Oregon, Journalists Sue U.S. over Portland Arrests, Violence - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-17/u-s-agents-are-added-to-suit-alleging-attack-by-portland-police <comment> Munky-Necan I'm surprised that someone hasn't been shot yet. Unmarked camouflage officers in unmarked vans that do not identify themselves as officers sounds like they might get shot at if they try detaining the wrong person.

<comment><USER2> They aren't unmarked - their camouflage uniform clearly says "POLICE" on the front.

To be clear, do not shoot someone with POLICE written on their uniform, or even anyone you _suspect might_ be a police officer, because you will spend the rest of your life in jail.

<comment><USER3> The pics I've seen show a small "police" patch in dark lettering over camo obscured by assault rifle straps and equipment. That's not very clear in the dark when they don't identify themselves and are putting a bag over your head

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm left with a lot of questions like...

When someone is arrested there are certain legal requirements, like the miranda warning, that must be done. Are those all being followed?

People need to be charged in the proper jurisdiction for the proper laws. Is that happening?

A person can only be held in custody for a limited period of time without charges being filed. Is this being followed?

Are the details documented anywhere?

<comment><USER5> > certain legal requirements, like the miranda warning

No. _Many people believe that if they are arrested and not "read their rights," they can escape punishment. Not true. But if the police fail to read a suspect his or her Miranda rights, the prosecutor can't use for most purposes anything the suspect says as evidence against the suspect at trial._

[https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/police- questioning-m...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/police-questioning- miranda-warnings-29930.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was just in Portland last weekend. Other than the all the masks, and the awesome new outdoor dining where they shut down streets for restaurant patrons, it's identical to how it was the last time I was there in November.

These are authoritarian scare tactics to make the protestors stop protesting police violence, so that they can go back to the violent status quo and maintain the blue wall of silence. The outcry from the pro-militants about public property damage is a day late and a dollar short: the point of the protests is about the murder of innocent blacks by out of control police. Murder >> Vandalism.

Want the protests to stop? Address police brutality, don't escalate with random acts of surreal violence.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article echoes another recent article[1], which has more details.

[1] - [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7w4w8/trump-sent-the- fed...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7w4w8/trump-sent-the-feds-to- portland-and-theyre-kidnapping-people-off-the-streets)

</comment><comment><USER8> DHS is like that youngest kid that gets to do a lot more and get away with. Assume that what happened is legal and this type of `snatch and go` is a valid way to detain someone. Does it make it right? It doesn't sound like they were grabbing someone who had an arrest warrant against them. The state seem to not know that these detention were being made. Hard to know who is making the arrest. Hard to know what was being done during detention. Was their phone copied? Is that okay? Maybe more than just the local police have a bit too much power than they need.

</comment><comment><USER9> FYI, what DHS alleges and is trying to stop, however competently or not:

[https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf- co...](https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-condemns- rampant-long-lasting-violence-portland)

<comment><USER10> Wow, that's a long list of mostly labeling minor property damage "violence". In a context where there have been some killings (car driving into demonstrations, shootings) - this seems like a clear case of wrong priorities along the lines of:

[https://theintercept.com/2020/07/15/george-floyd-protests- po...](https://theintercept.com/2020/07/15/george-floyd-protests-police-far- right-antifa/)

Thanks for posting the link, by the way. Very illuminating to the DHS state of mind.

<comment><USER11> Yeah,very illuminating. It's amazing how everyone who caused property damage was a "violent anarchist."

<comment><USER12> Have you seen pictures from Portland? It looks like the site of a third-world battle field.

I'm sure it sounds like minor property damage, but when you see what's happening, it's not as minor as you think.

Remember, these are the folks that destroyed the elk statue for some reason. Nobody is really talking about the fact that these riots have been going on for more than a month, so people don't know how bad it is.

<comment><USER13> Will nobody think of the elk? Thats a fine molehill you've got there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're looking to hear the other (pro-police) side of the story, I'd recommend checking out this video by YouTuber "Donut Operator". He's a former LEO and he makes pretty fair videos doing breakdowns of officer involved shootings and whether they were justifiable or not. He did some commentary on videos coming out of Portland.

[https://youtu.be/5EgMijMhS_U](https://youtu.be/5EgMijMhS_U)

<comment><USER15> There is no "other side" for unidentified officers in unmarked cars with no accountability. There's no justifying that. This problem could be dealt with by forces who identify themselves and can be held responsible for violations.

Do you have some videos explaining the "other side" for the SS too?

<comment><USER16> Well said. The attempt to divide this into a binary issue is (sadly) predictable. Nobody here should support the use of these gestapo-style tactics from the federal government, ever. For anything. Full stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I see a lot of comments on HN, and elsewhere along the lines of "America is so terrible! Look how the police treat their own citizens!"

The difference between the United States and many (most?) other countries is in the article's title: The word "sue."

In America, aggrieved citizens have the right to correct their government. It's not always easy. It's rarely quick. But it can be done, and it has been done hundreds or even thousands of times in the past.

America is a work in progress. Deliberately.

<comment><USER18> Do you think they would be protesting still if there was an easier way to petition the government to make actual changes?

Of course not. No one wants to potentially risk arrest and or be seriously injured in the political process. What we're seeing is the last resort of people organizing against a broken political system.

<comment><USER2> No. These (mostly teenagers) want change that most people _don 't_ want. That is why the process doesn't work for them - because they are the minority opinion. So that's why they resort to violence.

<comment><USER18> > mostly teenagers [citation needed]

> want change that most people don't want [citation needed]

<comment><USER19> probably closer to 18 - 34 demo based on looking over a number of arrest records. WRT the 2nd part, look up general polling for defunding the police, or general sentiment for communism

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Secret police snatching people off the street in unmarked vehicles is 100% police state / gestapo behavior. No one should be OK with it.

<comment><USER21> > _No one should be OK with it._

Agreed. And no one should be okay with the police standing down while rioters smash public buildings, vandalize and desecrate public spaces and burglarize innocent local businesses. What is the fair middle ground, and how do we get there?

<comment><USER22> I'd suggest the fair middle ground is to loosen state power by defunding police departments and reinvesting in communities. I keep seeing this sentiment voiced, but from a ground level looking up it comes off as closeminded because it implies that "riots" and "protesting" are different things. The reality is no one in portland tried to burn down the justice center, if they did they would be shot on sight. Whats happening is people are disrupting their societies to make a point to the people who run it that they're doing a poor job. That's a noble endeavor, no matter the means. America's founded on white supremacy, and America's maintained white supremacy. I think it's inspiring that people are targeting the police forces of their cities, who are in no uncertain terms the major enforcers of a rotten status quo.

<comment><USER21> > _That's a noble endeavor, no matter the means. America's founded on white > supremacy, and America's maintained white supremacy._

That's fair. But understand that not everyone agrees with this, and will be willing to do what it takes to defend their way of life. What does the end- game look like?

<comment><USER23> The people holding on to the past lose. It's not complicated.

Hopefully they don't use a bunch of violence in the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Protests." Let's be honest on both sides. What's going on in Portland is violent rioting. "Demonstrators" don't burn cars in the street, but rioters do.

<comment><USER25> Burning cars, so what? Parisians riot like this about every 18 months or so and the state doesn't call out the secret police and somehow the country still exists.

<comment><USER26> Maybe the fact that there are no consequences has something to do with the fact that it keeps happening every 18 months?

<comment><USER27> You are in support of secret police extrajudicially detaining citizens? Over a burnt car?

Why can't law enforcement do this by the book?

<comment><USER26> The initial detention of suspected criminals usually is "extrajudicial" in that it's done by police without a warrant from a judge. These are federal officers instead of the local police (who should be handling this, except that they're being hamstrung by local officials' pandering to the mob). But that doesn't make them "secret police."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Whilst it's potentially interesting, this submission will probably get flagged by other users who can see that the flame value outweighs any curious discovery.

There are a few comments which follow the guidelines and encourage discussion though, but more that are quick to temper.

</comment><comment><USER29> alright, so who pays when the lawsuit goes through? Taxes? How do we get it from the guilty department's budget?

<comment><USER30> I'm no lawyer, but the article implies that the purpose of the lawsuit is not to seek compensation but to stop the Federal Government from continuing these operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Any lawyers or people familiar with law want to chime in on how this will turn out?

