Princeton mom: Women have a 'shelf life' - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/01/pf/princeton-mom-women/index.html?hpt=hp_t5&hpt=hp_t5

<comment><USER2> The bigger issue that I see in today's college crowd is just a lack of vision for their future. This isn't about man or woman. I don't mean someone should know in glorious detail what they want to be doing in 10, 20, 30 years, but there should at least broad strokes that represent some kind of plan.

How about a simple question for a man or a woman - Do you want to have a family one day? If so, have you thought about how your current choices will affect your ability to have kids or even raise kids? Along the lines of the article - How serious are you with wanting to be married or have a long term relationship? I find it faulty logic to believe that someone can meet their life partner at college but it certainly doesn't hurt to be aware of the possibility.

I find such inquiries are given the bare minimum in thought. I am sorry to say that no one can have it all. It is not a gender thing. Everything in life has trade-offs.

<comment><USER3> The strange thing is, people change. If you had asked me even 10 years ago if I wanted kids, I'd have said absolutely not. Now, I'm a happy father.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. People change.

Hopefully, if one does change their mind, they are still in a position to do what they want without their previous life choices becoming too much of an obstacle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those interested, she expressed her rationale further on the Huffington Post[0].

[0]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-patton/why-i-told- female...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-patton/why-i-told-female- princeton-students-to-find-a-husband_b_2988154.html)

<comment><USER5> This has come up repeatedly on HN in various forms, but it looks like women in all walks of life are seriously underserved by current online dating systems, and there is likely a big market opportunity there despite all the incumbents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> She brings up an interesting point. I'd be curious to see some data on women who date "beneath" them (particularly career wise) in terms of relationship stability.

Personally, I know of many women who date men who are not as intelligent or financially successful. However, frankly, the women are (without mincing words) fat, which corroborates the related NYTimes article [0]: "Using longitudinal survey data on married American couples, it found that women can compensate for two additional units of body mass index with one more year of education."

The more attractive and successful women I know tend to date equally or more financially successful men (it is difficult to be more intelligent than these women, so it can only be said that the men have very lucrative jobs or come from wealthy families).

[0] [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/women-and- marri...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/women-and-marriage-at- princeton/?hp)

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the interesting effects of college is that they self select for their "kind" of people. I wonder if this is part of the problem or the solution.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought that it was politically incorrect to speak of such things. I guess it is ok if you are a woman.

<comment><USER9> There was actually some blowback, noteably this: [http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/03/princeton-mom-to-all- student...](http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/03/princeton-mom-to-all-students- find-a-husband.html)

Of course, it won't affect Patton much. <%= ruling_class_joke %></comment></comment>


Equal pay in 1896: The trail-blazing women of Kew Gardens - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47463053 <comment><USER2> Why do comments here suggesting that there are compelling arguments concluding that adjusted wages are nearly identical get flagged and down-voted? There is certainly a debate to be had, silencing the other side suggests weakness of one's own position. I have never seen a good rebuttal against the adjusted wages are very nearly equal position. Things always get shut down, shouted down or otherwise silenced in some way. I would love to see direct claim- rebuttal positions taken with opposing reasoning and data.

<comment><USER3> As far as I can see, the comments did not (just) assert that adjusted wages were nearly identical. They asserted:

1) That this is not a serious issue and 0 economists study it.

2) That at no point in history was the adjusted wage different between men and women. (This was asserted and not argued for.)

Comments which just asserted that adjusted wages might be nearly identical can still be seen. I agree that this might be debated. The other two opinions appear more extrem and much less plausible, as far as I am concerned.

<comment><USER2> I still feel that silencing someone is unhelpful. Why not let their claim stand? if outrageous - let it be handily refuted with logic and data and them made to look foolish. This is far more effective then silencing someone who then becomes a martyr. I also find it interesting that people on the far opposing side, those who come in with raw pay gap numbers whilst shouting "discrimination", they seem to always get a pass? Pay inequality has been well known since WW1, but all except a tiny portion of actual discrimination has been repeatedly dis-proven since the 1980s. Still huge numbers of people still parade the societal discrimination mantra proudly. People and parties run elections on it. Classes in prominent universities are taught preaching it (based on a few personal accounts, court cases and raw un-ajusted statistics). It is almost a religions justice objective for many to fix the unprovable wrongs of a system. Those are the people I often see shouting down the logical thinkers and data analysts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a cess pit of bigoted bullshit the comments are.

HN is the only place I have encountered in the modern world that still tries to argue against gender equality along with weak justifications for disparity. Arguments I haven't heard expressed _at all_ in the UK since the 1970s or 80s. No one still asserts in good faith that the world is flat, pay inequality is not a serious issue, or reinvents the timeline of actual history or even thinks that there is still debate to be had. It's basically a settled issue, and I see no evidence that any UK or European men are pushing against it.

America on the other hand, and I assume it's mostly the US nature of HN that causes this, seems to be still firmly stuck with the views of the 1950s. Still resenting the unfairness 60 years after equal pay laws? get real.

FWIW I managed to read the article with interest, without a single thought it was a myth. Or screaming unfair from my wealthy white male, privileged perspective.

<comment><USER5> People aren't arguing that women and men should be paid differently on the basis of their sex. The argument is simply that it doesn't make any sense to look at two disparate figures and assume they differ primarily due to discrimination.

The pushback so far has actually proven that this is sensible, as the more confounding variables are accounted for, the more the gap decreases. You'll notice that up until a few years ago, and sometimes to this day, pundits, professors, politicians, presidents and the public at large were completely comfortable stating that "women make 77 cents on a man's dollar." People were prepared to legislate for "equality" on the basis of this fact alone. But some people correctly stop and say, "Wait, but why? You're prepared to legislate, but you're just assuming that they're paid differently because of sexism you're attempting to correct."

Well, it turns out that the 77 cents on a dollar was arrived at by literally just comparing what women at large make vs men at large. But do men and women do the same jobs? Do they even work in the same fields? Depending on profession, the answer is a resounding no. So then the question becomes "do women doctors at this hospital who see the same amount of patients and work the same amount of hours and have the same track record and went to the same school and have the same seniority etc etc make less than the respective men." The more that is controlled for, the more the gap disappears.

What you are saying is that you can't believe sexist Americans stuck in the 1950s aren't prepared to legislate to remedy this issue, and that the pushback offered in this thread is evidence of people uninterested in gender equality. That's just not even close to the conversation that's being had, and I'm personally glad, whatever the topic, to have as much nuance brought forward as possible. Nobody is arguing against equality, it's just that you're mistaken in your assumption that this is what _you_ are arguing for.

Also, regarding the UK, please note Carl Benjamin, Paul Joseph Watson, Nigel Farage, Helen Pluckrose, among others, if you insist on the assertion that pushback is limited to those outside your country.</comment></comment>


Amazon's Chinese counterfeit problem is getting worse - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-problem-is-getting-worse.html <comment><USER2> Why does Amazon allow reviews from unverified purchases, those not made by customers through their site? Would this not improve the validity of reviews?</comment>


How Google's incredible recruiting machine works - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/24/google-recruiting/?iid=SF_F_River

<comment><USER2> I thought everyone knew that Google had the most incompetent recruiting machine on the planet, just barely propped up by the mountain of money that towers over the recruiters' shoulders, which is what actually wins candidates.

> They're young, highly paid and, often, on a six month contract.

Huh. So this is why most Google candidates experience recruiter turnover during their interview process. No one at Google thought that it might make a bad impression to candidates to watch recruiters constantly getting fired mid- project?

Google's PR machine is incredible, though. Nice hit.

> Like so many projects at Google, data pumps through the recruiting > organization's veins. An internally designed candidate-tracking program used > by recruiters is said to be a thing of mathematical beauty. > ... > a > happily-employed Google engineer finds a recruiting e-mail in her inbox — > from her own employer.

Um, OK.</comment>


JQuery Globalization Plugin  - <AUTHOR> http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/10/jquery-globalization-plugin-from-microsoft.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> The Minified and Gzipped version of jQuery is 24Kb and you can use one the hosted versions <http://docs.jquery.com/Downloading_jQuery#CDN_Hosted_jQuery>

<comment><USER2> 71k. See above.

<comment><USER3> 71k is before compression, and if you're serving javascript uncompressed, you have bigger things to worry about than how big jQuery is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did anyone else consider the "currency localization" bit silly? I mean, Apple can pull it off to sell songs for 0.99USD, 0.99UKP or 0.99EUR, respectively, but if my locale determines the currency, I'd rather read Japanese dates and pay 1000 Yen for something than read English dates and pay 1000 Pounds for the same thing. (roughly: 1000 Yen ~ 10$, 1000 Pounds ~ 1500$)

tl;dr: IMO, currency is an example where localization has to be server-side (exchange rates, sale taxes, yadda yadda ...)

