Show HN: Phishing as a service - <AUTHOR> https://cuttlephish.com <comment><USER2> I wrote some Perl years back to take the fight to phishers. You would provide my script with the field names and POST URL of the HTML form within the phishing email, along with some generic types for each form field. There were types for firstnames, lastnames, email, addresses, usernames, passwords, social security numbers, and credit card numbers. The script would generate fake but real-looking values for each of these things--the credit card numbers would even pass a checksum test--and then post to the URL. It would do this as fast as the remote end would accept them with the aim of filling out their database (typically a text file on some compromised server) with bullshit data, making it hard to pick out the legit data from victims.

It worked wonderfully. I used it through proxies when I could and watched the phishers try to block me or even attack me back.

<comment><USER3> Do you still have a copy of that script? Would love to look at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work in security at a large Fortune 500 company. I know at first it sounds like phishing your employees will give you good insight, but you realize quickly that the data you get is not very useful. Here are the roadblocks I've hit with these kinds of simulation phishing services:

1\. They rely on e-mail while phishing attacks come from multiple sources like Facebook and LinkedIn. Sadly, using those services to simulate phishing attacks violates their ToS.

2\. Simulation phishing only provides pass or fail data meaning you cannot determine your weakest links in the organization. At best you get an "average" snapshot.

3\. The data isn't very accurate or precise because there are too many confounding variables involved. Time of day, subject matter, type of phishing (attachment, social engineering, etc). Normally we ran our campaigns once a month but this wasn't enough to produce stable results.

4\. Clicking doesn't mean they fell victim to the attack -- lot's of people click to investigate then report the links. Ideally, I'd like to specifically know WHY the employee clicked the link and HOW MUCH was actually at stake.

4\. It pisses people off. There is enough animosity against us security folks that tricking your employees really hurts that relationship. People feel taken advantage of.

5\. It doesn't actually improve security in any meaningful way. I found that it didn't actually improve people's ability to spot and report phishing attempts. They either became paranoid to the point where they were no longer productive in legitimate emails, or they had no improvements over time.

6\. There's a growing body of knowledge that dismisses the effectiveness of this kind of phishing training ([http://www.govinfosecurity.com/interviews/training-doesnt- mi...](http://www.govinfosecurity.com/interviews/training-doesnt-mitigate- phishing-i-2148?)) .

With that being said, our company has tried about a dozen of these kinds of services and the best one so far has been one called Apozy that is rather new. It's a different approach but the data and insight you get back is actually very useful.

<comment><USER5> I get these (contracting at a Fortune 500) pretty regularly (last week for example). They are pretty easy to spot and probably have some worthwhile training value, but Incan see that teasing out any useful data might be hard - I suspect you will need a huge corpus of templates and a lot of employees.

Sadly I thought of setting up a company like this to do just this job. But Apozy's gasification approach seems a good idea

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are many sites like this and I love what they are doing for raising awareness. As one of the first people to ever fight phishing (I worked at eBay and PayPal fighting phishing before there was a word for it), I'm keenly aware that awareness is the only way to really stop it.

That being said, I don't like these reports, because any time I get a phishing email I immediately load it up in a protected VM to see what it does, so it would count me as a victim. Since the page you go to isn't a real looking login page, you can't differentiate between those who fall for it and those who just clicked to see what it was.

You need to actually set up the fake page and see who puts in valid credentials to get a true report.

<comment><USER7> Not to dismiss your experience (perhaps you had not heard the term yet) but the term 'phishing' has been around longer (mid 90s at least) than ebay and paypal have been big enough to be phishing targets.

<comment><USER8> I was deeply involved in the fledgling anti-spam industry in the early 2000s, by way of the anti-virus industry, and it was not a common term then. Wikipedia gives the first recorded use as '95, and that refers to it as "fishing", and as being AOL-specific.