<comment><USER32> The States should prevail, because under the Constitution the Federal Government does not have police powers and under the 10th Amendment police powers are reserved for the states.

Now the limit on the Federal government police powers has eroded slowly (like all limitations on the federal governments power under the constitution), so you could point to the FBI, secret service, ICE/CBP...but if the Federal Government prevails it would be a giant leap in erosion of State rights and limitations on Federal powers. Basically it would be negating the 10th Amendment and authorizing the Federal Government to establish their own police and unilaterally deploy them nationwide.

In short the States should prevail based on police power and 10th amendment arguments, but I wouldn't foreclose this being the spark the Federal Government is looking for to gain the police powers they have always wanted. If the Federal Government prevails over the States here, you can anticipate a "commerce clause" argument where the Federal Government will use mental gymnastics to claim State failures to police their States effect interstate commerce, so the Federal Government must have the right to step in with their own police powers and regulate.

<comment><USER26> When was the last time a 10th amendment argument won the day? Like 200 years ago?

<comment><USER18> Last time I checked, the fed doesn't have policing power, only states do. This is a huge overstep of states rights.

<comment><USER26> That's the plenary "police power" you're thinking of, and it has a lot more to do with the constitutionality of legislation than with actual police work. It doesn't mean that federal officers can never engage in police-like activities.

See, e.g., the FBI.

<comment><USER32> We have seen federal agents acting as police and detaining and arresting individuals on the streets over objections from the Governor and Mayor.

If you are going to support these acts:

1\. Cite any legal precedent where Federal government has policed and made arrests over state/local government objections?

2\. Identify the Federal Criminal Statute any of the suspects violated authorizing these "arrests"? (presumably even if you believe the Federal government has the power to police over State/local objections, you hopefully agree they don't have the power to make arrests without probably cause a crime was committed, so what is are the federal criminal statutes?)

3\. Now even supposing the Court did side with the Federal Government, finding that they have police powers they may unilaterally deploy over objections from local governments and that the arrests here were lawful, you would still tons of other Constitutional issues. For example: in all the arrests I have seen, I have not seen any miranda warnings, post arrest I have yet to find any confirmation the arrestees were afforded their constitutional rights to an attorney...seeing as the Federal agents to date have not had these traditional police powers I think it is fair to assume they haven't received this basic training, and for that reason alone even if the Fed had these powers they are still likely violating numerous constitutional rights in each arrest.

<comment><USER26> 1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807)

2\. Attempting to burn down the federal courthouse would probably violate federal law, one would think.

3\. You're just speculating. There's no reason to think the arrestees aren't being mirandized and given access to counsel.

<comment><USER32> >1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807)

Before invoking the powers under the Act, 10 U.S.C. § 254 requires the President to first publish a proclamation ordering the insurgents to disperse. So if this is your precedent and there is no Presidential proclamation, then you would agree Trump has engaged in illegal acts?

>2\. Attempting to burn down the federal courthouse would probably violate federal law, one would think.

There have been multiple "arrests" on video, and in the video the individuals were not attempting to burn anything down, much less a federal courthouse, in fact they weren't even near a federal courthouse and had no materials in their hands to suggest they could burn anything down.

>3\. You're just speculating. There's no reason to think the arrestees aren't being mirandized and given access to counsel.

There is video of some of these "arrests" including the prior to the interactions, the initial interactions, the detention, the "arrest" and placement into unmarked vans...in these videos there was no Miranda given. Since when is verifiable video evidence speculation?

But yes, my point is even if a court ruled the Federal Government has this power, there would still be many other Constitutional protections that apply, and based on what we have seen there seems to be those kinds of violations based on verifiable video evidence. I have also yet to see anyone who was arrested be bonded out nor make a public statement through any attorney...where are these arrestees held? Have they been afforded the right to an attorney? Have they appeared before a Judge for bail?

<comment><USER26> 1\. I don't know if this is exactly what's being relied on here. You asked for _any example_ , and this is one.

2\. It's easy to trim videos to remove the incriminating parts. You can make anyone look like the bad guy with selective editing.

3\. Maybe they mirandized them as soon as they were in the van? We have no idea. Anyway, failure to mirandize doesn't make an arrest illegal—it just means that if the suspect says something incriminating before the Miranda warnings, it can't be used against him later.

The fact that _you haven't seen_ anyone bonded out is meaningless.

<comment><USER32> >The fact that you haven't seen anyone bonded out is meaningless.

If you believe Constitutional rights are meaningless.

<comment><USER26> You missed the part of that statement that was emphasized. I was saying that the fact that you personally haven't seen it happen doesn't mean it isn't happening.

<comment><USER32> > I was saying that the fact that you personally haven't seen it happen > doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Yes, when bail hearings aren't seen, its good proof they aren't happening because its contrary to legal procedure. Are you claiming all people snatched off the streets have had bail hearings in secret and for some reason the court orders aren't being made public? You do realize news would show up to these bail hearings if they were happening and otherwise the Court orders would be public record right?

You have the President bragging about these actions:

"We've done a great job in Portland," Trump said. "I guess, we have many people right now in jail, and we very much quelled it. And if it starts again, we'll quell it again very easily. It's not hard to do if you know what you're doing." [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/17/report...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/17/reports- federal-officers-detain-portland-protesters-unmarked-vans/5457471002/)

The fact people would be in still be in jail as opposed to being brought before a judge for a bail hearing shifts the burden, sure some could have been denied bail (on the merits), but either way the Judge/Court order would exist, the fact there are no court orders is prima facie evidence they are not happening, there are ongoing violations of constitutional rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also condemned the reported actions of the agents.

"Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street, we call it kidnapping," the organisation wrote on Twitter. "These actions are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered." [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-53453077](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53453077)

Anyway its clear this won't go anywhere, because unless I see that which does not exist, in your opinion the same can not be excluded from existence...which is obviously an impossible burden. Should unmarked militarized federal officers occupy your city and snatch you off the streets, I wish you the best.

<comment><USER26> I mean, it's not like these people are just being disappeared. "Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far, while others have been arrested and released . . . ."

[https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement- unm...](https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked- vehicles-portland-protesters/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not sure why they are saying the detentions are conducted "secretly".

<comment><USER34> Because they're being conducted by unidentified agents of the state and there isn't a thorough public record of it. The idiom refers to state records, not to public knowledge or visibility.

<comment><USER2> The uniform clear says "POLICE" on it.

<comment><USER19> Along with agency patches on the shoulder area

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why isn't Oregon law enforcement treating this as they do any other kidnappings: by finding and arresting the kidnappers, and freeing the victims?

The people who ordered the kidnappings could also be rounded up on charges of conspiracy.

<comment><USER2> Because the uniforms clearly say "POLICE" on them.

<comment><USER35> > Because the uniforms clearly say "POLICE" on them.

You keep pointing that out as if it actually means something.

<comment><USER2> You keep denying it as if no one watches the video themselves

<comment><USER35> Anyone can buy a patch that says "POLICE" on it and sew it to some fatigues. That's not a legitimate form of identification.

There is no law enforcement organization or bureau named "POLICE" which one could petition, interview or sue.

Stop being purposely obtuse.

<comment><USER36> That's a stupid argument. Anyone can buy any easily visible publicly recognizable sign.

I fail to see how this badge is insufficient in a potentially aggressive situation.

<comment><USER37> So let's change the situation then.

If someone was trying to kick in your door wearing generic fatigues and a patch that says 'POLICE' while refusing to identify themselves, would you let them in? I'm assuming that would be sufficient identity for you to agree that they are in fact police and they have a sufficient reason to kick in your door.

<comment><USER2> Yes, absolutely, and so should you if you're smart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Maybe these Portlanders should stop trying to burn down the federal courthouse.

<comment><USER39> My thoughts exactly. When they're being violent and destroying things, does it really come as a surprise that they're getting arrested?

<comment><USER40> This isn't about whether or not they get arrested. This is about certain ground rules and principles that the government must always uphold, even against unprincipled opponents.

Federal law enforcement officers, dressed in camo gear and without any identifying insignia, arresting and covering the faces of alleged rioters and stuffing them into unmarked vehicles and taking them God-knows-where is absolutely unacceptable.

These principles are what separates the government from the rioters. How are you going to hold the government accountable when you don't even know which government agency a certain police officer belongs to?