</comment><comment><USER5> The thing I found most interesting was that Microsoft chose to release the source via GitHub rather than CodePlex. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but the hopeful part of me looks at that as going _with_ the community, rather than trying to shepherd the community to where MS wants them to go. Then again, I guess that was true of their (long overdue) decision to abandon MS AJAX in favor of jQuery, as well.

Maybe they've really turned a corner?

</comment><comment><USER6> Very nice to see Microsoft contributing to open source and solving a real problem while at it.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've been wanting to move over to jquery for my newer sites for a while, but it's always been just a bit too big to force users to download. Worse, every time I hear about them, it's because they've added more extraneous crap to it.

Is there a subset of jquery that I can pull in that just does the basic DOM stuff that makes it so useful, yet fits into 5k?

The smallest I've seen it pack down to is about 70k, which is bigger than most of the pages I server. Hell, that's bigger than the entire javascript component of Twiddla!

<comment><USER7> Which bits do you consider "extraneous crap"? The only part that I feel could fit that description is the Events part. Is there anything else you feel doesn't belong in the core jquery?

The current version is about 24kB gzipped. Also given the ubiquity of jquery and the popularity of the Google hosted version, chances are your users already has jquery in their browser cache. Just slap [http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min...](http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js) at the top your pages and don't worry too much about it.

<comment><USER2> I'd consider a library to handle i18n in javascript to be extraneous, thus the comment.

The current version is 71k before gzipping, which is how you compare it apples-to-apples to everything else that you serve, since everything gets gzipped before it goes out the door and it's easier to compare file sizes on the server than it is to sniff traffic as it goes past. It's a bit dishonest for them to promote it that way on their site. They might as well say it's 0k, since your browser will have it cached.

I guess my point is that it's just not useful enough to make up for the bandwidth it takes up. I mean sure, 10 years ago when browsers were genuinely dissimilar, it made sense to abstract out DOM calls. But now, document.getElementById("id").style.width will work exactly the same on every single browser, so all jQuery does is save you a bit of typing.

I guess today, all you really need is

      window.$ = document.getElementById

and maybe a home-rolled map function and 50 lines of xmlhttprequest code.

<comment><USER8> > I'd consider a library to handle i18n in javascript to be extraneous, thus > the comment.

It may be extraneous, but it has nothing to do with the size of jQuery core: it's a plugin, not part of the actual library. jQuery has a plugin system that lets people add features to extend its functionality.

Actually, most of the posts that mention jQuery are really plugins, not features of jQuery itself.

The list of things actually included in the latest release is in the API docs. It's actually not a very long list of functions; I expect most of the code bloat is for dealing with browser quirks.

<http://api.jquery.com/></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Data as a Property Right - <AUTHOR> https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/ <comment><USER2> This is the wrong approach.

It doesn't address the biggest privacy concern: the government's collection and use of personal data. No restrictions there, I guess.

Information wants to be free - even when it's about you. Putting that genie back in the bottle - the right to be forgotten - creates a world that is less free.

We should be really going the other direction and not allowing these corporations to hold this data in private silos to re-enforce their monopolies. They use the force of law to hold these monopolies over the things you've written so that it's their property and not the property of the individual. That's wrong and that's granted by the government.

<comment><USER3> Well, as we are finding out, freedom results in people being hurt. If you limit the freedom, you can prevent people from getting hurt.

Is freedom worth the harm it enables? That is a choice everyone has to make. Most people are willing to give up a lot of freedom in exchange for mitigating harm.

<comment><USER4> Generally yes.

When someone says "I give up this freedom" it's often because they don't use it or it doesn't affect them. The problem is that what they are really saying is "I give up this freedom for myself _and everyone else_."

This is bad when you have a large group willing to give up a freedom they already don't use or care about that only affects a minority of people. The problem comes that a different, overlapping large group is willing to give up another freedom and now the minority affected by that loss was part of the first large group. It's easy for this to continue until everyone has lost a freedom they enjoyed because they signed up with some large group, often thinking they were 'right'.

TL;DR: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The cost of complying with such regulations would effectively fall on companies as a regressive tax. Which companies benefit in relative terms from a regressive tax? The already-large ones.

<comment><USER6> Only large companies are capable of building a car that complies with emissions and safety expectations, but that doesn't mean that we'd be better off if there were tens of millions of black-smoke-spewing death-trap shitboxes on the freeway.

Frankly, given the long history of data abuse, security problems, and generally anti-human practices by IT and tech companies, I'd be perfectly fine if cowboy developers not be allowed to touch this product space.

That's not to say that large tech companies are blameless angels in any of this.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately I think your view is going to become the prevailing view and the internet is going to become cable 2.0. People are just obsessed with finding corners to round.

For some reason people think comparing loss of privacy when voluntarily visiting a website to deaths caused by car accidents isnt intellectually dishonest.

<comment><USER8> You're almost right.

Sure, I don't value my privacy, the security of my financial information, etc as much as my life.

But it's close.

<comment><USER7> Again a false equivalence. Financial information is already protected by numerous regulations. We are talking about generic cookies that are being used for tracking user behavior for a large number of useful and benign purposes. Most of the data is already pseudonymous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I am neither for nor against Andrew Yang as President; I merely find affinity with the idea of _data as a property right_.

In other words, I think it's a good idea.

<comment><USER9> Sort of. I think it falls apart quickly.

If I draw a picture of you, is it your data or mine?

If you walk through my house and I store the pattern you leave in my WiFi signal, is it your data or mine.

I think we'd have to narrowly define what belongs to an individual and it would be too narrow to address the problem.

Also data as property would get signed away for nothing like how arbitration clauses are in practically every contract with no added benefit to the signer.

<comment><USER3> > If I draw a picture of you, is it your data or mine?

Clearly mine. You recorded information about me without my consent.

<comment><USER10> And when you use a Visa card? Is it yours, visa's, the store's, or the bank's?

Or all of the above?

<comment><USER11> Who is impacted and fiscally responsible when it's mis-used? That helps quickly identify whose data it is.

<comment><USER10> But you are using their card, their network, and their credit. So that is clearly their information, is it not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I prefer actual privacy rights that are inalienable than having my life commoditized and made the subject of contractual bargaining for every little thing.

</comment><comment><USER13> >>>

\- The right to be informed as to what data will be collected, and how it will be used

\- The right to opt out of data collection or sharing

\- The right to be told if a website has data on you, and what that data is

\- The right to be forgotten; to have all data related to you deleted upon request

\- The right to be informed if ownership of your data changes hands

\- The right to be informed of any data breaches including your information in a timely manner

\- The right to download all data in a standardized format to port to another platform

>>>

The vast majority of these rights only work when applied to commercial entities. They don't protect you from government invasion, and they don't protect you from individual/social invasion. When applied on the individual level, many of them are flat-out unconsitutional (the right to be forgotten is a particularly obvious example).

Does this matter? Is it a problem if we specifically target corporations first? I think it does matter.

Even though corporations are currently some of the worst privacy offenders, I think there's real harm in orienting the privacy debate around Capitalist terms, and I think it sets a really bad precedent for future conversations. I strongly suspect that a pivot to talking about privacy as a property right being violated will make it easier for the government to dismiss future criticism, and easier for malicious groups to claim that data from public sources should be fair game.

My right to privacy is not based on the idea that I am being economically harmed. It's based on the idea that I have a fundamental right to hide my identity, and a fundamental right to choose what I disclose to the people around me. Money has nothing to do with it.

This proposal also goes against years of collective advocacy from activists for both an Open web and a private web that _no one can own a fact._ I firmly believe that the expansion of IP laws are counterproductive, even when expanded ostensibly for the sake of privacy.

Andrew Yang may speak for some members of the privacy community, but he doesn't speak for all of them. I really wish the politicians who are just now jumping on the privacy train would spend more time looking at the history behind these debates and the history of the activists that were working before them.

<comment><USER14> How is the right to be forgotten unconstitutional? I would think me being able to have my data deleted upon my request wouldn't necessarily infringe on my own freedoms, but I could be wrong.

<comment><USER7> Freedom of speech includes the right to spread the truth about others. The "right" to be forgotten is the right to silence others.

<comment><USER15> Why are you implying that the right to be forgotten only applies to silencing "truths?"

What truth am I forcing someone to be silent about if I simply don't want my personal data used for malicious or unwarranted commercial purposes?

<comment><USER13> It not that the Right to be Forgotten only applies to truths, it's that in addition to everything else, it _also_ applies to truths.

If people are spreading lies about you in the US, you can sue them for defamation. Beyond that, silencing someone because what they're saying 'isn't relevant' goes against the US interpretation of the 1st Amendment.

Arguably, we can create exceptions there for corporations (although we should expect a few court cases about it). But the (US) government can't restrict me as an individual from talking about another person's past in private or public spaces.

