When It's a Crime to Withdraw Money from Your Bank - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/upshot/when-its-a-crime-to-withdraw-money-from-your-bank.html <comment><USER2> On one hand, this seems almost like a Spinal Tap sort of situation. If you want to make it illegal to evade the reporting requirements by withdrawing $8,000 repeatedly, then write the law to require reporting $8,000, or whatever amount you're after.

On the other hand, the law is written such that it only applies to people who are aware of the law and intended to circumvent reporting. It seems like an easy case that withdrawing $1.7 million in increments under $10,000 is intentional, and that the guy who was Speaker of the House at the time that the law was updated by Congress would know that the law exists.

As is often the case, it seems like a bad person violating a bad law and it's hard to get worked up over either.

<comment><USER3> In Sweden, they have created a similar system but which simply limits withdraws to $1,500 a week unless you visit a bank and ask for permission, for which takes a minimum of 2 bank days. Withdrawing $1.7 million in increments would simply be too impractical.

<comment><USER4> Really? Well, the Bankomat AB ("ATM Inc") ATM network page says that each card issuer issuer (ie. Bank) that is connected are responsible for setting withdrawal limits individually. Unless the card is from a issuer that is not connected to their network, in which case the withdrawal is limited to 2000 SEK (currently ~237 USD, ~214 EUR).

Also, as far as I know - I can walk into a FOREX Bank branch office and withdraw as much as I want to at any time with my current card, as my issuing bank has a deal with them for cash management.

As far as I know, there's no laws that restrict cash withdrawal in this way or any laws about reporting cash withdrawal to Skatteverket (Swedish "IRS").

<comment><USER4>
      As far as I know, there's no laws that restrict cash withdrawal in this way or any laws about reporting cash withdrawal to Skatteverket (Swedish "IRS").

The only restrictions I can think about are for cash deposits. Basically, you need to declare where the cash is from. It's a checkbox type item where I usually answer "Savings." (It's that stupid.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Imagine you have a series S=[[datetime1,amount1], [datetime2,amount], ..., [datetimek,amountk]] of withdrawals in which the amounts are lower than 10 000 dollars. From there, it should be possible to define the predicate function isCrime(S)=yes/no for any such S. The way in which they wrote their so-called law, however, makes it obviously impossible to implement such isCrime() predicate function unambiguously. In other words, what we can learn from this, is that there exists a set of people who are pretentious enough that they insist that they can write laws, but who are obviously too stupid to do that properly. They are also dangerous because these people use violence in order to impose their stupidity onto others.

<comment><USER6> The UK is currently having great difficulty trying to ban "legal highs", which is obviously impossible to define.

<comment><USER7> Given the ample evidence that the current UK government don't care about tricky technicalities like human rights or cutting some slack to law abiding people and not harassing them I doubt they'll have any trouble sorting this issue out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This strikes me as a congressional case of the XY problem ([http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem))

Somewhere, long ago, people were committing crimes involving large amounts of money, but law enforcement couldn't stop it. So they instituted financial reporting requirements for banks, to help identify crooks. But people can easily structure their transactions to avoid the reporting requirements.

So now you make it a crime to do that. Regardless of whether there was an underlying crime in the first place.

Oh, and then when the FBI investigates, you can commit a third crime (lying to the FBI) without having committed the first crime or second crime.

<comment><USER9> The police can lie to you. Yet you can not lie to the police. You can refuse to talk to them however.

<comment><USER10> Yes you can and in the process you piss off the prosecutor who for all intent and purpose might as well be the police. Now you actively have the law working against you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "lying to FBI" charge is arguably the more important problem with this story.

See [https://popehat.com/2015/05/29/dennis-hastert-and-federal- pr...](https://popehat.com/2015/05/29/dennis-hastert-and-federal- prosecutorial-power/)

<comment><USER12> It seems that the risk of giving incorrect information to FBI agents while being interviewed, whether intentional or not, is so high that it's better just to not to agree to an interview, especially if you're innocent.

<comment><USER13> It can never help you to be interviewed without an attorney present. It's probably been seen many times before, but I do enjoy this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _The government has the burden to prove that the defendant knew about the reporting requirement and intended to evade it... this is quite unlike many of the regulatory crimes that can ensnare the unsophisticated._

So this is a situation where ignorance of the law _does_ excuse violating it?

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

<comment><USER15> It's not illegal to make repeated cash transactions less than $10,000.

It's illegal to make repeated cash transactions less than $10,000 with the intent to evade the reporting requirements.

So if you are not aware of the reporting requirements it is very unlikely that you are violating the law (you certainly aren't violating the reasonable spirit of the law, you may not escape prosecution...).

<comment><USER16> In other words the crime is the intent, so it's impossible to commit the crime without the intent! (Unlike the prototypical crime which is the act)

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure they only bother prosecuting cases where the act is committed.

I don't think it is so far away from other crimes where intent is evaluated (like murder vs manslaughter).

<comment><USER17> They've certainly been doing it without evidence of intent. It's been a huge deal. [http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/washingtonbureau/2015...](http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/washingtonbureau/2015/02/irs- seizes-millions-from-law-abiding-businesses-3.html)

<comment><USER15> The first business mentioned in that article certainly did structure their transactions with the intent of avoiding reporting regulations, under the advice of their accountant:

 _Convenience-store distribution is a cash-intensive business, and Hirsch said his accountant advised him that he should keep the company 's deposits below $10,000 because banks didn't like the paperwork involved with Currency Transaction Reports._

The article states _But there was no evidence of criminal activity_ , not that there was no evidence of intent (as the section I quoted makes clear, the intent was obvious).

Please note that I'm not making statements in favor of the law in these comments, just characterizing the facts as I see them.

ETA: as I keep reading, the second business was also intentionally avoiding the reporting requirements (after a teller told them how). The third one does not directly state that they were trying to avoid the reporting requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I enjoy contemplating the nuts and bolts of these laws with respect to what exactly would be allowed and what would not.

For example, if I were to withdraw $15k every friday and re-deposit it every monday under the guise that I want it available for gambling over the weekend, that would raise a flag, but it's easily explainable. Would it be considered "structuring" if I did this for a while just to establish a pattern, or is it only structuring if you're trying to _avoid_ triggering a report?

If the $15k occasionally didn't show up on monday, would I then need to come up with another explanation (e.g. "I lost")? Would it fly if I were actually paying this to a friend by way of intentionally losing to him in a private card room?

<comment><USER19> Structuring is withdrawing cash in under 10k increments to avoid the automatic reports that occur over 10k. You wouldn't be in trouble for structuring for withdrawing 15k every week, because you would trigger a CTR every week. More accurately twice a week if you re-deposited the cash. There is nothing inherently illegal in generating CTRs, or withdrawing cash over $10k.

You overestimate the amount of attention paid to CTRs. There are people and cash heavy businesses that trigger CTRs all the time. The reporting requirement is a fixed dollar amount that hasn't been adjusted since 1970. From a law enforcement standpoint CTRs are spam.

The way to generate attention is by trying to avoid CTRs or the equivalent rules for cashiers checks and money orders (MIL). That will get you a SAR. Those might get investigated if you generate a few of them.