<comment><USER2> The uniforms in the videos clearly say "POLICE" on them. According to the people released, they were read their Miranda rights - and who cares that they are dressed in camo and using unmarked cars?

As long as the suspect is put before a judge, I don't see the issue.

<comment><USER40> A tiny amount of "police" text isn't worth much of anything. There is absolutely no defensible reason to hide the agency patch and badge number of every individual officer on the ground. There is absolutely no defensible reason to tie beanbags around the faces of arrestees. There is absolutely no defensible reason for the police to put arrestees into unmarked vehicles.

There is no way of ascertaining exactly who these federal agents are. This precludes court redress and is unacceptable.

<comment><USER19> They have agency patches on too, just for the sake of truth

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Ironically, giving ideological ammo to the protestors that the system is rotten to the core and needs to be completely replaced. Unmarked rented vehicles kidnapping protestors that lead to interrogations in a secret offsite location sounds a lot like the Stasi or Nazi germany. No one should be ok with this, ever.

Where are the "second amendments against tyranny folks"? Oh, they probably support the police. Nice to see that when democracy is under attack, it's fine if they're just attacking the other side.

An alternate sources:

[https://www.newsweek.com/trump-accused-deploying-secret- poli...](https://www.newsweek.com/trump-accused-deploying-secret-police- portland-political-stunt-1518595)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-53453077](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53453077)

Seems like it's largely to shore up Trump's flagging poll numbers as the hope is that it plays well on Fox News. Feels like a fascist Nixonian "law and order" political calculation but like most Trumpian endeavors it will probably backfire.

edit: Let's put this another way. If these were the anti-mask protestors or the anti-lockdown protestors how do you think this would go down? Do you think elements on the right would be okay with this? My feeling is that it would be a shit storm. But because it's happening to "left wing thugs", "looters" and "antifa" it's ok right? Whether you believe these people have committed crimes or not, having secret police round them up is completely unamerican. If they committed crimes, serve up formal arrest warrants, give them their Miranda rights and their day in front of a judge with lawyer representation.

Democratic values and human rights only exist for those who political positions we agree with, right? I forgot there was a clause in the constitution that allowed you to just skip articles because it happened to people you don't like /s

<comment><USER42> We were told to shut up and put away our guns because these things could never happen...

<comment><USER41> Well if you don't use it to defend democratic values then I'd say you don't deserve those guns. The 2nd amendment was literally a hedge against these situations but many of those strong believers in the second amendment are conspicuously absent and probably side with the right wing fascist elements. Unfortunately many if not most gun owners seem to be entirely ok with eroding American democratic values and freedom so long as the other side "gets what's coming to them".

<comment><USER39> Yeah, because we're tired of mayors and governors letting the real fascists own the streets, causing untold violence and damage. If those folks are breaking the law, it should be no surprise when they're placed under arrest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a perfect Kafka trap, by resisting arrest by secret police in unmarked vehicles you can be labeled as a "domestic terrorist" later, justifying the arrest post-hoc.

It's especially concerning they have no ID or agency badges, as right wing extremists have been using the protests to dress up like soldiers.

<comment><USER19> "It's especially concerning they have no ID or agency badges"

Do you have source(s) for this claim?

<comment><USER18> Local LEO told them to identify themselves and they were told to "fuck off"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Antifa was declared a terrorist organization. They were seen as co-opting a movement, instigating with violence throughout the country, especially in poor neighborhoods, and attempting to start a race-war. However you may feel about the designation, the means to stop them are deemed serious enough to warrant these measures.

<comment><USER44> > Antifa was declared a terrorist organization.

Is this true? Was the identity right declared a terrorist organization as well?

Did "antifa" killed someone in the US? (Genuinely asking, i stopped following the new around may).

Because I will tell you that Antifa in europe is the leftist equivalent of the identity right (neonazis groups and white supremacists). So if antifa as a whole is deemed a terrorist organisation despite not having killed anyone while you have members of the identity right driving into a crowd or mass shooting people at a synagogue and the identity right as a whole is not at least declared a terrorist organization, this is a weird asymmetry.

<comment><USER37> No. There's been violence for sure, but 'antifa' as people claim have no murdered anyone nor caused any mass murders. Trump has said that he will declare them a terrorist group however.

The great irony of this all is that we have direct examples of the alt-right straight up murdering people during protests. Like Heather Heyer. But the Unite the Right rally 'wasn't responsible', it was just some rogue person totally unrelated to the alt-right (despite them cheering it on).

During these events, all protesters are considered rioters and thus are considered criminals. But during Unite the Right, not all protesters are considered neo-nazis despite marching with neo-nazis. Guilt by association for BLM, and then 'fine people on both sides' for neo-nazis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> We're at the point where the larger Republican establishment either needs to repudiate and remove this anti-American wannabe dictator, or they're going to find themselves at the guillotine alongside him. Our society cannot take another 6 months of economic destruction, brazen totalitarianism, and weaponized ignorance.

<comment><USER21> > _or they 're going to find themselves at the guillotine alongside him_

Be careful what you wish for, because the tech overlords and their enablers aren't very far down the list after the politicians.

<comment><USER45> I'm not wishing for it. I stated what I'd like to see happen to prevent collapse from occurring.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Rob an Airbnb: flaw could put 1.2M homes at risk - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@aronszanto/how-to-rob-an-airbnb-252e7e7eda44 <comment><USER2> Thanks! Excellent article by the International Business Times: [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/airbnb-privacy-flaw-makes-it- easy-h...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/airbnb-privacy-flaw-makes-it-easy-hackers- work-out-hosts-personal-details-1627611)

</comment><comment><USER3> Un fucking real. Airbnb better do something about this, or they're going to have some angry customers.</comment>


Court OKs warrantless use of hidden surveillance cameras - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57542510-38/court-oks-warrantless-use-of-hidden-surveillance-cameras/

<comment><USER2> I learned something today.

The 4th ammendment states:

The right of the people to be secure in their _persons, houses, papers, and effects_ , against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Note its not private property so if you have a large multi-acre plot of land apparently you do not have a right to prevent it from being searched without a warrant (except the area immediately surrounding a residence). This has been upheld in court in a previous case where the defendent's land was searched without a warrant and they found a marijuana field a mile away from the home.

This ruling extends that precedent to include hidden surveillance cameras.

<comment><USER3> _Note its not private property_

Actually it is private property, and the size of the property does not matter either.

The court ruled the way it did because the area of the property that was monitored was deemed to fall under the category of "open fields"

This would likely be different if it could be shown that the owner was actively maintaining this area of his property, or erected some sort of barrier, or something to ensure that the area of his property he would like protected is not just an open field. It wouldn't even necessarily have to be a residence, although this would be the most unquestionable.

Even still, I think it is a bad ruling, and I hope that it is overturned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title of the article is misleading. The issue here isn't about putting cameras on private property. As I understand it, the judge was saying that in a place that the police could have searched or could have themselves hidden and watched in person without a warrant they can also put a camera without a warrant. I'm as bothered as just about anybody about the erosion of 4th amendment protections, but this doesn't appear to me to be one of those.

This is not about someone's residence. It is about rules for searching "open fields."

</comment><comment><USER5> Let me guess, hidden surveillance of law enforcement by citizens is not covered, right?

</comment><comment><USER6> BUT - If you find the cameras, you get to keep them.</comment>


Ask HN: How to RTFM? - <AUTHOR> I have seen dozens of times that people direct to the language manuals etc. to understand something in depth. I am a new college grad working as a Software Engineer and I mostly reference the manual when I cannot find something on Stackoverflow or some blog.
Whenever I have tried to go through the manual, the  kind of language used has diminished my interest and ended up in my giving it up. Also, I don't have an eidetic memory, so I don't see how manuals can be useful in the real sense but I really want to go in depth of some topics like PostgreSQL, Spring, Javascript, Python etc.
It would be great to hear if someone actually reads the manual and is able to successfully apply it in their lives... <comment><USER3> I've had the opposite experience. I've found countless times that online tutorials confuse the issue, even if they help you to accomplish some specific task. The FM on the other hand tells it like it is. The trick is to only read the parts that you need to in order to clear up your confusion. This sometimes means reading one section and having to look something up in another section before you can understand the first, and this can sometimes be a recursive process, but if you have any understanding of the technology at all the recursion depth is rarely greater than two or three. You'll quickly find that the things you don't understand have straightforward explanations in terms of the things you do understand.

