Dole Food Had Too Many Shares - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-17/dole-food-had-too-many-shares <comment><USER2> It's fascinating that the financial system has evolved this kind of layered abstraction (humans owning stocks is a fiction maintained by brokers owning stocks, which is a fiction maintained by DTC owning stocks, which is a fiction maintained...) reminiscent of hallowed engineering kludges like TCP/IP. Its especially interesting since, unlike data packets, stocks are _purely an abstraction to begin with_ , but the systems around them have become sufficiently complicated that it can't function without this kind of structure.

A blockchain likely wouldn't help this issue either- high-speed traders would inevitably be dissatisfied with blockchain latencies and re-invent brokers that abstracted over blockchain transactions at a faster pace. These brokers would wind up causing bureaucratic meltdowns and become managed by some overarching structure similar to the DTC. Etc. If anything, a blockchain-based system would become _more_ complicated, because it reduces the task of adding another financial sub-mechanism to an engineering problem.

Something about large distributed systems of non- or imperfectly-cooperative agents breed complexity. (There's probably already formalized versions of that principle, but none are presently coming to mind.)

<comment><USER3> It reminds me of the last wave of distributed P2P filesharing, c. 2000-2005. First we got Napster, which realized that by taking advantage of the bidirectional nature of TCP/IP, we could distribute copyright infringement so widely that it would become impossible to enforce. Then some techies at NullSoft realized that you don't actually need a central server for discovery _at all_ , you can broadcast the existence of and metadata about files throughout the network for discovery, and put out Gnutella. Lots of excitement followed, with many people of that era believing P2P would be the Next Big Thing (among people working on this were such folks as Travis Kalanick of Red Swoosh -> Uber, Mark Zuckerburg of WireHog -> Facebook, Friis & Zenstrom of Kazaa -> Skype -> Rdio, and Robert Tappan Morris of Chord -> YCombinator).

And then folks realized that Gnutella was slow. Really slow, because folks on transient dialup connections in Estonia were critical nodes in file discovery. So they created the idea of super-peers, where the protocol was adapted to realize that some nodes are more equal than others and route requests through nodes with known-good connections. Then the next-generation P2P network (BitTorrent) decided that it was easier just to rely on HTTP for metadata exchange and went to centralized trackers, and the ecosystem that grew up around BitTorrent realized branding & centralized search engines were important for non-technical users and we got big torrent search engines like ThePirateBay and Mininova.

Eventually, the market seemed to settle on convenience & performance over distribution, and the real winners in the mass market were DropBox, Google, and Apple. There's probably a lesson in there, but as someone who's been fascinated by P2P technologies since high school and wasted a lot of time thinking about the problem in college, the lesson is pretty depressing. If hierarchy, market concentration, and single points of failure don't already exist, they will be reinvented.

<comment><USER4> > Then the next-generation P2P network (BitTorrent) decided that it was easier > just to rely on HTTP for metadata exchange and went to centralized trackers, > and the ecosystem that grew up around BitTorrent realized branding & > centralized search engines were important for non-technical users and we got > big torrent search engines like ThePirateBay and Mininova.

Followed by those trackers getting taken down, we went from distributing .torrent files over HTTP, to distributing magnet links and getting the torrent metadata over DHT.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, Bittorrent has actually gotten _more_ decentralized in recent years, both on the tracker front and on an increasing number of Torrent search engines being small operations.

I just find it sad that apparently the only reason that things tend to get more distributed is to evade some powerful authority. I wanted distributed systems to become mainstream, because of their freedom, equality, & competition benefits, but it appears that when given the choice, the mainstream would rather play kingmaker and live under centralized overlords.

<comment><USER5> > Yeah, Bittorrent has actually gotten more decentralized in recent years

Only due to sustained pressure to keep it decentralized. If TPB was acquired by Google and rebranded to 'Google Bay', bittorrent would be just another Google fiefdom, and be as entrenched as Docs or YouTube.

>I wanted distributed systems to become mainstream, because of their freedom, equality, & competition benefits

Unfortunately you're in the vast minority of people who understand what distributed systems are, and how to connect them to anything as abstract as freedom, equality, etc. Most people just want an easy-to-remember, easier-to- use, not sketchy looking way to consume content. Profit-seeking companies are simply better equipped and more motivated to provide that service than the open-source community is, because they don't have to worry about freedom, equality, and certainly competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Levine is such fun to read!

The solution to the problem he ends up with seems pretty easy to me - this is just counterparty risk:

When you lend your shares (or let them be lent on on your behalf) there are counterparty risks. You charge interest and accept collateral as compensation for these risks. Usually these risks are gone after the shares are returned or the position closed and settled out - but not always. Tracking down the short and making him cough up the extra $2.74 is the broker's job. If the broker can't find him, then if it was a case of a normal margin account the broker is on the hook. If it was a case of the client directly accessing the stock lending market then the broker is probably (fine print time!) not liable for the counterparty failure.

</comment><comment><USER7> No, a "blockchain" wouldn't help. It wouldn't help finding the holders of three years ago. Also, putting all stock transactions for the entire market into one blockchain would have huge traffic and synchronization issues. All the players have to agree on transaction order. You'd have one giant file that was petabytes long. If you used one of those schemes that "summarizes" the blockchain, you wouldn't have an authoritative record of who owned something years ago.

Bitcoin only works because transactions are few and slow transaction commit is acceptable. Most schemes for scaling Bitcoin involve "off-chain transactions".

DTIC predates high-speed trading. It was designed when it was assume that if you bought a stock, you'd probably hold it for weeks or months, not seconds or minutes.

<comment><USER8> Also, with DTC there is a continuous net settlement system that basically nets a brokers transactions together for the day and basically lets them know which securities are credited or debited from their account and how much they need to pay or receive for the day. It helps solve the issue of high speed trading and nets each brokers obligations out at the end of each day. In its simplest form if a broker had two customers and Customer A sold a share of AAPL and Customer B bought 2 shares of AAPL. The CNS system would basically net those two transactions together and calculates that the broker is going to receive 1 share and that they will pay x amount of dollars.

There is definitely room for improvement because sales don't settle till T+3 (however the settlement cycle is shortening to T+2 as of Sept 5th)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      1. Mr. A owns a share of stock.
      2. Mr. B borrows Mr. A's share of stock.
      3 .Mr. B sells the share to Mr. C.

well now, and the article says that Mr B borrows Mr A's stock _without asking or telling him_ and sells Mr C a share.

I understand that this is the way it has worked for some time, but franky I don't see how this is anything but fraud.

<comment><USER10> Most broker agreements allow them to lend out your shares without your consent or knowledge. It actually works against the long stock holders, but it does help brokers to lower their customers' transaction fees.

Even worse is Naked Short Selling, a practise where short sellers don't borrow the shares in the first place. This artificially creates shares and dilutes the value of the stock being shorted. Although illegal since Reg SHO was introduced, it still goes on due to lack of enforcement and comically low fines - google "Reg SHO Violations".

Some public pension funds forbid the lending of the shares they own for shorting. The minimal interest gained by lending shares is not worth the downward pressure to the stock price created by the short which undermines the asset value.

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

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

<comment><USER11> > Most broker agreements allow them to lend out your shares without your > consent or knowledge.

This is straddling the line between completely untrue and highly misleading. For cash accounts, brokers cannot lend your shares without a written agreement allowing it. Although the standard agreement could include agreeing to a securities lending program, this is not common in retail brokerage contracts. Additionally, even if that clause was in your contract, they have to notify you whenever they lend your shares. That right to notification CANNOT be waived in the agreement. So if you have a cash account, no one is lending your shares without your knowledge, period.

Even for margin accounts, the same requirements hold for fully paid securities. So if you have a margin account, but you're not actually borrowing any money, no one is lending your shares without your knowledge.

The only case where your broker might lend your securities without your knowledge is when you have a margin account and you are actually borrowing money.

<comment><USER12> > brokers cannot lend your shares without a written agreement allowing it.

Just read my brokers agreement - they can indeed lend my shares without notifying me for any purpose.

<comment><USER11> You didn't mention whether it was a cash account or a margin account, or if there's an exception for fully paid securities. If it's a margin account, that is indeed how it works for non-fully paid securities. If it's a cash account, or there's no exception for fully paid securities, regulators will probably not view that agreement favorably. You can file a complaint at [https://www.sec.gov/complaint/tipscomplaint.shtml](https://www.sec.gov/complaint/tipscomplaint.shtml). In my experience, they actually read and act on complaints. (Well, at least small easy to investigate ones... ones requiring a lot of investigatory work like the Madoff case are a different story.) The relevant regulation is 17 CFR §240.15c3-3, paragraphs b(1), b(3), and b(3)ii. ([http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi- bin/text-idx?SID=f07570958d348a3f75d...](http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?SID=f07570958d348a3f75d9c979186842b8&mc=true&node=se17.4.240_115c3_63&rgn=div8))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Eventual consistency strikes again.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you own an equity ETF in a retail brokerage, you actually own a claim on a claim on a claim on a fund that owns a claim on a claim on a claim on corporate stock which is itself a secondary or tertiary claim (behind debt and/or preferred stock) on tangible and intangible assets.