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

<comment><USER18> Actually, based on reading that wikipedia article and the related one on "structuring", it's not clear to me that the scenario I described couldn't be argued to be structuring. The relevant quote is that you may not structure transactions "for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements of section 5313 (a) or 5325 or any regulation prescribed under any such section," and my proposed scheme is designed not to avoid the CTR but rather the Suspicious Activity Report. So I think it's arguable that they could nail me for structuring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is why, if you ever want to extort money from someone, you have your lawyer talk to their lawyer first. I'm sure they could have set up an LLC for the extortionist/victim to perform "market research" or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> And don't forget the income tax; according to the article, even extortion must be taxed as per the Supreme Court, 1952.

<comment><USER21> I've always enjoyed the specification in the instructions for the 1040 form that you must include all sources of income, including illegal income! (Of course, famously, it was on this count that they got Capone.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is paying hush money illegal? This is essentially how no-competes and NDAs work sometimes. An employer offers you some amount of your salary on exit, and asks you to sign a document agreeing not to disclose things you learned there.

Further, while I am aware that transactions above 10K are flagged, so what? If you have paid taxes on the money, you can do what you want with it. IANAL but I think you can withdraw any amount, it is just flagged and reported by the teller.

<comment><USER23> No, I don't believe it's _necessarily_ illegal to pay someone "hush money" (though it probably depends! laws are awfully vague). I do believe it's illegal to _demand to be paid_ "hush money", though, normally referred to as "blackmail".

Presumably the reason the accused used structuring, even if a "hush money" payment itself was legal, was that they would have had to explain why they were making such a large withdrawal -- which doesn't really help for keeping things "hushed".

<comment><USER24> > I do believe it's illegal to demand to be paid "hush money", though, > normally referred to as "blackmail".

Depends on the jurisdiction. If the act being covered up is _illegal_ , then someone knowing about it is obligated to report it or be an accomplice after the fact, regardless of money changing hands. On the other hand, if the act being covered up is not illegal, merely embarrassing (classic example: an extramarital affair), then it would depend on whether blackmail itself is a crime in itself or only an extension of some other crime.

The description at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail) would suggest that, in the US, blackmail would be a crime only when some other crime is being covered up. I don't know if that's accurate or complete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My biggest gripe with this law has to do with the fact that the limit hasn't changed in at least 22 years. I remember learning about this law when I worked as a bank teller one summer. $10K isn't what it used to be.

<comment><USER26> The "Know Your Customer" rules actually encourage reporting of transactions in the $2500 dollar range, which is even less.

Source: drinking buddy who was VP of local bank and handled regulatory compliance

<comment><USER27> Yea that's nothing. Probably wouldn't even get you a pound of weed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised no one has mentioned Bitcoin yet -- which like him or not, would have made this man's life much easier and more private.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure how using Bitcoins would have helped. He could have easily purchased Bitcoins. But using them to anonymously pay his blackmailer(s) would have been nontrivial. Even if he had known how, or had advice from someone who did, I suspect that he'd have been pushing the limits of most mixing services. Also, the US classifies Bitcoins as capital investments. And so he would have had to report gains and losses in his income tax returns.

<comment><USER28> true, but the 10k withdrawal would have been a non-issue.

<comment><USER29> I don't think so.

Consider that I want to discreetly give someone $80K. If I withdraw $80K, the bank must report that. But if I withdraw 10x $8K, I'm arguably structuring to avoid reporting. So let's say that I want to buy $80K of Bitcoins. If I do that in one $80K transfer, the bank must report that. And with 10x $8K, I'm still structuring. And either way, in that year's tax return, I'll need to report capital gains and losses on the $80K of Bitcoins.

<comment><USER30> You wouldn't have to report capital gains unless you had sold the asset. But transferring the asset to your blackmailer, perhaps you might have to pay gift tax, unless you filed a 1099. [1]

[1] [http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employ...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employed/Frequently-Asked-Questions-on-Gift-Taxes)

<comment><USER29> I'm not very familiar with US tax law. But the key point, I think, is that once I have that $80K Bitcoin asset, the reporting requirements for it will be comparable to those for $80K in my bank.

Bitcoin only helps if I can buy those Bitcoins without reporting. So I'm in the same situation as accumulating cash to send via DHL or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If the law was [automatically] adjusted with/for inflation, the original $10,000 limit would be $60,000 today.

</comment><comment><USER32> This situation itself is pretty straightforward, Hastert was clearly structuring, and, odds are, the person he sent the money to didn't pay taxes on the money he got from Hastert, which itself is a crime, and finally, he lied about it to the FBI, also a crime. So, three clear crimes here, one of which committed by a third party.

So many things in life are "grey" \- this one is pretty straightforward, and Hastert would have known that what he was doing was wrong. The news coming out today strongly suggests that he had a good incentive to commit these crimes to hide evidence of even greater wrongdoing.

<comment><USER33> Hmm, how is blackmail money classified? Gifts are not taxable by the recipient, but if you're being blackmailed, it hardly sounds like you're making a gift. Similarly, insurance money that "makes you whole" is not taxed, and in this case the money kind of sounded like restitution for abuse.

I'm genuinely curious how this money would be treated by the IRS.

<comment><USER32> Money from blackmail, otherwise known as extortion, is most certainly taxable by the IRS: [http://www.irs.gov/uac/Federal-Statutes---Money- Laundering](http://www.irs.gov/uac/Federal-Statutes---Money-Laundering)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So the offense is, essentially, not arranging your affairs in a way so as to leave them open to easy scrutiny by the state. With decades of precedent allowing such laws how can strong cryptography possibly be permissible?

<comment><USER15> No, the essence of the offense is to be aware of a certain type of scrutiny and arrange your affairs specifically to avoid it.

<comment><USER35> Actually, some people here will argue that, in fact, the state HAS an inherent power to inspect anything at all. Math and physics be damned.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand why that is an actually.

The financial reporting regulations surrounding structuring are pretty specific, it really isn't the sort of thing you would use as a salvo in a war to inspect everything.

<comment><USER35> No, it isn't. But some people think the Hobbesian PoV means outlawing strong encryption is exactly what the government should do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This problem should be tackled at the root. The reporting law (report transactions >10K is antiquated). The federal government can set up other ways of finding "interesting" transaction patterns that have nothing to do with a specific threshold that continually lowers in real value due to inflation.

Drop the 10K reporting requirement and there is no need a structuring law except as a way to "get" people that they can not "get" in another way.

</comment><comment><USER37> And powerful people in the gov/banking complex want to abandon cash. Great marketing.

<comment><USER38> It is not about marketing, it is about control.

I understand your point, but the money laundering laws and the abandoning of cash all leads into one direction: The government shall be in control, who uses money and for what reason.

As much I sympathize with the need to control money laundering and tax avoiding, I fear that our basic freedom rights are in grave danger. When I have to ask the government, before I can buy a car (with cash ... at least in Europe it is still normal to buy used cars from private people with cash) or have to fear the grip of the FBI, because I am reported by the bank, my freedom rights are hurt.

Also there where even small merchants accused, since they put sums <$10.000 repeatedly in their account. Something that is normal, when you earn <$10.000 in cash during the weak and empty your cash box at the end of week.

Don't make your whole population into offenders, because you want to prosecute some crimes!

<comment><USER37> It's easy to see how you might interpret my snarky comment that way, but I agree with what you said about control except I would go further. I think people should be able to do whatever they like with their money (and what they decide is money), no government involvement whatsoever. Taxes are theft. If the gov "needs" our property, they should make the case; and if someone agrees, they can donate.

<comment><USER38> I did think, that your comment was mostly ironical.