<comment><USER9> I definitely remember old AOL "progz" referring to "fishing"/"phishing". "Phreaking" was a very popular term before that, which is where I'm guessing the f/ph replacement came from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> the FAQ page is 10/10

[https://cuttlephish.com/faq](https://cuttlephish.com/faq)

<comment><USER11> I noticed a serious issue with the documentation. I'm not able to go any farther until this is corrected...

The documentation's FAQ page asks:

"How much phish could a cuttlephish phish if a cuttlephish could phish phish?"

This is not accurate based on my own testing. This should actually read:

" "How much phish could a cuttlephish phish if a cuttlephish could phish phish phish?"

If you can correct this error, I would love to start using your service

<comment><USER12> Also:

>Are cuttlephish phish?

>No. The term "phish" is deeply offensive to cuttlephish, who are proud cephalopods.

s/cephalopods/cefalopods

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Love it! My recommendation would be to offer an option for allowing the target to be tricked through the whole process. (Even if credentials are discarded completely.) The idea here is nothing is left to the imagination. What you have is great, but it requires them to read and be observant, which is not the type of person who falls for phishing emails. Clicking the link is "No-No" #1, don't exclude "No-No" #2 from your process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks and thanks for the suggestion! One thought I'd had was longer/more in depth campaigns. It's good to know other people would be interested in that as well.

One thing I was concerned about was that people might not trust some random guy on the internet to properly discard those credentials.

<comment><USER14> I think you are completely correct in your second sentence there - there's no way I'd use this if there was any chance of my colleagues actually disclosing real credentials to a third party.

(Suspicious me is wondering if you're evil - 'cause if evil-me was in your position, I'd be selectively showing your "you've been phished, ha ha!" landing page to most people, but mining LinkedIn/Rapportive/Google for key contacts at any domains that sign up, and displaying genuinely evil credential-collecting-login pages if I got a hit from senior sysadmins or a CTO/CIO/CSO...)

<comment><USER15> The phishing page could be set up to have a fake form that sends no data, and says "you've been phished" when someone tries to submit information to it.

At that level, though, the pen-tester really ought to have control over the phishing landing page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You should send the emails, and charge me to view the report.

<comment><USER17> That is an excellent idea! In fact, we've just implemented the billing service, so please go to [http://cuttIeph1sh.com/account/billing](http://cuttIeph1sh.com/account/billing), log in to your account and provide your payment information to continue receiving our phishing reports!

<comment><USER12> Cyrillic homographs[1] are your friend here :-)

[http://сuttlерhish.com/account/billing](http://сuttlерhish.com/account/billing)

(PunyCode [2]: [http://xn--uttlhish-f8g4if.com/account/billing](http://xn-- uttlhish-f8g4if.com/account/billing) )

Also, it seems that Firefox (v38.0.5 Windows) doesn't convert URL interpuncts (mid-dots) into punycode, so clicking on something like [http://www.billing·cuttlephish.com/](http://www.billing·cuttlephish.com/) doesn't actually rewrite the URL in the address bar. Chrome converts it to [http://www.xn--billingcuttlephish-c4a.com/](http://www.xn-- billingcuttlephish-c4a.com/) .

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

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

<comment><USER18> Filed [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1178095](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1178095), thanks!

<comment><USER12> No problem.

Out of interest, do the Firefox team and the Chromium team compare notes on decisions like this?

Purely in this one area (IDN homograph attacks), it might be an idea to look at the Chromium Unicode vetting rules (Which characters and combos get "punycoded") as they seem to be more conservative from a "Latin" perspective.

I'm not sure if a "blacklist" (mentioned in the bug report) is the best way of handling this. Perhaps only direct-encoding the "exemplar characters" for the language setting, and punycoding everything else? I'm pretty sure it would have eliminated the mid-dot issue, but perhaps this "whitelist" is too prohibitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Neat, but doesn't seem very IT/corporate, which would surely be the intended audience.

