Not Even In South Park? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/opinion/26douthat.html <comment><USER2> As a Muslim, myself, I don't understand the stances these fringe groups take. Ultimately, we have two issues. Portrayal of the Prophet is a big big no no in our religion, yet Freedom of Speech/Expression is a pertinent human right in most of the civilized world.

Does it offend me to see any portrayals of a man we don't like to have portrayed? Yea, of course. But I'm pretty sure it offends me more to see the reactions from the people involved.

If someone caricatures the prophet as a violent person, how can people [angry extremist Muslims] think that VIOLENTLY rioting and giving death threats will make the person recant that?

"You think Islam's violent!? No, it isn't. And to prove that to you, I will kill you."

I'm offended every time I see things like this - even if I'm a fan of South Park - but I do the sensible thing, I don't watch it. I can go more, say, write to them (sans death threats), or not buy from them anymore, etc. But this response just makes no sense at all.

<comment><USER3> _As a Muslim, myself, I don't understand the stances these fringe groups take._

The RevolutionMuslim guy explains it in great detail here, [http://revolutionmuslimdaily.blogspot.com/2010/04/clarifying...](http://revolutionmuslimdaily.blogspot.com/2010/04/clarifying- south-park-response-and.html)

I have to say, from the POV of a true Muslim he makes a pretty airtight case. If you can't make yourself agree with the idea that Trey and Parker have to be killed maybe it's time that you start questioning your beliefs in this religion.

<comment><USER4> That's a rather interesting mix of good points and religious crazy talk. I think the most pertinent point is that the U.S. has in fact acted in an imperialist way over the past half century or so, and has killed a very large number of people in the process, many of which happen to be Muslim. I don't agree with the theory that this results from a lack of values on the part of Westerners, but I can see how Muslims might feel like they are being attacked on all fronts---both militaristically and culturally.

From that perspective, the idea of refraining from unnecessarily insulting their most important religious leader makes sense to me. In context, it sends very much the wrong message, and is counterproductive. Of course, death threats over the matter are stupid and counterproductive, too, as it only feeds into the jihadist stereotype.

<comment><USER5> > I think the most pertinent point is that the U.S. has in fact acted in an > imperialist way over the past half century or so, and has killed a very > large number of people in the process, many of which happen to be Muslim.

I'm not seeing the relevance.

Precisely how does what the US has done explain threatening the South Park guys?

<comment><USER4> It doesn't excuse it of course, but I think it does explain it a bit. Imagine somebody kills one of your children, then comes back and insults your wife. It's adding insult to injury.

It's kind of like kicking someone when they're down. People in the Islamic world are sensitive as of late, and considering what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan lately, I think it's pretty understandable. The prudent, friendly thing is show a little respect.

<comment><USER5> Suppose that an orange person raped my sister, would you "explain" if I issued death threats when orange people made fun of my pants?

Of course not.

> People in the Islamic world are sensitive as of late, and considering what's > happened in Iraq and Afghanistan lately,

Umm, what happened is that we kicked out their govt, which was killing them, and we kill people who attack us (and them). Meanwhile, we build schools and the like.

All they have to do to get us to leave is lie low for a while. Then they can go back to killing each other. (However, since that's what they're going to do, I'm not that excited about them being killed by us. Dead is dead.)

If you're looking for "brutal occupation", the US isn't in the same league as France and Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best part of South Park exemplifying the double standard is at the end of the Cartoon Wars episodes where they show Jesus and the American flag in a pretty vulgar scene.

I'm sure Comedy Central received plenty of complaints from offended Christians, yet there was no censorship.

<comment><USER7> There were also probably no death threats.

<comment><USER8> So it seems that by making a death threat getting what you want is possible in the western world today. If you don't want SP to make fun of your religious leader? Just make a few death threats and they will censor the episode. And on top of that all other shows are afraid to touch the topic too.

By what will happen is, for instance, Paris Hilton activists will start making death threats to the SP creators? Will Comedy Central start censoring all references to Paris Hilton too?

Probably nothing will happen since Paris Hilton activists haven't killed anyone yet.

So in fact you can conclude that terrism does work to get what you want in the world today.

<comment><USER9> _So in fact you can conclude that terrorism does work to get what you want in the world today._

It doesn't work for white people though -- that guy who flew his plane into the IRS building didn't get what he wanted, and neither did the Unabomber or Timothy McVeigh.

It seems that we are more afraid of different-looking people than we are of being blown up.

<comment><USER10> That's a poor comparison. Presumably a small army of white guys pissed off enough by taxation to kamikaze themselves into public buildings does not exist. (Although, see the insurgence of the militia movement, and Palin's "don't retreat, just reload!" rhetoric...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Similar thing happened here with Sikhs. A young Sikh writer produced a play about child abuse in a temple (you thought catholic priests had a monopoly). The local peace loving religious leaders threatened to burn down the city run theatre. So the play was taken off. The city then went further to suggest that all future plays with Sikh characters should be approved by the religious leaders.

Since no writer was going to go for that it simply removed all Sikh character from plays and to be careful from tv aswell.

So the result of this censorship is going to be that the only time muslims are seen on TV it will be in news reports about terrorists. Way to go guys!

<comment><USER12> You didn't say where "here" was, but I'm going to assume it's somewhere where Sikhs are the minority.

I think one aspect of media is that it should be called out when it misrepresents a minority who don't typically get the well rounded coverage that the majority culture gets. For example, Christianity in the US. It's "ok" to make fun of Christians because we are inundated with Christianity; the joke is obvious and there's an abundance of positive portrayals to offset the negative impact of the satire. In the case of a marginal minority, it's a lot more hurtful, and so the response is more dramatic (ie, death threats).

<comment><USER13> If atheists are to be believed Christians are also in the minority though, so why no protection from infantile attempts to denigrate Jesus Christ.

Case in point - Behzti (sp) was cancelled the month before the BBC airing "Jerry Springer the Opera" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Springer_The_Opera>) which was widely criticised as being needlessly defamatory of Jesus. A few Sikhs complain and the the UK authorities react and shut down the show, thousands [of Christians] complain (the most complaints ever received by the BBC apparently) and nothing is done.

The difference, well the Sikhs threatened to kill the Sikh playwright, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/dec/21/religion.arts> (add pinch of salt!), and took part in violent protests at the theatre.

So violent protest is the way to win.

Aside: IMO both shows should have been put on. Interestingly the Jerry Springer:The Opera show includes the use of the word "cunt" which from what I can tell is the only word the BBC won't normally allow - exceptions are made if your show is considered blasphemous, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't read it yet and don't doubt that it's a great op-ed but:

 _Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important._

From: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> What really is a shame is that your comment regarding this submission--which isn't entirely on the mark--is what is at the top of the comments and taking away from the discussion which I am finding (and I'm sure others) very passionate and enlightening.

Sorry, the only thing I added was "Great". The title is the original and adding NYT Op-Ed let the HN user know it was an Op-Ed.

While I understand your concern and deciding to quote from the guidelines, I don't believe adding just the word "Great" was misleading or breaking the rules...

And well, this may be where I get flamed, but if you want to be technical, it isn't a "parenthetical remark".

Either way, point taken.