If you find yourself five levels deep in this process and still unable to comprehend what you're reading, you need to take a step back and ask yourself if you do in fact have any real understanding of the technology you're using.

<comment><USER4> > If you find yourself five levels deep in this process and still unable to > comprehend what you're reading, you need to take a step back and ask > yourself if you do in fact have any real understanding of the technology > you're using.

... in which case, you are in exactly the right spot to learn the fundamentals of whatever you're trying to learn :D

One reason why I value (good) manuals is precisely that they are _not_ simply a how-to-do-X-with-Y tutorial. Instead, a good manual will explain the theory behind what you're trying to do - and so leave you in a much better position to solve future problems on your own. Because now, you actually understand what you're doing.

<comment><USER5> I find that a lot of documentation is poorly written or poorly structured. They read like a straight description of a piece of software rather than a document designed to help you understand what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't read to remember everything (that's virtually impossible for most people), mostly skim to build an index of concepts and possibilities in your mind – and leave the details to the reference materials. Don't even bother to try and remember details for something you don't immediately need. Computers are good at details, humans are good at high-level webs of concepts.

You also need to be comfortable with stopping at a certain layer of abstraction and mostly trusting that abstraction holds. For many programmers (including me) I suspect that's the model of a computer presented by C. I don't really bother to try to understand much of what's underneath this model because time and my brain is regrettably finite. I just know more or less what it's meant to do and trust it works. (Trust that, as evidenced by Spectre/Meltdown, is unfortunately misplaced, but still – I'm only one person.)

If I had to attack trying to understand, say, PostgreSQL, I would find out what sort of thing it is (an RDMBS), what sort of ingredients that has (a network protocol, a query parser, fundamental data storage structures, etc) and fill in detail as my interest takes me. There's always going to be more to learn about – these are massive subjects – so it's always going to be piecemeal.

</comment><comment><USER7> I find the most detailed manual I can find on a thing and then I skim it, making note of chapter and paragraph headings.

90% of the benefit of a manual is knowing _that a thing is possible_ the other 10% is the manual telling you _how that thing is possible_.

I do the same thing with man pages, I just scan down them, I don't care about the minutiae at that point but it's handy to know.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just so you know, manuals aren't read like story books, from beginning to end. They're arranged in a tree structure with the root/trunk giving a rough Overview or Introduction on whatever the manual is about, the branches explaining various features in broad terms and ordered by their importance, and the leaves explaining the most arcane details you might eventually need to know about.

What I do is first take note of whatever seems like a Table of Contents which neatly lays out this tree-like structure with one-line summaries. Pay attention to each title, remembering their existence for future reference, and determine how much you want to know from the get-go. Of course, the root/trunk, otherwise known as Overview or Introduction, will be relevant to everything so go over it. Only go to the deepest branches/leaves when you're planning on using that knowledge, but always go over the branches that lead to those leaves.

That about covers it. For example, there was recently a question on SE on what had higher precedence in the shell, the | or the &&. Had this person gone over the shell grammar section of the bash manpage, the answer would've been obvious:

> Pipelines: A pipeline is a sequence of one or more commands separated by one > of the control operators | or |&.

> Lists: A list is a sequence of one or more pipelines separated by one of the > operators ;, &, &&, or ||, and optionally terminated by one of ;, &, or > <newline>.

By the way, some answers say that you shouldn't go over the manual unless you want to know a detail, but I think it sometimes pays off to read it whole (or most parts of it). I've read most of the manuals for vim, bash, i3, urxvt, among others, and I can say, it has paid off. This might depend on how you learn best, though.

<comment><USER9> > _Just so you know, manuals aren 't read like story books, from beginning to > end._

Yes they can be! And if you're working a great deal with some technology, it behooves you to read the manual from cover to cover. Try it!

I've read a number of programming language standards from cover to cover, after which my facility greatly improved.

After I read the GNU Make manual from cover to cover, I was able to understand complex Makefiles like never before, never mind generate them from scratch.

At university I read a Motorola 68000 architecture spec from cover to cover (while writing an emulator). My ability to code MC68K assembly shot through the roof.

I haven't read the entire POSIX standard cover-to-cover (not even the much smaller classic 1990 version), but sections of it, like the complete description of the Shell Command Language. My ability to write robust shell scripts shot through the roof.

I've read the complete manuals for GNU Flex and Bison, plus the POSIX descriptions of these and other materials. Complete whiz here.

Highly recommend cover-to-cover. Problems is, standards have gotten a lot thicker. Everything takes more time. You have to choose wisely and prioritize.

> _branches explaining various features in broad terms and ordered by their > importance, and the leaves explaining the most arcane details you might > eventually need to know about._

That simply isn't how most technical manuals work. Once you get past the intros and overviews, the arcane details are spread throughout all the descriptions like raisins in a pudding. Generally, the description of a specific feature or construct is completely given in one lump, with all the arcane details. If there are four paragraphs, the first two may be general, the second two full of arcane details. If you don't read the arcane details, you could be screwed. Oftentimes, you're reading this stuff because of the arcane details, not because you don't get the gist of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The thing is with RTFM is that it takes time. We don't all have time. So while RTFM will sometimes help, almost all the manuals lack good examples. It would be much more useful if all manuals had an equally extensive examples section. Then we could say RTFE(xamples). `man awk` and `/` for `examples`, they have a great example section. `man curl` doesn't have a specific section but does have examples sprinkled throughout the options. `man kill` has zero references to `example`, yeah, probably don't need it but there are some nice `kill` tricks that could be in there.

I do read `man` pages daily, and it does get easier & faster with time. I am a pro at searching man pages, but again, most lack good, high quality examples, which would be most effective. As soon as I open a man page I press `/`, which lets me search. If I am looking for an option (e.g. -F) I search for ` -F` with the preceding space, this almost always gets you the actual option, not just mentions of it. Then I press `n` or `shift + n` to go to the next and previous results.

Also keep in mind that some apps don't have man pages, for those try `help <command>` or `info <command>`.

Another tip is that the `apropos` or `man -k|--apropos` command can search all man pages for you. Also there are hidden man pages, like `man 7 signal` instead of just `man signal` (try it). `apropos` can find those for you.

Getting faster at reading is a key part of this, I spent some time exercising my eye muscles and it does help. (Eye Q) was the name of the software I used, I plan on revisiting that again.

I also spent a lot of time reading technical books, which _only_ helps if you practice the information you learn. Otherwise it just goes in and out. You want to take knowledge and turn it into skills, by practicing. Deliberate Practice to be more specific per the book Peak by Anders Erickson (must read for all learners).

At any rate, don't be afraid to ask and use StackOverflow, we don't all have many hours to find answers, we need to be effective, that includes reading a lot, but also knowing how to search, very effectively. Search Engines are a manual in a sense.

</comment><comment> dan-robertson As others have said, it is often helpful just to have a general idea of what things can be done so one can know where to look to find it. E.g. it might be "I know a library/tool related to this problem, let me find it's manual and guess some keywords to search", or even just "this feels like something for a lesser used unix tool, let me do info coreutils and look around."

For programming languages, the thing I find particularly helpful is a formal grammar as it typically resolves any syntax related issues (and often these are subtle issues where two terms look similar written but one may be more restrictive than the other). The other thing I try to do is build a mental model of the compiler: If one has a good idea of what sort of thing one's code might be compiled to, it is more obvious what constructs should and should not be allowed. This can backfire slightly: if one has an idea that eg Javascript will be compiled to fast code, it is obvious that the with construct should not be allowed, but maybe that just implies that the construct makes code slow.

I think this can help to understand eg why virtual methods are slower to call or why overloading works the way it does in an oo language, or eg why only certain subtyping operations should be around (in particular one way to decide this is "this language has certain typing rules and those demand certain constraints" Another is "this language wants to compile this construct to a certain thing and that requires that certain obvious constraints must follow"

</comment><comment><USER11> Read the documentation for what you're currently using and struggling with. Sometimes I peruse the documentation and discover new things I have never tried that I can try to make my life easier. It's a bit hard at first, but once you're used to it you can just read documentation and get work done. I also read the underlying source sometimes to get further insight.

</comment><comment><USER12> I feel that Google's manuals are notoriously bad or written in some kind of manualese dialect that only Googlers use. Things like Android or Firebase.