My company uses these guys: [http://www.knowbe4.com/](http://www.knowbe4.com/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I often intentionally click links to phishing sites, and sometimes enter in fake usernames and passwords. (I even wrote several bots to auto enter thousands of random usernames and passwords.)

I don't like the click link = you lose idea.

<comment><USER21> What if the phishing site also has a 0 day?

<comment><USER20> If they have a 0 day for my browser, then they likely have an enormous budget with tons of ways of getting it to me besides phishing. I click so many links per day via reddit, HN, and other sites that the security gained by not clicking a phishing like is likely less than the education value of clicking it.

I think the actual danger for me of clicking a phishing link is opening a phishing tab, then moving on to another tab, then a while later coming back to the phishing tab but forgetting it was phishing and entering my password. 95% of the time I remember to check the url before entering my stuff, but everyone makes mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hm. I often click on obviously phishing links to see what's there. Would this tool classify me as a victim?

<comment><USER23> Me too. I often intentionally click on phishing links to see how well the page is done and where it's hosted.

OP should probably consider adding login pages etc (discarding the credentials) to actually find people who would fall for it, as someone here suggested. Many people click the links just out of curiosity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Neat! I really like the easy pricing model.

Quick question - are you concerned about trademarks (Amazon and such) being included as the phishing templates? Reason I ask is that I'm working on a hosted project [1] similar to this and have considered including default templates. I've held off for this exact reason.

Edit - another question, your screenshot in the intro page shows an email (in the Gmail client) coming from "email@example.com". Github has spf records setup so I would be interested to know how you manage to spoof the actual email address itself without getting flagged as spam.

[1] [http://github.com/jordan-wright/gophish](http://github.com/jordan- wright/gophish)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and very cool project!

> Quick question - are you concerned about trademarks (Amazon and such) being > included as the phishing templates?

I'm honestly not 100% sure, but I think in the context of a phishing site using trademarks like that falls under fair use. But IANAL.

> Github has spf records setup so I would be interested to know how you manage > to spoof the actual email address itself without getting flagged as spam.

I don't know much about spf records, honestly--for every site I had to try multiple "From" and "Reply-To" addresses to get the emails past gmail's spam filter. Some of them didn't even arrive in my spam folder, (apparently they just got killed on some intermediate hop). firstname.lastname@example.com definitely works, at least for me--you should try it yourself and see how it goes.

Hope this helps!

<comment><USER25> IANAL. I took a seminar freshman year on IP law.

The root of trademark law is preventing consumers from being confused or deceived about brand affiliations. I believe using a trademark to refer to the product/service symbolized by the mark is a protected case, so long as you are clear that no endorsement exists. Looking at your language, this is abundantly (and amusingly) clear.

You might have something to worry about with your insinuations about Dropbox though. I'm quite sure they are strongly pro-cephalopod.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Consider changing pricing to $/click (pay per victim), so that companies are paying for the value you provide (detection security holes), and the CTO can "bet" the CEO that employees need better training/protection.

Much more upside for you.

<comment><USER27> The problem there is that the person/group conducting the test (presumably security team of a 500 person org) doesn't know if it will cost 500 x PerClickRate, or 5 x PerClickRate.. They don't yet know the stupidity of their users. Variable pricing like that can be a deal breaker for a small company.

<comment><USER28> You could address that by creating a control on the price. "I want to run this campaign against 500 users. But my budget is $100." The service sends out e-mails up to the $100 cost if they all clicked through, then deducts the actual expenses from the budget. In a few days, it sends the next batch of e-mails targeting the rest of the budget. Continue until either the e-mails are all sent, or the budget is expired.

<comment><USER27> I suspect explaining that pricing model is a sales risk. flat fee or price per contact is far more intuitive I suspect.

Even reading your explanation, I'm not clear on what it will cost me -- this sounds more like pre-paying? how long should it wait between batches? how effective will batching be? Rumors of phishing/testing could move quick in the organisation making the report outcome misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What if this site occasionally sends out real phishing mails? If a lot of sites are using it, they would have interesting stats one could use to target the right audience.