It is a common & legal practice for the fund to lend its claim on a claim on a claim on corporate stock to other parties, for a small amount of interest, to help reduce its fees. See [https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGSL.pdf](https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGSL.pdf)

If the potential for fraud and error in this system doesn't give you a bit of a pause, it probably should.

<comment><USER15> And yet it works so much better than stashing a bar of gold under your pillow.

<comment><USER14> Why not both.. based on Chinese/Indian/Russian/German central bank action I do find the argument that gold is now a "worthless, obsolete shiny rock" unconvincing & I think a good case has been made for a modest allocation to physical PMs as insurance against tail risks. The goal is not to "outperform everything else" during normal market conditions but rather to limit worst- case draw down in the unlikely event of a major and sustained equity collapse, currency collapse, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "That system has worked pretty well for 40 years." \- Wait, so I'm saving for retirement (40 years from now) in a system that isn't even that old?

Somehow I don't trust it to still be around when I need to get money back.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ultimately I don't think it's fair to have BOTH short selling AND resolution of sale price YEARS later.

I actually don't like either of those as features, but both together is clearly incompatible.

<comment><USER18> The years later resolution is a court dictate. I'd hardly call it a feature, like short selling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I read an article recently on "Patterns for dealing with uncertainty". It never ceases to amaze me how often these concurrency patterns apply to more antiquated business models.

<comment><USER20> Is it this?

[http://blog.arkency.com/2016/12/techniques-for-dealing- with-...](http://blog.arkency.com/2016/12/techniques-for-dealing-with- uncertainity/)

I haven't read it yet, but it looks worthwhile.

<comment><USER19> yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > took it private for $13.50 a share

How do you take something private? What does it mean?

<comment><USER22> Taking a company private is when a company buys back all the publicly traded shares, so that one can no longer purchase shares in the company on a publicly traded market. Usually a company doesn't have enough cash to accomplish this, so they take on additional debt or outside investment to afford buying all of the publicly available shares.

<comment><USER21> Thanks. So why didn't it happen at market price? How do you set a price if the shares are public?

<comment><USER23> There are usually shareholder agreements in place that not every single shareholder has to agree to a acquisition. Otherwise, you'd never be able to acquire a company if just one shareholder, holding one unit of stock said "no".

<comment><USER24> I think in most jurisdictions there is a law that enables a supermajority shareholder to take possession by a forced buy-out of remaining stock, at a "fair price". Thus a separate shareholder agreement is not necessarily required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Unfortunately I just keep staring at the woman in the picture at the top of the page.

</comment><comment><USER26> That was way more interesting than I thought it might be. I really liked the writing style, kinda snarky, but still explained well:

 _" "But what if ...," you start to ask, and I reply: Shh, shh. It just works."_

<comment><USER27> Congratulations, today is your day to discover Matt Levine! Here are a few good ones from the archives:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-14/banks- for...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-14/banks-forgot-who- was-supposed-to-own-dell-shares)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-01-28/yahoo- wou...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-01-28/yahoo-would-rather- not-pay-taxes-on-its-alibaba-shares)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-07/can- you-r...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-07/can-you-really- game-index-funds-)

<comment><USER28> Don't forget "Oreos, Vomitoxin and the Price of Wheat" (with the best alt-URL) [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-04-02/my-dog- is...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-04-02/my-dog-is-gluten- free)

"Arbitrage Discovered" about the best/worse life insurance contract ever (whether you're the beneficiary or the insurer), and includes possibly the best financial punchline in an opening paragraph ever: [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-02-27/arbitrage...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-02-27/arbitrage- discovered)

There were others, but I can't remember them offhand. The Vomitoxin article is the one that put him (well, Bloomberg View really) in my feed :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Three words... Counter Party Risk

</comment><comment><USER30> The problem is that the courts can amend a buyout, which goes against the principles of free market capitalism ..a buyout represents a significant gain above the market price even if the offer is low relative to what it 'should' be. Matt is blaming the wrong target.

<comment><USER31> There's nothing particularly "free" about being compelled by majority vote to sell your shares at a price you don't agree to either. But, like executives' fidicuary duty not to act against the interests of their shareholders before mounting a takeover bid, it's baked into the rules of the market that shareholders and executives have freely chosen to participate in.

If you don't accept that in the interests of better functioning markets the law allows for both compulsory purchase of outstanding shares in the event of a successful takeover bid and litigation against those accused of ripping shareholders off by running down the value of the company before bidding on it, the principles of free market capitalism allow you to not even think of buying or managing a publicly owned company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is why eShares or someone like them will disrupt this entire ecosystem.

ComputerShares should be killed off too.

The entire system is amazingly broken.

<comment><USER33> Voting rights aren't even accurately tracked. People who buy non-existent shares from naked shorters get voting rights. Not too many people can naked short anymore, but I think voting rights also come along when you buy from people who shorted with borrowed shares, yet the people who lended the shares still get voting rights too.

<comment><USER34> This is what bothers me. What stops someone from shorting and then buying the shares (likely through an intermediary) in order to gain votes. Seems like it would be enough to tip the vote in a close shareholder vote. I don't think there is anything like a negative vote to balance it out as with negative shares and dividends.

<comment><USER35> It is very likely that the people who know they are casting a negative vote will vote strategically for the opposite of the thing they actually want to happen, thus turning their negative vote into an anti-negative vote.

I don't think that is resolvable unless each vote has an intrinsic auction process wherein each vote is accompanied by a dollar-valued bid, which is what it would cost for you to not vote your shares on that issue.

The costs are ordered, and the cost of the lowest N votes are sold to the N anti-shares of open short positions, and so each short pays 1/N of the total cost. Any vote not cast or cast-by-proxy or explicitly cast as "abstain" is intrinsically a $0 bid for not-voting that share.

So if there are 10000 real shares in circulation, and 4000 shadow shares, and 4000 shadow anti-shares, then 14000 shares are eligible to vote, but the shadow anti-share holders are also on the hook for collectively buying off the proxy for the 4000 least-interested shareholders, and not-voting those shares. If 2000 people don't vote or fail to assign their proxy, and the next-lowest 2000 bids amount to $80, then each short pays $0.02 per shorted share, and the brokers distribute that to all the low bidders, including those who didn't vote or assign proxy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > There are little cracks that give us brief glimpses of the abyss below. Why > not cover them up with a fresh, cool coat of blockchain?

This is a great example of Wall Street's continued but lessening snark towards blockchain and vicariously Bitcoin. That much of the complex system you know and revere and spent so long learning can be replaced by new fangled technology is still a hard pill to swallow. The snark is a coping mechanism.

<comment><USER37> As currently implemented, blockchain technology cannot scale to the requirements of Wall St. It simply lacks the transaction volume. That's leaving aside other computation and synchronization difficulties inherent to distributing resources rather than centralizing them.

Furthermore, finance is not a homogenous group of luddites. Blockchains are being actively explored in the industry. There's even a consortium of large banks developing one - they're just doing it without all the decentralized sugar that bitcoin has.

Finally, as others have mentioned in this thread, a blockchain wouldn't have obviated this problem. The primary difficulty isn't identifying the owners of shares from three years ago, it's in correctly finding them and arranging for rightful reimbursement.

I think your characterization of the industry is misinformed and unfair.

<comment><USER36> > As currently implemented, blockchain technology cannot scale to the > requirements of Wall St. It simply lacks the transaction volume.

There are so many implementations. Many of these can process orders of magnitude more transactions than Bitcoin.

<comment><USER37> How many orders of magnitude, exactly?

Bitcoin's maximum throughput is about 7 transactions per second. Superior blockchain implementations can generally achieve ~30 transactions per second for long term, effective operation.

Nasdaq's daily trades would require over 430 transactions per second. There are tradeoffs to be made (such as block size or integrity), but it's fundamentally not feasible to port our existing centralized ledger to a decentralized blockchain ledger.

This is just Nasdaq. Imagine trying to scale a decentralized blockchain to multiple markets, or to Visa's requirements, which are over 2000 transactions per second.

There is a variety of research on this topic:

[http://fc16.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/CDE+16.pdf](http://fc16.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/CDE+16.pdf)

[http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/74bc987e6ab4a8478c04950616612...](http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/74bc987e6ab4a8478c04950616612f69/main.pdf)

[http://fc16.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/CDE+16.pdf](http://fc16.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/CDE+16.pdf)

<comment><USER36> Your numbers are nonsense. A blockchain can be made to handle any number of transactions per second. It's simply a matter of increasing the number of transactions per block, the frequency of the blocks or both. The trade off is in the increasing storage requirements. The Bitcoin blockchain currently sits at just over 100GiB. This is an insignificant amount of data for a bank. Furthermore, you can reduce the blockchain storage requirements through checkpointing. Every so many blocks the participants in the blockchain can agree to and cryptographically sign the latest balance sheet. All previous transactions can then be archived. IMO, the Bitcoin Core developers shouldn't be focusing on anything but checkpointing right now.

<comment><USER37> Do you have any evidence to support what you're saying? The research I cited directly contradicts your claim.

You cannot scale up blockchains arbitrarily without making fundamental tradeoffs to increase their performance (for example, increasingly centralizing it).

<comment><USER36> It is self-evident.