<comment><USER14> _What really is a shame is that your comment regarding this submission--which isn't entirely on the mark--is what is at the top of the comments and taking away from the discussion which I am finding (and I'm sure others) very passionate and enlightening._

I completely agree. My only goal was to remind people of the guidelines and get one of the mods to tweak the title, certainly not to overshadow the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This situation really saddens. I hate the fact that people are self-censoring because of a minority of violent people. This lends them legitimacy, when they deserve none. Seeing this after reading about a girls school being poison- gassed in Afghanistan makes me say why kowtow to the violent ones? I've read the Koran and its no worse no better than the bible. My girlfriend is a Middle Eastern anthropologist who loves the culture and speaks Arabic. My research into the history of math show the ancient Arab world as a hot bed of science and literature. Yet nowadays when people think of Muslims they think of death. The high point of my last week was having one of my university students (during a class on privacy issues) say that nobody has a right to ask you what your religion is on a job application. Unless, that is, you are from somewhere in the Middle East. Then its understandable that you need to ask. WTF... But, if _some_ Muslim feels the need to show pictures of murdered directors on then website as a _prediction_ of what will happen to you if you make art, then it gets harder and harder to fight these prejudices.

I just wish the non-violent majority of Muslims would (could?) step up to the plate and counteract the extremists.

<comment><USER16> I'm not a very religious person, but I've done some light research and here is what I came up with as being the difference between violence in the Koran versus Bible. This an extreme paraphrasation and may be wrong, but this is how I understand it as of now:

According to tradition, if the Koran/Mohammad contradicts itself, what ever happened later is to be taken as the accepted rule, however the Koran is not organized in chronological order so it can be hard to tell at first blush what is the "correct" interpretation. In the early days of Islam, when Mohammad had very few followers, it was necessary to gain more followers to espouse peace, rainbows and sunshine. As he grew more politically powerful, his rhetoric changed and "kill the infidels" was the way to go. Since it happened later chronologically this is the "official" stance of the Koran.

Contrasted with the Bible wherein most of the violence is contained in the old testament. Then Jesus came along and essentially said "forget all this old stuff, I'm the new covenant, love thy neighbor, yay rainbows, sunshine and lollipops".

That being said, that doesn't mean a lot of people haven't been killed in the name of Jesus, but in current times I'd guestimate 99.9999% of Christians are peace loving people who don't want violence brought upon someone because they are non-Christian. But I'd also guess that worldwide 97% of Muslims are the same way. Unfortunately the other 3% is still a large number of people who want to bomb markets, fly planes in to buildings or throw acid on girls who insist on going to school.

You're absolutely right, the 97% needs to stand the hell up and drown out this nonsense.

<comment><USER17> "You're absolutely right, the 97% needs to stand the hell up and drown out this nonsense."

Plenty of people have been trying to drown out the nonsense, but it is not newsworthy (fairly recently a very influential religious figure in Pakistan made very strong statements and fatwa against the 'nonsense'). If it bleeds, it leads. Good works rarely make the news, but jackasses easily do so.

As a Muslim myself, having to 'stand the hell up and drown out this nonsense' makes little sense to me. It implies that I/we are somehow complicit in what the jackasses do. No thanks. I have a family to take care of, a job, etc. and do my personal best to be an example of a good human being, just like the majority of Muslims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article fails to recognize Seaman as a member of the super best friends. Leave it to the NYT Op-Ed to get the facts wrong.

</comment><comment><USER19> The last paragraph is stirring: "if a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there's enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down."

But this bit a couple paragraphs up strikes me as complacent: "Happily, today's would-be totalitarians are probably too marginal to take full advantage." A new one can and will arise. Totalitarians _love_ a vacuum.

xkcd should do a stick figure of prophet mohammed.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is actually getting really scary. A short while ago a cartoonist from Seattle suggested to make May 20 'Everyone draws Muhammad' Day worldwide. Her cartoon went viral, a Facebook page was created, the exacerbated mix of anger/resentment/stupidity in the air fueled the whole thing -- and now both her and the creator of the FB group want out: [http://guyism.com/2010/04/creator-of-everybody-draw- muhammad...](http://guyism.com/2010/04/creator-of-everybody-draw-muhammad-day- wont-draw-muhammad.html)

I can absolutely understand the heat they must be feeling -- it's especially chilling since she's clearly not famous enough to require protection, but might become just enough so that she actually pays the heavy personal toll of constant fear of reprisal.

It's very sad to see this lifelike Prisoner's Dilemma happening -- we would all like to see people of goodwill the world over to show some spine and make a respectful but clear and strong resistance statement. But no one, absolutely no one can afford doing this anymore in an age of exponentials, viral growth, annihilated privacy and geocoded checkins broadcast to the world, where you can rise to (unwanted, in this case) virtual fame in a matter of hours. Anonymity is not a protection anymore.

I sincerely hope that being the first globally connected generation will somehow help us avoid tearing this planet apart over religion in the next 20 years...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Skip to the 6th paragraph if you already know the back story and want to read the actual Op-Ed piece.

</comment><comment><USER21> Xeni Jardin interviews Matt and Trey about the 200th episode and the Mohammed controversy. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSVU-8X8T7U>

</comment><comment><USER22> The reason this is always such an "outrage" when the Muslim religion is parodied is historical.

The religion was founded on the idea of spreading the itself as widely as possible. Certain leaders (the founder himself even) achieved this through conquering and control. Which was fine thousands of years ago when being invaded was just part and parcel of life. :)

Nowadays the original edicts don't really have any answers of what to do when you get a detractor from the religious teachings (i.e. a parody such as this). Hence extremists turn to literal interpretations and go for violence.

EDIT: hmm, not that I mean to suggest Islam is a violent religion - this was meant as an explanation to the other comments that were wondering why slamming Islam elicits such a violent response from extremists compared to other religions - it is historical.

(I've scrapped all the respectful nonsense - it was a quick opinion at the end of a comment relating to something different. I never intended it to be taken so seriously :))

<comment><USER23> If we're going to be that respectful of Islam, why are we not going to be that respectful of Christianity? Or, relevant to the current discussion, Scientology?

Because they don't threaten violence anywhere near as credibly? That's a terrible, terrible incentive to set up. (But perhaps you have another answer?)

<comment><USER22> [most of this was incoherent - sorry]

Perhaps the suggestion of be respectful is the wrong choice of words; probably I mean "avoid inciting the extremist elements" instead (till they become irrelevant).

What would you suggest as an alternate solution?

<comment><USER23> Are you familiar with the logic as to _why_ we "don't negotiate with terrorists"? It is not because the people saying that are waving their dicks around and showing off. It is because when you do negotiate, you encourage other terrorists to try terrorism next week. Today's hostages may die, but they are saving tomorrow's hostages, and the next day's, and the next day's. It is brutal calculus, but it is the only sane answer. The cost of being nice here is death; it is a net cost of lives.

My solution is simple: To tell the extremist elements that they can't dominate our discourse, and to meet both threats and any attempts to follow through on those threats with all the force necessary to dissuade them. The "nice" answer is wrong and has all sorts of "not nice" results. And however hard this may be to believe or accept, the potential losses of knuckling under to terrorism are _unbounded_. Because the thing is, it's not about the grievance they say it's about. There's an infinite supply of grievances, and even if there wasn't, if you leave the decision about whether you've discharged the grievance in the hands of the terrorist they can always decide you haven't done enough. What it is about is that they can get more benefit from the terrorism than it costs them. That is what you must be concerned about, ensuring that the costs of terrorism exceed the benefits, and one easy (and arguably necessary-but-not- sufficient) way to do that is to make sure they don't get benefits. Official "Draw Mohammed" day is a good solution on the side, by raising the costs of terrorism.

