slipping out of our hands by the moment.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Or, the fools who are running away from one threat, US surveillance, right into the arms of a vastly more serious threat, local government censorship."

How do you judge which is more serious? For example you mentioned the UK. The only censorship/filtering here is for two things: piracy and porn. ISP's have to block The Pirate Bay (easy to get around through a proxy) and when you sign up for internet some ISP's ask "do you want us to run our filtering software to protect your children from porn?". You say "no" and they don't filter. Those things don't bother me at all. US surveillance does.

<comment> grey-area _Those things don 't bother me at all. US surveillance does._

The UK has surpassed the US in surveillance - the Tempora program attempts to capture all traffic in the UK and store it as long as possible.

 _The only censorship /filtering here is for two things: piracy and porn._

That's not quite true - along with self-censorship, there are huge areas (for example surveillance) which cannot be discussed in an open way in the UK because of government pressure (D-Notices, threats of legal action etc).

<comment><USER3> _That 's not quite true - along with self-censorship, there are huge areas (for example surveillance) which cannot be discussed in an open way in the UK because of government pressure (D-Notices, threats of legal action etc)._

Sorry are you suggesting that we in the UK can't have an open discussion on surveillance?

<comment> grey-area Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if history will look back at this as the decade the USA lost "governance" of the "free" world / leadership among nations. US Dollars losing defacto currency of the world status. Internet balkinization in response to spying. China and India overtaking US as places to make money selling consumerism. Leading up to now; no more unifying USSR threat -> NATO's lack of relevance, growth of EU, USA near unilateral military actions and wars.

The world is rapidly realizing not only do they not need the USA anymore, they are better off without it.

<comment><USER5> That is a lovely fantasy but the world is run by grownups. Intelligence like defense has been outsourced to the US and Europe shows no signs of resuming their own defense. I think you will be in for few disappointing decades, probably longer.

<comment><USER6> Methinks Europe is realizing that a) most of that defense and intelligence is aimed at enemies created by the US in the first place, and b) outsourcing defense to a nation that massively violates the civil rights of European citizens is about as appropriate as outsourcing protection to the mafia.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, violating the civil rights of Europeans should be done by European governments only - they all have similar spying programs in place, and have had them for a while now.

They are probably pretty concerned about the appearance of being concerned, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article could be less fluffy. I believe the most concrete piece is:

Another portion of their [Directors of all major Internet organizations present at the Uruguay meeting] released statement asked to accelerate _"the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing."_

Sounds more like "wrestling the centralized control from" rather than "breaking up".

</comment><comment><USER9> If you want to break up with the US on the web you need to do at least two things (and probably many more).

1\. Start laying (more) cables between countries that do not pass through US territory. [1]

2\. Encourage home-grown innovation and services so that people are not all using services under authority of US sovereignty.

[1] And try and stop the US from tapping them...

Good luck...

<comment><USER10> This is not impossible though.

China has done this with their Great Firewall and web firms such as Baidu (search engine), QQ (like Facebook), Weibo (like Twitter), etc. I believe EU and Russia also have the capability to do the same if they want to. For the rest of the world, they can license a copy from one of the three and host their own server farms.

This is not a bright future to have though: the Internet would become an actual inter-net among a few huge LANs.

<comment><USER11> China is way ahead of the game... that's for sure. There's no arguing that.

But the rest of the world is pretty dependent on the US when it comes to the internet. This include the EU and Russia. And this is not something that is trivial to change.

I am not saying that it WON'T change... I'm saying that for the rest of the world to create a China-like internet for their citizens may be desirable, but it won't be easy.

I mean... if I was Brazilian, I would much rather the Brazilian Government watched my internet usage than to have the American Government do so. Because the American Government can put you on a No-Fly list and you have no recourse. (ie - no rights in US Courts). Consequently, you have no easy way off of that list.

So I understand the desire... I just think it will be more difficult than flipping a switch.

<comment><USER12> >Because the American Government can put you on a No-Fly list and you have no recourse. (ie - no rights in US Courts).

The American government could put you on a No-Fly list, but your own government could put you in a cage.

<comment><USER11> Heh...

So can the American Government.

The difference is...

if your own Government puts you in a cage...

you actually have rights.

<comment><USER12> But - the American government probably isn't going to care if you say terrible things about your own, or if you're looking at porn, or cheating on taxes or denying the holocaust, or about any number of things that could get you into trouble on your home turf.

I'm not saying America in this case isn't a threat, it is abstractly, but it can also be the lesser evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> America's Internet? _shrugs_

People from all over the world have been contributing to the development of the internet, web, computers et cetera. Yet, it is America's Internet.

<comment><USER14> I assume the point is that countries don't want to break with "The Internet", just "The American Internet".

<comment><USER15> That might be how it's being played - the NSA surveillance is a useful story to push individual countries agendas, but what they're really after is complete control of domestic communications. It's not countries "breaking free from the US", rather the beginning of the balkanization of the internet.

<comment><USER16> Back to the good old days when all communications where under the countrys PTT and in third world country's was a nice source of foreign cash to be spirited away to a Swiss banck account.