Increasing the block size may indeed make a coin more centralised but we are talking about using cryptocurrency to replace outdated systems among banks, government agencies and brokers. In this case, it's not unreasonable to assume that the participants could afford to dedicate sufficient storage space to handle high transaction rates. There is no fixed limit on the transaction rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> tl;dr cloud computing has yet to reach stock offerings.

Probably too much regulatory burden for a startup though: [https://www.sec.gov/divisions/marketreg/mrclearing.shtml](https://www.sec.gov/divisions/marketreg/mrclearing.shtml)

<comment><USER37> The "cloud" is someone else's computer. What are you actually suggesting that would have preempted this issue? The DTC's issue was one of volume, which is certainly a technological issue, but what precisely would "cloud" computing do about it?

By design it is supposed to be centralized, and it would likely be out of the question for the DTC to utilize the computing resources of a private company (especially one for which it owns all or nearly all the extant shares).

<comment><USER38> The problem is the chain of responsibility: company -> DTC -> brokers -> investors With "IPO as a service", the chain of responsibility is instead: cloud-IPO -> company -> investors Because of centralization, the DTC isn't as accountable to the company as a cloud service would be.

I guess there are actually companies in the space, e.g. [https://www.startengine.com/](https://www.startengine.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In before someone mentions blockchain as a solution (IBSMBAAS).

There already exists a database that works and has been well tested over the past 30+ years of securities settlement.

The issues was the database wasn't updated properly. So if a blockchain was used ti would stand to reason that that also wouldn't have been updated properly

<comment><USER40> The difference is with a blockchain system every individual actor pushes in the transactions that update the data, whereas with the existing system you have to trust an arbitrary central party to perform the updates.

The problem with existing systems is that the incentives of the entity owning the asset and the entity responsible for updating the database are not aligned.

<comment><USER31> If you don't trust the company you're investing in and the securities regulator to record things faithfully on a non-distributed ledger and uphold the law, update privileges to and mutability of the transaction record is the _least_ of your problems when it comes to investing.</comment></comment></comment>


Computers Are Going to Disappear - <AUTHOR> http://seersuckermag.com/lifestyle/read/computers-are-going-to-disappear

<comment><USER2> I've been saying for years that the current model of computer —"television and a typewriter"— is ready to die.

OTOH the computer is the new boob tube, and people do love to lounge in front of it. Its not that we wish something would save us. We like sitting in front of it feeling productive and whiling our time away.

I was at my Grandmothers for a few weeks sitting there working with my laptop. Eventually she asked "so what is that thing ?" Totally reasonable question ! I watched films on it, showed her google earth, did skype calls. Why should she assume it was a computer ?

So in a way the computer has already disappeared. and that's not a phone in your pocket.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Computers will die. They're dying in their present form. They're just about dead as distinct units." ― Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

even the word "computer" sounds hopelessly old-fashioned

</comment><comment><USER4> interesting post! i wonder at what point will people on the bleeding edge of the industry maybe think this trend has gone too far, if ever

</comment><comment><USER5> Great article, meshes with a lot of what I've been thinking recently.</comment>


Can undergraduate admissions officers tell if you aren't actually a good coder? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/How-technical-are-undergraduate-admissions-officers-at-esteemed-universities-like-Stanford-and-MIT?share=1

<comment><USER2> No, short answer.

This isn't an issue with coding, it's simply one of more modern things that people have started lying about on their CVs. Of course we still have the good old summer placement descriptions where "typing numbers into Excel" magically becomes "solving serious engineering challenges".

Ultimately if you're reviewing this sort of thing, you learn to use judgement about who is telling the truth and who isn't. Most of the time you can't and you go by your gut instinct.

At a recent summer camp I help out at, we had maybe 20 students doing progrmaming projects. Around 15 claimed some experience with programming either in their application or through email correspondence before the camp. I think perhaps two managed to write a FizzBuzz program in under ten minutes?

I doubt this is something MIT is immune from. It is a problem which particularly plagues undergraduate admissions where students are pressured into making the most boring events sound spectactular in order to compete with about a thousand other people. This is why almost all the top institutions interview.

I once spoke to an admissions tutor at Oxford (Physics) and he said that essentially they ignore the application. They'll interview you if your grades are good enough and go solely on that. If your grades are close, but your application is great then they'll consider it. They introduced entrance exams, but even they were a poor performance indicator because rich kids pay tutors to help them prepare which skews the results.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tom Stagliano's makes the point. It doesn't matter. Coding is a tool to use at the university level, not the goal of education. In addition, coding can be learned at the university and is not necessary for admission.</comment>


What I learned from building an AI that generates porn - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DavidMack/what-i-learned-from-building-an-ai-that-generates-porn-ba1f47b2035f <comment><USER2> Surprising how poor the reception for this kind of research is.. it's 2019, porn/adult entertainment is a huge industry. I'd expect the tech industry at least to be more open to discussing it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very informative and well written. Thanks OP. This stood out:

> Self-attention allows a model to "look back" or "look elsewhere" in the data > to figure out what to do in its current location. For example, when > translating French to Chinese, to choose the next Chinese word to output, it > can look back at all the different input French words to help decide.</comment>


RIM's PlayBook to run Android apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/25/rim_playbook_android/

<comment><USER2> That'll do wonders for UI consistency.

It's moves like this that comes back and bites companies in the ass. Now they're gonna be stuck playing keep up with Android for the foreseeable future. And when you're playing catchup, you're probably not gonna have the time to be the leader.

<comment><USER3> So now "BlackBerry tablet apps" will be based on (I might have gotten a few of these wrong) Flash/Air, HTML, old BlackBerry OS, new BlackBerry OS, and [non- tablet] Android? And maybe Java? Interesting to see someone take the _exact_ opposite route from Apple, who's obsessed with "owning" the app/development environment for their systems.

Sure, technically they've solved the problem of not having any apps... but I bet they've just shifted the problem to not having any _good_ apps. That might be an even worse problem to have.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a test/security nightmare, too. What happens when a BB game plays fine until the (very popular) Android tool in the background messes it all up?</comment></comment></comment>


A.I. downs expert human fighter pilot in dogfights - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/ai-pilot-beats-air-combat-expert-in-dogfight <comment><USER2> The referred paper:

[http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/genetic-fuzzy-based- artif...](http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/genetic-fuzzy-based-artificial- intelligence-for-unmanned-combat-aerialvehicle-control-in-simulated-air- combat-missions-2167-0374-1000144.pdf)</comment>


Loud and fast music at restaurants makes people eat faster and drink more - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-17/how-restaurants-get-you-drunk/full/

<comment><USER2> Better be a fast-food kind of place. If it's trying to be a real restaurant with real prices, annoying customers strikes me as a good way †o kill repeat business. Unless it's a bar catering to the meat market...

</comment><comment><USER3> Loud and fast music at restaurants; Tina Brown publications. Two things I do not like.</comment>


Ask HN: Examples of C# or Java legacy code - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I'm putting together a guide (or course, depends on how you look at it) for people who want to self study and get better at
1. recognizing code smells and poorly designed code
2. refactoring legacy code 3. then bringing it under tests
I am not an expert in any of these and am hoping that pulling all of the material together, creating exercises, and working through them with others will help me and also provide some materials for anyone who wants to do it after us.
Do you know of any open source projects or good examples of C# or Java legacy code? I'm open to other languages but everyone doing this class with us the first time will be primarily experienced in C#.
I have searched on GitHub a lot but am only finding code refactoring and TDD katas.
Thanks!
Edit: Trying to make a list <comment><USER2> [http://genghis.codeplex.com/](http://genghis.codeplex.com/) would probably work for this purpose. The CommandLineParser class is particularly in need of refactoring.</comment>


Ask HN: What have you chosen as your Google Reader replacement? - <AUTHOR>

There is less than a month left before Google Reader is shutdown forever. But enough time has passed for users to try other services. What have you chosen as  as your Google Reader replacement? <comment><USER2> I like the old Reader - <http://theoldreader.com>. It's just like Google reader.

I compiled a list of other alternatives, a lot of which are even open source. Check it out - <http://getgini.com/google-reader-alternatives>

</comment><comment><USER3> Using <http://feedly.com> Good UI both in the mobile app and Web app.

<comment><USER4> I use feedly now too, I could set it up to look almost like reader did. I use it on my android phone as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi Guys,

If what you want is the ability to skim large #s of headlines, organize lots of feeds, label them, tag articles for later reading in one fast unobtrusive "no magazine layout" reader, SwarmIQ is your choice. Sign up at <http://www.swarmiq.com/register/askhn> , click on the Google reader icon to get all your feeds, and get up and running straight away.

www.swarmiq.com is our landing page if you want to see some screenshots and get a sense of what the service is like before signing up.

Disclosure: I'm on the team that built this site :-) Also, we don't have "Google Alerts" type functionality yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.feedsapi.org> \+ <http://feedly.com> is my first choice, followed by <http://www.feedsapi.org> \+ snackr , feedsapi turns shortened rss into full text rss feeds, which makes the user experience with any other rss reader much more better. I also use FeedsAPI rss to email feature on the go.

</comment><comment><USER7> commafeed.com. Seamless import from Google reader, and the interface works about the same, no surprises.

I just wish they'd charge $19/year or something so I can be sure they'll stick around.