I also know this thinking, that taxes are theft. But that is just one viewpoint. The other is, that taxes help to build a community, to build infrastructure, to build the internet ... (remember: the internet started as military network). Taxes are necessary, to help those that are weak and have not so much possibilities in life. To help those, that can not buy their schooling ... Before (gov. funded) public schooling was started, reading and writing was a privilege of less than 10% of the society. I would even go as far, that many of our today's achievements are because of taxes (only taking schools into account). Without public schools, we might have still steam machines. The fast successes of science are because so many people have access to education.

Even you and me might be still life in some underprivileged village and reap noggins without (tax paid) public schooling.

<comment><USER37> Sure they help build community, but paradigms change. There might be a better way. If a 1/3 of middle class income wasn't stolen and wasted bombing the manufactured enemy of the week or propping up corrupt banks, it's possible that even more would be spent on community. People like to give, but put under financial pressure, it's the first thing to stop. The real problem is this idea that it's ok to use violence to take someone elses property. It's a fundamental structural flaw, an asymmetry that undermines the rule of law by making it legal to steal if you have the right title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I run a business and regularly withdraw > $10k per month as salary. The bank reports these routine transactions to the government every month? And if I decide in the future that things aren't going so well and need to cut my pay down to $9k or so, I might get charged with structuring, despite the fact that I am not using the money in any illegal way?

</comment><comment><USER40> This case is why I believe it's pointless to try to protect your privacy: even if you just withdraw < $10,000 to avoid notice, you've committed a crime. But, if you withdraw more than $10k all the time (then deposit it back in) you haven't committed a crime and that $10k you needed for hush money gets lost in the noise.

</comment><comment><USER41> From the unfortunately dead post of TEMPLEOS_DEV

 _They don 't have to. Structuring transactions to avoid reporting laws is also a crime. Periodic withdrawals of $9,999 won't save you._

<comment><USER42> What's up with that shadow banning?

<comment><USER43> Explanation: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308017)

<comment><USER44> I believe that particular account is someone else pretending to be Terry, which (if true) is an obnoxious thing to do. We unkilled this one comment because it was unobjectionable (and in fact did so before seeing this subthread), but I'm not unbanning the account.

Soon users will be able to unkill comments on a case-by-case basis [1], which I hope will render superfluous the tedious genre of shadowban outrage subthread.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9318675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9318675)

<comment><USER43> Thanks for the clarification Dan, as well as this feature improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> That's what you get when you elect socialists, statists. They will decided what you can do with your own money. Why does any government asshole get to decide how, what, how much you withdrawl from your own money.

You leftists better fucking wake up. You are the cause of this.

</comment><comment><USER46> How about when it's from your bank but from someone else's account? I think that satisfies the crime predicate :)

</comment><comment><USER47> Let's examine this law via the perspective of speed limits.

In the US, most interstate highway systems have a speed limit of 70 miles/hour (around 112-113 km/hour). If you go over 70 mph and run into a police officer having a bad day, you'll get a ticket.

Say you're on a particular stretch of interstate which is populated by officers with a reputation of consistently coming after drivers traveling even 1 mph over the limit (eg 71 mph).

So, to err on the side of caution, you limit your driving to between 65 and 69 mph.

You're driving along at 65-69 mph thinking all is well in the world, when the flashing lights appear behind you. You pull over, the officer comes up, and The Question comes out: "Is there a problem officer?"

The officer looks you over and asks "Do you know how fast you were going?"

You get a puzzled look on your face. "Well, I couldn't have been speeding. I know you guys are pretty strict about speeding around here, so I set the cruise control right at 67 mph."

"So you know that speeding around here will get you a ticket, and you intentionally kept your speed below the speed limit?"

"Yes sir."

"Well, I'll need you to step out of the car please."

"Um sure, but why?"

"We have an anti-evasion law around here which makes it illegal for you to knowingly and intentionally go below the speed limit in order to avoid the possibility of going over and getting a ticket. The penalty is 30 days in jail vs the $100 speeding ticket. Since you admitted to intentionally going under the speed limit, I'm placing you under arrest."

Insanity, I tell you.

<comment><USER48> The metaphor is not apt. There would be nothing wrong with him withdrawing $32,000, nor with him withdrawing $8,000. The crime was withdrawing $32,000 while evading the reporting requirements. It's not remotely the same as staying under a speed limit.

<comment><USER49> Not to mention lying to the FBI about it. It's not the crime that'll get you, it's the coverup.</comment></comment></comment>


Graylog2 v0.9.6 released, transitions from MongoDB to ElasticSearch - <AUTHOR> http://graylog2.org/ohai/0.9.6

<comment><USER2> Note, though, that MongoDB stays for some statistical calculations.

</comment><comment><USER3> great stuff! looking forward to upgrading.

</comment><comment><USER4> \o/

</comment><comment><USER5> awesome

</comment><comment><USER6> That sucks. I was looking at implementing Graylog but Elastic Search, or any other cloud datastore, is out of the question. We need to keep the logs in the same data centre as the servers for reasons of confidentiality, and for performance reasons as well. Most of the logs will never be used for anything. We log lots of stuff just in case, and after a few weeks there is no real use for them. If we wanted stats we would calculate them and then delete the logs. We certainly don't want to consume huge amounts of bandwidth shipping logs across the Internet.

At this point I'll probably just use an older version so that we have local storage and local search.

<comment><USER7> You might want to look at <http://www.elasticsearch.org/> Elastic Search is not to be confused with Elastic Compute Cloud. Elastic Search is a Lucene- based NoSQL-like search engine. You install it on your own machines.</comment></comment>


Blogging with Emacs org-mode - <AUTHOR> https://www.sadiqpk.org/blog/2018/08/08/blogging-with-org-mode.html <comment><USER2> I once tried to do this as well, and got sucked into the rabbit hole of tinkering with little scripts and hacks and trying things out and never writing my first blog post before I lost motivation.

Next time I feel like I want to write a blog I'll just put it on wordpress.com or so.

<comment><USER3> That's what I tell everyone. Blogging is about the content, not the form. Do not waste time doing anything else than writing. Setup a wordpress and write, once you have more content take a day to transfer stuff to jekyll or something.

<comment><USER4> I think the pleasure of doing something like this is in the pure tinkering. Setting up the system just like you want it is kind-of fun. There's some value in that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I realised a while ago that Github had an org mode renderer. So I've been working on a blog post that's hosted directly on Github (without needing to export to HTML). The renderer has some problems, but it's been OK for my code examples. Completely unfinished blog post here for example purposes only: [https://github.com/ygt- mikekchar/oojs/blob/master/oojs.org](https://github.com/ygt- mikekchar/oojs/blob/master/oojs.org) You can look at raw mode to see what the source code looks like.

One of these days, I'm going to see if I can get something similar working on GitLab (which I've started using and admit to liking better at the moment). I think it should be easy, if a bit expensive (for them) because I should be able to set up a docker image with Emacs and export the HTML to generate a static page.

P.S. Anyone interested in the content of my blog post -- I got stalled trying to reason about the purpose of "this/self", but I've unstuck myself and should be finishing it up soon.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use org-page ([https://github.com/kelvinh/org- page](https://github.com/kelvinh/org-page)) to write my blog. It has a pretty cool workflow if you are into git, and integrates well with github pages.

The project seems to be dead (or stable!?), but I keep using it because I made some small tweaks to the default theme, which resulted in a clean looking website.

Maybe I'll switch to vanilla org-mode for static website generation in the future since I seem to always be in the mood to remove dependencies from my emacs config these days.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nikola[0] has an orgmode plugin[1] that works fine for my blog. After I write something up, nikola builds the site (incremental build), I can view it locally to verify the rendering, and finally rsync the changes up to the web server.