For Android, the unofficial manuals are better, or even Stack Overflow.

I've seen some very well written manuals though. Facebook seems to be good at it at least.

</comment><comment><USER13> Documentation is good when it's good, bad when it's not. And people don't put much effort into documentation, in the average case. The final source of truth is the code. If you're wondering why something doesn't work, the code will tell you exactly why, because that is what controls success or failure. The manual author may have forgotten something, or the documentation might be out of date. You'll never know for sure.

For that reason, I would say that the amount of time I spend reading documentation is significantly less than then amount of time I spend reading the code.

For documentation authors, I'd recommend focusing on giving the reader the high-level context necessary to understand the code. It can be hard to dive into that. But things like "an error will be returned if these 86 conditions are true" probably should be a reference to the code, because you know there are going to be 87 conditions tomorrow and you'll forget to update the documentation.

As for your actual question, it can be hit and miss as to whether or not you can go into depth in something by merely reading. I have not found a book about modern Javascript ("use the axios library to make HTTP requests from your code") and just have to cobble things together from existing code, googling for the current problem I'm having, etc. I imagine that sucks for people new to the field, but I suppose is why you get paid for having experience. For things like SQL, you can definitely find a book about it, as it's been essentially the same for my entire life, and what really matter are the fundamentals of relational databases... the Postgres-specific things you will probably discover while doing some work.

So I guess what I'm saying is... focus on getting experience. If you tell yourself, "I want to write 'foo' in Javascript" you will learn Javascript somehow. It's not as easy as just reading something, but it will stick with you forever. And when you run into the inevitable obscure error message, realize that you can just read the code to figure out what's actually happening. You need not be dependent on a secondary source when reading the primary source works. Because someday, you will be paid to work on code without documentation, and you will need that skill.

</comment><comment><USER14> > I am a new college grad working as a Software Engineer...

I don't want to sound harsh but...How did you manage to earn a college degree without learning how to research specific topics?

That's pretty much all I did in college, I tried to "pivot" a while back and started at one of those private universities and was truly offended when they said I had to take a course on "researching topics" or some such nonsense and wouldn't let me out of it when I said "but, Dude, I have an _art history_ degree..."

</comment><comment><USER15> > _I really want to go in depth into x y z_

Don't worry. Manuals are not supposed to be read like a textbook/tutorial. Not most of them anyway.

I know a guy who read through half a thick book on Python without writing a line of code. He said it all made sense until a point, where he began to hate the language. Well, it was a terrible book for a beginner, but the point is, reading about the stuff is not enough and you will only get repelled.

Choose one tech that you like. Investigate how real use works, mostly by trying to build _real_ things, even if only for study purposes. If you get lost or the learning material gets repulsive/boring, move on. You need to have a good time. Seek existing useful examples by other people in real famous software not textbooks. Emulate them / reuse parts for your projects / invent, imagine new uses. You get deep by enjoying and "pushing the envelope" on what you can build. Not by reading per se. That is a parallel activity that can help, but is not enough.

Many books/manuals are good for getting straight idea on which version of the tech supports the feature you need, and what is the version-specific syntax and limitations. But this is the kind of information that gets useful only after you already have a very good working knowledge of the thing and need to deal with real world ugliness of different versions/obscure features/corner cases at work.

</comment><comment><USER16> I find that after you've picked up the basics, reference materials are usually the most useful part of documentation by far.

For programming languages I always add the standard library reference into my browser's search engines. For example, I can type "kt mutablelist" into my address bar to go straight to [https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/?q=mutablelist&p=0](https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/?q=mutablelist&p=0).

</comment><comment><USER17> For context I have been writing professional code since the early 90's, and while I have a ton of experience, I still will pull out the manual or google to refresh myself. The difference between being in college and the professional world is it is expected that you have to use reference material to do your job effectively. And over time things you use frequently or have solved frequently will stick in your head. The things you have solved, but not used regularly will require more time to refresh.

The more you specialize in solving a specific type of problem or in a specific area of software the less referring you do for everyday problems but it will still be a part of your normal day.

Also, when you read something, the only way to truly understand it (and tradeoffs) in my opinion is to write tests and actually test it. That is something that is super critical to success, doing small test projects to prove it out and see what works and what doesn't. Because frankly what is written in the manual and what it actually does or how you actually do it might differ still.

</comment><comment><USER18> Manuals are not really for reading cover to cover. You generally want to use the table of contents, the index, or searching of some variety (google, ctrl-f, whatever) to narrow in on exactly what you want to know. A few scenarios I find them useful:

(1) If you're getting conflicting advice from blogs and stack overflow: this is often the case when software is changing fast. Manuals are often explicitly versioned to match the software, so if the manual covers the topic you care about, going to the latest manual is a great way of figuring out which advice is current.

(2) Skimming the index: a quick way of discovering topics you can then explore in more detail either in the manual itself or through follow up googling.

(3) A manual you know and love. Over time you get a feel for which manuals you interact with are good. If a manual is good and you've gotten comfortable reading it, it's often faster to find the answer you're looking for by searching the manual directly rather than wading through a google search.

</comment><comment><USER19> I refer to documentation when I need to learn how to do individual things, and then once I'm starting to become comfortable with the library/software/whatever then I'll sit down in more depth and read through more of the documentation. At that point you have enough context to understand what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's pretty simple with modern tools. For example, I'm learning Angular at the moment. I needed to learn how to use an IF statement in the HTML code.

The first google result is a blog post [1] from some guy. It's helpful, but really dilutes the core material. So instead I just went directly to the angular docs [2]. This was straightforward and gave me the info I needed to know.

Now CLI manuals from tools created in the 80's and 90's? Those are trickier. I'm still trying to learn a good way to grok those tools, but so far blog posts and Stack Overflow have been better than the man files, in my experience.

[1] [https://toddmotto.com/angular-ngif-else- then](https://toddmotto.com/angular-ngif-else-then)

[2] [https://angular.io/api/common/NgIf](https://angular.io/api/common/NgIf)

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems like you're going about it backwards - start with the reference docs to figure out how something _should_ work, then if that breaks down start looking to other sources for workarounds or more information. This approach will force you to get better at understanding TFM. Going to SO or blogs may be a quick way to get a solution but as a software engineer you also need to understand how and why that solution works, which is where the reference docs come in.

If you're finding that TFM is just too dense to get through then you probably need to start learning/understanding the building blocks in whatever way works best for you (online courses, wikipedia, more reference manuals, tutorials, etc).

</comment><comment><USER22> I think reading software manuals is a waste of time. Unless if you do something wrong, you break something, it is much more efficient to just try to do a few examples and work with the tool, then when you need the manual, you read it. Just search on it what you need.

I think it is impossible to read those things and still be ahead of the curve on what is happening with software and things in general. Very time inefficient way of learning things. Try to learn by practicing and knowing where to search when problems happens, learn how to debug problems in real life effectively, because that's what you will do on your whole career.

<comment><USER23> I used to feel the same way... until I actually read one.

It was a point several years ago that I was looking for a "better" solution to something I was doing. A bunch of Stack Exchange answers on the topic each had a different way of doing it, and each was as complicated as my own solution. Over the course of _years_ , people tried to make the solution better.

Then I noticed the very bottom answer, below some dozen others. Posted about a month before my search.

It was one line.

The individual just posted the one-line answer and a link to the manual.

It was part of the standard library.

 _And had been SINCE INCEPTION._

It was at that point that I began to RTFM. There are good manuals and there are bad manuals. But one thing I've noticed is that for _most_ libraries, it is absolutely invaluable to be able to have a high level picture of what's available. It has completely changed the way I code, now.

First, read a few hello world tutorials so I can wrap my head around the gist. Then RTFM. Then maybe read a book about it if I want a good idea of best practices. Only _then_ do I search SE or other online sources.

Which I now rarely have to do, for the things in which I RTFM...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Every time someone says 'read the manual', I weep for humanity.

When I open most manuals pages I may as well be reading 'ᐅᒥᐊᕐᔫᑉ ᐳᓪᓕᓕᒫᐸᒐ ᑕᑦᑕᕐᓂᖅ ᐊᒻᒪᔭᖅ'

It does nothing for me. I am seldom any smarter afterward.

These people don't understand there are different brain types, and only ~25% are read/write brain types.

Couple that with the fact that many in technology write in a broken, sterile form of English that any grammar correctly immediately flags as wrong.