<comment><USER2> commafeed is open source. so if it does disappear, you could run it on your own server - <https://github.com/Athou/commafeed>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> although i have a google reader set up, for the last several years my reader has been techmeme. Since techmeme, I look at my reader once a week and techmeme throughout the day.

</comment><comment><USER9> feedly - the best one :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> feedly is pretty neat</comment>


Connections between SVMs, Wasserstein distance and gradient-penalty GANs - <AUTHOR> https://ajolicoeur.wordpress.com/maximummargingans/ <comment><AUTHOR> Paper is here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.06922](https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.06922). Feel free to ask me questions!</comment>


Ask HN: Best book to learn Objective C - <AUTHOR> I would like to be able to hack a prototype in a month or so..
I haven't written a line of code in the past 7 years (and then it was mainly VB and C) and I basically need to start from scratch.
I don't like video schools like Treehouse because I find it redundant - I just can't skim through a video, or speed read parts of it.
I am just looking for a book that will cover all the basics and will basically teach me to build my first iOS app from scratch assuming I am an idiot. No more.
Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> It sounds like you really want to learn Objective C and the iOS frameworks. For that, I suggest the Big Nerd Ranch books along with the Stanford iOS development class videos.

If you want an intensive study of Objective C itself, look at the Kochan book. It's the bible.

<http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/>

[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Objective-C-Edition- Develo...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Objective-C-Edition-Developers- Library/dp/0321811909/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337695533&sr=8-1)

[http://www.amazon.com/iOS-Programming-Ranch-Guide- Guides/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/iOS-Programming-Ranch-Guide- Guides/dp/0321821521/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337695555&sr=1-1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I don't really like videos but I will check it out..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a big fan of all of the Big Nerd Ranch books. Also, Objective-C is pretty simple to learn, the real hurdle is learning the Cocoa/Cocoa Touch framework in addition to others. I would recommend the BNR books (they have one on iOS programming as well as one that teaches Objective-C) as well as watching the video lectures from Stanford since your focus is learning to program for iOS.

</comment><comment><USER4> Programming in Objective-C 2.0 from Kochan is an amazing book, that's were I started.

The Apple's documentation is also pretty damn good and I also use Stackoverflow.com/google a lot when I need to understand something with other prespective</comment>


Data Flows and Crises in Online Reputation Economies - <AUTHOR> http://oakhazelnut.makerlab.com/2009/03/08/data-flows-and-crises-in-online-reputation-economies/ <comment><USER2> Twice this refers to "this paper". What paper? If it's referring to itself, then it seems content-free. If it's another paper, where is it?

This seems a complete waste of time, reiterating material that's pretty obvious to a moment's thought. If I've missed something then I'd be pleased to have it pointed out so I don't feel like I've just wasted five minutes trying to find some value in this.</comment>


UUID vs. BIGSERIAL for Primary Keys - <AUTHOR> http://thebuild.com/blog/2015/10/08/uuid-vs-bigserial-for-primary-keys/ <comment><USER2> Even if it is a hair slower, UUIDs (or similar schemes) are advantageous for reasons beyond being able to merge tables.

Another big advantage is being able to use the UUID as a key, without worrying about exploits from guessing serial numbers:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictable_serial_number_atta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictable_serial_number_attack)</comment>


You want your startup to be visible on TechCrunch, right? - <AUTHOR> https://www.yegor256.com/2019/04/09/beg-them.html <comment><USER2> This is definitely worthy of a trail, the number of asses we founders have to kiss to get anywhere with our startup could use an increase anyway.

Makes me wonder if we really are changing the world by keeping so many peoples butt wet with kisses, and not really making the world a better place.</comment>


TSA inspectors damage 9 aircraft while conducting "security checks" - <AUTHOR> http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=340a79d6-839a-470d-b662-944325cea23d& What are they doing touching airplanes? <comment><USER2> I agree with the editor's note at the bottom, this sort of incompetence needs to be prosecuted in a court of law. It's downright dangerous, and any other individual perpetrating the same act would be sent to Cuba as a terror suspect.

I guess it's time to start driving to Vancouver B.C. before getting on a plane...

</comment><comment><USER3> The modern TSA and/or the DHS is quite obviously an exercise in "we must do something; this is something; therefore, we must do it."

</comment><comment><USER4> "'We think it's an unfortunate situation,' she told ABCNews.com."

Are weasel words really necessary here? They think it's unfortunate that 40 flights were delayed? They think correctly

<comment><USER5> 40 flights? Very annoying if you're on one of 'em, but the TSA can't afford to freak out every time 40 flights out of the thousands-per-day that they're responsible are delayed, can they? Viewed from the TSA's perspective, this is a minor screwup.

<comment><USER6> _this is a minor screwup._

<Cough!> As a pilot I can tell you that in many real cases, your very life depends on the proper functioning of these instruments. That's why we check them fanatically! If I wanted to crash a plane and kill those aboard, I wouldn't waste my time with bombs. I'd wait for a cloudy day and subtly damage the instruments on as many planes as I could.

There are heroes among us and they don't wear TSA badges. They check instruments and mechanical systems. Every day, for every flight, whether they feel like it or not, whether "its been working fine all day" or not. Air safety is a friggin miracle of eternal vigil. This fool is an "accidental terrorist" and should never be allowed near a plane again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess a plane that is grounded is more secure than one that is not.

<comment><USER8> Unless that's what the terrorist were trying to accomplish in the first place.

<comment><USER9> Amusing thought: Violent Outlaws who try to make people safer in terrifying ways.

Examples: Damaging the transportation fuel infrastructure. Grounding planes. Rendering highways unusable. These would all tend to save lives if accomplished in a big way which could easily be terrifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To be fair, I've encountered far fewer arbitrary and rude TSA personnel who like gratifying themselves by throwing their weight around. But a few years ago, they were obnoxious.

One time, I was ordered to consolidate my luggage -- just before the point at which we take our laptops out and reshuffle items into the bins to put them through the X-Ray. WTF? The number of items you are going to take on the plane is not their business! It's the airline's. According to the procedures they make you follow, it's actually their business to make you take your luggage apart.

Perhaps it's coincidence, but I'm encountering fewer of these bullies. I wonder if enough people complained about them.

</comment><comment><USER10> Oy, its a dilemma. This isn't really hacker news, but it is damn interesting. Looks like the Digg problem is leaking in.

<comment><USER11> I've been told that Hacker News is "Anything of interest to hackers." This is on the front page, therefore it must _a posteriori_ be of interest to hackers, musn't it?

<comment><USER12> ...I think that's more a hope than a definition (though you're probably just being sarcastic.) Anyway, I don't see why this story is prompting the !HN rigmarole. Bumbling government screwing with technology they don't understand in the name of protecting us sounds like HN to me.

<comment><USER11> _you're probably just being sarcastic_

Why? If you consider yourself part of the HN community, and you find it interesting, then by definition it belongs here. Isn't that the case?

FWIW, I disqualify myself from judging whether things belong on HN or not. Many of the articles I used to think were not HN have been proven by popularity to belong here, leading me to the conclusion that I am not a hacker since I do not find them interesting when I am reading "Hacker News."

p.s. Now I will be sarcastic: ESR has stated that "Hackers do not place double quotation marks outside of punctuation."

<comment><USER13> Ah, but you're missing an important point:

You're (I'm not directing this entirely at raganwald, as it applies to many of the arguments made) assuming that only Hackers are capable of voting and posting.

I generally agree, and think this article should have made it. But the argument of 'Only articles interesting to hackers will make it to the front page' fails at the part where we assume that only people interested in Hacker News are doing the majority of voting (The Digg factor kind of forces me to think that when the Digg-ers show up, they'll reshape any news to fit their idea of "news" - see Reddit).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> -1 off topic

</comment><comment><USER15> Hmm. This would be a great opportunity for the airlines to sue the TSA for the lost time.</comment>


Python from scratch- RegEx - <AUTHOR> http://go.hodspot.com/2012/03/python-from-scratch-regex.html <comment><USER2> I applaud your effort. Regex is a valuable skill (really, language) which you will use across languages and programs as it gives you access to an efficient and pretty general method for scanning and extracting things from text. And if you study fundamentals of computer science (like the Chomsky hierarchy) you will also find that regular expressions are important there too.

<comment><USER3> But, to make life more exciting, the regular expressions you'll see in actual CS/math are strictly less powerful than the Perl-style regexes you see in Python. E.g. the language accepted by /(a+b+)\1/ is clearly not regular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I would expect Repetition to act like Wildcards but ' + ' is not a wildcard.

The meaning of the term "wildcard" may be ambiguous. The plus sign, called a "repetition operator", is used to modify what precedes it, like this:

\w+ will match one or more word characters. Word characters are usually in the set A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and the underscore.

In much the same way, \w* will match zero or more word characters.

And \w? will match zero or one word characters.

If you want to use one of these repetition operators in your search, preceded it with a reverse slash:

"true\?" will match "true" followed by a question mark, while "true?" will match "tru" optionally followed by "e".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer. I wrote it to show example of my confusion.

Anyhow. I read your words and will code it later tonight. Thanks man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a good nerdy time, check out the first implementations of glob and regexp. 20 years on they still work in modern Pythons. Soon after Guido decided to make globs a special case of regexp, and his elegant recursive code was no more.