[0] [https://getnikola.com/](https://getnikola.com/)

[1] [https://plugins.getnikola.com/v8/orgmode/](https://plugins.getnikola.com/v8/orgmode/)

<comment><USER8> I use Pelican[0] which also has an org-mode plugin[1]. I tend to use markdown for my blog but I do use org-mode for other organising stuff.

[0] [https://blog.getpelican.com/](https://blog.getpelican.com/)

[1] [https://github.com/getpelican/pelican- plugins/tree/master/or...](https://github.com/getpelican/pelican- plugins/tree/master/org_reader)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So the blog index is maintained by hand? [https://gitlab.com/sadiq/sadiq.gitlab.io/blob/master/src/blo...](https://gitlab.com/sadiq/sadiq.gitlab.io/blob/master/src/blog/blog.org)

That's a bit of a pickle.

</comment><comment><USER10> I prefer keeping everything in one file (but exporting to separate files) so I hacked something up[1]. It doesn't build the index, but it would be pretty easy to extend to do so.

There's also Arthur Malabarba's extension[2] to ox-jekyll that's a much more complete solution.

[1] [https://gist.github.com/andreareina/37c634f102f819db8e49828f...](https://gist.github.com/andreareina/37c634f102f819db8e49828f34934542)

[2] [http://endlessparentheses.com/how-i-blog-one-year-of- posts-i...](http://endlessparentheses.com/how-i-blog-one-year-of-posts-in-a- single-org-file.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> You can do python stuffs too. Similar with jupyter: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16842786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16842786)

<comment><USER12> How does jupyter handle embedded data? I've found org mode to be fantastic for opening "literate debugging" of bugs, and being able to do things like embed sql to show the relevant data. My only frustration is that the data get's embedded in the document, I'd prefer it to be a "virtual" element.

<comment><USER13> With org, either typically you are showing the data, or you reference it elsewhere. You _can_ have a session going that is holding a reference, however, it is much easier and more practical to send it to table or a file. (I almost said "local file" but that isn't necessary, either. It mostly does as you would expect with TRAMP style filenames.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >boring content ahead

aw, it's not boring! Don't sell yourself short!

</comment><comment><USER15> Did the existing org-to-blog things not work for you? Here's a (probably incomplete) list:

        https://orgmode.org/worg/org-blog-wiki.html

I've been using v1 of o-blog for a while, and it works ok: [http://notes.secretsauce.net](http://notes.secretsauce.net)

Maybe the other options are better, I don't know. Would definitely be interested in hearing people's personal experiences.

<comment><USER16> > Maybe the other options are better, I don't know. Would definitely be > interested in hearing people's personal experiences.