<comment><USER15> The right to keep and bear arms exists, yet it's illegal to commit murder with a firearm. The right to vote exists, but not the right to commit vote fraud. The fact that a right can be abused is not a valid argument that it doesn't, or shouldn't exist.

If one objects to the right to be forgotten altogether, then one objects to the right to demand that even false and libelous content can be removed from the internet. You can sue for defamation, but you can't prevent the publication and spread of defaming content.

>But the (US) government can't restrict me as an individual from talking about another person's past in private or public spaces.

Yes but the right to be forgotten doesn't apply to private or public spaces, it applies to data on the internet, or am I mistaken?

<comment><USER16> Harm principle.

The government doesn't ban firearms, automobiles, knives, etc. because they have _potential_ to cause harm, so why would the government break freedoms to censor information on the basis that it has _potential_ to cause harm?

Defamation (libel/slander) is not a crime and is not censurable as such, but you can be sued for the damages (harm) that it causes. You are free within your first amendment rights to leave that defaming information up after it is proven to cause harm in civil court, but then you are still liable for the damage it continues to cause.

<comment><USER13> > You are free within your first amendment rights to leave that defaming > information up after it is proven to cause harm in civil court, but then you > are still liable for the damage it continues to cause.

IANAL, but this is a weird interpretation to me. I'm not sure how to describe a court fining you for publishing information other than, "compelling you to remove that information."

I dunno, this really doesn't line up with my understanding of libel laws.

Of course, bear in mind that the Right to Be Forgotten has very, very little to do with libel. If we were just talking about libel, we'd use existing libel laws. The fact that Right to Be Forgotten exists _in addition_ to libel laws should be enough to show that it is targeting different information.

I dislike that people bring up libel when debating Right to Be Forgotten, because I view libel laws as largely irrelevant to the debate. It's just trope #3 again[0].

[0]: [https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and- critique-...](https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique- censorship-tropes-in-the-medias-coverage-of-free-speech-controversies/)

<comment><USER16> I didn't bring it up - I was explaining how it's different and not a form of government censorship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I appreciate Yang as a candidate and I hope his ideas gain traction. That having been said, implementing these rights is a huge task. For example: "The right to download all data in a standardized format to port to another platform" Just deciding on a standardized format for all data will involve significant political effort and technical effort.

I don't think it's even possible to apply these as blanket rights to all data. Focusing on certain domains (healthcare, finance, etc...) will help.

<comment><USER18> All of those rights or stronger are already in effect in the EU since last year, which means most companies doing online business already have to comply with them. In fact it's pretty clear that Yang mostly just copied GDPR with this whole proposal. I'm not complaining, it's a great law if you're for consumer protection.

Many companies already provide the option to download all data, and I've written GDPR data request mails to multiple US based companies with success. Mostly you get the data in JSON files (without schema).

Right now, many companies are trying as hard as they can to skirt the law, but there's land mark cases happening already that will hopefully put an and to that soon [1].

[1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/europes-top-court-says- act...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/europes-top-court-says-active- consent-is-needed-for-tracking-cookies/) ironically, techcrunch is a prime example of a "tracking cookie consent" popup that is absolutely illegal and will hopefully get them huge fines once the data protection agencies have their hands less full with bigger fish (google, facebook, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some control over this stuff would be nice.</comment>


IKEA to introduce furniture that snaps together without requiring tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.dezeen.com/2017/03/06/ikea-introduce-furniture-snaps-together-minutes-without-requiring-tools/ <comment><USER2> IKEA has talent to split simple things into 10x times more pieces than needed.

As a result - basic, simple things comes with 10-20 pages manuals on how to put them together.

Now they invent an easier way to put them together.

COME UP WITH LESS PIECES, DUMMIES! PRE-ASSEMBLE STUFF WHERE POSSIBLE.

DON'T SPLIT THINGS INTO TINY PIECES!</comment>


Hacker News Rankings - <AUTHOR> http://hnrankings.info/ <comment><USER2> Nice visualization! Do you suppose it's correct to presume that if a story drops from one of the top positions to off the first page within a very short period of time that it's been flagged off by users who don't think it should be there? If so, the prevalence of such drops would imply that flagging is a major factor for what stays on the front page.

</comment><comment><USER3> From 2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4058277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4058277)

</comment><comment><USER4> How meta: [http://hnrankings.info/10329038/](http://hnrankings.info/10329038/)</comment>


What Is the "Social Justice" Endgame? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.alexrohde.com/archives/603 <comment><USER2> This is one of the most "HN" things I've read in awhile.

Their first bullet point asks their audience to define a term they just made up, and implies that grouping people via this term is important to social justice, said as someone who has trouble making sense of social justice.

This list feels like they're trying to disprove a math proof or something. As if, if you can "catch them out" with some edge case you can blow this thing wide open. This kind of approach doesn't work outside of maths, physics and CS. It barely works there.

My advice: step back from your 12 highly specific "smoking gun" bullet points and start asking some more general questions. Or, even better than asking, doing some of your own reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> It feels to me that you're treating this as more of a power game than a mutual pursuit of truth.

<comment><USER2> What does that even mean? What possible power could I (?) have over you (?).

Again: your list is a large barrage of insistent questions that require your readers to contort to a set of terms you've made up. It is not open minded, it is treating the subject as already wrong and here's why.

It reminds me of when you have a "discussion" with someone and they aren't actually interested in listening, they're just waiting until you say something they can "ah ha!" you with.

<comment><USER3> Man I'm so confused here. Questions are good! Even if alexrohde is trying to bait you, you have an opportunity to lay out arguments.

I'm a libertarian and I love it when people ask me questions, even if they're trying to bait me. I've got a consistent ideology and someone asking me questions doesn't threaten it.

I think alexrohde is a systems kind of thinker, and he's trying to understand the values and ideology that social justice lives by, because it feels inconsistent to him. But again, maybe I'm being too generous.

The post also reminds me Double-Cruxing: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/o6p/double_crux_a_strategy_for_resol...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/o6p/double_crux_a_strategy_for_resolving_disagreement/) but.. granted, it's one sided.

<comment><USER4> Your post is Poe's Law for sea lioning. I can no longer differentiate satire in this space.

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea-lioning](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea- lioning)

<comment><USER3> I'm serious, I wasn't trying to be satirical. I also wasn't asking any questions? I was just doing my best to... idk, lay out my own thoughts.

I know that Poe's Law applies to a lot of the internet, but I feel like HN is one place where people are more likely to honestly engage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > what is harder is presenting a superior alternative.

...and the OP doesn't even try. Instead he asserts his privilege by asking others to justify themselves and their actions to him individually according to his framing and questions. Does he even ask, for example, about the _other_ culture(s) at play here, racists and sexists and so on pulling in the other direction? Surely understanding them is just as important, but that would be inconvenient. No, only one group has to be completely transparent and explicit and specific, while others remain free to roam around the rhetorical battleground changing claims however/whenever it suits them.

This doesn't seem to be about understanding. It's a delaying tactic. Keep people busy answering an endless series of questions and objections, so they can't spend that time doing anything else. It's not like we haven't seen this before. It even has a name: sea-lioning. To the author: show some evidence that you've tried to educate yourself before you expect others to do it for you.

<comment><USER6> > _It 's a delaying tactic. Keep people busy answering an endless series of > questions and objections, so they can't spend that time doing anything else. > It's not like we haven't seen this before. It even has a name: sea-lioning._

Something I find quite amusing is you accuse the author of sea-lioning while you blatantly do so in the rest of the thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029410) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029531)

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's very amusing that I deliberately put the shoe on the other foot. I even explicitly pointed out that I was doing it. Some people recognize their own bad behavior much more readily when it's reflected back to them. There, now you're all caught up.

<comment><USER6> But the author isn't sea-lioning, you're the only one doing it. @civilian explains why in a followup comment. Sea-lioning yourself reflects badly on you and makes it hard to take your other comments seriously. You admit half your comments here are troll comments, so why should readers take your other comments seriously?

> _I even explicitly pointed out that I was doing it_

It's not clear to anyone reading the thread. You never explicitly point out you are doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey a game!

Disclaimer: not a native english speaker, i might lack vocabulary and do some grammar mistakes.

1/ I have no idea of what a protected group is. A discriminated group however, depends on where you live. Erythreen jews in israel are discriminated against by the "dominant" group (white conservative isreali). Chinese suffer discrimination in some parts of India and Philipines, while people from Philipines suffer some in China (sorry, no idea how englsh call them).

Past oppression is only relevant if some discrimination is done because of this (Hello Rwanda). Let's take South Africa. Past oppression was relevant even after Nelson mandela because the culture was still related to the apparteid. This is less true today, so this is not as relevant now (my question: how did you not figure this on your own? Do you like asking leading question that much?)