Any policy that has the end result of moving the cost/benefit advantage of terrorism in the direction of "benefit" is wrong, especially any that cross from net-negative to net-positive. Regardless of how "nice" it is. Regardless of how well-cloaked in moralistic bibble-babble it is. And it will be so cloaked; the ability of humans to rationalize the short-term convenient answer is nearly unbounded. This is part of the basic contract of civilization and operates at a lower, more fundamental level than most people are used to debating at, in that if terrorists are allowed to tear apart civilization (the ultimate end result if this policy of appeasement is followed), most of the rest of our debates are rendered moot. The first order of business is make sure we still have a civilization in which to have our arguments about what it should be.

I've gone down to this level because it's _really important_. The US remains a ways away from this being a serious problem, but I am concerned about the number of draws we're making against this account without depositing things; we're a ways from bankrupt here but the trend is strongly negative lately.

I have carefully referred to "nice" policies rather than naming names, but in most cases there are, shall we say, _correlations_ between political parties and the "niceness" of their policies; applying this discussion to their country's policies is left as an exercise for the reader. But there is definitely a time and a place for "not nice" policies, if you actually want your civilization to survive.

<comment><USER24> Exactly. Whenever we self-censor because of terrorist threats, we send the message that threats work. Threats will get you want you want.

If we consistently replied with "we don't listen to threats; if you follow up, you'll be punished," then crazies with agendas wouldn't be able to push the whole world around.

Not that I'd find it easy to publish something, just for humor's sake, that could get me or my loved ones killed. But if I thought it was truly an important message, I hope I'd publish it.

<comment><USER22> > But if I thought it was truly an important message, I hope I'd publish it.

Just for the record; I entirely agree here! If it is important then it needs to be said.

But if you say something for fun (which I think one should be allowed to do!) and because of it a bomb goes off elsewhere in the world - that is hard to justify.

> If we consistently replied with "we don't listen to threats; if you follow > up, you'll be punished,"

Yeh, the problem with applying this to extremism is that, for the most part, it doesn't work. On one hand it gives them ammunition to "legitimise" their actions and on the other punishment isn't necessarily a concern for some. They will kill anyway.

<comment><USER25> No. If south park had shown Muhammad, and someone had gotten killed because of it, the only people to blame would be the ones who killed them, not anyone involved with south park.

As cliche as it is, if we let them dictate what we do and do not do, the terrorists win.

<comment><USER22> Yes, to a point. But there is an element of blame too; they must know what reaction their actions would provoke - and yet they choose to continue with them.

There is, perhaps, only a small portion of blame - but it is akin to throwing a red cape between a bull and a man with his back turned.

I think it is morally justified to think: "if I say this will some idiots try to kill other people? perhaps I should tone it down"

<comment><USER26> What will happen is that in some time there will nothing left to be said.

Mind you, I'm drawing a line between incitement (flat out saying "go and do something wrong") and saying something knowing others, in reaction, will do something wrong.

You're opening the opportunity for _every_ type of speech to be silenced. Example?

If you disagree with me, I will kill every poney in the world.

Now you see, we can't even discuss the chance of having a discussion.

Also, one last point to be made: How do you "tone down" against a belief that EVERY visual representation of a person is wrong?

<comment><USER22> > If you disagree with me, I will kill every poney in the world.

The only real point there is that is an unlikely threat. I can ignore it. If a substantial number of people developed a long history of killing ponies and _then_ made that threat I might reconsider.

One of two things has to happen in my mind. Either we have to ignore the terrorists - which is my preferred solution, but I highly doubt the media will let us. Or we avoid inciting them for a bit as best we can _whilst_ eradicating the problem.

<comment><USER26> You know that blame means punishment right? I just drew Mohammed on a napkin. Do you think I should pay a fine, go to jail, something?...

If you think "of course not, don't be silly", then tell me how can I know, prior to expressing my thoughts, if my work will result in a murder. What's a substantial amount of people, how much time is a long history? You're saying there's a line that speech should not cross, because after a certain point bad things will happen.

Where is that line? You're being vague if you say "some people, long history, napkim is okay, cartoon in national newspaper is not". I want to be a law abiding citizen. Should the government publish a list of prohibited things to say? A civilian committee? Should I use "common sense" (as if there's anything common in 2 billion people and 2 major religions spanning 2 thousand years). Or will I only know if what I said was okay after someone killed?

There are serious implications on who you choose to blame, I don't think you've thought this one through.

<comment><USER22> > I just drew Mohammed on a napkin. Do you think I should pay a fine, go to > jail, something?...

You know that's not what I mean :) and it's unrelated. Also your definition of blame is fallacious because punishment does not always take the form of jail/fine (i.e. social blame, personal blame).

Besides your action is not inciting; who will see it? If you now go into the town centre and happen to post it near a mosque a _that_ has potential to be inciting. And you need to consider whether that is the sensible thing to do.

(the answer is; it's probably fine because no one is likely to get killed)

> then tell me how can I know, prior to expressing my thoughts, if my work > will result in a murder.

Strawman; there is ample precedent for media, particularly cartoons, to cause offence and elicit extremist response.

> You're being vague if you say "some people, long history, napkim is okay, > cartoon in national newspaper is not". I want to be a law abiding citizen. > Should the government publish a list of prohibited things to say?

Deliberately so; it's a personal choice, not something anyone else should decide!

> I don't think you've thought this one through.

You skirt around some good points - particularly with regards to "social interference" (i.e. a moral brigade deciding what is right/wrong to publish based on their feeling on what will cause extremist response). However I think you make a few fatal mistakes in rhetoric (mostly by building on increasingly shaking links); ultimately I'm not sure you've thought the counter argument through clearly.

<comment><USER26> Just to let you know I think we're in a point where the medium doesn't help either one of us to convince the other of anything, so I really would have some additional stuff to say (I do have the modern judicial system on my side, after all ;)) but I'm going to choose not do it right now, here on this board. Agree to disagree?

<comment><USER22> Heh, yeh good reminder.. I actually never thought it would spurn such a big thread. My fault.

I suspect I've just not really put my idea out there very well. It happens.

> Agree to disagree?

Done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For those interested, this week's South Park: _NEW YORK, April 26, 2010 - JIMMY AND TIMMY head off TO SUMMER CAMP WITH ALL THEIR HANDICAPABLE FRIENDS in an all-new episode of "South Park" titled "Crippled Summer," premiering on Wednesday, April 28 at 10:00 p.m. on COMEDY CENTRAL.

Competition is the name of the game this summer. There is no time for Jimmy and his friends to slack off. They're working to be this year's champions at summer camp. Jimmy suits up and prepares to shred in the annual surfing contest._

<http://www.southparkstudios.com/news/3880>

Interested to see what lines they push given recent events. They certainly have been in this territory with <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Fight> & <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_the_Down_Steroid>

</comment><comment><USER28> Has anyone read an official statement from Comedy Central about this? This situation seems so counter to their reputation and public image I'm surprised they'd let it stand and not respond to all the trashing.

</comment><comment><USER29> I find the comparison between Apple's lost phone and Muhammad (PBUH) drawing interesting.