If you are open to trying out Hugo, see if my above comment[1] regarding ox- hugo.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17721272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17721272)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I ran into a problem following the example

``` $ emacs --batch -q -l src/my-web.el -f org-publish-all Cannot open load file: No such file or directory, htmlize ```

I tried and succeeded in installing htmlize. But still ran into this issue. How do I resolve this?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are trying to use htmlize, download the file[0] to src directory, such that htmlize package is available as ~/web/src/htmlize.el

Now run emacs:

      ~/web$ emacs --batch -q -l src/htmlize.el\
      -l src/my-web.el -f org-publish-all

See [https://gitlab.com/sadiq/sadiq.gitlab.io/blob/master/.gitlab...](https://gitlab.com/sadiq/sadiq.gitlab.io/blob/master/.gitlab- ci.yml)

You can simply download/clone the complete repo[1] and run the above command from its root directory.

[0] [https://github.com/hniksic/emacs- htmlize/blob/master/htmlize...](https://github.com/hniksic/emacs- htmlize/blob/master/htmlize.el)

[1] [https://gitlab.com/sadiq/sadiq.gitlab.io](https://gitlab.com/sadiq/sadiq.gitlab.io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > My idea was to put all articles (posts) in a single org file

Unfortunately, this is exactly what I'd like to do. Does anyone have cool examples of this alternate workflow?

<comment><USER16> I developed the ox-hugo[1] Emacs package, which allows exporting multiple posts (even the website structural pages like Home page, About page, etc.) from a single Org file.

So here's the elevator pitch:

\- ox-hugo is an Emacs package that exports from Org mode to Markdown format that's compatible with Hugo ([https://gohugo.io](https://gohugo.io)) / Blackfriday + automagically converts natural* Org metadata to TOML/YAML front- matter.

\- To understand what I mean by "natural" Org metadata, see this table[2].

\- ox-hugo works with Hugo. I let each tool to do what they are best at:

(i) Org mode deals with the rich markup (Org macros, INCLUDE, TOC, keywords, Org Babel, NoWeb, property/tag inheritance, etc.) and Emacs/Elisp processing, and

(ii) Hugo deals with all the "Web stuff" in super-fast fashion (roughly 500 pages in less than a second [depends on your theme efficiency too]): Markdown->HTML conversion, generation of list pages, taxonomy pages, RSS/Atom/JF2/.. feeds, minification, cache busting, page generation using JSON/TOML/.. data, etc.

\- I prefer having most of the posts be exported from a _single_ Org file (my blog[6] source[3]). So ox-hugo definitely supports that. It also supports the conventional flow of exporting each Org file to a single post too (I use that style too, for my "notes" posts).

\- The ox-hugo doc site[1] is dog-fooded by ox-hugo itself. Here's the single Org file[4] that holds the content for the entire site.

\--> Here are few Real World Examples[5] of people using ox-hugo + Hugo.

== Refs ==

[1]: [https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/](https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/)

[2]: [https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/doc/org-meta-data-to-hugo- front-...](https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/doc/org-meta-data-to-hugo-front- matter/#for-subtree-based-exports)

[3]: [https://gitlab.com/kaushalmodi/kaushalmodi.gitlab.io/blob/ma...](https://gitlab.com/kaushalmodi/kaushalmodi.gitlab.io/blob/master/content- org/scripter-posts.org)

[4]: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kaushalmodi/ox- hugo/master...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kaushalmodi/ox- hugo/master/doc/ox-hugo-manual.org)

[5]: [https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/doc/examples/](https://ox- hugo.scripter.co/doc/examples/)

[6]: [https://scripter.co/](https://scripter.co/)

PS: Your user name sounds a bit familiar. So I apologize if I have already mentioned ox-hugo to you.

<comment><USER19> I really enjoy using ox-hugo to blog as well, it works very well and does everything that I need it to do! @kaushalmodi did a great job developing it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I do something similar for my blog. I love orgs embedded code features</comment>


Samsung's Bada OS growing faster than Windows Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/samsungs-bada-os-growing-faster-than-windows-phone-1092179 <comment><USER2> Microsoft should scrap Windows Phone and buy into a joint venture with Samsung - Bada Bing!

<comment><USER3> That sounds like a good idea until the collaboration is acrimoniously torn apart in a legal battle over patents, trademarks and revenue sharing.

Then, Apple file a brief that proves conclusively that it was their idea anyway and demands $200 for every new installation of Bada. Microsoft, sensing the winds of change, retreat into enterprise-only mobile space.

Bereft of their large software partner and unwilling to pay licence fees to Apple, Samsung sell off their low-tech phone business to Facebook, who buy it for $1bn for no other reason than the price was decided by an engineer and an intern over lunch. They then shutter the OS, replacing it by FB OS that was in development for 6 weeks on phones across the third world.

The Techcrunch headline? Bada: BOOM!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Comparing Bada to WP is apples to oranges. Bada is not a smartphone OS and many (most?) Bada handsets are sold at a fraction of the price of any WP handset. Symbian is a better comparison for Bada and it probably still dwarfs it in terms of market share.

As for App devs, native development for Bada is a massive headache that bears no comparison to WP, iOS or even android. From SDK bugs to Store bugs. And even when using web technologies (phonegap or pure web app), their webkit based browser isn't up to Safari/Chrome standards. Plus the low end devices have (had?) slow processors which make a lot of the fancier CSS stuff unusable.

On top of that, how many people will even know and use the bada app store?

Oh and nowhere in that mini-article is it mentioned that Bada will probably- maybe be replaced by another OS, Tizen.

<comment><USER5> > Oh and nowhere in that mini-article is it mentioned that Bada will probably- > maybe be replaced by another OS, Tizen.

Not much of a problem. Tizen will be able to run the Bada application layer.

<comment><USER4> I didn't know that - I haven't been keeping up with Tizen. But I did read that tizen would also run android applications.

<comment><USER6> I don't think the Bada -> Tizen transition is official yet, but Bada had a Linux-based road map, and Tizen would work on the kind of hardware to which feature phones are transitioning.

As for it being an invalid or unfair comparison with Windows Phone, you have to take into account that the feature phone business is overall in steep decline. What might be called a "feature phone" in the future is likely to be indistinguishable from a low end smartphone. The difference will be that the feature phone's ecosystem is more-captive to the carrier's ecosystem, and that will support lower initial costs.

<comment><USER4> I believe that eventually feature phones will be replaced by smartphones.

Do you believe that Bada will be a smartphone OS comparable to Android/iOS/WP in the sense that people looking to buy a smartphone will buy a Bada-based one instead of one that's WP (or iOS/Android) based? I don't believe that.

If people simply want the phone with the best camera than it wont matter if it's Bada or Android or WP. But if people expect to run apps/games on it than it will matter.

Bada's "growth" is simply due to Samsung replacing their previous feature phone OS with Bada. Even if the overall market is in decline, Bada's share of it will increase as Samsung adopts it in more of their models.

<comment><USER6> I think there will be a class of phones that do almost all of the things a smartphone like an iOS or Android phone do, but that have an app and content ecosystem where more of the revenue goes to the carrier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Samsung is the biggest cellphone maker in the world and they put Bada on a lot of their phones and 95% of the owners of these phones don't know what Bada is. This makes total sense numberwise, but doesn't say anything about Bada's popularity. It's totally like Symbian was the biggest "smartphone" OS just a couple of years ago, just because Nokia was the biggest cellphone maker. Guess how many Nokia owners knew the word Symbian back then?

<comment><USER8> I doubt that the majority of mainstream Android phone owners know what kind of OS they have either. Maybe more than Symbian/Bada but still...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, my daughter (13) was explaining something to her friend like:

D: there's this thing on Android too F: what's Android?? D: your phone!

Still way more of Android users know that they have an Android phone than Symbian/Bada. Actually most likely no less than iPhone users knowing the word iOS (doesn't matter that much in iOS ecosystem though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Microsoft would probably sell more of them if there were some decent phones on carriers besides AT&T. Last time I got a new phone, I wanted to go Windows Phone 7, but I'm sure as hell not switching to AT&T from Verizon for it.

<comment><USER10> It might help to some extent, but I think the fact that the iPhone was so successful while it was AT&T exclusive for so long proves that it's probably not the main issue.

<comment><USER5> > the fact that the iPhone was so successful while it was AT&T exclusive

It also had software that was much more sophisticated and usable than any of its competitors of the time. WP7 doesn't enjoy this advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Equally valid headline: "Windows Phone and Android are the only mobile operating systems with year over year growth" <http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/15/american-exceptionalism/>

<comment><USER12> The article clearly states Windows Phone's growth was slower than Bada's, so how can you say Android and WP are the "only" mobile operating systems with YoY growth?

Plus, you should never trust Aymco's data. The charts look pretty and as if "they make sense", but the truth is they are always misleading in some way, from what I've noticed, much like Net Marketshare's charts on mobile browsers' "market share", which show iOS at 50% or 60% and Android at 20%, even though there are now about 400 million devices for both Android and iOS, so about equal in market share.

<comment><USER13> >The article clearly states Windows Phone's growth was slower than Bada's Did you even see the numbers?