2/Leading question, again, nice. None. But people in discriminated groups should have an easier time joining profession that brings power or visibility, so related to law (even if it is as paralegal), politics or television, or company management. Again with the S.A example, the culture changed because there were more and more black people in courthouses, politics and at the head of national companies. The fact that there is some racial inequalities there come from class inequalities (not the subject here) and not racism.

3/ What agenda?

4/ None. I don't see your point there, it might be lost in translation.

5/ What? Why would you punish statement made at work? Except if there is a client (let's say, the state want to buy your product, and you say "public worker are paid doing nothing" to his face, get ready to be fired or put in a closet). Is this a leading question?

6/ Victims are defined by law in my country, i don't know about the us though. I'd define "offensive" a statement that i would not say out loud to all my friends or family. Like "i find that any theism is dumb as f…", which i would never say to my grandmother, despite being my real feeling, is offensive. 3rd part is a leading question, but my response is that i do not care about you and you can tell whatever you want to anyone, but if you say the previous sentence to anyone and get called out, i would not help you

7/ I'm not advocating for anyone, but i can see (in my country anyway) that some people (obese people) have it worst than anybody in some places (hospital mainly). I defend them orally with my friends and on internet when i feel like it (not often in english though). Well, since i'm 20 i don't really hang with anybody that would judge people for their looks (because its tiring /time- consumming to defend people i'm not related too for no reason but my personal ethic) but i did that.

8/ Do you know that apostasia is punishable by death in pakistan, but not in other countries (tunisia come to mind), and in some, nobody cares. So it depends on WHERE you live, obviously. Do you feel that in USA/UK, the way most of the people treated Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam when he choose, after nearly dying twice, to change his religion, was justified/ subjectivly fair/fair isn't the question? Where i lived, no one cared about this. So probably MORE protected if you live surrounded by dumb a-holes, about the same else.

8bis: Sorry about the passive-agressive subtitle there, i might have no personnality and just mimic the way of expression of the people i'm talking to.

9/ Well, you can see my response in 6/. Yes, there is studies that make correlation about IQ and how religious people feel, still, making any remark about that out loud (or on a forum where religious people gather, on a video about gregorian chant) is just rude.

10/ Depending on where you live, discriminated people are not the same, so i don't really care. I spent entire vacations with my racist cousin, we had no problems. He is quite honest with his hate and while i disagree, i still quite like him. Honestly, most of those are leading question and i decided early to go away from people i perceive as manipulative, so i would never hang out with you anyway, but we could coexist just fine.

11/ No, i don't care about the majority, i'm old enough to think on my own.

12/ Sorry, how does work safety come with guilt and social pressure? I think this is manipulation, but w/e. Guilt and social pressure are sadly two educational levers, that are used and abused with children in school quite often (and in dog training too). Using it against adult are less effective, but it still works for some reason. I do hate this way of doing things, but whne i was a youth camp consellor, i had to use social pressure to make activities run smoothly. I'm still feeling guilty about it. I disliked doing it because i feel this was dishonest, even if this was the easiest way to get thing started. Those questions being a bit dishonest, are you feeling a bit guilty about it or do you feel its fine being dishonest to try to convince people they are mistaken (or do you think those question where objectively honest and i'm mistaken)?

It was an interesting game, thank you.</comment>


GNU/Linux Distribution Timeline - <AUTHOR> http://futurist.se/gldt/wp-content/uploads/12.10/gldt1210.svg <comment><USER2> I maintain a specific timeline for Debian if anyone is interested: [http://timeline.debian.net](http://timeline.debian.net)

<comment><USER3> That's great. Made me go back to to my early debian days with Potato CDs from the bookstore and a translation of "Debian GNU/Linux: Guide to Installation and Usage". I Could'nt update to woody because it was too costly over the dialup line, so i bought the Woody CD set together with a Friend. Every time i had to install something i had to walk to his house and get the CDs, or pay lots of money (for me as a teenager at that time) to download the files.

Maybe you could add another Frame with Versions of Popular Packages? I'm Thinking KDE, Gnome, GCC, mayor scripting Languages Browsers and Editors?

<comment><USER2> > Maybe you could add another Frame with Versions of Popular Packages? I'm > Thinking KDE, Gnome, GCC, mayor scripting Languages Browsers and Editors?

That's interesting - to give more context to particular eras? I can certainly "place" myself in life when using GNOME 2.8 :)

<comment><USER3> yeah, to give more context. icons of the programs at that time would also be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish the dots were scaled by some metric indicating popularity. Such a metric is hard to come up with. Maybe total number of commits.

Way awesome though.

<comment><USER5> You already see some kind of popularity – just count the number of forks.

<comment><USER6> Forks are also an indicator that people weren't happy with the origin.

<comment><USER7> It kind of depends on the forks. Many are just a different set of default installed packages plus a new wallpaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> google-serf This is beautiful. I'd like posters for my walls. Does anyone else know of similar diagrams suitable for printing?

<comment><USER8> It's a nice svg so I guess you couold turn it into a PDF with a converter.

SVG to PDF in google?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Outdated and misleading.

For instance, Korora is based on Fedora, not in Gentoo.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome, reminds me of this pngs I've been saving for a while (don't remember the source, but is probably written on the pngs somewhere)

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26820220/unix.png](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26820220/unix.png)

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26820220/windows.png](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26820220/windows.png)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is from 2012 and missing the (2012) part in the title...

<comment><USER12> Agreed. Two things that I know are out of date:

No SteamOS (Based off Debian)

Backtrack was rebuilt and is now Kali

I'm sure there is other stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Such a waste of time and manpower creating all these forks. I wish folks spent time scratching their itch by writing great software for Linux instead of trying to reinvent the same wheel. And yet folks will continue to fork platform trying to solve problem that doesn't exist.

<comment><USER14> A distro with enough options to satisfy the creators of every fork would be an unholy mess. 1,000 separate contributors are very good at adding every option under the sun to a piece of software. But reducing choices to the point where you can just burn a CD and "install Debian" is anti-parallelizable.

<comment><USER13> I think 10 different distributions are fine. 1000 distributions are not. Fedora is good for Gnome, Ubuntu is good for Unity, OpenSUSE is good for KDE, Arch Linux is good for minimalism, etc. All these distributions are good at something radically different which is fine but I want to use a different theme, let's create a new distribution or some driver didn't work on my system, so I am going to create a new distribution is hardly a valid reason.

For me freedom means two things (1) contribute to up stream project (2) write free software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The chart clearly shows that there is a lot of proliferation, which is confusing to a lot of new users. Imagine what would be possible if all these fine developers would focus on two or three distributions.

Ps. I am proud that I was a paid co-developer of the very first distribution listed ;).

<comment><USER16> >Imagine what would be possible if all these fine developers would focus on two or three distributions.

You don't think the lessons learned by those developers' experimentation weren't shared and applied in the decision-making process for more prominent distros? In a way, creating a distro is like contributing to all the other distros at the same time. What makes them fine developers is their drive to innovate and try new things so that one day the status quo can improve. Who knows: if all those developers worked on the same few distributions, they may have crashed and burned.

<comment><USER15> _You don 't think the lessons learned by those developers' experimentation weren't shared and applied in the decision-making process for more prominent distros?_

Sometimes. But there is also a lot of 'let's take Ubuntu and change the default desktop/wallpaper/DVD package set/...'.

Also, it's not as if developers in major distributions such as Debian don't have room to experiment with different approaches. For instance, in Debian, the default init system discussion rages. The most promising candidates are already available in Debian itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I put this chart as the example on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_forks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_forks)

</comment><comment><USER18> What tool was used to create this graph? Does anyone know?

I often find the need to create such a diagram.

I am hoping the answer is not Photoshop.

<comment><USER19> The comments in the SVG file indicate that it was made with Gnuclad: [https://launchpad.net/gnuclad](https://launchpad.net/gnuclad).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wasn't RedHat originally a Slackware derivative?

</comment><comment><USER21> What about all the distributions that don't include GNU, or those that only include a tiny proportion of GNU code, is there a chart that includes those?

<comment><USER22> They don't actually exist - it's just hot air from the anti-GNU crowd.

<comment><USER23> Android doesn't have glibc, and it's the most popular consumer computing platform.

<comment><USER19> It's the most popular platform for mobile devices; the most popular consumer computing platform is still Windows.

<comment><USER23> Got any links for that? Everything I've read for the last couple of years says mobile/tablet has overtaken desktop dramatically.

<comment><USER19> What have you been looking at: sales figures or install base numbers?

<comment><USER23> Usage on consumer web.

<comment><USER19> Link? Stats linked elsewhere in this thread show Windows ash having about a 45% share of useragents visiting Wikipedia, with iOS having less than half that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I couldn't find kylin linux.