[http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Lib/glob.py?revision...](http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Lib/glob.py?revision=2268&view=markup)

[http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Lib/sre_compile.py?r...](http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Lib/sre_compile.py?revision=14919&view=markup)

</comment><comment><USER6> In case you're curious, here's what I consider a modern pythonic solution - <https://gist.github.com/1995010>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks shorter, i need to learn what you wrote and tell you if it is OK or with bug. Anyway thanks for dropping your comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> PEP8 recommends 4 spaces for indentation. At least you should try to make it consistent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Somehow it looks easier and clearer to use TAB over Spaces. Now that you linked me PEP8 (First time i see it) i will start using 4 spaces. Thanks for your comment

<comment><USER7> You're welcome. There's a pep8 package on PyPI that implements validation against that recommandation and plugins for most popular editors that make it easy to check your code. Editors can also be configured so that pressing the tab key actually inserts 4 spaces.</comment></comment></comment>


Why traders should pay attention to earthquakes occuring in Japan - <AUTHOR> https://www.scoopanalytics.com/blog/why-traders-should-pay-attention-to-earthquakes-occurring-in-japan/?utm_content=buffer98515&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Anecdata at best. Rsq or gtfo.</comment>


BSDCan 2014 Videos - <AUTHOR> http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140528143344

<comment><USER2> Its a shame that more folks don't have the equipment, people, and money to do a camera + speaker's computer video wide split screen.

<comment><USER3> Paging BlackMagic, loan an ATEM Video Switcher to these guys and boom, drivers for BSD will be created :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recommendations?

<comment><USER2> The LibreSSL talk is funny and scary.

[watch the other version one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnBbhXBDmwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnBbhXBDmwU) so you can hear the other people and see the end]</comment></comment>


Suggest me which platform I should use for my new project? - <AUTHOR>

I'm about to start a new project, a web+mobile application that will use Facebook, Twitter and Google+ API(when available). The application is social in nature and may attract lots of users. It will extend existing social network functionality to help users plan an outing with friends using features such as "Places", "Interests", "Activities", "Meetups" etc. In short, it will help users plan and get involved in active offline social life.
Now, right now I am in the process of finalizing the features of version 1.0 and designing user interface. I need to select a development platform .
I'm comfortable in php and have never done any development using ruby or python but I can learn it if required. So, please suggest me which platform I should use for my project? PHP with any framework, Ruby on rails or python/django? <comment><USER2> Use whatever you know best. This decisions tend not to be so important. If your app becomes real big you will end up replacing most of your code anyway. The most important thing is to build and launch as fast as possible.

<comment><USER3> Unless you also see this as an opportunity to learn something new..in which case you could pick either ruby/rails or python/django (or any other ruby/rails framework)...or really anything, but those are probably your two best bet.

You also didn't talk about databases, but I think the same would apply. "Use whatever you know best", or pick something new if learning something new at this point (and on this project) is something you'd like to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is one of the goals for this project to learn a new language/framework or purely to get the project up and running? If it is the latter I would suggest sticking with what you know (PHP) and this way you will get the project off the ground quicker. If it is part of your goals then first I would suggest looking into whether you want to deploy on something like the google app engine or heroku. This might help you decide if you want to go down the Ruby or Python route.

</comment><comment><USER5> Off question, but I am working on a very similar idea (only in my head for now). Hit me up if you would like to connect. My email is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sent you an email. Looking forward for your reply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Smalltalk</comment>


CleanTab launches version 2 - Guitar & Bass Tabs in HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cleantab.com/news/cleantab-launches-version-2-0/ Hi Hacker News, I have become a huge fan in the last several weeks. I am proud to present my first submission. For the last few months I have been working on CleanTab a guitar and bass tablature site that harnesses HTML5 for an amazing playing experience. I hope you all enjoy. <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, but there's at least one piece of data you're throwing out from your scraped pages.

Compare The White Stripes' "Offend in Every Way" tab on your site ([http://cleantab.com/offend-in-every-way-guitar-tab/white- str...](http://cleantab.com/offend-in-every-way-guitar-tab/white-stripes/v1)) and the scraped site ([http://www.xguitar.com/guitar- tabs/white_stripes/white_blood...](http://www.xguitar.com/guitar- tabs/white_stripes/white_blood_cells/offend_in_every_way.txt)). xguitar is telling you where the chord changes happen by placing the chord name over the lyrics (e.g., on the first line, you play a G when singing "plan").

Also, on your blog pages, the top header links to <http://blog.cleantab.com/blog/> , which is a 404. You want to link to <http://blog.cleantab.com/> .

</comment><comment><USER3> Really great site. Tab sites for been terrible for too long. This is a refreshing change from the popups, popovers, and audio ads that plague the existing tab/chord sites.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kudos. The presentation is pretty good. I've had a similar idea rattling around in my head for a few years, but haven't had the time to build it... There's a major problem with all these sites that has yet to be solved. What that is is left as an exercise for the reader. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Great site, I'll be using this from now on! How do you plan to make money? Affiliate links? Membership fee? Ads?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the comment. I am hoping to monetize the site through both affiliate programs and advertisements. While the ads will be minimal, I strongly encourage our users to support the artists they enjoy by purchasing music through our affiliates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, where did you get the tablature data from? Scraping existing sites?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the tablature data is scraped from existing sites. There is a credit to the original page on the top right of every tab.</comment>


A Pissed-Off Tutorial for Google Wave (2010) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z4RKRLaSug <comment><AUTHOR> I love the collaborative features of Google Docs and Google Sheets.

The thing that's missing from "Google Docs" is a decent collaborative outliner called "Google Trees", that does to "NLS" and "Frontier" what "Google Sheets" did to "VisiCalc" and "Excel".

And I don't mean "Google Wave", I mean a truly collaborative extensible visually programmable spreadsheet-like outliner with expressions, constraints, absolute and relative xpath-like addressing, and scripting like Google Sheets, but with a tree instead of a grid. That eats drinks scripts and shits JSON and XML or any other structured data.

Of course you should be able to link and embed outlines in spreadsheets, and spreadsheets in outlines, but "Google Maps" should also be invited to the party (along with its plus-one, "Google Mind Maps").

More on Douglass Engelbart's NLS and Dave Winer's Frontier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20425970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20425970)

<comment><USER2> I guess one issue these tools have had historically (collaborative outliers, and Wave along with it) -- was what are they actually for?

Google Docs is for writing documents, letters, school essays, etc... The output is a document of some kind.

Sheets is for performing calculations, modeling numbers, etc... the output is normally some calculated value (or values). The benefit of this over just writing a single function/program is that you can potentially have more insight into the way that calculation is performed, but in general, the output is some calculation.

But outliners are different... what is the result? The NLS demo describes a shopping list. Which is nice, and you can slice and dice the data around, but fundamentally, it's a shopping list. And that function can be achieved with Google Docs for 80% of the functionality. Sure, it doesn't make moving bananas and carrots into a 'produce' category easy, but with copy and paste, it's a pretty well solved problem.

But the basic outliner functionality you're describing -- what's it actually used _for_? What's the payload that you're organizing?

Even Dave Winer's tools were used not for making lists, but for making websites. There was a "payload" present. You were managing data for websites (at least, as far as I can understand it, I didn't have a Mac at the time, so never used most of the UserLand programs).

So, would you say the "point" for these tools is making other tools? For example, using Frontier to manage websites? Or Wave to make a chatting tool?

In my mind, this was the problem that Wave came across... it wasn't easy to describe what it did in a simple way. It wasn't email. It wasn't chat. It wasn't collaborative writing. It was the backend that made that all work. It was incredibly ambitious, and that made it difficult to get people to use.

If it was "just" chatting -- I think that would have made a huge difference. Users don't care that you're using OT to write messages on the fly... they just want to be able to chat with friends or colleagues.

So, what is the killer application for a collaborative outliner? Why would I need one? I'm genuinely curious as to your thoughts, as you've clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> One thing an outliner lets you do that you can't do with something like Wave or a tree structured discussion group is to arbitrarily rearrange the tree.

You're right, you can represent tree-structured outlines in Word or Docs (or JSON in Excel or Sheets as I described here [1]), but it's clumsy and not well supported by the user interface.

[1] Representing and Editing JSON with Spreadsheets: [https://medium.com/@donhopkins/representing-and-editing- json...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/representing-and-editing-json-with- spreadsheets-8f8832db5239)

Where Frontier really shines is in its user interface and feature set, which makes navigating and creating and editing outlines very easy and efficient.

Frontier's main use was (tree structured) content management and scripting, and making websites is a popular application of that. It was extremely useful for making tools, and like Emacs, its power came from its extensibility.

Its pre-web predecessors [2] were ThinkTank (which started on the Apple ][ with a keyboard based interface) and MORE (which added a mouse-based drag-and- drop interface, that made it much easier to use without spoiling the ease of use of the keyboard interface, and also formatted graphics for making charts and slide shows).

[2] MORE (application): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MORE_(application)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MORE_\(application\))

Beyond obvious stuff like content management, blogging, and scripting, I think there are many other killer applications of programmable outliners (just as emacs and spreadsheets have many applications), some old hat, and others undiscovered!