Bada grew from 1.9 -> 2.7 percent in 1 year. Microsoft's total share (including the old windows mobile grew from 1.6 -> 2.7 percent in the same time. How's then Bada growing faster? [http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/gartner-global-mobile- sales...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/gartner-global-mobile-sales..).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No one knows what Bada is, it's just because Samsung is huge.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wonder whether Bada manages to avoid what Japan's carrier-owned MOAP and KCP platforms had become- once dominant in its home country, yet never managing to break outside and rapidly losing out to platforms that did attain global adoption.

<comment><USER16> In Germany Bada phones are quite popular, you see a lot of people with Wave models.

<comment><USER17> What's totally bizarre to me is that the Wave 3 is a _really nice_ handset on the outside. It's made of out metal and glass, rather than the somewhat cheap- feeling plastic on the Galaxy series. Why some of the hardware choices on the Wave couldn't come over to Samsung's Android range is beyond me.

<comment><USER18> I'm guessing it might be an issue of having to compromise to meet a desired price point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yet they scraped it and moved on to Tizen[1]. While it's good that Tizen is linux based and open source, abandoning a perfectly good os(Bada)just in 2 years might not go well with it's app developers. They(devs) might think twice before developing for tizen now. Although Samsung seems to be planning to make bada open, I doubt it will get the same traction now. [1]<https://www.tizen.org>

<comment><USER20> Bada apps will be able to run on Samsung's version of Tizen, so Samsung is dropping Bada in a fashion similar to how Apple dropped OS9.

<comment><USER21> Or for that matter Windows Phone 7 and 8.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yet, despite the fast growth, I'm still having problems finding a Bada phone in the States. None of the major carriers seem to sell them. I've been looking for one for about a year now and it just seems that I would have to buy it directly from Samsung and not get a discount on my new plan discount. If Samsung could start entering the US market, I'm sure they would easily pass Windows Phone in sales.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's just some misinformation. Bada grew from 1.9 -> 2.7 percent in 1 year. Microsoft's total share (including the old windows mobile grew from 1.6 -> 2.7 percent in the same time. How's then Bada growing faster? [http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/gartner-global-mobile- sales...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/gartner-global-mobile-sales- down-2-smartphones-surge-43-apple-stalls-as-fans-hold-out-for-new-iphone/)

<comment><USER23> That only works out if you believe that Gartner's 'research' is sound and has an error margin of zero.

I encourage you to read Asymco's post on these kinds of guesstimates: [http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/13/how-many-smartphones-did- sa...](http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/13/how-many-smartphones-did-samsung-ship- in-q2/)</comment></comment>


The Death of a Civil Servant - <AUTHOR> https://www.believermag.com/issues/201005/?read=article_grossman <comment><USER2> If you have not seen Akira Kurosawa's subtle 1952 masterpiece "Ikiru" (To Live) about a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat, I recommend it highly, especially in light of "How to Think Like a Medieval Monk".

[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ikiru/](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ikiru/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if the title is deliberately evocative of Anton Chekhov's 'The Death of a Government Clerk'. [http://centerforfiction.org/forwriters/the-model- short-story...](http://centerforfiction.org/forwriters/the-model-short- story/the-death-of-a-government-clerk-by-anton-chekhov/)</comment>


Facebook AI Creates Its Own Language in Creepy Preview of Our Potential Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2017/07/31/facebook-ai-creates-its-own-language-in-creepy-preview-of-our-potential-future/#48079f8c292c <comment><USER2> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14900615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14900615) (criticizing other media coverage of this).</comment>


Day Night – Kill the procrastination in you - <AUTHOR> https://getdaynight.com <comment><USER2> Shouldn't this be tagged Show HN?

"Coming soon to macOS" Darn, can't even try the app since it supports neither of my primary platforms (Linux, macOS)</comment>


Red Hat Writing Style Guide - <AUTHOR> http://stylepedia.net/ <comment><USER2> Interesting to see this posted, as this wasn't particularly widely used even at Red Hat. And the timestamps for revision history show you that it's of a certain era.

What I would recommend is something like the MailChimp style guide: [http://styleguide.mailchimp.com/](http://styleguide.mailchimp.com/)

The upside here is that those teams are small and centralised and obsessive over the tone of their product. The same goes for other SaaS companies like Intercom (Elizabeth is an amazing content strategist). They have to be.

For context, I'm an alumni of the Red Hat content team, which I joined from a corporate background and was frustrated to see the team relied on the IBM Style Guide. I pushed for Red Hat to make a canonical open source style guide, as I researched common patterns across engineering and tech writing that can create disparity in UIs or APIs if one group ends up writing one way, and another the other.

For various reasons this wasn't a feasible project so my team focused on tooling instead (creating the PressGang CCMS internally, and then I took funding from one of the Red Hat founders to launch Corilla, a collaborative publishing tool for technical writers considered "the GitHub for content teams").

This style guide here is at best a reference for the kinds of things you might want to consider if you're building one for open source. In my era this guide was pretty useless though, as the content team voted for a strange hierarchy of style guides going from the IBM, then the CMoS, then the American Heritage dictionary, and then this guide. Or maybe some variation - nobody paid attention and we all just used the IBM and had opinions.

This is why the smaller SaaS companies make the best style guides (and the MailChimp one is not only creative commons so you can use it too, but not stuck in the awful DocBook XML format!).

</comment><comment><USER3> This will be incredibly useful, thanks for posting. Now I need to learn what the GNU Free Documentation License allows, how/if it can be reused or derived.

Certainly, in my experience and where I currently am, most of the texts that are published externally receives good editing, but many communications and documents are not, and 90% of the documentation is for internal purposes. This guide might just make the documentation a bit improved and more fun.

Also I appreciate the details about appropriate use of "$" or "#" for prompts, to name one. That is the way one would expect since at least the days with Bourne shell in the 80s, but I have not seen it spelled out.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm posting this one in the hope of discovering few more of such free resources in comments!</comment>


Rich Hickey: Simple Made Easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy <comment><USER2> Normally I am opposed to chronic reposting but I have watched this video start to finish 5+ times and it has never been time wasted. It is an eloquent expression of a philosophy that has shaped how I approach problem-solving more than any other. If you've never watched it, you're doing yourself (and those who depend on your ability to efficiently and effectively solve problems) a disservice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm also opposed to reposting, but I mention this talk to people all the time and nearly none have seen it. Those who have, however, all agree that it is an amazing (and eye-opening) talk. I just saw it again today for the first time in half a year and realized how much it has actually changed how I develop software.

<comment><USER3> I watched this a few months ago but don't remember much other than simple != easy. I thought I had taken notes, but turned out I had it confused with a Dan Ingalls talk on OO from 1989 I watched around the same time (which I found interesting enough to take notes).

Reading the comments on the infoQ page jogged my memory a bit. I remember thinking that his concept of "complect" was the same as "connascence" - a term I learned from a Jim Weirich talk [1]. Minimizing complectity/connascence (variables shared between modules) is good.

Is there something more striking (and summarizable) I should have remembered?

1\. [http://www.bestechvideos.com/2009/03/29/mountainwest- rubycon...](http://www.bestechvideos.com/2009/03/29/mountainwest- rubyconf-2009-the-building-blocks-of-modularity)

<comment><USER4> The simple vs easy concept is broader than data sharing. One example is perl, which is quite easy to pick up but complects many things, like strings representing numbers being silently coerced into numeric values.

Another example, where I immediately thought of simple/easy as it came up: I realized the other day that a component of an app I've been designing serves two almost independent purposes, and I can drastically simplify the design by making separate components.

The video you linked doesn't seem to be available anymore. The slides are available on scribd, but they don't seem to make much sense without the context of the talk.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. This one is working: [http://confreaks.com/videos/77-mwrc2009-the- building-blocks-...](http://confreaks.com/videos/77-mwrc2009-the-building- blocks-of-modularity)

He mentions that back in the 70s he was writing Fortran for NASA and his mentor recommended he read a book called Composite/Structured Design. "Structured Design" was the big thing back then and the controversy was using if-else and while loops instead of Gotos. Nobody was worried about strongly vs weakly typed langauges (perl!).. Key chapter in that book is on Coupling and Cohesion.

Junp to the late 90s for his second book recommendation: "What Every Programmer Should Know About Object-Oriented Design", really just the third part of the book which introduces "connascence". Two pieces of software share _connascence_ when a change in one requires a corresponding change in the other.

I love the historical angles on this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was worth watching again so I'm glad it was reposted and brought back to my attention. I was as struck by it this time as when I was sitting in the room listening to him last year.

What I would like to see, or create if I have to, is a condensed version of this argument that is meant for the non-programmers, the managers, and the c-level employees of a business. The underlying premise of believing in and executing with simplicity is one that nearly requires air support, and buy-in.