While most around here are with Apple's now legal tackling and their defence of their future commodity (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1295964>), many are sceptics and sometimes hostile when some call for understanding of why they could be offended of other's 'freedom of expression'.

Edit: spelling, concision.

</comment><comment><USER30> Man I would love a real Super Best Friends t-shirt (and not the cheap rip-offs on cafepress right now or the the one with the black censor box).

Funny, I was just watching an illegal stream of SouthPark over the weekend and they showed the original superbest friends ep and there was no censorship at all on Muhammed. In fact, they treated him kind of cool, if anything.

</comment><comment><USER30> Man there are a lot of [deleted] comments on this thread. Don't do it! Seriously, the discussion is worth having - resist the urge!

Otherwise downvoting becomes an effective censorship tool as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> "...there's enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down."

This may be the white space behind the type.

</comment><comment><USER30> So what if Stone and Parker just announce to the world they are now Muslim? Wouldn't that be an easy way to solve this for them and then do whatever the hell they want? Sort of like the dentist on Seinfeld that changes religions 'just for the jokes'?

In all seriousness, it worked for some Fox News reporters a few years ago who were capture by muslim extremist. That's almost a South Park ep right there it so absurd.

<comment><USER5> > So what if Stone and Parker just announce to the world they are now Muslim?

Nope. Then their "unIslamic" behavior would be apostacy and blasphemy, which are always taken more seriously when committed by "the faithful".

<comment><USER30> Yup, for sure. I was joking hence my comment about it making a great topic for a SouthPark. I guess I'll lay my sarcasm on thicker next time, people are awfully jumpy on this topic apparently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are people this short memoried / one sided / blind?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ>

Others [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_controversies#Visual_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_controversies#Visual_arts)

And go ask the grieving families of abortion doctors if they think only Islamic fundies murder for their religion?

<comment><USER33> Piss Christ as a counterexample? So what exactly have the fundies achieved in this case, compared to blacking-out of Mohammad by CN?

<comment><USER34> Piss Christ didn't inspire any murders that we know about, but he's got a good point about the ongoing abortion clinic killings.

<comment><USER33> Not really. The point of the article is not that only Muslims kill for religion but that their tactic is disturbingly effective in getting what they want (speech suppression.) Abortion clinic killings have not achieved anything comparable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> For a great response, see Glenn Greenwald's takedown: [http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/26...](http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/26/douthat)

<comment><USER35> I'm curious: who downvoted this without comment, and why?

EDIT: removed inflammatory derogation of said downvoters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> And a well-stated counterpoint [http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/26...](http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/26/douthat/index.html)

<comment><USER37> I don't think this piece goes anywhere near "well-stated", to me it read more like a hysterical outburst. Look, I don't know who Douthat is, he's not one of the NYT writers I read (I'd rather read Dowd for her dazzling word games). And I don't care. All I care is the column he's written and that's the way it should be, I think.

Now, the Salon essay's main point seems to be to argue that "threat-induced censorship" is _not_ "a uniquely Islamic practice". I totally agree with that, other groups also dabble in such threats (and sometimes carry them out, too, e.g. see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence>). However, carrying-out a unified agenda of world-wide censorship through political influence ([http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cf...](http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15833005)) or down-right intimidation when that doesn't work, is quite unique to Islamic countries.

I know, because I'm a Muslim and I come from such a country.

<comment><USER38> This particular brand of 'worldwide censorship' is not unique in this day and age - Scientology practices something very similar, using the threat of copyright to discourage talking about their practices.

In any event, it's only recent globalization has made this approach a possibility. Go back two decades, and the Soviet Union practiced similar censorship within their own territories. Go back a few hundred years, and the catholic church threatened excommunication if you didn't toe the party line.

It's the same idea - just the techniques have gotten more refined.

<comment><USER39> Except that excommunication simply let you know you had removed yourself from the Church, and was a call to repentance. (Same today, though it's rarely used.)

No physical threats, no violence, just a formal reminder from the Church that by your actions you're essentially cutting yourself off. If that didn't bother you, so be it.

<comment><USER38> You must be joking.

The church's excommunication back in the day went far beyond that.

For example, when the Catholic church excommunicated Martin Luther, "It also made it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food or shelter. It permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence." (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther>)

Many excommunications were of the form "vitandus", where the excommunicated was to be shunned by fellow Catholics. That's a pretty severe penalty when _everyone_ was Catholic.

<comment><USER39> No, the Church didn't do that--the state (Emperor) sentenced him thusly. Read the article more carefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Still waiting for their parody of the holocaust.

<comment><USER6> Tolerance Camp.

<comment><USER40> No. The _holocaust_ , not a nazi cameo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Probably worth while to mention that depicting Jesus in an inappropriate manner is _greatly_ disrespectful to Muslims as well. Jesus(peace be upon him) is among the most renowned Prophets of God in Islam.

</comment><comment><USER42> I haven't taken a position on this matter yet, but is anyone (credible) looking into whether the hype around this story was generated on purpose as an attempt to smear American Muslims? See:

The Radical "Muslim" Group That Threatened South Park Creators Was Founded and Run by Joseph Cohen, a Former Israeli Radical Who Used to Live in a Settlement in the West Bank <http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/bvnsa/>

<comment><USER6> Has anyone credible raised the question that Theo van Gogh was really murdered by someone out to make Muslims look bad?

<comment><USER25> If by credible you mean not a raging anti-Semite, then no.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon States Language – A JSON-based language to describe state machines - <AUTHOR> https://states-language.net/spec.html <comment><USER2> "The Step Functions free tier includes 4,000 free state transitions per month." .. "$0.025 per 1,000 state transitions thereafter"

So Amazon has created a new calling convention, where conditional logic now also requires a context switch and JSON serialization. Then they charge you for the call .. $tdcall?

This will certainly have some useful applications, maybe someone will build an inexpensive data processing pipeline on top of it. Having seen many visual workflow tools through the years, most are simplifying complex underlying process, but these step functions and state transitions are modeling basic internal control flow with complex abstractions and little benefit other than retries with backoff.

The pure functional immutable nature of the data flow is ideally nice but tainted by the JSON. The parallelism is interesting, but it seems bolted on instead of a more powerful central part of the design.

<comment><USER3> wait, what..!!

is that entire system state to state or per state?

i.e. if i have 100 states each transitioning 365 times bootstrapped a thousand times

they'll charge nearly a million dollars or nearly a thousand?

noting that takes like a minute on my desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do something like this in JSON? I don't work in javascript, but surely it would have been far simpler to use. Restrict it to a subset if you have to, but this is absurd:

      "ChoiceStateX": {
      "Type" : "Choice",
      "Choices": [
        {
            "Not": {
              "Variable": "$.type",
              "StringEquals": "Private"
            },
            "Next": "Public"
        },
        {
          "And": [
            {
              "Variable": "$.value",
              "NumericGreaterThanEquals": 20
            },
            {
              "Variable": "$.value",
              "NumericLessThan": 30
            }
          ],
          "Next": "ValueInTwenties"
        }
      ],
      "Default": "DefaultState"
      }

<comment><USER5> It looks like they want to make a User interface on top of it. It is very difficult to make a user interface that reads and writes from a regular programming language as there are multiple ways to write the same expression (with space, without space, with new line etc).