I wrote some more [3] about Dave Winer's work on Frontier, and linked to some screencasts he made that show how he uses it to organize his thoughts (about the history of outliners, in this case, which is beautifully self- referential).

I think the most important point that comes through in Dave's demos is that the operating system and user interface shell should support generic outlining and scripting at a very basic, built-in, ubiquitous level. But I believe Windows, OS/X, iOS and Android have a hell of a long way to go!

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20672970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20672970)

Dave Winer's second outliner screencast:

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

Dave Winer's the many lives of Frontier screencast:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlN-L88KScw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlN-L88KScw)

Dave Winer on The Open Web, Blogging, Podcasting and More:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLX415mHfX0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLX415mHfX0)

>UserLand's first product release of April 1989 was UserLand IPC, a developer tool for interprocess communication that was intended to evolve into a cross- platform RPC tool. In January 1992 UserLand released version 1.0 of Frontier, a scripting environment for the Macintosh which included an object database and a scripting language named UserTalk. At the time of its original release, Frontier was the only system-level scripting environment for the Macintosh, but Apple was working on its own scripting language, AppleScript, and started bundling it with the MacOS 7 system software. As a consequence, most Macintosh scripting work came to be done in the less powerful, but free, scripting language provided by Apple.

>UserLand responded to Applescript by re-positioning Frontier as a Web development environment, distributing the software free of charge with the "Aretha" release of May 1995. In late 1996, Frontier 4.1 had become "an integrated development environment that lends itself to the creation and maintenance of Web sites and management of Web pages sans much busywork," and by the time Frontier 4.2 was released in January 1997, the software was firmly established in the realms of website management and CGI scripting, allowing users to "taste the power of large-scale database publishing with free software."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To be fair, Google did a really bad job of explaining what Wave _actually was_ when it was launched, which was not helped by the naughties tech-tradition of being "invitation only".

Had they simply said it was a cool chat application and given everybody access then it may well have caught on.

<comment><USER4> I got an invite to wave, but no one else I knew was on it, so it had no value at all to me. It didn't have that attribute that PG ascribed to reddit: the ability to be valuable with a small number of users.

They also didn't have explain how it was different, if at all, from similar chat systems of the past, like PowWow or ICQ chat. Those were both see-typing- in-real-time-systems that were, IMHO, not at all useful in business.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps you joined wave before I did, but IIRC by the time I got an invitation each invited user had 5 inivitations to share among their friends/peers.

So forming a group wouldn't have been a problem because you could invite your friends who could invite their friends.

<comment><USER4> This sounds familiar. I don't remember if my friends/colleagues didn't want to join or what. So it might have been my fault. Still, the system seemed useless as single user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sure Wave gets a lot of hate but our team enjoyed it a lot.

After it was shutdown we migrated to Hipchat, then Slack, and finally Keybase.

It was positioned as an 'email killer' \- and as validated by Slack I think that was pretty clever and spot on marketing.

</comment><comment><USER4> The last sentence of the video is "google wave, because... because... fuck you _exasperated sigh_ ".

I burst out laughing at that and I've been trying to figure out why.

Laughter is an act of destruction, an emotional declaration that this thing is not part of reality and wiping it out of existence.

A lot of what tech companies do feels like a fuck you. Killing Google Reader without explanation, disabling the full capabilities of ad blockers, removing headphone jacks, letting third parties exploit our social data, hiding the full scope of data collection behind a vague "we will use your data to improve the service", and so much more.

The relationship between tech companies and customers wasn't nearly so adversarial 20-30 years ago. In the 1980s, it felt like Microsoft was really on a mission to bring computers to everyone. Sony was creating tech to allow us to listen to our existing music collections. By the late 90s, Apple's big idea was basically "candy color are pretty, they will make our users happy, so let's make good colorful cases".

And up to the mid 00s, google really seemed like a champion and advocate for internet users. It felt like (though in hindsight it was an illusion) that when policy decisions were being made, we could trust Google to be our voice when we weren't in the room.

"Because fuck you" would not have been at all funny back then.

</comment><comment><USER7> I loved Google Wave, was pissed when it was terminated, happy again when I installed and played with the slightly derivative Apace Wave project, then was unhappy again when Apache Wave was retired January 2018. In retrospect, I wish I had volunteered some effort on Apache Wave - lesson is if you like something contribute.

<comment><USER8> >I wish I had volunteered some effort on Apache Wave

The point of the video is that products don't fail for lack of developers

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've worked on UC for most of my career and loved Google Wave. Conceptually they were right, but it required imagination on the part of the user and there was no bridge to the past. Instead of addressing this, Google killed off the product, and then all of their collab products over and over again. I've lost track and gave up on them now, and I think you really have to love Google to even bother with their UC stuff now, but Wave was a joy while it lasted.

<comment><USER2> Does UC stand for Unified Communications here?

<comment><USER9> yeah

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had such high hopes for Wave. I thought it was an idealized union between IRC and NewsGroups. Real-time interaction, plus threaded conversations, and For The Real WIN: no more top-posting.

Web-forums could finally be re-invented.

I also saw it as a great platform for things like 'Remote D&D', and a "rich media" that was hinted at in the 90's.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was in grad school when Wave hit. I was dumb founded when they cancelled it. I've heard only a very few people whom tried it say they didn't think it was awesome, which leads me to believe they didn't kill it because of a lack of viability at all - they killed it because it competed with other strategic initiatives, imho. This would have been the pre-slack killer easily. Looking at it's features (in conversation threads, drag and drop photos, adding folks to conversations, etc) one almost thinks it was the inspiration for slack even.

Anyway, Wave wasn't killed because it wasn't viewed as viable, it was killed for politics, which is probably why it's creators and engineers were so pissed off. Shame.

<comment><USER12> I think that video was made by a comedian, not actual engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They didn't even give Wave 2 years??

<comment><USER14> Nope, and it was invite only. By the time my friends were getting access, they were shutting it down. We would've loved it for remote gaming, in particular.

<comment><USER15> My D&D group used it for collaboration, mainly debating how bad 4th edition was :-) We liked it, but it didn't break anyone's heart when it was shut down.

<comment><USER16> I worked on a (non-D&D, quite niche/indie) RPG managing bot in Wave. The ability to work gameplay into a document draft, with the GM and player directly collaborating on revisions and bot-based rolls/mechanics directly inline, had a potential to be fantastic for certain types of story-heavy, written narrative-focused RPG playing.

I keep debating revisiting something like it for Discord/Slack today, but the style would still be quite different from that "threaded, collaborative Word document with revision tracking" feel of Wave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's actually creepy that other contacts can watch you live typing!

<comment><USER18> This is feature that is/was present in other applications, such as ICQ and talkd.

<comment><USER19> And it's awful. Typing stuff makes me think about it, and I change it constantly. Then you end up having people change thoughts mid sentence when they see what another person has started typing in response to what they haven't even finished yet. It's like having everyone talk at once.

<comment><USER20> Apparently it wasn't everyone cup of tea but personally I loved it. It makes for a different sort of conversation - more live than the asynchronous back and forth messaging of most apps today. You can often reply to someone while they're typing their message - and if you guess right they can stop typing and move on to read / reply to your response in turn.

I'm not sure how well it works in groups but 1-on-1 it feels more like a phone call than a messaging app; except it's over text, it seamlessly transitions to offline asynchronous messaging if someone isn't there and you can both "talk" (type) at the same time.

<comment><USER21> Just make it an option duh!

<comment><USER22> But it was an option wasn't it?

You could write in draft mode I think, and people couldn't see the result

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've made a timeline with the video of the original world-shattering announcement and demo of Wave at Google IO, and some of the Google Wave related submissions to HN. How pretentious and audacious it seems in retrospect! It's hard to appreciate all the snarky jokes in the Pissed Off Wave Tutorial, if you don't remember how, um, over-confident they were when they announced Wave.

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 (May 28, 2009)

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

Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web. (May 28, 2009)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630427)

[https://techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with- amb...](https://techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with-ambition-can- it-fulfill-googles-grand-web-vision/)

Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today (May 29, 2009)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630470)

[http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/google-wave-what-might- emai...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/google-wave-what-might-email-l.html)

What problems does Google Wave solve? (Oct 15, 2009)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=883116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=883116)

[https://danieltenner.com/2009/10/15/0012-google-wave- html/](https://danieltenner.com/2009/10/15/0012-google-wave-html/)

Google Kills Wave (Aug 4, 2010)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1575892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1575892)

[https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google- wav...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html)

What makes Slack so successful whereas Google Wave wasn't? (Oct 10, 2015)

[https://www.quora.com/What-makes-Slack-so-successful- whereas...](https://www.quora.com/What-makes-Slack-so-successful-whereas- Google-Wave-wasnt?share=1)

What in the Hell Was Google Wave Trying to Be Anyway? – Gizmodo UK (May 27, 2019)

[https://gizmodo.com/what-in-the-hell-was-google-wave- trying-...](https://gizmodo.com/what-in-the-hell-was-google-wave-trying-to-be- anyway-1835038967)

On a lighter note, the Game Helpin' Squad (who made the Wave tutorial) also has several spot-on parodies of various video game genres!