I think in his summary at the end there are a few key statements he makes:

"The bottom line is that simplicity is a choice. It's your fault if you don't have a simple system.... it requires constant vigilance... You have to start developing sensibilities about entanglement... You have to have entanglement radar... You have to start seeing the interconnections between things that could be independent."

</comment><comment><USER6> If, like me, you're overwhelmed with complexity in software projects, you need 'Out Of The Tar Pit'[1]. This essay is so good, I've read it four times, gaining new insights every time.

[1] <http://web.mac.com/ben_moseley/frp/paper-v1_01.pdf>

<comment> brown9-2 Ugh, somehow in the 3 days since you've posted this the URL just returns a default "MobileMe is closed" page.

<comment><USER6> There's this: <http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I also recommend Rich's talk called hammock-driven development

<http://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven-development-4475586>

<http://www.popscreen.com/v/5WwVV/Hammockdriven-Development>

or his recent talks about reducers or Datomic.

For me the talk about reducers was especially jaw-dropping experience because it was about something simple we all do every day - crunching data in collections (how many times you have implemented lists library? :). Yet after decades of collection traversing, there is a still a place for fresh approach, if you are willing to thing hard.

This is the difference between blindly following known programming patterns (cargo-cult programming I would say) and really thinking about a design.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like most of the points he makes but that "complect" business is fingers-on- a-chalkboard pretentious to my ears. "Coupling" and "complexity" are perfectly good words and have been used for decades to talk about this stuff.

But the stuff about how simplicity and easiness are not the same (at least in the short run) is very good.

<comment><USER9> "Coupling" and "complexity" are nouns, "complect" is a verb. Complect is to complex as complicate is to complicated - It means "complexify" for those who prefer archaisms to neologisms.

<comment><USER8> "Couple" is of course a verb. There are other words people have long used for this too. There's no need for obscure new jargon, and it's ironic that a talk about simplicity would introduce any. It gives the wrong impression, because these concepts are neither new nor difficult. What's difficult is building systems that respect them.

<comment><USER10> "Coupling" has always been a particularly weak word for the software problems to which it's been applied, IMO. After all, when you connect 2 Legos together you couple them.

"Complicate" was a candidate, but is decidedly unsatisfying. It just means "make complex", saying nothing more about how; nor about what it means to be complex. For many people, simply adding more stuff is to "complicate", and that was another presumption I wanted to get away from. There is also some intention in "complicate", as in, "to mess with something", vs the insidious complexity that arises from our software knitting.

I wanted to get at the notion of folding/braiding directly, but saying "you braided the software, dammit!" doesn't quite work :)

<comment><USER8> As far as how we use these words in software goes, I think "coupling" is just fine. To me it means exactly what we're talking about: making things depend on each other. "When you connect 2 Legos together you couple them" sounds off to me. I'd say that's just what you don't do. Rather, you compose them. Composition to me means putting together things that have no intrinsic dependency and are just as easy to separate again.

Reasonable people can obviously have different associations, but I thought "coupling" and "decoupling" were pretty standard terms in software. You know, "low coupling high cohesion" and all that.

What about when we simplify a design by removing dependencies between things? Surely we're not going to say we've "decomplected" them?

It goes without saying that we agree on the more important point, which is that whatever we call that thing we do to software where we make everything depend on everything, we fuck it up :)

<comment><USER10> > Surely we're not going to say we've "decomplected" them?

Simplified.

<comment><USER8> But that has the same problem you mentioned about "complicate". It just means "make simple", saying nothing more about how, nor about what it means to be simple. Not all simplification is disentangling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Been really impressed by the man, the language and the philosophy ever since I saw the video. Clojure has been a challenging and yet eye-opening experience, and I plan to continue learning it and using it in as many projects as I can from now on.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tip: If the video and the slides don't fit on your widescreen display, shrink your browser window _horizontally_.

<comment><USER13> Or click on 'horizontal' and then on 'fullscreen'.

<comment><USER14> And then click 'X' to close the meaningless countdown timer early.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you haven't seen it, Stuart Halloway's "Simplicity Ain't Easy" is a more Clojure-specific talk that's a nice complement to this one. It has some more concrete examples pulled from Clojure.

[http://blip.tv/clojure/stuart-halloway-simplicity-ain-t- easy...](http://blip.tv/clojure/stuart-halloway-simplicity-ain-t-easy-4842694)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm glad Rich and its presentation gets the popularity they deserve. I attended to that one at QCon London in March and it was the presentation that struck me the most.

Rich gave also another presentation about the modeling process that I find great (slides from Goto Con) : gotocon.com/dl/jaoo- aarhus-2010/slides/RichHickey_ModelingProcess.pdf

</comment><comment><USER17> If someone wants to do a talk about how to get as close to this as possible in a language like C++, I would watch it.

<comment><USER18> The issue with languages like C++ is, that you can follow better programming practices, but the compiler doesn't support you in the verification and accordingly you can't trust that easily your code, which complicates the reasoning about a system a lot.

Having properties like immutability and pureness in your language makes it lot easier to trust your code and to reason about it.

<comment><USER19> Clojure doesn't give you immutability guarantees, it just makes it harder to chose otherwise, but on the other hand calling a Java method on some object is just one special form away. I'm not saying Clojure does the wrong thing here btw, but this thing you're talking about is a fallacy, unless you're working in Haskell and even there you could find ways to screw things up by interacting with the outside world, which isn't immutable.

<comment><USER18> "I'm not saying Clojure does the wrong thing here btw, but this thing you're talking about is a fallacy ..."

Please, read exactly.

"... unless you're working in Haskell and even there you could find ways to screw things up by interacting with the outside world, which isn't immutable."

The whole point is, that you're able to express immutability and pureness in a language like Haskell _AND_ have a compiler which can verify it.

You will never be able to prohibit any screwing, but you can make it a lot harder to screw something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In a way dynamic typing is easy and static typing a la Haskell is pretty hard.

A good type system allows you to reason more easily about your system and checks if you're violating the rules of the system.

Looking at static typing and only see inheritance and the increased complexity, is only looking at static typing a la C++/Java.

</comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone seen this recording and the newer one [1]?

Is one of them _better_ in any form?

[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy-QCon- Lon...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy-QCon-London-2012)

</comment><comment><USER21> I get something new out of this every time I watch it.</comment>


Show HN: Sort image downloads automatically using Stowbots - <AUTHOR> http://stowbots.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

Super excited to share this with you all!

I'll be in the comments for any questions.</comment>


Tech Trends 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.frogdesign.com/techtrends2014/ <comment><USER2> Reinvention of PC as productivity tool

I am hoping it will finally happen in 2014. It is such a pity that the machines for work and work places are not improving as the rest of the products - and in my opinion laptops are mostly getting worse: mirrors instead of displays, wide-screens (instead of high screens), and dumping accessible design: crappy keyboards, no options for track points and those who have the best track points remove the mouse buttons. It's nice to have a long battery life and a light laptop, but it does not help for the primary task, where I have my hands lying on the keyboard and staring at the screen.

This had just to go off my chest.

<comment><USER3> The TRS-80 Model 100 had possibly the nicest keyboard of any laptop ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is amazing to see privacy issues all over these predictions. You have predictions of consumers owning their own data and services with anonymization as a value proposition but also the intrinsic value of product data, and the proliferation of drones, IoT devices and the growth of the quantified self movement.

Privacy is clearly moving from a struggle to remain anonymous from the powers that be to a real business opportunity.

<comment><USER5> I think it's more that various powers that be want protection from other powers that be, and thar be profit opportunities in providing that protection.

The consumer follows that trend as real material consequences impact individuals and receive press coverage. The average consumer understands when they have to switch out their credit cards repeatedly due to theft. Gamers understand when a kid gets sent to prison for trash-talking someone on Facebook. When the IRS uses Facebook postings to augment their audits, or local prosecutors pull your accounts to convict you for something, then the need for privacy becomes more obvious.

Privacy is the necessary antecedent to security. It's funny that almost every other poll option points towards increasing totalitarian control and lesser security for everyone. It looks like tech in general is trying to frogmarch new developments before they can be properly secured -- cobbling together networks that are fragile to pillage, like building un-walled cities in Genghis Khan's grazing grounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7034562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7034562).