<comment><USER3> 18 years late.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dia_(software)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dia_\(software\))

<comment><USER5> Not at all related. Amazon step functions are executable state machines, while Dia is just a general-purpose diagramming tool.

<comment><USER3> dia creates xml almost identical in nature to this json spec.

and if you need json, plenty of xml to json convertors knocking around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been working on a moon-shot project for more than a decade that seeks to model distributed systems as if they were digital logic circuits. One of the natural areas of interest is of course FSM's - in particular declarative specifications of FSM's. I continue to believe (although it's a wildly unpopular notion among some of my machine learning friends) that this obsession with the mechanics of declaring design intent with models and then synthesizing runtime code will fundamentally transform software engineering over time. But, declarative FSM's aren't enough to make it practical IMHO.

I wrote a short essay about this work in which I argue that the software engineering community needs to embrace the design methodologies and rigour of hardware designers: [https://medium.com/@alpinelakes/on-monday-i-learned-i- got-ac...](https://medium.com/@alpinelakes/on-monday-i-learned-i-got-accepted- to-the-founder-institute-991cdd88275e#.20kj8ipp5)

See also: [http://blog.encapsule.org/early-encapsule-project- history/20...](http://blog.encapsule.org/early-encapsule-project- history/2004-encapsule-prototype-screen-shots/) (old code but same ideas as what I'm building now in Node.js/HTML5 @Encapsule).

Several things I believe are actually essential to make use of any of these ideas at scale:

\- There needs to be an ad-hoc extensible standard for notating serialized data with markers, tags, semantics, metadata (whatever you care to call it). It is not practical to do unsupervised feature extraction on internal message streams. And, it's _insanity_ to write/test/maintain custom validation/normalization logic.

\- Given the above, FSM declarations must be encoded with labels (as above) so that generic code can easily affect interop.

\- Small FSM's are reasonably easy to comprehend. But, very few systems can be modeled with simple FSM's. Rather, real systems can be modeled as complex directed graphs where edges represent the flow of observable state from one FSM to another (vertices represent individual FSM).

\- Given that real systems can be modeled using non-trivial graph models of FSM (as above), building reusable components by splicing and dicing the graph up is logically possible. But, this is not something that mortals can do by hand. Considerable tooling is required to make it practical to design systems like this.

If you're interested in these topics, and want to help, look me up @Encapsule.

<comment><USER7> You're about 30 years late. The programming with visual state machines started with Harel and Booch and led to UML (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlaer%E2%80%93Mellor_method#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlaer%E2%80%93Mellor_method#/media/File:OO_Modeling_languages_history.jpg)). Executable UML (xUML) is a thing. It just never caught on.

<comment><USER8> UML Statecharts are definitely an interesting model , being HFSMs, and thus modular/extensible. But I think there is a lot to be said about context and application - this kind of thing needs to have a revolutionary 'right place, right time' opportunity.

Kind of like Hypertext and Hypermedia, which languished as an academic pipe dream for decades with occasional commercial moments of brilliance (Hypercard), until Tim Berners Lee figured out the right mix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A new market to disrupt - undergraduate computer science projects as a service.

Wait until you guys check out my hashtable implementation _in the cloud_.

<comment><USER10> Is a KeyValue database not a hashtable in the cloud?

<comment><USER11> Hashtables are by far not the only way to associate a number of keys with respective values. They have some nice properties and some rather ugly properties (memory usage, growing/shrinking, iteration, seeding / table poisoning). Most RDBMS (for example) tend to use trees instead for indices. And then there's the whole category of tries.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, but most of the large key-value stores are distributed hash tables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> See also SCXML and SCION:

[https://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/](https://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/)

[https://github.com/jbeard4/SCION](https://github.com/jbeard4/SCION)

And for background, see the pioneering work of Dr. David Harel:

 _A list of all of his papers_

[http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers.html](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers.html)

 _A few on Statecharts_

[http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/SCANNED.PAPERS/Seman...](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/SCANNED.PAPERS/SemanticsofStatecharts.pdf)

[http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/reactive_systems.htm...](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/reactive_systems.html)

[http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/RhapsodySeman...](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/RhapsodySemantics.pdf)

[http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/Statecharts.H...](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/Statecharts.History.CACM.pdf)

[http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/Statecharts.H...](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/Statecharts.History.pdf)

 _Prof. Harel the dreamer..._

[http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/LiberatingPro...](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/LiberatingProgramming.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting that they're using JSONPath, which isn't even specified formally anywhere. The only other major implementor that I know about is Kubernetes, which has some odd extensions for templating. (JSONPath itself, of course, isn't very well designed in the first place.)

We're working on a new variant of JSONPath that we're hoping to publish as a formal, comprehensive specification. It's essentially a superset of JSONPath with some syntax warts fixed (like the need to start with $). I wrote a little about it on HN a week ago [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13032391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13032391)

<comment><USER15> IBM JSONata is another open source alternative. Check it out: [https://developer.ibm.com/open/jsonata/](https://developer.ibm.com/open/jsonata/)

<comment><USER5> JSONata - weird name but seems like a good alternative to XPath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Remember when we used XML, and then people started making DSLs in XML and XML was the worst and too 'heavy' and having to write schemas was enterprise and awful and we are totes using lightweight schema free sexy JSON now?

I wonder what the new thing to replace enterprise JSON will be.

<comment><USER17> It's still going to be XML. JSON is fairly limited, it's literally the serialization format for JavaScript variables, and that one size does not fit all.

<comment><USER16> I'm totally fine with XML. I'm just amazed at the cognitive dissonance anti- Xml pro-Json peeps are starting to display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is interesting, has a lot of similarities (not surprisingly) with how the state machine we build workflows on our bot platform, although of course ours is specifically fixed around chat/messages as a key interaction point.

Major differences that I can see are we enable multiple functions to be sent per state, and that the output data from any state is referenceable by any other state, not just passing it down in turn through the states.

We support fallback states but in a different way, and don't support the retry concept directly within the state language itself, has to be built as a set of states to perform a loop to attempt a retry.

We don't support parallel stages, but do support branches, and remerging of those branches.

Probably the final difference I can see, is one of our options when running a function allows you to actually append additional states to the machine during the runtime process.

</comment><comment><USER19> I did it better 5 years ago. [https://swizec.com/blog/a-turing-machine- in-133-bytes-of-jav...](https://swizec.com/blog/a-turing-machine-in-133-bytes- of-javascript/swizec/3069)

133 byte interpreter in JavaScript. Input is JSON specifying state name, write, move direction, and next state. Turing machines, basically.

Mine was for fun, but why is Amazon doing this?

<comment><USER20> People needed a state engine for sewing Lambda functions together. For example, try doing retry with exponential back-off in Lambda. You quickly run into a number of problems that are difficult without an execution context outside the Lambda itself.

Step Functions give you this external context for doing retry, conditional trigger of downstream functions, parallel trigger of additional functions and more. Execution time of a state machine can last for up to a year, so this also gives you a way to do more than 5 minutes of work at a time.

<comment><USER19> That's cool.

But is there no existing language that can be used to describe state machines?

<comment><USER20> :)

They needed a syntax that was easy to transform into usage of other Amazon resources. I'm guessing JSON was by far the most straightforward for them, not to mention that they've been using the system themselves for quite a while. But I'm just guessing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Some more info on Tim Bray's site: [https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2016/12/01/J2119-Val...](https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2016/12/01/J2119-Validator)

</comment><comment><USER22> Glad to hear that so many people already did this (only better), years ago. Nice to have company.