"Time Travel Understander" is a parody of Braid:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fABGyVzVwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fABGyVzVwI)

"Severe Running" parodies those Flash running games:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrUWFo2D1Xs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrUWFo2D1Xs)

And "World Quester 2" is the ultimate D&D RPG parody:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gy9hJauXns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gy9hJauXns)

"Pretend Gas Station" is a SimCity parody:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMeWas4kXM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMeWas4kXM)

"Solitare Party" parodies all those card games:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBbMb3X2R8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBbMb3X2R8A)

<comment><USER23> I dunno, I liked Wave. I thought of it as NLS as implemented by a modern software dev who had only heard a verbal description.

<comment><AUTHOR> I fell for the hype myself, got terribly excited about it, and wrote up a bunch of ideas in a Wave discussion about how to use it for collaborating in multi player SimCity. But it just got so slow and unresponsive the bigger a wave grew, and it was like drinking from a tsunami, so that nobody could keep up with what everybody else was typing.

<comment><USER23> Part of the problem is that it had none of the filtering tools of NLS, and the linking/sharing/addressing tools had a terrible UI. It could have used some kind of changelog/journal as well.

I wish someone could have shown them The Mother of All Demos, if they could make it do mostly that it could have been amazing, but they were probably pretty heavy into drinking their own flavor-aid at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wave was a perfect example of leading with technology rather than the problem to be solved. Nothing I ever saw or read about it spoke to a specific user problem. Sure, Google has problems in spades that can be solved by Wave (engaging users, crushing upstart social media companies to name two). But in terms of eliminating something costing large numbers of computer time or money, Wave brought absolutely nothing to the table.

I remember seeing the hyperventilating response to Wave by tech people at the time and wondering what they were actually experiencing. Because what I saw was yet another Google initiative that would be shut down and forgotten fairly quickly.

<comment><USER25> Neither Google Reader nor Talk had been shutdown until 2012, so the whole storyline of Google constantly shutting down stuff hadn't started yet, this seems like a false recollection.

<comment><USER16> Though Reader, Talk, Buzz, and Wave were all killed in quick succession and to arguably the exact same forces (Google+), for very similar reasons (walling the garden, "reducing redundancy"). That shutdown wave was brutal and nearly simultaneous enough that of course it defines the narrative of Google constantly shutting down stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me of You Suck at Photoshop

</comment><comment><USER27> It wasn't a very bad idea, the implementation was. I still miss a tool, somewehere between email and chat. Basecamp has something like this, where you have topics (threads), members (recepients) and a simple message sending like a forum, without the downsides of a chat.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised no one has tried to revive the Wave idea in some way. Whether by forking the original project, or attempting a remake.

<comment><USER29> For better or worse, I think Slack and its cohorts are what people accept as the "next" email. They are wave's successors, spiritually at least.

<comment><USER28> Is Slack really that much more feature-rich than IRC?

I'd really love to see something similar to Wave's "real-time" instant messaging in one of these newer apps.

<comment><USER30> Slack adds persistence, shared sessions across multiple PCs and phones, search, accounts with logins, messages to offline users, image and file hosting, and works even if you're heavily firewalled.

i.e. the stuff a veteran IRC user cobbles together from an always-on server running irssi+screen, nickserv, saved identify and ghost commands, a chatbot and some personal webspace.

Still, I agree Slack is far more the child of IRC than the child of Wave. IIRC Wave had full rich text, a threading-like mechanic, and you could edit other people's messages, and documents rather than channels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So Google wave was Slack before Slack??

<comment><USER32> I consider Google Wave closer to reddit for real time chat.

<comment><USER33> That, sounds a lot like slack

<comment><USER16> Less like IRC and more like using a Google Docs document or Office 365 Word document collaboration for a live chat, using different paragraph formatting for threading. (Some of the Wave collaboration tech wound up in Docs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can't wait for the Google alternative to Slack....

<comment><USER35> Hangouts was just killed. It'll be a few years before they try again.

<comment><USER36> [https://gsuite.google.com/products/chat/](https://gsuite.google.com/products/chat/) ?

<comment><USER37> Not sure why you are being downvoted -- it's a fair suggestion but worth pointing out it's for enterprise/business clients only.

<comment><USER38> Hangouts Chat

* Can't communicate with anyone without GSuite

* Can't talk with our customers who use GSuite on another domain.

* Can't communicated with the "old" Hangouts, so it's utterly useless.

Another failure from Google. Whatever management structure incentivizes this crap needs to be fixed, if they ever want to expand out of their current domains.

Google had a winner with Hangouts. Instead they left it to die, while they moved on to Duo, Allo, and now Hangouts Chat. Meanwhile slack stepped in and took what should have bee their market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Google needs to own its failures. It can't ship anything new or innovative. The only things that they've been good at is acquiring things that other people have invented (Youtube, Android, etc).

Buzz? dead. Wave? dead. Plus? dead. Allo? dead.

It's so bad now that even features and innovation on their existing platforms are dying.

Youtube? Everything they do with Youtube is a screwup. Android? Good luck getting an app in the app store without Google accidentally killing your company.

Google Cloud? Sorry... everyone's on AWS or Azure.

Search? Nope... Elasticsearch now dominates that space. Think about it. Elasticsearch now beats Google at what Google should have dominated - search.

<comment><USER40> Chrome, Kubernetes, TensorFlow, Golang, AngularJS, Prometheus, gRPC, Protocol Buffers, Vitess, Spanner, Flutter, Bazel, GoogleTest, Istio, V8, AlphaZero

Seems like Google innovates and builds a ton. It's the whole dealing with customers part that they don't like.

<comment><USER41> Angularjs + Angular doesn't belong in that list.

how they handled that transition gave react a huge footing, splintered the framework community, also have made it very hard to search for their own framework.

<comment><USER42> Wasn't the bigger problem that it was hard and heavyweight and felt like you needed to be a Java developing software engineer to make anything substantial with AngularJS?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Moving a Static Site to S3 Before My Girlfriend Got Out of the Shower - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hartleybrody.com/static-site-s3/

<comment><USER2> Why exactly did you frame the article "Moving a Static Site to S3 Before My Girlfriend Got Out of the Shower" instead of "Moving a Static Site to S3 in 5 Minutes"?</comment>


Axioms of Internet Governance: Why we've failed so far - <AUTHOR> http://www.cukier.com/writings/oii-netgov-may05.html

<comment><USER2> Governments could control the internet to a greater degree (see: China), but given how entrenched the multinational, cross-border culture of the internet has become, the nature of the internet lends itself to corporate control much more than state governance. Corporations are not as restricted by such arbitrary boundaries, and large conglomerates' international reach can better control the flow of traffic and information than a government that is mostly relegated to controlling aspects within their geographical limits.

So while the goal of public interest advocacy to promote open networks is noble, it faces the same problems that governments see in other forms of internet regulation. The limit of one country's abilities may be outweighed by private interests. The only way the internet can stay an equal and open forum in this sense is if it is economically advantageous for corporations to provide this service, though I fear the potential undermining of their control and ultimately their bottom line may lead them to restrict according to their agenda.</comment>


C++14 lambda tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://solarianprogrammer.com/2014/08/28/cpp-14-lambda-tutorial/ <comment><USER2> As someone currently learning C++ the biggest surprise was finding out about C++11/14\. I'd assumed that the language hadn't changed for decades so it's great to see it still being updated.

<comment><USER3> Yes. C++ is in an active standard update process. Here is a short history of notable versions:

Year Version Year-Delta

1983; 1.0; 0

1989; 2.0; +6 years

1998; C++98; +9 years (first ISO standard)

2003; C++03; +5 years (minor update)

2011; C++11; +8 years (major update)

2014; C++14; +3 years (minor update)

The C++14 version was the first that arrived on schedule. The next major version is planned for 2017. The future looks quite promising for C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work as a C++ developer, but damn, C++ has the ugliest lambda syntax ever.

<comment><USER5> Do you have an alternative suggestion? It seems reasonably straightforward to me and I don't find it all that impossible. Not having to muck around with a specific lambda() factory-like function with horrible inputs (as is needed in LPC where I sort-of learnt to code) is a plus :)

<comment><USER6> I don't mind C++'s lambdas, but in some other languages they use "arrows", like

       square = (x) -> x * x

C++ won't want to give up the different kinds of capturing, though, so it's hard to see anything much better than what's available now.

In imaginary, never-to-be-implemented language daydreams I toy with the idea of using curly braces and implicit positional arguments to have lambdas look like

        square = { _1 * _1 }

and

        factorial = { (_1 < 2) ? 1 : _0(_1 - 1) }

and with explicit captures and arguments,

        partial_sort = [&lt_vec, &ge_vec, pivot](item){
            if (item < pivot) lt_vec.add(item)
            else ge_vec.add(item)
        }

I suspect, though, those ideas are just horrible shortcuts to a Perl-like hell :-)

<comment><USER5> Hrm, I don't quite like the arrows. C++ lambdas can contain arbitrary code and these arrows always remind me of "pure" functions (in a sense), or at least functions whose main purpose it is to map input arguments to output arguments.