When a post has had significant attention within about a year, we kill reposts as duplicates. If the repost already has an ongoing discussion, we don't kill it, just demote it in rank. That way people can keep discussing.

</comment><comment><USER7> The combination of augmented humans, the quantified self at the office, and, sort of on a tangent, the re-invention of the PC items are the most interesting. There is a lot of potential to create capital equipment for the knowledge worker, and thereby re-revolutionize productivity among knowledge workers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have you missed something? HTTPS? Encryption?

<comment><USER9> I think the article is a few months old already. It came out before all the drama.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Virtual Reality?

</comment><comment><USER11> 2014 is shaping up to be a year of backlash.

Technology is important and mostly a force for good, but right now the industry has (and deservingly so) lost the trust of, well, everyone.

As we realize that technology is _too important_ to be trusted to arrogant, myopic, sloppy, sexist, and often deeply classist Silicon Valley assholes, we're going to see only more controversy. With that will come (disliked and sometimes wrongheaded) regulation, increasing class tension, and perhaps a widespread loss of faith in the current technological leadership.

The truth is that most tech companies are horrible. They're horrible to their own employees (mean-spirited stack-ranking policies) and horrible to their users and the world outside of them. They've turned the Valley into an Uberized, Snow Crash cesspool.

In about 12 months, we've gone from tech exceptionalism (pundits asking why Wall Street talent wasn't "doing good for the world" in Silicon Valley) to a full-on hatred of this industry, and it's deserved. Rank-and-file programmers who ride Google buses don't deserve to be harassed, but the leadership deserves far more hate than it has seen so far.

Technology has to make a new choice. Either it changes its leadership wholesale, or Silicon Valley becomes Public Enemy #1. And, unlike Wall Street, it doesn't have the collective social skill to still prosper while being hated.

<comment><USER12> "arrogant, myopic, sloppy, sexist, and often deeply classist Silicon Valley assholes", "The truth is that most tech companies are horrible." Wow, I thought I was the only one feeling that way.

<comment><USER11> No, far from it. My comment is at +7 (6 upvotes, at least).

People, inside and outside of tech, are waking up.</comment></comment></comment>


Flights disrupted after computer failure at UK control centre - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30454240

<comment><USER2> Problem has now been resolved and airspace is reopening slowly: [https://twitter.com/NATSPressOffice/status/54343249977989529...](https://twitter.com/NATSPressOffice/status/543432499779895297)

</comment><comment><USER3> Been stuck on the runway for 3 hours. Next in line to leave to Copenhagen.

<comment><USER3> UPDATE: Missed my connection. All good! Got upgraded to business and put on another flight. Every cloud....:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would imagine being an air traffic controller right now would be very stressful. London Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world, Gatwick is also pretty popular as well. Having to reroute planes out of London to alternative airports throughout Europe must be one hell of a task. But having said that, I bet every major airport in the world has a plan B for this kind of thing.

<comment><USER5> Add in London Stansted, London City and London Luton and you've got a very busy controller!

<comment><USER6> Don't forget London Oxford Airport!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2014/12/12/all_londo...](http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2014/12/12/all_london_airspace_down_due_to_major_outage/#c_2387268)

Allegedly UPS failure.

</comment><comment><USER2> Semi-misleading title.

LON airspace was closed due to a failure (unconfirmed as power) at the Swansick facility [1]. Hence, the EU regulators have required them shut the airspace.

1: [http://www.nats.aero/news/swanwick-technical- failure/](http://www.nats.aero/news/swanwick-technical-failure/)

</comment><comment><USER8> That's another reason why I'd never want to fly to USA via London. I prefer all the middle east airlines.

<comment><USER8> Stop downvoting me unnecessarily. I am stating my reasoning of avoiding London airport, and it makes reasonable sense. Similar thing has happened to London ATC before, as per the video report in the article, where a new upgrade to the software disrupted flights last year. Together with all the Iceland volcanoes etc., my reasons to avoid this airport are all legitimate.

Even if you have other choices, you don't need to downvote me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: JavaScript machine learning library? - <AUTHOR>

Quick question: would a JavaScript machine learning library be useful to you?  If so, how?  I'm thinking basic classification (NN, DT, Bayes) and optimization (GA, NN, RHC, etc.) and clustering (EM, KM) functions. <comment><USER2> A point and an idea:

(1) Modern classification algorithms like SVMs need some pretty hardcore math routines (SVMs require Quadratic Programming, which isn't trivial to implement correctly). Do you intend to implement these yourself? If so, that alone might be useful as a separate library, with the ML library built on top of it.

(2) I've been thinking about a JS distributed computing library for a long time -- sort of like Folding@Home, but instead of having to download a program, you just visit a website and let JS do the crunching (Ajax will pull and push data chunks). With modern JS engines, this has become more of a reality. So to bring it back to your question -- why not try to abstract as much of the math+algorithms from as many distributed computing projects as possible, and then build a generic JS library for doing distributed computation. You could have each distributed computing project as a benchmark -- i.e., start by implementing SETI@Home using your library, then move on to Folding@Home. I guarantee you won't be bored... ;)

Good luck, and I'm really glad people are pushing the capabilities of JS these days.

On a lighter note, can you imagine the derisive laughter if you had suggested this 10 years ago? :)

<comment><USER3> this might be relevant to your (or our collective) interests- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1645520> (MapRejuice - Distributed Client Side Computing (Node Knockout Entry))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know enough about the field, but I'm throwing out this link, since I saw it earlier this week - Brain JS <http://harthur.github.com/brain/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing, I had not seen that!

<comment><USER4> No problem, I hope it helps you out or gives you some inspiration!

Since I don't know much about machine learning: what do you plan to build your JS library to do or support? Is it just for research, or are there ways to use it in a more everyday webapp?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes these would be useful to me. What would the performance be like compared to other options like Java? You'd have to use the new typed arrays to have any hope of comparable performance right?

This <http://harthur.github.com/brain/> seems very slow to train.

</comment><comment><USER6> It would not be immediately useful to me personally, but it is something I've been intending to build over the coming winter (for educational purposes and for interface experimentation).

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe we can collaborate.

<comment><USER6> Sure. Drop me an email if/when you get started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We're building out our REST API to allow you to create, train, (and re-train) your own SVM. In theory, you could use our API entirely on the client side, using JavaScript.

From my experience in seeing performance and the kind of tweaking we've had to do to be able score 10K documents/s, you need some nitty gritty C code that I don't think can run in a browser.

<http://www.repustate.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> Assuming you mean Javascript-in-the-browser, then meh... (I'm sure that's not the answer you were looking for, but hear me out):

Why would this be useful? Machine learning generally needs two things that browsers aren't very good at dealing with: 1) Large amounts of data 2) Fast I/O to process that data.

Why would someone prefer to use a client library rather than a remote call to a high performance serverside library, which will give better results?

Having said that, there are a few _very_ specialized areas where this might make sense. For example, a Javascript Haar classifier would be useful for machine vision in a browser.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Follow up: what would you do with clustering and classification on the client side? What about optimization?

<comment><USER9> It's not only about the client side. With the rise of node.js, it will be more and more relevant for server-side, data-heavy processing.

<comment><USER10> You are right, there are many things that can be done, using machine learning, like music classification by genre,artist or predictions api ( mentioned in a general fashion on a purpose because you are limited to the datasets and problems you choose to work on ). If a Javascript library that works smoothly and makes these things work better can be given birth i think it is definitely worth it. And you are right about the node.js thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm looking for something like this to build on for image driven searching. If anyone knows of anything, please email me at ahmed.nat ATSIGN gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER10> If you are planning to release this as a product, i doubt that it could gain traction, although the whole node.js thing makes me wonder whether everything is moving to the client, even heavy computational tasks as ML or AI problems. If it is a project just for the sake of it or for fun, then it would be cool to see your implementation.</comment>


China regulator summons founder of debt-laden LeEco back to China - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-leeco-debt/china-regulator-summons-founder-of-debt-laden-leeco-back-to-china-idUSKBN1EK06Y <comment><USER2> If Jia is smart, he won't return.

<comment><USER3> Maybe the US can swap him for "Big Vern".

<comment><USER4> Seems like small fish now (compared to LeEco billions) , but who knows how many coin he held...

[http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/cryptsy-founder-paul- verno...](http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/cryptsy-founder-paul-vernon- speaks-out-about-millions-in-lost-customer-funds-8568540)</comment></comment></comment>