The only thing new or interesting about States is it has a product behind it that implements it at scale, available now; give it a try.

I think it's quite likely that this syntax is state-machine assembler, and smart people will find nicer expressions of this and compile them down.

In particular, some people prefer dependency graphs to explicit state machines for this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Amazon has also created a ruby gem to lint JSON state machines. [https://github.com/awslabs/statelint](https://github.com/awslabs/statelint)

</comment><comment><USER24> Wait, did they just made a Lisp in JSON?

<comment><USER25> You wait, Google is going to create one in XML, then Apple is going to invent a cool minimalistic pseudo-Lisp that doesn't require any brackets or colons. Then Windows is going to try to create one that only runs on .NET. Finally, someone will create a format that to be read by all of them, and someone is going to implement another LISP in that format.

<comment><USER26> The Apple one attempts to use natural language, the Google one gets discontinued after it becomes somewhat well-known with a cult following, and Microsoft tries to push a competitor until after the Google one fails, at which point they adopt the standard even though their platform store is filled with junkware and no one cares anymore.

<comment><USER27> Meanwhile the aws service is still there plugging away, like simple db, because core infra in aws was built on it and they don't want to anger customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _" This document describes a JSON-based language used to describe state machines declaratively. The state machines thus defined may be executed by software. In this document, the software is referred to as "the interpreter"."_

Oh no.

<comment><USER29> Everything old is new again.

So, now that it is happening to me, am I allowed to apologize to the numerous old-coders that tried to tell me this when I was coming up?

<comment><USER30> If you've seen this before, I'd love to know what came next last time. How did this evolve and what were the issues with it?

<comment><USER31> Tooling. IDEs and special languages to generate the files for the state transitions, and the body of the lambdas themselves. (reading this kind of made me want to go write a little haskell dsl)

If they're a little undisciplined, they'll probably add stuff to implement counting and comparison directly, to put a hard limit on loops.

I'd also guess an addition of a couple special tasks, perhaps append to log in s3 bucket and continue, that perhaps come with a discount.

There are about 3 million old flowchart tools out there, any feature you see tacked on is a candidate.

Tangentially, other organizations will be inspired by this, and implement their own language in json, but this time they'll do it "the right way" then you'll get a working group to try to reconcile all the competing standards.

Or maybe not. kind of what happened with XML though.

 _edit_

ah, here you go. [https://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/](https://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/) that stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wondering why they aren't using their own data format(Amazon Ion - [https://amznlabs.github.io/ion- docs/spec.html](https://amznlabs.github.io/ion-docs/spec.html)) instead of JSON.

<comment><USER32> Nothing here require ION as far as I can see

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This strikes me as the underlying spec for the new Batch service mentioned at re:invent.

<comment><USER20> It's the underlying spec for the JSON description of state machines in AWS Step Functions.

[https://aws.amazon.com/step-functions/](https://aws.amazon.com/step- functions/)

<comment><USER33> .....and just when I thought I've seen all the new services, haha. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This could be useful. Currently there is no easy way to add delay when invoking lambdas from an event. Perhaps this could be used to create a delayed execution triggers (e.g. Invoking a lambda 10 minutes after a dynamodb entries updated).

</comment><comment><USER35> JSON? Somebody forbade s-expressions?

<comment><USER24> For some weird reason people these days believe curly brackets are the the best brackets.

<comment><USER36> It seems some people would rather die than use parenthesis and acknowledge that _those damn lispers_ had a good idea, after all. When curly braces fall out of fashion, what will come next?

I vote for "263D first quarter moon" and "263E last quarter moon", which cannot be displayed here.

[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Unicode/List_of_useful_symbols...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Unicode/List_of_useful_symbols#Science)

<comment><USER35> For me it's not curly braces vs parenthesis, but about unnecessary commas and quotes in JSON. I would rather use EDN than JSON ([https://github.com/edn- format/edn](https://github.com/edn-format/edn)) - no unnecessary noise. I regard EDN as a kind of S-expressions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> JATEOAS

<comment><USER38> Context: [https://spring.io/understanding/HATEOAS](https://spring.io/understanding/HATEOAS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Doesn't look too pretty, ugly in parts. Something strange about it. The ARN business looks very suspicious.

Maybe this is supposed to be pre-alpha?

Consistent with the Tim Bray blog article saying the validator's "implementation is kind of gross."

But then again: stay out of trouble, avoid Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER40> Looks like any other brittle FSM. It's missing an important layer of logic. And yeah, I'm bias because I'm finishing up an FSM that crushes that brittleness.

<comment><USER41> That doesn't tell us very much, and the word you mean is "biased".

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Language? That's bold

</comment><comment><USER43> Bah! Why JSON not XML?

<comment><USER44> ... what is a single reason to use XML over JSON beyond legacy purposes?

<comment><USER43> Schema. Validation.

<comment><USER45> JSON Schema validation exists (e.g. the IAB standards).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


American Cities May Have Hit 'Peak Office' - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/11/05/american-cities-may-have-hit-peak-office/ <comment><USER2> I'm still waiting for Forbes to hit 'Peak Linkbait'

Maybe when Priceonomics does an article on it I'll have another look :-) But seriously there are so many unconstrained variables in their questions that they cannot draw any conclusions whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER3> IMO, this is a tax policy problem. You can go to a city where 80% of the buildings are vacant, but the property owners want insane rents.

Real estate developers have an incentive to hold on to property to let it rot, because they can use the losses (real and imagined) to avoid taxation. The carrying costs for the property are often largely driven by taxes, and assessed value is usually driven by rental income.

<comment><USER4> I would agree with your remarks about crazy rent demands although I'd make a mild correction that nobody has ever been foreclosed due to an imaginary loss, but real losses result in real problems.

So if you can't rent some shack for $20K/month and you've got a loan for half the value of the property, at least for awhile you can get away with telling the bank that you haven't found the right "fit" or "personality" or "match" and much as you're not allowed to criticize single people for such language, the bank will back off as long as you're somehow making the monthly payment. But the day you rent that "$20K" property for $5K the bank is going to freak out at the implication your 0.50 LTV ratio just insta-rose to 2.00 LTV even if you somehow can make the payments.

Its an accounting trick... unrented space is a temporary cost of sales... even if temporary turns into a couple years. But a contract proving the property is worth less because the rent has dropped, is an instant semi-permanent hit in the balance sheet, which you can't just paper over with "cost of sales" BS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Company I work for has offices all over the place. Every time I go to one of these places for meetings, the offices are usually empty.

Most everyone I work with is telecommuting. I do sometimes miss goofing around with folks in the office, but working in boxers is the best perk ever.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting to note: San Francisco adopted an annual limit on office development in 1985 of ~1M sq feet per year [1]. For the past decade, new office development has been under that limit and the remaining allocation has been carried over to subsequent years. Fast forward to today and planned large office development in the city is projected to exceed the allocation in the next year or so.

[1] [http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=3254](http://www.sf- planning.org/index.aspx?page=3254)

</comment><comment><USER7> I think we may have to wait until the unemployment rate drops to pre-Great Recession levels before we can draw firm conclusions.