</comment><comment><USER25> Cool :)

Where does the source data come from?

<comment><USER26> The same one: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_Distribution_T...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg)

Not able to find source though. Anyone?

Edit: More info [http://futurist.se/gldt/](http://futurist.se/gldt/), still no source though.

<comment><USER27> The tar.bz there has a CSV file which looks pretty sourcy to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Now for Desktop is here? - <AUTHOR>

I turned on my computer this morning and got a desktop notification asking me if I wanted to turn on google now cards. I clicked yes but I'm not sure how to use it. No change on the blank tab or the google.com page.
I use Version 27.0.1453.116 m
I have a background Extension on Chrome so it runs on startup.
Anyone else seeing the same? <comment><USER2> Not seeing it on 29.0.1541.0 dev-m.

There has been a chrome://flags/ flag called "Google Now - Enable Google Now notifications support" for a few months now but it doesn't seem to do anything. Could it be related to that?

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like it's Windows or ChromeOS only:

>Google Now Windows, Chrome OS >Enable Google Now notifications support. >Sorry, this experiment is not available on your platform.

(27.0.1453.116)</comment>


San Diego? - <AUTHOR>

What do you all think of San Diego as a location for a startup? I just got into grad school there (I'm waiting on Stanford, but that's a long shot). I know it's far from Silicon Valley.<p>Are there any VCs there? Any cofounders? Other startups? Would it be too much of a PITA to fly to the Valley all the time for living in San Diego to be worth it? <comment><USER2> Resources and lots of like minded people. That is what you'd be missing if you skipped SV and headed to San Diego. I'm an entrepreneur myself and moved to San Diego (from NY) almost 2 years ago.

I was working on a startup coming out here and the beach and weather did not help me focus (but other distractions including living with my college friends directly ON the beach).

That aside you can find like minded people, but it is much MUCH MUCH harder. I've joined a couple startup groups on meetup.com and actually that is how my current partner and I met. But I haven't been to any meetups since.

Personally, the weather is beautiful and does give me inspiration, but I wouldn't sacrifice all the resources that you would get in SV.

... one pro to San Diego aside from the weather might be if you do have a somewhat successful startup here you may get more attention since there are so few. Take Goowy ([http://news.yahoo.com/s/sddt/20080208/lo_sddt/aolacquiressan...](http://news.yahoo.com/s/sddt/20080208/lo_sddt/aolacquiressandiegostartup)) for example.

Hope that helps!

John

</comment><comment><USER3> Who else is located here in San Diego?? I love it here, but I don't feel like I'm surrounded by many other people who have the same interest in web startups. So in that sense it's not very motivating for me. But the weather is great, the beaches are nice, and the ladies tend to be more attractive ;-)

<comment><USER4> There are startups, just not as many web ones. If you want biotech or wireless then you are in business though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> san diego really sucks if you don't have a car.

most of the startup stuff is biotech.

<comment><USER6> _san_ _diego_ _really_ _sucks_ _if_ _you_ _don't_ _have_ _a_ _car._

As opposed to the Silicon Valley??

<comment><USER7> I'm a San Diego expat who now lives in San Francisco without a car. I love it. I just wish we had SD weather here...

<comment><USER8> San Francisco proper and the middle of the Valley (Palo Alto, Menlo Park, etc.) are very different -- from San Mateo down to San Jose you pretty much need a car since everything is very flat and spread out compared to, say, Manhattan or Boston.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a very large biotech scene in San Diego, so I imagine there will plenty of VC's. Not sure about the computer tech scene, though.

<comment><USER10> Biotech/computer startups! We can't all be doing social networks and aggregators ;)

Just think about coding looking unto the beach with a cup of tea. Living the dream.

<comment><USER11> Are you working on a computational biotech startup? Do you know of any examples. I have only found a few that I am interested in, but they are out of Montreal and Budapest.

<comment><USER9> I am, or at least I would be if I could find some programmers. Being out of the UK probably isn't much help to you either. As for examples, most tend to be in the drug discovery/modelling area because industry will pay for that. I think there is huge potential for targeting other areas as well as industry. Some of the really good stuff is academically based, which means it just whimpers along as the funding comes in from grants; eventually, most of these projects just die because they aren't promoted and/or developed with a business mindset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd be more concerned about the beautiful weather than the start-up environment.

Will it energize you or distract you? 95% of your time will be heads down hacking no matter where you live.

When I lived in Southern California, it energized me. Wrote some of my best code with the windows open and the ocean breeze blowing through. Will it be the same for you?

</comment><comment><USER13> I have heard there's a fair VC/Entrepreneurial presence in San Diego, for instance, Slacker.com is based there.

But as someone pointed out, I would be more concern about the beautiful beaches and weather. Lots of distraction certainly :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh no! Not beautiful weather and beaches! Next you'll be telling me there's gorgeous women and a short drive to Mexico!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Prrometheus, what's your email address?

I used to live in SD, but transferred to Orange County. I'd really like to chat and get together with news.yc'ers in southern California, the few that seem to be out there.

</comment><comment><USER15> Do not pick San Diego. I have lived in the valley and in San Diego, and it is a cultural wasteland that will drive all your best potential hires away to other parts of the world. It sure drove me away, to Tokyo.

</comment><comment><USER16> "I know it's far from Silicon Valley." - As if all good things happen in SV.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I want to know is would I be shooting myself in the foot by trying a startup in San Diego?

<comment><USER12> No! What goes on inside your head is infinitely more important than what goes on inside your neighborhood.</comment></comment>


Shariq Hashme Arrested for Embezzling Money from Scale AI - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1688427/fbi-used-paypal-verification-history-to-track-cybercriminal/ <comment><USER2> Such a big shame how ceo is handling this...

<comment><USER3> what do you mean?</comment></comment>


Treasury Dept to Allow US Companies to Do Business with Russian Security Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/treasury-dept-allow-u-s-companies-do-business-russian-security-n715951 <comment><AUTHOR> I sould have bought Palantir shares...</comment>


How a completely funded kickstarter project faded into darkness - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lifelog/lifelog-remember-life/posts

<comment><USER2> Kickstarter projects are often lofty goals to make an app that people think they can build in a few months, but they forget the "take a wildly pessimistic guess and then double it" rule of estimating software costs. Project failure happens. A lot. About 70% of the time in fact (where "failure" means over- budget, or late, or not to specification, etc. Not _just_ undelivered).

Sidenote: The update mentions spending "countless dollars". If there's one thing I know about money, it's that it's eminently countable. If the project starter has spent all the Kickstarter money he should know _exactly_ where and on what. Whether he chooses to share that information is up to him, but implying it's all gone and he doesn't really know where should be ringing alarm bells at Kickstarter HQ.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, peoples who spend money believing them needs to know what happened to their money. Founder says he learn a lot from this project, but peoples didn't fund this project for his Entrepreneur education, they spend it for the product they told will be available one day. I don't think its that difficult to launch the App they planned with that long time period they took (1 and half year)</comment></comment>


Farmers and Ranchers Are Completely Screwed by American Healthcare (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://modernfarmer.com/2017/07/farmers-ranchers-completely-screwed-american-healthcare/ <comment><USER2> Uh... small biz owner here, it ain't just farmers. I know very little about farming but I hear a lot about this:

"An agricultural subsidy (also called an agricultural incentive), is a government incentive paid to agribusinesses, agricultural organizations and farms to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities."

Curious where the small business subsidies are? How about all these programmers that are in such high demand?

I am probably way off the mark here but I don't have a lot of sympathy for this. This is a problem for a lot of people these days.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting that you have no sympathy because you suffer the same problems. I would expect (and hope) for the opposite.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Single-header C++11 HTML document constructor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tinfoilboy/CTML <comment><USER2> It's worth getting the escaping right in a library like this. For example, at [https://github.com/tinfoilboy/CTML/blob/master/include/ctml....](https://github.com/tinfoilboy/CTML/blob/master/include/ctml.hpp#L215)

      for (const auto& attr : m_attributes)
        output << " " << attr.first + "=\"" << attr.second + "\"";

it'll generate incorrect HTML if an attribute value has a " character. Although early versions of HTML were kind of vague on how escaping was supposed to work, the HTML5 standard explains it in detail.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add escaping attributes to the library according to the spec. Thank you for the heads up!

<comment><USER3> Please look it over once, twice and thrice. Getting escaping correct is the main reason to use a library like this over manual construction with a heap of string concatenations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought about this for a little while, and I think I don't like the API for this library. There are two things in particular I don't like. The first is that I think I would prefer to have helper types for each tag type so you don't have to include them as strings all the time, and the second is that I don't like the AppendChild approach that this library takes.