Thats why Postmaster general was such a plum Job in that sort of country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, the rest of the world is "shocked, shocked I tell you" that the US is monitoring the internet? Does anyone really believe there aren't similar entities in other countries doing the same?

I bet all the world's governments can be divided into just two groups: those that are monitoring the internet, and those that are trying to.

<comment><USER14> There aren't many other world governments that yield the same kind of international power on the Internet. You might have a point about governments in general, but I think the situation actually gets better if no single government can wiretap on such a large scale.

That being said, the tone of your comment makes me think you are not interested in an argument, but rather just want to deflect attention away from what the USG is doing. Because everybody is doing it, right?

<comment><USER18> Agreed, that "argument" is getting tiresome.

> Does anyone really believe there aren't similar entities in other countries > doing the same?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Keep in mind here that Chehadi was appointed by the US government, who has remained silent on this matter."

No, he wasn't. ICANN appoints its own President/CEO. There is no US confirmation of that position. None.

</comment><comment><USER20> Governments on the 'same footing' vs. human beings on the 'same footing?' I respect people everywhere sure; but dictator x is not deserving of disproportionate influence.

</comment><comment><USER21> When we start embedding sensors and microchips in our bodies, it'll suck when we ctrl-alt-delete on the running processes in our bodies, and see Google Play Services in the task manager. Try to kill it and it pops back in your sleep. I just hope the current passive evil ever-present corporate interests aren't forced upon us at the biological level. I don't want my body violated by the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER22> 'Murica has some good points but it's a pretty destructive and unsustainable culture. I'm also worried about the fact that they have no qualms about blowing up people with drones or sending people to shady prisons without trial. You might say that China and Russia are worse, but they have nowhere near the power and technical possibilities open to Murcans.

<comment><USER23> You confuse decisions by government with those of the American people.

I can assure you, as an American, I have qualms about blowing up people with anything, including drones... and I hold due process to be one of the most fundamental human rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what impact this will have on cloud service providers.. I guess an opportunity for cloud vendors to develop "national cloud" \- a public cloud inaccessible outside a particular country/region/state etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm going to miss google a bit but I'll live :P</comment>


Shakespeare programming language - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_(programming_language) <comment><USER2> Nice! One of the authors (Jon Åslund) is a colleague of mine at Spotify. He did a talk at europython about our python usage: [http://ep2011.europython.eu/conference/talks/spotify-and- pyt...](http://ep2011.europython.eu/conference/talks/spotify-and-python-love- first-sight)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Wikipedia page doesn't really explain how the language works. The manual is a much better source: <http://shakespearelang.sourceforge.net/report/shakespeare/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I implemented a shakespeare interpreter a couple of years ago and it was great fun, although I had to extend the language a bit to be able to write tests. Sadly, there was an ISO commitee where I could send requests to get new standard features :)

</comment><comment><USER5> The Esolang wiki has articles on a number of other "Thematic" languages in this flavor: <http://esolangs.org/wiki/Category:Thematic>

</comment><comment><USER6> what would be super interesting is an obfuscater that sort of did the opposite of this. Feeding it normal source would output a Shakespearian play that could be decoded and run on another computer.

<comment><USER7> That sounds a little like steganography, or an IOCCC entry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've actually written a snippet in this once as a personal challenge. The GOTOs don't work properly in the interpreter I used, which just messed everything up.

</comment><comment><USER9> This has been around for quite a while, and, as usual, the "99 Bottles of Beer" example is quite instructive as to how to use the language on a real problem. "Thou art as cute as the difference between yourself and the sum of a furry cat and an animal. Speak your mind." :)

<http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-shakespeare-664.html></comment>


GVFS: Git Virtual File System - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS <comment><USER2> Saeed Noursalehi of MS presented GVFS at git-merge. MS is trying to get the Windows team to transition their enormous repo to git. 270Gb working directory, 3.5M files, 86Gb initial packfile, 400Mb index file, 4k users.

With GVFS, clone takes 5min (down from 12hrs), checkout takes 30sec (from 3hrs), status takes 4sec (from 8min), commit takes 13sec (from 30min).

GVFS is currently windows-only but support for mac and linux is planned.

<comment><AUTHOR> We just published more on our blog: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudioalm/2017/02/03/...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudioalm/2017/02/03/announcing- gvfs-git-virtual-file-system/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The README doesn't help much. On first glance, this idea seems to subvert one of the primary objectives of git. Maybe their repo is too large?

</comment><comment><USER4> nice name: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GVfs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GVfs)</comment>


How to Hire – eShares - <AUTHOR> https://blog.esharesinc.com/how-to-hire-34f4ded5f176#.7ikvyja1u <comment><AUTHOR> "It is humbling to go back to the labor market, hat-in-hand, asking for help. We did this when we hired you. We asked each of you to help us. You did not need us. There are plenty of great jobs. But we needed you. And thank goodness you came. We wouldn't be here without you. But each of you was hired because the team before you failed to execute without you. And this is still true today."

Such a great perspective to have. More of this please.</comment>