<comment><USER8> The only way the unemployment rate (the true unemployment rate, U6 [[http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm]](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm\])) is going to drop is if more people continue to permanently exit the workforce [[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000)]. There just is not enough consumer demand, even with prodding by the Fed with QE to increase employment.

<comment><USER9> Why on Earth would monetary stimulus to the lending markets create consumer demand? Should we really continue believing that demand is supposed to come from credit rather than wages?

<comment><USER8> I completely agree with you, but I don't control US monetary policy _shrugs_

Too many people believe growth is a requirement, vs a steady-state economy.

<comment><USER9> Well I wasn't even talking about growth vs steady-state. I was talking about _monetary_ policy vs _fiscal_ policy. A _traditional_ Keynesian stimulus would have been fiscal in nature, and preferably direct state spending on productive matters.

Here's a few things that could have been done:

* Increased spending on scientific research

* Reform the health-insurance system to a universal system for greater efficiency while pouring extensive funding into it

* Vast amounts of infrastructure and public-works projects (especially: bridges, sewage infrastructure, electrical grid, fiber-optic internet, etc)

* Refunding/renationalizing state universities

Most of these sorts of things were _utterly uncontroversial_ until the "neoliberal bloom" of the 2000s, in whose wake Western politicians have apparently forgotten how all their predecessors have managed recessions ever since the Great Depression.

And that's _before_ we talk about undoing financialization and fixing the world's iniquitous trade policies! _Those would be controversial!_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article didn't have any exurb commentary, as employees are pushed out of cities, the appeal of a long commute declines.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. My understanding is that office space is a function of the number of white collar workers in the economy.

I expect this number to increase slowly over time. But perhaps we're approaching a point where a sort of equilibrium exists. Further societal and technological changes will need to occur to significantly shift it.

<comment><USER11> >My understanding is that office space is a function of the number of white collar workers in the economy.

Telecommuting makes this rule obsolete.

<comment><USER12> You have been drinking the telecoms company's cool aid - they want to sell expensive teleconferencing solutions which have higher profit margins than the regulated services.

face to face co-located teams are still be best for many jobs especially complex software development.

<comment><USER13> What parent or you consider best is irrelevant, what matters to this discussion is what most employers think. And most office work is not software development.

<comment><USER12> And your point is? Most employers like bums on seats as its easier to manage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If we really have hit 'Peak Office' and Windows is on the decline, then no wonder Steve Ballmer is resigning from Microsoft. </joke>

</comment><comment><USER15> I for one welcome our new remote boss overlords!

It's about time for this to happen.</comment>


2015 Tech Trends by Amy Webb - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/webbmedia/2015-tech-trends <comment><AUTHOR> Heard about this report and Amy Webb on NPR (Newshour). Found it very relevant for the startup community.

"At the end of each year, Webbmedia Group applies our FuturePrint Trend- spotting Framework to surface the most important emerging trends in digital media and technology for the year ahead. This 2015 Trend Report offers 55 key insights representing the immediate trends that we think will matter most in the coming year."</comment>


The Messy Mediterranean - <AUTHOR> https://sovereignlimits.com/blog/the-messy-mediterranean <comment><USER2> Can we please leave politics out of HN? Being Greek I don't want to see a conflict starting here. With that being said, it would be best if all nations signed and followed UNCLOS [0] guidelines and adopted a strict equidistance- based maritime boundary for all sea disputes.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea)

<comment><USER3> It looks quite neutral for me, perhaps because I'm from Argentina and we don't have any skin in this game. (We have our land and maritime border conflict too. It's a sensitive topic in all the countries. [1])

The article helped me to understand the recent problem. My fast and possible inaccurate takeaway is:

 _The land shore of Turkey has a lot of nearby Greek islands. If there is oil nearby, that will surely cause a problem._

[1] Let's pick and easy one, the land frontier of Argentina and Chile. The Andes mountain range is in between. One method to select the border is to pick the highest mountains, other method is to look at the water basins. They are very different, so after a lot of problem we selected a mixed method and then added some arbitrary borders for a smaller section. Now it is quite settled, probably because there is not too much oil under the area. Other borders are too boring or too polemic.

<comment><USER4> It's complicated to rely on natural barriers as they change too, for instance some parts of the border between Croatia and Serbia were drawn to follow the Danube river, but the river bed is ever-changing as water finds new ways - creating meanders and river islands - so now we have some areas in-between the two countries where ownership is disputed. Some guy even tried to declare a new state in one of those areas [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland)

<comment><USER5> The Gornja Siga area (where Liberland is) did not appear over time as the river changed, it's that the Serbians are explicitly using the historical river while the Croatians are explicitly using the contemporary river, which results in Serbia not claiming the piece of land and Croatia declaring it belongs to Serbia.

<comment><USER4> Actually it's the opposite, and the difference between the two is because the river bed has changed over the time naturally and by human engineering. To quote Wikipedia: "Serbia holds the opinion that the thalweg of the Danube valley and the centre line of the river represents the international border between the two countries. Croatia disagrees and claims that the international border lies along the boundaries of the cadastral municipalities located along the river—departing from the course at several points—reflecting the course of the Danube which existed in the 19th century before meandering and hydraulic engineering works altered its course."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsovereignlimits.com%2Fblog%2Fthe%2Dmessy%2Dmediterranean)

I was hoping we'd gotten past the era where blog articles stopped loading under a bit of traffic, alas.

<comment><USER7> Yep, HN hug of death is still real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a very real problem in the Eastern Med. as the article points out.

From a Lebanon perspective, people have been talking about tapping into these offshore energy reserves for a decade+. But the inside conversation is that the Lebanese people would never see a penny from any revenues. They would simply get funneled into various politicians pockets.

It seems like many countries would be far better off without this.

</comment><comment><USER9> TIL cyprus still has two UK bases. That might help complicate things.

<comment><USER10> UK, complicating things since 19... wait... 18... 1700s?

<comment><USER9> Wikipedia says 1688-1914. I would argue that brit foreign policy makers weren't ready to pass the baton until 1957 made it obvious.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony#15th–19th_centuries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony#15th–19th_centuries)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#Financial_pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#Financial_pressure)</comment></comment></comment>


Fusion Garage Disintegrates: Founder Creating New Company For Lots More Fraud? - <AUTHOR> http://uncrunched.com/2012/01/09/fusion-garage-disintegrates-founder-creating-new-company-for-lots-more-fraud/ <comment><USER2> Fusion Garage and Arrigton had partnered at one point to produce a tablet. Later Fusion Garage struck off on their own to build a tablet, barely sold any units (~90), got sued by Arrington, and now seem to have gone bankrupt.

I had to use wiki to catch up on internet drama the headline and blogpost seem to assume the readers follow.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo></comment>


Ask HN: Do we have a MVP here? Help us out - <AUTHOR>

Since our first release 4 weeks ago, we have iterated and incorporated the feedback we got. We are now beginning to shift our focus on letting people know about our product.
We have gotten so far ~500 visitors but not many are using our product.
http://caniafforditnow.com
Context: Our app/tool performs a financial health check and evaluates your affordability
 of a purchase. The user asks the question, provides the financial numbers,
 and the tool provides the Answer in the form of a verdict and a Report.
When I say User not using our product, I mean not asking the question and not completing providing the details.
We would like to figure out why the asking rate and completion rate are dismal
a) Are we not targeting the right audience?
 (so far mostly from HN, reddit, Facebook Ads, and very few from financial forums) b) Is our product's value not clearly conveyed on the site? c) Our product does not provide value? d) None of the above. Just keep pushing and it will happen
What do you think and what do you recommend?
Thanks <comment><USER3> Site design is problematic - it doesn't look solid - it looks almost spammy, as if if I gave you any info (personal finance info!) it'd be compromised.