No, the 'RTFM manual' people are typically extremely left-brained, analytical, black/white people who have no ability to see from others' point of, and often little desire to do so.

</endRant>

</comment><comment><USER25> Manuals complement books and tutorials. Say I'd like to review sockets: I'd probably first pull up Beej's _Guide to Network Programming_ [1], and then switch over to (say) 'man 2 listen' when I want to dive in and see for myself that Beej's exposition is true on my system. :-) Then I'd dive in and try it out in code, referring back to the man pages as needed.

[1] [https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/html/multi/index.html](https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/html/multi/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> > _Whenever I have tried to go through the manual, the kind of language used > has diminished my interest and ended up in my giving it up._

I think you have to change your attitude and get used to reading that language, and learn how to write it, too.

It is the language of engineering specifications.

I recommend reading at least one standard (e.g. programming language) in its entirety.

Things refer to other things; at some point, you need the transitive closure of the whole darn thing in your head to properly understand any part.

</comment><comment><USER26> I would like to start by declaring that very, very few software manuals are can be read cover-to-cover and offer great benefit. There are some exceptions to this--the one that comes to mind the most is Ableton Live's manual.

Clearly, the most common use case for a manual is when a user has encountered a situation where they don't know how to use a product as it should be used. Here are two examples of different scenarios where RTFM as ended in different ways:

* Keras: I'm currently optimizing the architecture of an artificial neural network at work, and I needed a little more detail on how quickly the network was training. The Keras documentation quickly guided me to the Callback section, where I quickly learned what callbacks were, and then found the CSVLogger callback. Not only did the documentation link directly to the source, but I thought the documentation gave a good high level overview of what the function did so I could see that clearly this was the function that was going to solve my problem.

* Vim: I use vim quite frequently at work as my main editor, and some of my co-workers also use it. Recently, I had asked a coworker how he configures vim for his projects, and he told me about Vim sessions. I asked him for more details about how vim sessions and tabs worked, and he referred me to the vim documentation. While the explanations were clear, I've always held the opinion that the vim documentation is a bit of pain to navigate, and suffers greatly due to the lack of example vimrc snippets. Maybe others think differently than I, but I've learned much more vim through blogs and vim-tutor than I have through vim's own documentation.

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is that regardless of the quality of the documentation there is always some guarantee that the official documentation is not the only documentation out there. It is quite rare that I ever truly grasp an answer or new piece of information on the first read; I often need examples or further reading for me to incorporate that information into my everyday life.

All that being said, start with official documentation. I can't say for certain, but in my experience it has always been the most authoritative and the highest quality writing on the software itself. Seek out blog posts and unofficial technical writing for further examples or different writing styles that might be easier to grasp.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find example usages first then decipher what the manual means while referring to them. Many times it feels like manuals have their own language, phrasing, templating syntax or what-have-you. If you have something to compare against when they you can usually understand what they mean from that. I really wish more manuals had simple examples at the start of the manual. You don't even need many, just like 2.

</comment><comment><USER28> Try things out as you read.

I read the Unix manual from cover to cover when I started out. As I went through it I'd try the commands. Often there were short examples.

This was when there were only a couple of hundred pages though.

Regarding the language -- usually it's not only too terse but badly written. However the classic books e.g. Kernighan & PIke's UNIX Programming Environment are excellent.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe a slow walk through each item in that subject is needed? Also for any particular popular subject there's more than one 'manual'.

I rarely read manuals. Except for roleplaying ones back in the day.

Is it a matter of time to focus for a long time on one task?

</comment><comment><USER30> Exactly. The question is where's TFM today ? Doxigen is not TFM. The examples are not TFM. The comments are not TFM. The video posted on Youtube is not TFM. The blog is not TFM. I want TFM or at least TF Man Pages.

<comment><USER31> Thing is, Documentation that thorough is _hard_ , and it's only harder with the rapid release schedules many have adopted as of late. Then you have software that hasn't had a completed set of man pages in years, because no one bothered to finish it. So, I've resorted to reading the source code to see what the blazes is going on if there's no competent manual available.

If I'm grabbing for the manual in the first place, I've found it's mostly to search for an answer to "Can I do x in y context without having to code it in the way I know works but is exhaustive, bloated, and a waste of my time".

I ran into this last year with an XML parsing library; I wanted to do something so simple yet the library appeared as if it couldn't - <USER2> incoming XML payload - but the library's manual only discussed parsing XML as if it were fully formed and from a local file, which is only applicable in a fantasy world. It seemed very odd to me that the library would have its own routines for local file loading, so I assumed it was required and I would have to write incoming XML to a file and load it every time. Then I looked at the source code to the library and discovered the author had coded it specifically so that newbies could use it and not be affected by XXE attacks. Now the library specifically mentions this in its tutorial, but not in its manual, so I never saw the bloody thing.

I wasted a whole day for something that could have been mentioned in the "manual".

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would suggest taking a look at the book How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. The title of the book does not do it justice.

It covers analytical and syntopical reading. But it also addresses how to read different types of texts

</comment><comment><USER33> I print it and read it from cover to cover. I usually skip the preface, table of contents and index though.

</comment><comment><USER34> >if someone actually reads the manual

Uh, I thought everyone does.

>I don't see how manuals can be useful in the real sense

I'm...not sure how you can say this. Maybe you mean, reading a manual cover- to-cover. I don't think "RTFM" means that. Don't read the whole thing if it's boring! But I find once I'm well into using/learning some piece of software, and want to know everything, reading the entire manual is fascinating. Plus they vary in quality and readability. The python docs are extremely readable..aren't they? (especially if you have a high tolerance for Monty Python gags). Man pages mostly suck for learning software the first time, but are brilliant for refreshing the memory. Mostly, I google lists of the best books on a subject, and read as many of them as I can get my hands on. If I'm not enjoying one, I turn to another.

<comment><USER35> > > >if someone actually reads the manual

> Uh, I thought everyone does.

... have ... have you ever met another programmer?

<comment><USER36> The old ones did this. Want to learn C? Read K&R. Want to learn Perl? Read the Camel book. Want to learn C++? Read Stroustrup. That was _the way we learned_.

These days? Not so much. Stroustrup is now big enough to use in self-defense. I'm not sure there ever was an equivalent book for Java. (There is one for Go, however.) React? Angular? TypeScript? Do they have authoritative books? If they do, is that the canonical way to learn them?

I think something changed 20 years ago. _The book_ used to be _the way_ to learn, and now it's not. I don't know if the programmers changed, or if the languages changed, or if the books changed, but something did.

<comment><USER37> FWIW Rust has "The Rust Book" as their primary long-form documentation, separate from their reference documentation. It's a common starting point for people new to the language. I read it in chunks as I was getting started.

I'm not sure how it compares to those works of the past (perhaps less detailed?), but I found it much more approachable than most languages' documentation and more in-depth than most languages' tutorials.

The old ways may not be entirely lost.

<comment><USER38> All three of the books your parent mentions were explicit influences on TRPL. So yes, it lives on :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why do you need to be interested in something in order to read the manual? Sometimes part of being a professional is just forcing yourself to grind through it.

</comment><comment><USER40> Don't worry about memorizing the manual. When I first got into programming, focusing on Ruby, I would study the Ruby docs intensely. I got really good at understanding the standard library. I read the heck out of the manual, and in interviews that focused on how well I knew Ruby, I sounded really experienced. But I struggled to build basic things.

There's a bunch of different types of documentation, and being able to skim them enough to get a basic understanding is super helpful! A non-comprehensive list of different types of documentation includes:

\- man pages

\- REST API docs

\- Language docs

\- RFCs

\- Tool specific docs

Let's get specific.

\- Say you need to find a way to filter text in a Bash shell, and you want to read the man page for grep. Maybe you want to read [https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Man-Page/q3.html](https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Man- Page/q3.html) to start understanding this... 'grep [-abcdDEFGHhIiJLlmnOopqRSsUVvwxZ] [-A num] [-B num] [-C[num]] [-e pattern] [-f file] [--binary-files=value] [--color[=when]] [--colour[=when]] [--context[=num]] [--label] [--line-buffered] [--null] [pattern] [file ...]'

\- Let's say you need to want to better understand how JSON works because you are working on a networking library. Maybe scanning [https://www.json.org/](https://www.json.org/) will help you read this [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8259](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8259).