Not saying they would, but they could get hacked of course...

</comment><comment><USER30> Another service which does a similar thing that's been around some time, I used them but the spam filter ate all my fake mail, as it should :-) [https://phish5.com/](https://phish5.com/)

</comment><comment><USER31> How do you send your emails ?

If your customer is using google domains, microsoft 365 or what else, and the employees do not fall in your phishing attempt and report your mail as spam, you may be heading for some trouble with delivery afterward.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sending the emails directly from my server with the unix "mail" utility.

Ending up in spam is actually what most concerns me about this idea, and in fact this concern was what led me to choose the "you don't pay unless someone clicks on a link" pricing--I was worried that some of the emails might eventually start ending up in spam after a few customers and wanted to make sure I wouldn't be charging people if that happened.

I'm planning to see what works once/if the phishing emails actually start ending up in spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> In case anyone one was curious, the "phishing" urls in the phishing emails lead to this page:

[https://cuttlephish.com/cuttlephished](https://cuttlephish.com/cuttlephished)

</comment><comment><USER33> I was doing exactly the same project probably 8 years ago when I was still a high school student. I used to have a lot of websites, too but I never launched as I thought phishing is probably illegal and unethical.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a useful service. But I imagine there will be some nontrivial issues regarding spam filtering, server reputation, legal, etc.

How do you do email authentication? What are the headers that you put on your email?

</comment><comment><USER35> Love the brand and name (reminds me of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDwOi7HpHtQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDwOi7HpHtQ)).

</comment><comment><USER36> Are you hiring?

<comment><USER37> He just closed a series A with a $10 billion valuation, so he's hiring rock star full stack data scientists.

<comment><USER38> Incidentally, I am a rock star full stack data scientist looking for work in NYC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would a company want to give you a list of corporate email addresses?

</comment><comment><USER39> That's a refreshing idea for a change. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER40> It's a living.</comment>


Test for Machine Consciousness Has an Audience Problem - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/this-test-for-machine-consciousness-has-an-audience-problem <comment><USER2> This proposal seems to test whether an AI has a human-like consciousness, while ignoring the possibility that an AI has an experience of its own self that is really different from our own.

The article seems to have forgotten that the Turing Test isn't really a test, but a tautology: Turing was saying that if a machine can converse like a human, then it _is_ intelligent, because the most fundamental aspect of human intelligence is our ability to communicate.

<comment><USER3> How can machine consciousness cannot be different from human consciousness? How can we say that when we cannot even define consciousness.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. You cannot create a convincing test for what you cannot define.

So, this proposed test is just a thought experiment demonstrating the pointlessness of the question. At least I hope that was the intent. If they really thought they had something, that would just be sad.</comment></comment></comment>


Patterns in the history of science - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_and_sociology_of_the_history_of_science#Patterns_in_the_history_of_science

<comment><USER2> I would put Popper under philosophy, and Kuhn and Feyerabend under sociology.

Of course, Feynman would put them all in the trash bin. ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Never heard of Feyeraband, but based on the three sentences in that article it seems the most right to me!</comment>


My [Google] Compute Engine Pipe Dream - <AUTHOR> http://bjk5.com/post/26346827037/my-compute-engine-pipe-dream

<comment><USER2> I read this, and I wonder "What happens to your company when Google goes away?"

It seems like Google has everyone gunning for it, from anti-trust, to privacy, to patents, to governments. Every tech company that has been in a war of attrition with the world has paid a heavy price. IBM and Microsoft were relatively recent examples. The battles wear on the company and while shields are at maximum now, they erode over time. People get burned out from fighting, and governments change.

I have no idea what the Google of 2020 will look like compared to the Google of 2010. But having been at Sun as a 'startup' and watched it rise, flare up, and then fade away, I realize that tech companies have a horrible track record of permanence. The list is long, Compaq (the unkillable titan), DEC (the company that 'invented computing for the masses'), 3COM, Tandem, Cabletron, Ungerman-Bass, Telebit, Etc.