Level-headed check, I know that's not the case, but the appearance is not very hot. I'm not a huge fan, but look at Quizzle.com. It's slightly _busier_ in some ways, but there's a lot more polish, and the value prop is right there in the tagline "don't guess - know". Actually, that's a bit nebulous, but it feels stronger.

You've got 3 thrusts: Get a Second Opinion before Purchase Get a Free Financial Health Check Anonymously and Instantly Boost your Financial Savvy by responding to Questions

Focus on just one as the main push on the home page, lose the others.

This is 'site redesign' stuff, and not quite what you asked for, but I think you might have the makings of something. A solid base of people sharing info here could lead to other products for upselling. Also, targetted ads - <USER2> someone's looking to buy X, not only would have people suggesting whether they should or shouldn't buy it, you'd have ads right there giving them options. Or perhaps that's crossing a line in your mind?

Again, conceptually, I think there's the seed of something there. It just feels a bit hokey at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, you can tell, I am not a designer, my goal is to just keep the design neutral (not get any awards for it :) and focus on selling the functionality. Damn, keeping it neutral is turning out to be so hard :)

Any ideas welcome in this regard as well.

<comment><USER4> I think the basic concept is a good one. Specific (and mostly functional) design observations:

\- Your logo/header looks like a banner ad. You'd actually be better off with a simple text logo in a neutral sans-serif font. Same goes (to a much lesser extent) for the general design - if you don't want to pay a designer than go for something even more minimal - spammers aren't big fans of white space or grey text.

\- The "Please be assured..." text at the top of the forms should be a neutral colour and not warning red

\- Having a section called "Payment Details" is very bad for a free service. I realise there's a logical reason for it being called that, but it leaves the user wondering whether its a bait and switch which will end up sending recurring monthly bills. Especially when that underhand tactic is very widely used for "free credit checks" all over the internet anyway...

-Your "I want to" field is too small and outside the main flow of the page - at a glance it could be a search box or newsletter submission form. Instead, merge it into the home page. Break down the main homepage flow into two steps:

(1) What do you want to buy?

Your form field goes below, probably including a second field for the cost as I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to include that. Experiment with dropping the form from the home page altogether

(2) Can I afford it? "Fill in our free, anonymous financial health checklist and we'll calculate an instant answer"

with a big "Check Now" button to the next page just below. I've also reworded to something less threatening than "Provide us with your financial numbers". Subtle differences in wording mater for something like this - I once had a job where I did have to ask for people's bank details whilst still studiously avoiding words like "details" or "numbers"

"We evaluate your financial health against..." and the associated links goes below this. You might want to test whether the "recently asked" section on the home page is a good or bad thing for user signups

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for a great feedback on your thought process while filling out the fields and suggestions. Appreciate it very much and will certainly look into that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's not overly clear what the site actually does. There's a lot to read and none of it really jumps out at me to explain why this site is of benefit to me.

The biggest problem, as has already been mentioned, is that it looks like a spammer's site. I know you say you're not a designer, that's ok, I'm not either. But when dealing with financial stuff you MUST look professional.

I'm pushing my own barrow here a bit, but try a service like <http://fivesecondtest.com> or (for fairness) something like <http://conceptfeedback.com>

If you want, shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll get you set up with a free 5st premium account so you can get some test results quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and offer. Sending you an email now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not clear at all what the site does.

The text field under "I want to" is too small, what am I supposed to do with it?

I mean what kind of stuff can I type in there? It seems like I should tell you a lot more than just three words. I mean, it says "provide us your financial numbers", how am I supposed to provide you them in that tiny box?

Out of curiosity I tried to type "buy a house", and then it took me to a new page. Now in that new page, the "I want to" box is larger, and it says under it "Example: Buy a TV, Visit Europe, Go on a Cruise". Too late to give an example at this point.

Also it's not clear who will be advising me, will a real human look at my situation and give me advice, or will it be left up to a machine?

It seems to me that the calculation is simple enough that I can do it on my own, the hard part of such a decision is not the number crunching, it's about what else do I want. Sure I can buy a house with a mortgage of say 1000/mo, but how would that affect my life? What if I actually want to travel around the world? Should I still buy a house? How will the machine know?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for a great feedback on your thought process while filling out the fields. Will certainly look into that.

When you have 2 things in mind, you can break it down into 2 questions,

for ex: first check your affordability for the house. If you get approved, the report tells you your status at that point. Based on that, ask another question about your Travel. If you sign up, the app will remember your financial details from the first question. No need to type them again.

Let me know what you think.

Once again, thanks for your excellent feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems that a general consensus from feedback thus far is:

1) It is difficult to tell what the site _does_ , and 2) Once that's figured out, few people stay because the site doesn't seem to solve a problem _they actually have_.

You mentioned iteration; What do you mean by it, specifically? Have you made substantive changes in functionality? Or have you simply added "most requested features"? The difference here is important, as it may be the difference between finding a problem that needs solving and adding resources to a solution searching for a problem.

My recommendation (for what that's worth) is to engage in a bit of customer development, the initial goal of which is to find _who_ has the problem that you feel like you're solving. Hasenj noted that the calculations seem very simple (given, many contributors here are programmers and/or math nerds). That said, you do not know how many of your actual customers may be thinking the same thing.

However, if you can find (and by find, I mean specifically target, talk to and learn from) a group of people who consistently benefit from your service, you are in a much better position to move ahead. Effectively, this group will act as your cheering squad, providing feedback upon which you can grow and word- of-mouth upon which you can ultimately scale.

I consider this to be much more important than the design (although that is important as well). While better design may attract people to stay longer and/or use your service for the first time, it will not help with retention unless you're solving a problem that people legitimately have. Design doesn't provide an accurate indicator of scale-potential; Function does.

You may have known all of what I just told you. Hell, you may have already done it all. If, however, it was new to you, I would suggest checking out Steve Blank's book _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ , found here: [http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/0976470705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290478480&sr=8-1)

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for summarizing. I kinda knew about the customer development part, however, we are not able to get users to see past the design and into asking the question and seeing the Report at which point the value of the tool can be determined. We have only iterated the design, believe it or not. This tool closely mimics the popular TV show 'Can I afford it?' by Suze Orman, and so we know there are quite a few people who can benefit from these evaluations that we do. The value is in remembering to do all the checks at once.

The challenge is to find these folks who can benefit. Any ideas to reach such customers welcome.

Today's feedback has been quite beneficial, hopefully we can get past the design hump. Thanks to everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried it out and got stuck at Gross Monthly Income. It is limited to "Minimum: $2,500 Maximum: $8,000". So what do I do when I don't fit in there?

Other seemingly arbitrary limitations:

\- Net income : Net Income should be less than Gross Income.

\- Liquid assets : Currently we support between $1000 and $1,000,000 only.

</comment><comment><USER9> Clickable link: <http://caniafforditnow.com></comment>