I would change it so that you pass the document to the constructor of each element and the scoping of each variable effectively determines the relationships. As a 10 second example of what I mean:

        HTML::document d;
        HTML::body b( d );
        HTML::div div( d );
        HTML::p p( d );
        d.text( "Hello world" );

Hello world

The reason I like this because it maps very well onto a C++ programmers natural understanding of the stack frame and RAII, and in addition it can be implemented with needing to store any state inside the node classes. This means that only HTML::document would need to actually allocate any memory, and it would just be a single text stream.

This wouldn't create a node hierarchy in memory, so it's not a DOM like this library creates, but if you are just looking to output HTML quickly, then I think it would be easier to use and more efficient.

<comment><AUTHOR> While I do agree with the idea of outputting HTML quickly, I think that in the end I'd want to emulate the DOM more closely. For instance, I've been thinking about adding a simple parser to the library so that I could use it in making a web scraper. With a replication of the DOM, I could then easily find nodes that I'd like to grab from the scraper. In addition, I was also thinking of adding actual element grabbing via selectors a la CSS, which would require a DOM representation.

However, the helper types could be useful, and might be able to be implemented as simple aliases to a Node. Also, the reason I take the approach of appending child nodes is for representing actual HTML easier. For instance, with your __.text __example (at least with my limited glance on it), you can 't do something such as __
Hello, world! Welcome!
 __, which was actually a previous problem that I had with another version of the library.

<comment><USER4> You would implement that like this:

        HTML::document d;
        HTML::p p( d );
        d.text( "Hello, " );
        {
            HTML::span s( d );
            d.text( "world!" );
        }
        d.text( " Welcome!" );

Obviously though, if you were trying to do an HTML parser as well, then my ideas are not appropriate.</comment></comment></comment>


Peloton Plots $1.2B IPO at $8B Valuation - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/10/peloton-plots-1-2b-nasdaq-ipo/ <comment><USER2> Video of our team's analysis on this subject: [https://youtu.be/v8egMzmuC8A](https://youtu.be/v8egMzmuC8A)

</comment><comment><USER3> for a bicycle that gets deprecated because it has a computer attached to it :facepalm:</comment>


Quine in multiple languages - <AUTHOR> http://d.hatena.ne.jp/ku-ma-me/20090916/p1 <comment><USER2> Broke down for me when I hit Java, although it may be a version issue. Either way, incredibly awesome.</comment>


Do you need a BS in CS to land job? - <AUTHOR>

I began working for my fathers computer business when I was 8 years old. I started by working in the shop building computers after school and on weekends. Since then I have grown to a lot more responsibilities running the shop. I am 26 and I have been selling service contracts, setting up networks(2-100+ computers), Server 2000/2003/2008 with Active Directory Domains, MSSQL Management, and design internal network apps in PHP and Python (around 20+ satisfied customers using apps), along with the general computer repair tasks. (Virus removal, upgrades, network security, etc...)
My question to the gurus in the biz, even though I skipped college but still have certifications, would I still be able to get a job in IT at a small to large company without a BS in computer science if things went sour? Everything I see online says a BS is a must. However we have had people working for us who have MORE than that, who I have had to train myself.
Footnote in case: I am MSCE, MCSA, A+, Network+, Security+, and Linux+ certified. <comment><USER2> I'm a self taught programmer without a college degree. I have released some apps on the android market and done some freelance work. From my experiences, yes, yes you do. I have applied to countless programming jobs over the last two years and I can't make it past the filters. On the rare occasion that I do, the vast majority of the interview is focused around the interviewer grilling me on why I don't have the all important degree.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've met a lot of people who have non-CS degrees in the industry. I have a non-CS degree. Can you actually do the work? That's the question a lot of employers will want to know the answer to.

</comment><comment><USER4> No, but you do need to be able to use the indefinite article.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just thought listing them out like that would save valuable reading space. I don't want to bore anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're very good at what you're doing, then no. You don't need one. It will be harder to get an interview, but not impossible.

</comment><comment><USER6> Even if you don't, you should still study and improve your theoretical understanding as though you do.</comment>


Tropical forests are emitting more carbon than oxygen, study finds (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/tropical-forests-carbon-rise-oxygen-study-climate-change-emissions-a7974941.html <comment><USER2> I'm confused. How are tropical forests emitting carbon? Even if the title is misleading and they mean the areas that used to be tropical forests (deforested areas), how are these bare areas, which are now clear cut or used for farming, emitting carbon? I don't see any explanation in the article. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER3> Exposed earth typically emits carbon dioxide. It's not "emit" in the way a breathing mammal would, more that the carbon in the organic material is oxidized at a greater rate because it's exposed to the atmosphere.

Before deforestation, carbon would be pulled from the atmosphere by trees, turned into plant material, fall to the ground as dead leaves or whole dead trunks and be sequestered into the soil as they broke down and were buried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If all "tropical forests" were in a single country, at 0.425 Gigatons per year of emissions that country would be the #14 most polluting in the world! [1]

The article above estimates 0.425 Gigatons of carbon dioxide per year being emitted by from the world's tropical forests. This is 1.3% of yearly global emissions! [2]

What if forests flipped from friend to foe, with poorly managed forests becoming liabilities?

[1] 2016 Carbon Dioxide emissions by country ([http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=CO2andGHG1970-2...](http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=CO2andGHG1970-2016&sort=des8))

[2] 2017 Global Carbon Dioxide emissions at 32.5 Gigaton ([https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-carbon- iea/global-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-carbon-iea/global- carbon-emissions-hit-record-high-in-2017-idUSKBN1GY0RB))

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused, is this tropical forests that still exist now emit more carbon, or land that used to be tropical forest release enough carbon to override the left over forest?</comment>


Google finally makes 'Undo Send' an official feature of Gmail on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/23/google-finally-makes-undo-send-an-official-feature-of-gmail-on-the-web/ <comment><USER2> Undo has saved me from a number of awkward situations over the years. I wonder why it took Google these many years to make it go mainstream.</comment>


Programming is hard, let's go scripting.. - <AUTHOR> http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/12/06/soto-11.html?page=1 <comment><USER2> _We think about extensibility a lot. We think about languages we don't know how to think about yet. But leaving spaces in the grammar for new languages is kind of like reserving some of our land for national parks and national forests. Or like an archaeologist not digging up half the archaeological site because we know our descendants will have even better analytical tools than we have._

This quote, and what little I've sampled of Perl 6, reminds me of a few lines from the movie _Wonder Boys_ :

 _Grady, you know how in class you're always telling us that writers make choices? [...] And even though your book is really beautiful, I mean, amazingly beautiful, it's... it's at times... it's... very detailed. You know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses, and the dental records, and so on. And... I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all._

<comment><USER3> The book is significantly better...

(yes, I have nothing to add)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> wherein Larry Wall foresees the future: "I think when the new JavaScript engines come out we'll probably see renewed interest in a JavaScript backend." - December 6, 2007.

<comment><USER5> By "backend" he meant something to run Perl 6 on.

<comment><USER6> And he was write. Perlito compiles subsets of both Perl 5 and Perl 6 to Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quote: _By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals._

I would think that by 2007 Larry Wall would have seen DrScheme (now DrRacket). You can't get a better onramp than that.

<comment><USER8> Kids learning about computers have a slightly different set of problems to solve than programmers being paid to program. The hard part of programming is integrating with the real world; DrScheme solves that problem by making its own world.

<comment><USER7> Do you have in mind a particular integration with the real world that is language-specific, but where DrScheme would not help a professional programmer ramp up familiarity with a Schemey way of doing it?

I think I disagree with you, but have to understand what you're arguing to be sure.

<comment><USER8> Nope, I'm being more general. Throw darts at random programming ads. Take that job. Chances are, it will be something like "move QUUX formatted records from BAZ mainframe to new Oracle Windows Java 7.0 Lightweight Enterprise Server", rather than "start completely anew to help elementary school students learn calculus". Things like ad-hoc record parsing and network connectivity and the ability to easily fork() end up being more important than a clean OO system or a nice UI library, and so on. (Not that they are mutually exclusive... but it's likely that Oracle Windows Java 7.0 Enterprise Server has drivers for Java but not DrScheme, saving you thousands of hours of programming time.)

<comment><USER9> What you say is indeed true, if you take a monolithic approach to problem solving. And I tire of this approach--dammit, we're tool-builders! We have been shown the Unix Way, and yet we ignore it time and again, forcing us into suboptimal solutions to our problems.

Moving "QUUX formatted records from BAZ mainframe to new Oracle Windows Java 7.0 Lightweight Enterprise Server" involves these things: a source, a sink and the pipe character. Your source and sink may necessarily be in Java--meh, whatever works. But now you have a decoupled framework for doing these kinds of jobs, and you haven't invested any more time or effort than you would have with your one-off, inflexible solution. And you can now stuff anything in that pipeline. And I regularly use racket for exactly this, using protocol buffers as the pipe character. It's not rocket science, it's the Unix Way. People, embrace it and free yourself from the monolithic millstone!