\- Let's say you're reading API docs for Artifactory, and they your not sure how REST works, but they keep talking about it. Maybe scanning [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer) will help you read [https://www.jfrog.com/confluence/display/RTF/Artifactory+RES...](https://www.jfrog.com/confluence/display/RTF/Artifactory+REST+API)

I identify with your pain. Reading docs is hard, especially when you're diving into unfamiliar problems with unfamiliar tools. All I can say is that you just keep pushing yourself to get better at it, and if you're lucky, maybe you'll be fortunate enough to work with people who can help make the learning curve less steep. There's no shortcut to getting to where you want to go.

A few tips & tricks that make things less painful for me:

\- getting high level context by watching short YouTube videos makes it easier to read denser material that is hard to absorb

\- working on things that interest me makes reading dry documentation a lot easier

\- building something at the same time I'm reading docs makes it a lot easier to spot errors in the docs & gaps in my understanding

Keep pushing. It's always going to be hard. You just get better at working on hard things :)

</comment><comment><USER35> > Ask HN: How to RTFM?

(blinks)

Open to page one. Engage eyes. Parse words.</comment>


How to raise the next Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-raise-the-next-mark-zuckerberg-1462155391 <comment><USER2> This reeks of forcing a parent's goals and ideals onto their children which in the situations I've seen tend to never end that well. Encouraging them to do what their genuinely interested in I think would probably lead to much happier lives.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would would you want to do that? What kind of shit parent would want their child to be "other person" let alone Zuck. Even Zuckerberg would probably (rightly) say, idk guys that's probably not a good idea.</comment>


Face.com Free Detect Faces in Pictures Alternative - <AUTHOR> http://signup.face-alt.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> \- Only detect faces \- OpenCV implementation HaarClassifierCascade (initial) \- REST service \- NO Business Model (PayPal donate for maintenance) \- GPL code in GitHub \- Feel free to parcipate

<comment><USER2> \- Typo: "patners"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this just for face detection or for face recognition as well?

Face detection is a pretty much solved problem IMO and running OpenCV locally is a simple enough solution.

What I will miss about face.com is the face recognition. It was state of the art, lightning fast, and free. The eigenfaces implementation in OpenCV doesn't even come close.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't get the title... I know what it is (it was mentioned on the other topic about face.com shutting down free API), but the title of this submission doesn't make any sense to me. I read it maybe five times and still can't understand what it means.

<comment><USER5> I've been staring at it for a while and the best I can do is: 'Face.com: Free "Detect Faces in Pictures" Alternative', which is still a barely-syntactical Markov chain of press release words.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1, but I can't change it now</comment></comment></comment>


CopyQ – Clipboard manager with advanced features - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hluk/CopyQ <comment><USER2> Using it daily, mapped to Win-G. Love it.</comment>


Microsoft Launches Modern.IE To Help Developers Test Their Web Apps For IE - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/31/microsoft-launches-modern-ie-to-help-developers-test-their-web-apps-for-legacy-and-modern-versions-of-ie/

<comment><USER2> _> Step 1 – Log-in with Facebook to activate your 3 month testing service._

Thanks. No.

<comment><USER3> What's with this trend of companies and startups requiring customers to sign up with Facebook? Especially for developer and technical resources, for which it seems there's a healthy level of dissociation from Facebook.

<comment><USER4> What's worse is developer-level services that require Twitter to sign up, or sometimes even Github. Not all developers (see: me) have a Twitter or Github account.

<comment><USER5> The services are trying to provide you with easy access so you don't have that barrier of creating "yet another account". Depending on the service they're offering they'll pick a reasonable third-party that offers oAuth integration.

I'd say that GitHub auth for a service aimed at developers is a reasonable assumption to make.

<comment><USER6> The process of logging in with a third-party account takes about as much time as filling out a name, email address and a password into a form. Since I can even get my browser to auto-fill my name and email address and auto-generate a random password, creating "yet another account" (a couple of clicks, no typing at all) is actually less hassle for me than logging in with some other account and then going through a scary-looking authorization prompt. In fact, apart from Stack Overflow, I can't remember a single website where my identity is tied to another account of mine.

<comment><USER7> And to make things worse a lot of time after you go through the facebook/google/github login they still require you to pick a password for their service, which means the login was purely to get you to link your accounts to their services which just feels icky to me.

Sure support it as an option, but don't make it mandatory that you have a account with social media service X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I ran one of my problem child sites through it. Modern.IE seems more interested in ensuring my pages add a bunch of crap for IE10 and Windows 8 rather than finding painful IE8 compatibility issues. This is pretty much just a marketing site for IE10.

<comment><USER9> The scan results are grouped into IE compatibility problems, potential cross- browser issues and the last option you mention. I'm not sure the former two categories qualify as marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If they really want to help developers they should patch ie7/8 so people auto update

<comment><USER11> And push IE10 to XP, which is still like 40% of PC's out there.

<comment><USER12> XP is going to end support in April 2014. I wonder how fast people are upgrading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's a little sad that the most "modern" IE Microsoft can put out is still like 2 years behind Chrome in HTML5 features. Chrome 10 had more HTML5 features 2 years ago than IE10 has today, and the Blackberry 10 browser is actually even more ahead, and that's from a company that doesn't usually make browsers:

<http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html>

<http://html5test.com/results/mobile.html>

<comment><USER13> >and the Blackberry 10 browser is actually even more ahead, and that's from a company that doesn't usually make browsers

html5test.com does not test anything, it just checks that listed features are available. Blackberry 10 uses WebKit and they just turned on more experimental features than Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "The virtual machines testing platform is nearly finished. Once completed, > you'll be able to easily test your site on Windows, Mac or Linux. Check back > soon."

Very much looking forward to this!

<comment><USER14> The VMs are now available!

<http://www.modern.ie/virtualization-tools>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Total side notes, but I'm really enjoying this new design trend from Google and Microsoft. Clean, simple, and to the point. Helps take that "corporate" edge of Microsoft specifically.

Also I'm glad that, like Adobe, Microsoft is embracing more modern and standard practices towards web development.

</comment><comment><USER16> Most important thing on modern.IE:

Get a free 3-month trial of Browser Stack sponsored by Microsoft. Normally you get a 15minute trial.

Just go to the Virtual Tools page.

<comment><USER17> More important on modern.IE:

> The virtual machines testing platform is nearly finished. Once completed, > you'll be able to easily test your site on Windows, Mac or Linux. Check back > soon.

Having an official VirtualBox (I assume?) image would be great.

<comment><USER18> These kind of already existed: [http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=1157...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=11575)

<comment><USER2> It's VHD (although relatively easy to make work with VirtualBox), but more importantly exe files. I don't know it cabextract or unrar can handle this. In either case, it needlessly unfriendly to non-Windows users.

<comment><USER19> The IE6 image is a cab and the rest are rars. I tried to make it more friendly: <http://xdissent.github.com/ievms/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I thought this looked okay, so I tried to get a report for hacker news: [http://www.modern.ie/report#http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.co...](http://www.modern.ie/report#http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F) Result: "We encountered an error with this URL."

</comment><comment><USER21> A site for modern Ireland that is not.

[edit] I just find it odd that MS puts so much stuff on Irish domains, just because of the abbreviation. Surely they don't think they could possibly own this tld.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've always found IETester to be a great "good enough" lightweight testing tool. No VM images to download/spin up separately or worry about expiration.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why here? It is not even humorous.

</comment><comment><USER24> Fantabulous. It's not a tool for developers, it's a tool for clients to unreasonably bash developers over the head with and to market MS's substandard browsers.

Already had one email going "URGENT!!!! COMPATIBILITY ISSUES WITH IE!!!!" on a site that renders and works perfectly back to IE6.

<comment><USER12> IE9 and later are not seriously "substandard".</comment></comment>


Why polygamy breeds civil war - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2018/03/economist-explains-16?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/whypolygamybreedscivilwartheeconomistexplains <comment><USER2> You get civil wars when powerful families/factions decide to gamble on violence instead of staying with whatever was the ongoing peaceful arrangement for power sharing.

The supply of foot-soldiers has little to do with it.

The Roman republic had plenty of civil wars, and they had indissoluble monogamic marriage for the aristocracy. And the Persian empire, with harems, also managed to have plenty of successor conflicts. I doubt any wars were started by poor wifeless men.