For example, consider something like this relatively common block to do some complex operation on the elements of a vector using some (naive) threading (it might be nicer to first create some lambdas, push them into a queue and then spawn threads to work on that queue, but the syntax is essentially the same):

      for(std::size_t i(0); i != somevec.size(); ++i) {
        workers.push_back(std::thread([&somevec, i]() mutable { calc(somevec, i); }));
      }

That is, we want an anonymous lambda which captures some elements of its environment (by both reference and value, also it's essentially a closure by now) and call some function on these elements. That lambda doesn't have any return value and doesn't take any input arguments. Sure one could throw in an extra _lambda_ somewhere or put an arrow between _mutable_ and _{_ , but I have to admit I don't see the value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never been a good at Templates. After reading this it seems that a lot of Template uses can be replaced with the generic lambdas using auto as the types going in.

Am I wrong or misunderstanding? I'm not saying completely but I feel like when I have used Templates I can now use this.

<comment><USER8> Templates are the C++ implementation of "generics". Their utility extends far beyond lambdas-as-callables. The entire STL library is built using the Template feature of C++. Templates are far more important than the ability to do "true" object-oriented programming using other features, in my opinion.

For a more concrete example that doesn't rely on the "authority" of an externally developed template library, consider that templates are also useful for static/compile-time polymorphism (see: Curiously Recurring Template Pattern).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In python, lambda usage extremly beautiful. Also, 'lambda' keyword solves readibility problem. I expected a keyword. Is there any challenge to add keyword?

<comment><USER10> I don't like that in python you are enforced to only use a single expression in lambda. Sure, writing long lambda functions is ugly but I don't think python should enforce a given coding style in the language level.

<comment><USER11> Isn't that literally a core principal of Python? They enforce all kind of coding styles within the language, not the mention all the PEPs.

<comment><USER10> But PEPs are not enforced in the language level. Also there are cases where there could fit two simple expression in a lambda. Also the language still doesn't stop you from abusing lambdas, you can nest them. It could be stated in one of the PEPs that "no overly complicated lambdas" and that's it, there is no need for the language to enforce this.

<comment><USER11> PEPs are literally the language, in my opinion. It may not be enforced on an implementation level, but some have been. You can't mix spaces and tabs now. That seems like a style choice being enforced on every level.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


As Seas Warm, Galápagos Islands Face a Giant Evolutionary Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/18/climate/galapagos-islands-ocean-warming.html <comment><USER2> Meta-comment: I just wanted to mention how civil and logical debate is in this thread. I've seen discussions of economic systems on HN get way in the weeds with personal attacks and such. Good job team!

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure my initial comment quite met that standard, although the statements were directed at groups rather than HN individuals. That might be the best I can do on the civility front.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Every day, another sign of collapse. Fluffy-minded business execs, SV megaconsumers, and economist fairy-people will hardly notice (yet).

<comment><USER4> At what point do we start seriously discussing solutions? We could right now ground the aircraft, ban meat production, institute a steep tax on gasoline and electricity, stop the ships, ban deep sea fishing, etc. The problem is these solutions are political suicide in a democracy and people will never accept them, but barring magic carbon capture technology that can scale is there really an alternative besides 'shut it all down' (besides plan on starving to death or dying in a resource war)?

<comment><USER5> We've been seriously discussing solutions.

The real question is at what point do people start actually applying what they learn in these serious discussions in how they live their own lives?

I don't think it ever happens on a large enough scale to matter before it's too late to avert massive loss of life and global conflict.

Things will naturally sort itself out, the population collapses, lots of lives suffer, but life goes on.

<comment><USER3> > The real question is at what point do people start actually applying what > they learn in these serious discussions in how they live their own lives?

But they can't. People live in systems with affordances and restrictions. What about their lives can a lower-middle-class family living in an outer Sydney suburb meaningfully change? Little, and only at the margins (a bit of recycling, some solar panels). Certainly not even approaching the ballpark of what our situation requires.

Any strategy for change demanding that we should on average become exceptional is mathematically doomed to failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "test" \- crisis"; potato - potahto. The headline screams "but those plucky animals may just pull it off".

</comment><comment><USER7> Solutions have been seriously discussed by _real_ socialist politicians for years. Problem will start seeing actual solutions when people start massively voting for them.

Current stage of capitalism is strictly incompatible with sustainable development. It's the root cause, it's almost never discussed here.

[https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/16/the-elephant-in- the-...](https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/16/the-elephant-in-the-room- capitalism-and-sustainable-development/)

<comment><USER3> That's a hard row to hoe - a civilisation's foundational superstitions are invisible to most of its members, so a wide-scale questioning of them is unfathomably difficult to prompt. Think Protestant Reformation as the scale of the conceptual and emotional shifts needed.

It's too late now, but it would be lovely to go back in time, say 50 years, and keep plugging away with attempts to undermine the ideologies: there is no such thing as an 'economy', still less 'economic growth' (and as for 'sustainable' growth ...).

We'd probably still lose though. The winners have already bought up half of New Zealand to retire to as things go increasingly awry amongst the general population.

<comment><USER8> What's your disagreement with the concept of economic growth? You say things elsewhere in the thread I rarely hear but broadly agree with, if I understand correctly, so I'm curious about this one.

<comment><USER9> GDP is an extremely artificial measure of an economy, and like most overly simplistic measures, it has lead to gaming the statistic. GDP growth is an easy headline for politicians. Yet even when our modern understanding of GDP was invented (by Kuznets, a US economist, during the Great Depression), he closed the document with several paragraphs criticising and limiting it. The final sentence of which being "The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above."

In the context of pollution, environment and climate change resources are not part of GDP until they are used or harvested. A tree has zero value until it is cut, oil has zero value until it is in a pipeline, a river so polluted it catches fire is of zero consequence in GDP. Neither does it consider the health and welfare of a population, quality of life and other non monetary activity (within a household, community schemes etc). Lastly it does not account for progress: It is _purely_ a monetary measure. No account is made of improvements to efficiency or new methods.

We could have negative GDP growth without reducing quality of life, as it's not all about money. Solar panels, computers etc are getting more capability for less cost, environmental damage and pollution has monetary costs to health, perhaps mental wellbeing too.

Thus it tends to promote purely the monetary aspect, and belittle to the point of insignificance (by calling it an externality) everything else. In short it doesn't measure anything especially useful.

<comment><USER3> That's all true, and let's be clear that this problem is fundamental to the very notion of economics. It is not fixable. An 'economy' doesn't map usefully to physical realities. Say you wanted to develop a 'real', comprehensive GDP- alike metric. Even if you could develop measures for all the mutual interactions between a so-called 'economy' and the ecological system with which it is enmeshed, the interactions are so manifold & complex, you'd have to end up with those metrics as parameters in whole-ecology models in any case.

We live in ecologies, not economies.

<comment><USER9> Sadly I tend to agree that it's not fixable, certainly not in the timescales we seem to have. I suspect a simplistic metric could be achieved to replace GDP that would have to assign value to _leaving things alone._ The ore or oil in the ground, and the tree uncut. If nothing else to remove absurdities where polluting then cleaning up and grassing over is "good" for the economy (because money was spent, which is GDP positive) is better than leaving some pristine acres of mature forest (because money is not spent).

I doubt that would be a popular metric with some though as that would imply far more value to not exploiting than doing so.

That's before you get to the more vague aspects of quality of life that can't be given spreadsheet space like community, family, friendship, health etc.

> We live in ecologies, not economies.

Too true.

I'm not optimistic for how the next 100 years plays out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Here's my interview with the anti-tech group that is harassing Kevin Rose - <AUTHOR> http://nextshark.com/counterforce-interview-anti-tech-group-explains-why-they-hate-kevin-rose-google-silicon-valley-entreprenuers/

<comment><USER2> Between Brendan Eich and Kevin Rose, SF is really showing how intolerant it can be :/. Although I am just as distrusting of Google as this group claims to be, harassing individual Google employees is downright disgraceful. I can't imagine what makes them think these actions are going to help them accomplish (what I can only imagine is) their goal of more economic equality in the Bay. Trying to extort $3b from Google in exchange for not harassing Google employees is hilariously stupid, but it also does nothing to bring us closer to an actionable solution.

Cities and communities evolve naturally over time. If you go to New York today, you'll be hard-pressed to find an 'authentic' New York accent, for example. But very rarely, if ever, has a community evolved so dramatically at such a high rate as the SF Bay Area is now. In order to prevent further tension as we as a community move forward (without giving in to the crazy anarchists), the tech community needs to invest in better public transportation solutions available to everyone in the Bay, not just tech employees. We need to adjust the minimum wage in certain counties to facilitate economic growth (again) as a community, rather than focusing it exclusively on tech workers. And lastly, rent controls need to be implemented to ensure our communities maintain the diversity that have made them so awesome in the past few decades.

just my two cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. I feel like it is incredibly wrong and generates this culture of punishing hard work as I mentioned in the article. But they do have a point in that the cost of living in the Bay Area is insane. I feel that there are much more productive ways to try and solve these problems without stooping down to harassment.</comment></comment>


What does everyone think of this concept? - <AUTHOR> http://www.smoothstart.com

<comment><USER2> I think you should use a descriptive title.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was pretty awesome. Wondering what everyone else is thinking?

</comment><comment><USER3> Brilliant idea! well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Really...why? I only say this cause this is my idea and want to know why people find value?</comment></comment>