<comment><USER8> You're assuming that BAZ mainframe wants to let me move data away. They don't, so the only way to do so is with ugly hacks. That's the bulk of programming: making things that don't want to interoperate interoperate.

If everything was a service, then everything would be easy, and our tools would look a lot different. But if you can't change the world, you can at least make living in an imperfect world easy, and that's what Perl tries to do.

<comment><USER9> If the mainframe won't cooperate, you'll have work to do no matter what. But you can isolate that work into as little as possible. That is what the Unix tools do.

Everything _is_ a service, if you make it so. A component is a service, offering the functionality of its interface. The 'wc' tool is a service--its interface is its command-line switches. And you're right, when everything is a service, everything is easy (I'd say easier).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a python programmer and this article really makes me interested in Perl. The only problem is that Perl 6 haven't shipped yet in more then 4 years since this article was written, have it?

<comment><USER11> Perl 5 has nothing to do with Perl 6 development or even releases. Even after Perl 6 is released Perl 5 will still continue to evolve and grow.

At the moment Perl 6 specification gives a good evolution map for Perl 5 development. So you need not to have to ever worry about Perl 6.

Perl 5 is a solid language in itself. Perl has been amazingly useful since almost 25 years now. And anybody who denies this is simply trolling. Its useful for almost anything to everything. From scripting, to application development, to prototyping to building reliable applications in any domain.

Perl adapts to nearly every programming paradigm out there. Object oriented, functional, declarative you say it Perl has it. Its amazingly flexible, easy to learn and extensible.

You also get to benefit from the community experience and knowledge accumulated over years. You get the power of CPAN. There are also amazing resources to learn Perl.

Its a tool that you will never stop being in love with.

Those of us who have used Perl and pushed its boundaries to get amazing stuff done over years, even now can't write down words to describe its greatness. We can only tell you how great it is, but when you see it yourself you will know it.

But the position of any new Perl programmer is enviable to say at the least. He stands at the gates of a city which is going to take him to places he has never seen and experiences he has never been through. Most of them are going to change his life for ever.

<comment><USER12> I have hardly ever seen such high praise for a language. I guess I'll have to learn it sometime and see what the hoopla's about. With the Modern Perl book, of course, if it's still the best-of-breed then.

<comment><USER13> Although Python is taking more of these roles over time, Perl is still the thing that holds much of the internet's infrastructure and tools together, as well as internal servers, so it's a good thing to know if you're interested in all that.

<comment><USER11> Hmmm, Python has some great frameworks and is a great language.

But unfortunately, its almost like going backwards. Perl was invented because C + Unix text processing utilities together were not proving to be good for many tasks like Text processing, fast prototyping etc. Now using another C based language which doesn't do that, takes us back to the old problem again.

IMO, Python doesn't solve those problems. Regex support is really bad in Python and file operations are not trivial. There is too much of Java feel to it and it just doesn't have the feel of bash/perl/awk's scripting powers. Scoping is just not right. There doesn't seem to be a sane ways of evolution without breaking backwards compatibility. No equivalent of CPAN. And in many ways white space based parsing is not good for large and nested code blocks. It still doesn't have multiline lambda's. And its too much do-it-one-true-way kind of language, that sort of is a blocker for quick hacking. Because I like to write what I think, and not the other way around. The language is too verbose, and unlike Perl and Emacs there are no exponential productivity gains over time.

But I agree though, that Python does have some other good things. The OO syntax is neat, there are some great frameworks like Twisted and Django. And there is low barrier to entry which makes new bie feel just at home. The tutorials are just too good. And good standard libraries ship with it.

<comment><USER14> > Regex support is really bad in Python

More verbose than Perl? Yes.

Bad?

        for x in re.findall(r'\d+', '12 drummers, 11 pipers'):
            print x

How is this bad?

> file operations are not trivial.

File operations are trivial and well designed. You know, there is much more to file operations than in-place substitute.

> There is too much of Java feel to it

Bullshit.

> and it just doesn't have the feel of bash/perl/awk's scripting powers.

Want it to feel like Perl? Don't bother - use perl.

> Scoping is just not right.

Scoping doesn't require your testimony.

        # foo doesn't exist
        if blah:
            foo = 'bar'
        # foo  exists if blah

This is perfectly fine.

> There doesn't seem to be a sane ways of evolution without breaking backwards > compatibility.

When you change the semantics of the language, bozo syntax tricks don't help. Python 3 has semantic changes - syntax tricks aren't going to handle them.

> No equivalent of CPAN.

A large stdlib and PyPi.

> And in many ways white space based parsing is not good for large and nested > code blocks.

Spaghetti will look like spaghetti, irrespective of whether block separators are braces or indentation.

> It still doesn't have multiline lambda's.

"still doesn't" sounds like it is something which is planned but not achieved yet. It is not something that Python designers are planning to incorporate in the language. Perl has multiline lambdas but I only used single line lambdas for sort, grep et al - anything larger than that becomes a named function. Unless you have blocks, multiline lambdas aren't used that much.

> And its too much do-it-one-true-way kind of language, that sort of is a > blocker for quick hacking.

There can't be an objective explanation to a subjective statement.

> Because I like to write what I think, and not the other way around.

What's the other way round? I like to think what I write? So in Python you think what you write? That makes zero sense.

> The language is too verbose, and unlike Perl and Emacs there are no > exponential productivity gains over time.

Complete, utter bullshit. There isn't a single language in the world where the productivity gains are exponential over a long time - there might be some when you are a beginner which gets capped pretty fast.

<comment><USER11> I am going to neglect the responses 'Bullshit' basically because that means you don't have an answer at the moment.

>> _There isn't a single language in the world where the productivity gains are exponential over a long time - there might be some when you are a beginner which gets capped pretty fast._

Sorry to ruin your party. But there are languages where there are exponential gains in productivity with time. Languages like Lisp, Perk, Haskell etc. But I can't convince that to people who can't look beyond 'readability matters' and consider that as the Pinnacle of programming language design.

Coming to regular expressions they are first class citizens in Perl. That is basically what takes them to the next level. Now scripting on Unix has always been so much about Text processing. That is how it has always been. tr, sed, awk and dozen other text processing utilities. And then there is Perl. If you are not getting 'Text processing' thing correct, then you already loose the scripting race with a very huge margin.

Perl added a lot of new semantics to the language too given/when statements, smart matching operators etc. Python broke it for as simple a thing as a print statement. That is the whole point(The language is too brittle to evolve). And I'm sure any new thing in Python is going to go the same way.

And stdlib is no where near CPAN. Although I agree PyPi is doing a good job.

You are right that I must use Perl,And you are also right that Python is an awesome language. There are great frameworks Twisted, Django, NumPy. I've used Twisted extensively. In many Python ways is a great language for web development, for studying algorithms(because its better psuedocode), and due to its frameworks like Twisted - its good for network programming.

But I am sorry to say Python doesn't do well in scripting areas. And it so happens once you start there and go a little deeper you can just go on and on with Perl.

<comment><USER14> > I am going to neglect the responses 'Bullshit' basically because that means > you don't have an answer at the moment.

Saying 'python feels like java' or 'exponential gains from switching language' is _bullshit_ , and augmenting it with "calling it bullshit means you don't have an answer" is more bullshit.

> But I can't convince that to people who can't look beyond 'readability > matters' and consider that as the Pinnacle of programming language design.

I don't remember mentioning 'readability matters' as being pinnacle of programming. You are responding to arguments you are imagining I am making.

> Sorry to ruin your party. But there are languages where there are > exponential gains in productivity with time. Languages like Lisp, Perk, > Haskell etc.

Get off your high horse. Lisp, Perl, Haskell aren't some exclusive club only you are allowed into. I have used Racket, Clojure, Python, Ruby etc. and if your gains are exponential accumulated over a period of 1 month between say Python and Racket, be assured you are a very lousy Python programmer. Let alone exponential, a gain of even 2x is quite a stretch. Why don't you put your money where your mouth is and show me your 'exponential gains'?

<comment><USER11> Sorry! I shouldn't have hurt your religion at the first place.

<comment><USER14> > Sorry! I shouldn't have hurt your religion at the first place.

In place of spewing this nonsensical shit, you could have quoted me an example of "exponential gains".

Out of curiosity, have you actually programmed in Lisp or Haskell? I am not saying you have, I am not saying you haven't; it's just that people who claim "fuck yeah macros - now I am 100x more productive" are mostly people who haven't actually used them and are regurgitating blogosphere bullshit.

<comment><USER11> Well I should have learned long back to not argue with impolite people.

This is one lesson I'm not going to forget.