<comment><USER3> > The Roman republic had plenty of civil wars, and they had indissoluble > monogamic marriage for the aristocracy. And the Persian empire, with harems, > also managed to have plenty of successor conflicts. I doubt any wars were > started by poor wifeless men.

You're getting the argument backwards. It's not "conflict => polygamy", it's "polygamy => conflict". Of course other things lead to conflict as well; nobody's claiming that all conflict leads back to polygamy. So your arguments about Rome and Persia are meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When polygamy is blamed instead of the "buy in" custom - which is the true cause - to get a more bait title.

</comment><comment><USER5> Correlation != causation

<comment><USER6> Can't have causation without correlation.</comment></comment>


MineSweeper implemented in CSS and HTML and no JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/propjockey/css-sweeper <comment><USER2> Another discussion, currently on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23920987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23920987)</comment>


Protect Firefox Browser From the U.S. Government, Says Mozilla Exec - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/21/protect-firefox-browser-from-the-us-gove

<comment><USER2> Mozilla don't seem willing or able to protect their browser from malicious Google advertisers, never mind governments.

Right now if you turn off your ad blocker and search for 'firefox' on Google you will most likely find that the top result is an advertisement that leads to a site that offers a Firefox download that is bundled with a bunch of malware. (Screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/jX5Lt9F.png](http://i.imgur.com/jX5Lt9F.png) )

I really have no idea why Mozilla isn't screaming at Google to fix this. Thousands of their users are getting infected every day. Maybe they have asked Google in private to fix it, but if they have Google are ignoring them or fobbing them off with some weak-ass 'it's too hard to stop' excuse. This situation has persisted for months (possibly longer).

Mozilla seems quite happy to put out very strongly worded press releases when it comes to other things so why aren't they talking about this issue publicly? Is it because they don't want to criticise the cash-cow of their corporate sponsor? If so that is pretty depressing.</comment>


Amazon solved the payload problem in drone delivery system - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatafuture.com/amazon-finds-creative-way-solve-payload-problems-drone/ <comment><USER2> This already existed long before amazon filed this.

It won't hold in court

<comment><USER3> I have a feeling that Amazon probably provides financial incentives to employees for filing patents, which is the real reason this got filed.

And courts are fickle, on the chance this doesn't get thrown out, it might still be worth patenting for Amazon.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Facing disengagement with work/company – what are some best practices? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Contemplating your paycheck and do what you like on the side - that's my way of coping with contractor work.

But I know it can't be long term though.

</comment><comment><USER3> leave, sometimes jumping ship is better than mutiny or walking the plank</comment>


ElasticSearch Docker Image to Use with K8S Petsets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mrmm/elasticsearch-kubernetes <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to the work of @mrmm: [https://github.com/mrmm](https://github.com/mrmm)

</comment><comment><USER2> Good Image but I like Buddy Image. Buddy is good app for self-hosted. ElasticSearch is little poor :( I love soo Deploybot.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks @smile0x90, hope that helped</comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't hackernews have an AAAA record? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to go IPv6 only and use some tech websites that I visit frequently. Many sites work, but many do not. Hacker News has no AAAA record. Why not? Can we get one added? <comment><AUTHOR> github.com and slack.com don't have AAAA records either.</comment>


Show HN: 6 days until broke/homeless: here is my hack - <AUTHOR> https://www.askjemima.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, my name is Olivier, I'm a 22 yo entrepreneur with a failing startup. I have 6 days left until I go broke, have to leave the city and end my bootstrapped company.

So I came up with this crazy website to raise funds to help me survive: AskJemima.com is a witty virtual psychic that will text you a personalized answer to any question you ask for 99c.

Help out a fellow hacker and ask a question!

</comment><comment><USER2> What is your other business? Why is it failing?

I appreciate you're trying to hang on in there, but it might be better to cut your losses and move on to the next thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's Skyler[0]: it's a fashion weather app. We are bootstrapped and can't raise money so we have to shut down at the end of the month... :(

[0] [https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1011881829](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1011881829)

<comment><USER3> I think these (and the pepper thing?!) are all good lessons for you if you're able to learn from them. The key things I missing from your portfolio are: A. The Elusive Obvious B. Communication of Value. Those are your blind spots. Nail those and with your other qualities you'll be successful. I hope this feedback is useful to you:

A. The Elusive Obvious: What is a "fashion weather app?" It's obvious to you, but not enough other people. The Elusive Obvious is a common problem and the good thing is: it's relatively easy to correct. Just use the "elevator pitch" or "grandparent description" techniques. Say "It shows you attractive people in cool clothes automatically dressed for the weather forecast so you know what to wear that day."

B. Value: You have to tell everyone who hasn't bought your app why to spend five minutes, 99 cents, 1.6 MB, learning and using your apps instead of doing other things we already love like making a stir fry and letting the chips fall where they may w/r/t weather: How much will we get back for our expenditure? Tell a story, will it save us time? Lead to better social results? Save us money? Change our mood, make us laugh, validate our clothes choices? Lead with emotion.

You can't count on your customers to hang out in 45-minute brainstorming sessions ideating all the reasons they should use your program. You've got to tell them point-blank.

(And now I'm off to do the most important thing which is to apply all these critiques to myself. Good luck, Oliv__)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty racist, "mon".

<comment><USER5> Nowadays, everything is considered racist.

EDIT: See what I mean?

<comment><USER4> Cultural appropriation is always uncomfortable in the first place. For example, see the media storm over Kylie Jenner's hairstyle [0]

[0] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kadia-blagrove-/cultural- appro...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kadia-blagrove-/cultural- appropriation-it_b_7800126.html)

<comment><USER6> Consider it a pull request I think callsyfing it as racist is fair, isn't "mon" slang from Jamaica, a nation in which 59%[1] have mixed ancestry?[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ten Startup Tips From Amazon Founder, Jeff Bezos - <AUTHOR> http://infochachkie.com/10tips-bezos/

<comment><USER2> Yea those are great, sorta reminds me of this from 2005:

<http://evhead.com/2005/11/ten-rules-for-web-startups.asp>

*BTW, you should note that this list is circa 2004 in the title :)</comment>


Ask HN: What key features of Instagram would you need in a future alternative? - <AUTHOR> I'm building a decentralized platform for users to collect and own their personal data. Our first product is a decentralized alternative to Instagram.
We are including basic features like private photo storage plus curated groups for sharing and commenting. Our big focus right now is getting the user experience very high-quality and it got me wondering: Are their small features that keep you interested in Instagram that maybe I'm missing?
Because we are focused on encrypted and p2p sharing, we aren't tackling fully public sharing yet, so maybe that is a key feature you'd want.
But also the little things, the ways that you comment or interact, the integration with the messaging system. Discovery? <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it be more useful to interact with every day users than engineers? It seems like you could easily get seduced into developing features that only 2% of the population wants/is willing to figure out.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure, but it doesn't need to be an either/or

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A chronological timeline.</comment>


James Baldwin's Archive, Long Hidden, Comes Mostly into View - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/arts/james-baldwins-archive-long-hidden-comes-mostly-into-view.html <comment><USER2> Has anyone else noticed the common application of the term 'prophetic' to minority-writers? First the New Yorker article on Atwood, now this one. We don't read great writers because they're prophetic, we read great writers because they're great writers. Like, the subtext is always that the solution to our current political issues is looking for people who we can construe as "having seen it coming." It's so silly.

I doubt that the guy who wrote Giovanni's Room would particularly appreciate having the term "prophet" applied to him, as if it were some sort of award.</comment>


[dupe-delete] Trump reveals that he is taking hydroxychloroquine - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/FirstSquawk/status/1262480431737221120 <comment><USER2> All those useless millions of pills aren't going to take themselves! And neither are they going to people with arthritis or other medical conditions.

<comment><USER3> Screw those widely studied, cheap $1 a pill cures, that they are pushing on people for some unknown reason!

I'll go with the pharmaceutic industry approved, patented, $1000+ per pill treatments instead, which are the result of science. Definitely the billions of dollars of potential profit have nothing to do with it.. you can't prove that it does, so it must not be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would like to see this from a reliable source. Looks a lot like clickbait to generate attention for their new publication.

<comment><USER5> This is video of him stating it: [https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1262487139083837448](https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1262487139083837448)</comment></comment>