<comment><USER14> > Well I should have learned long back to not argue with impolite people.

Sheesh. In this thread, there is nothing but platitude in your posts, and you are constantly trying to put down people(everyone else who doesn't agree with you about perl is a troll, saying that what you know about python is not correct is me defending my religion etc etc), and then you whine about people being impolite. Pot, meet kettle.

> This is one lesson I'm not going to forget.

Another lesson would be to actually learn and use Lisp before claiming exponential gains.

It's not impolite to say you are regurgitating blogosphere bullshit when you claim with utmost confidence "I am sorry to ruin your party but there are languages like lisp and haskell which results in exponential gains" when actually you haven't used either one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting to see him talking about multiple dispatch. I wonder what the thinks of Clojure? And CLOS, of course.

<comment><USER11> Moose has borrowed some features from CLOS - <http://moose.iinteractive.com/>

You might find it interesting to use it.

<comment><USER16> Multiple Dispatch however is implemented in the extension MooseX::MultiMethods for various reasons to do with robustness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At the risk of being annoying, virtually all the research done in linguistics departments anywhere in the world is research in the cognitive science of language, so a social science, not a humanity. This certainly includes Berkeley around 1970 or so (assuming that's when Wall was there).

</comment><comment><USER18> I've always liked Matlab's distinction between a function and a script. (Aye, many would call Matlab a scripting language).

Simply put, a function can map arbitrarily, and a script has the mapping and parameters provided!

At least, that's when you get into the scientific computing paradigm, as I understand it.

</comment><comment><USER19> As a new programmer, should I wait for Perl 6, or just learn Perl 5, this article makes Perl 6 look quite compelling.

<comment><USER20> You should never "wait" for a programming language. :) I say this as someone who is deeply involved in Perl 6 development.

Learn Perl 5 if you want to learn how a full-featured, complete, and liberating-to-use programming language works.

Check out Perl 6 if you want to see what some of us are building, and if you value _ideas_ as such, even when they haven't all been put together into a finished, polished product.

<comment><USER19> I don't think Rakudo works on windows well anyway

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "X is hard, let's go Y"

Is this a reference to consultant_barbie on reddit, or is this meme more widespread?

<comment><USER22> It's a Simpsons reference. There's a Malibu Stacy doll that says, "Math is hard, let's go shopping!"

I'm sure consultant_barbie is referencing the same.

<comment><USER21> Wow, did not know! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Scripting? its another language used to program.

In my opinion, none of the language will solve the problems with programming or bad programs. The only thing which could help programmers is the way they think of the solution and how they approach to it. Thinking about long term solution for a given problem may help.

</comment><comment><USER24> Perl has outlived its utility.

</comment><comment><USER25> tl;dr; So basically Perl 6 will force strict and warnings by default.

<comment><USER26> An actual tl;dr for this article would be almost as long as the article itself. There's lots of good stuff in there. However, if the length of the article intimidates you, I suggest starting at the sentence before the heading "early binding; late binding". Everything before that is historical perspective -- interesting but not as useful as the rest of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Programming is not hard. Getting people to buy your product or give you money... that's hard.

<comment><USER8> Being bad at programming is not hard, anyway.

<comment><USER27> I knew I was going to get downvoted to oblivion for that comment. But I still firmly believe it.

People are much harder to deal with. Much more dynamic. I'm confident the computer would not have downvoted me :)

BTW you apparently have a gazillion repo's in github but no blog ... writing is much harder than programming IMHO.

<comment><USER28> That's a non-sensical statement. Certain types of writing may be harder than certain types of programming. And vice versa.

<comment><USER27> I'm just joking around and slightly jaded cause business is going slow.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cops: Pokémon Go used to lure victims of armed robbery spree - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/10/12139968/cops-pokemon-go-used-to-lure-victims-of-armed-robbery-spree <comment><USER2> [http://www.snopes.com/2016/07/10/armed-robbers-used- pokemon-...](http://www.snopes.com/2016/07/10/armed-robbers-used-pokemon-go/)</comment>


Why a Clinkle executive quit after 24 hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-a-clinkle-executive-quit-after-24-hours-2014-4/

<comment><USER2> Many, many stories about this already:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=clinkle#!/story/sort_by_date/0/cli...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=clinkle#!/story/sort_by_date/0/clinkle)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Colin -- sometimes with a bookmarklet I forget to check for stories existing on HN before submitting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had the oddest thing happening with me. As soon as I finished reading this story on Tuesday, a co-worker that had started on Monday quit without saying a word to us.

<comment><USER4> I had a 1 day coworker too. I think the reason he quit was "He missed working from home"... but no where in the interview process would he have been told it was anything but 100% work from office.

But if you know after a few hours that a job is really crappy - hey may as well make it fast. Interviews can never tell you 100% of the story, a few hours at your desk usually can.</comment></comment>


AWS Fargate Price Reduction - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/aws-fargate-price-reduction-up-to-50/ <comment><USER2> Awesome to see Firecracker[1] already bearing fruit:

> _At re:Invent 2018 we announced Firecracker, an open source virtualization > technology that is purpose-built for creating and managing secure, multi- > tenant containers and functions-based services. Firecracker enables you to > deploy workloads in lightweight virtual machines called microVMs. These > microVMs can initiate code faster, with less overhead. Innovations such as > these allow us to improve the efficiency of Fargate and help us pass on cost > savings to customers._

Also seeing interesting Firecracker developments around OSv (7ms boot times)[2] and Kata Containers[3]

1\. [https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/](https://firecracker- microvm.github.io/)

2\. [https://twitter.com/osvdev/status/1081461689139281920](https://twitter.com/osvdev/status/1081461689139281920)

3\. [https://twitter.com/egernst/status/1076308458335494144](https://twitter.com/egernst/status/1076308458335494144)

</comment><comment><USER3> I played around with fargate and one of the things I couldn't work out is scaling quickly (or quick-enough). I think the problem wasn't purely fargate but actually the load balancer. Even though containers were launched and responsive, the load balancer needed something like 3 liveness responses to bring it into the pool, and the time between each probe was something like 30 or 10 seconds and not very flexible (sorry, my memory is fuzzy)... so this felt like it only really fits loads that aren't very spikey and also the potential saving from scaling down is somewhat reduced.

Did anyone experience something similar? Or maybe I did something wrong?

If one of the benefits of firecracker is quick spin up time, then this only works if the load balancer also responds quickly doesn't it?

Granted, it was a while ago so things might have changed.

<comment><USER4> That's configurable - [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/appl...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/target- group-health-checks.html) \- default `HealthyThresholdCount` is 5 and `HealthCheckIntervalSeconds` is 30 seconds.

We adjust those down - somewhere 10-15 seconds for HealthCheckIntervalSeconds and 3 for HealthyThresholdCount works pretty well.

<comment><USER3> That's still _at least_ 30 seconds (+boot time for the container). So felt too slow for some use cases in my opinion

<comment><USER5> You get into some fundamental signal-processing type issues in terms of how quickly you respond to increases in a given value (incoming requests in this case, but it's a general issue) vs. (in this case) spinning up too many things and overcharging the customer. There's a limit to how reactive Amazon can be here, even in theory. You may have to do some pre-sizing if your needs are that great, and choose to take a possible over-provisioning hit vs. a possible underprovisioning hit. I think it's pretty obvious why Amazon would choose to bias in the underprovisioning direction in this case.

(There's some really good stuff in the signal processing field for anyone responsible for high-scale systems. An underrated branch of math for computer programmers. Believe it or not, the "fundamental limits" I'm referring to are the same ones involved in the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle, when you get down into it.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glad to see this, Fargate was a pretty steep premium. Comparing an on-demand m5.large to the equivalent Fargate container looks to be a 20% premium, which seems reasonable.

Next I'd like to see an equivalent to EC2's reserved instance pricing.

</comment><comment><USER7> FWIW, using M3.Mediums at Spot with AWS Batch, the per vcpu rate works out to 0.0067/hr. Fargate is still ~600% more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is still a one-minute minimum.</comment>


Backlash over Microsoft's anti-piracy tactics - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/security/backlash-over-microsofts-antipiracy-tactics/2008/10/23/1224351417643.html

<comment><USER2> the corporate line for microsoft doesn't float. "we want to tell people that they don't have an authentic product". well you can accomplish that without disabling the fake with a simple notification.

the public outrage _is_ a little absurd, however. it's as if they don't understand the piracy epidemic.

i'd say it's a failure on both sides to think rationally

<comment><USER2> oooh it turns out that the outrage is completely and utterly unfounded. microsoft doesn't disable anything, they just turn your desktop background black every hour.

an annoyance AT BEST. the angry chinese mobs were citing loss of data and stuff, which is offbase. wish the media wouldn't report the ravings of lunatics as legitimate complaints.</comment></comment>