Google is on a path to join them. Google is intensely protective about how they do what they do. A common complaint on the ex-Google email lists is "Where can I find feature <x> in the FOSS or even enterprise software world?" when they slip below the waves, there is a very real possibility that stuff running on their infrastructure not only won't be extractable (due to lack of access) but even if it was could not be recreated elsewhere.

I see Google's CE/AE and Amazon's EC2/AWS as a quick way to demonstrate you're product has 'legs' and if you can afford to run it on their stuff and still make a profit then, once you get above about 500 'instances' you can afford to run it yourself as well. The downside is that once you get that validation, its probably a good idea to start your migration plan off of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> 7 terabytes seems like a lot of data perhaps the author is counting blob storage also. In which case surely s3 is the largest blob storage database already.

<comment><USER4> No, but I'm counting our indexes which store tons and tons of denormalized data (Google counts these when assessing datastore size). If you completely ignore all indexes, we're at 1TB (but even that includes some denormalized data).

<comment><USER5> It seems like AppEngine is saving your ass at the moment but aren't you worried about scale? This is sort of a classic "storage not data" problem where you mapreduce raw data to a structured store for reporting. Are you really still querying everything live? When do you expect this to break down?

<comment><USER5> It broke down for me on AppEngine. I had to move data out of the store to blobs, then use AppEngine queues to reduce the data into the store for reporting access.

Basically they promised me what they promised you and, after I got past a few TB of real data, the whole thing blew up.

Also what "front end user apps" are you unable to write on AppEngine itself that require something like EC2? Splatting data out the HTTP hole was the least of my worries.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean "why would a team choose EC2 over App Engine?" I never claimed that you are unable to do anything specific on App Engine.

<comment><USER5> Your post confused me because it said a lot of things about App Engine's datastore that conflicted with my direct experience. Khan Academy is one of the few sites that I'm excited about at the moment, so I'm concerned.

I chose AppEngine because I was very much aware of the issues around big data and I thought I could avoid having to deal with it. I came away from your post with the feeling that you may be underestimating what you're up against. Step one: look at your data size and querying cost every day!

Right now you can access the datastore externally via the remote_api shim or an API you put on your app. Performance isn't great. (An OData-style HTTP interface to the datastore seems like an obvious addition.)

Specific to my query: you say you're excited about Google's EC2 equivalent. I'd be more excited about the managed Hadoop that's likely the next step along your dev path whether you're aware of it yet or not. Custom mapreduce operations against the Google App Engine datastore, ironically, really suck and are really expensive.

So... was this general excitement or is there something specific you want to do with App Engine but you can't yet? And have you estimated out the transactional costs for walking across your full record set even if they gave you access to it?

You're likely going to find yourself stuffing at least some things in a SQL store and talking to that.

<comment><USER4> Ah. Well, first of all, we have already gone through the pain of building a pipeline to export the majority of our heavy data analytics to a Hadoop/Hive setup on EC2. So, yes, we only use App Engine's mapreduce in certain cases where it makes sense.

However, what I'm specifically referring to in this blog post is the ability to keep relying on App Engine's datastore for the everyday work involved in serving our application (forget the mapreduce stuff) while gaining more flexibility to run non-App Engine pieces of software on the virtual servers without suffering the App Engine-to-EC2 latency pain.

A trivial example would be Lucene (right now we have to run it on EC2 and communicate back'n'forth). Another example would be our own memcached servers that we control the size of.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Platypus – Turn shell scripts into native Mac applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.sveinbjorn.org/platypus <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this is really necessary...

\- With Automator (Applications folder), even a shell script that pipes input into itself can be wrapped as a standalone application and saved.

\- Naming any script with a ".command" extension (or ".tool") makes it double- clickable from the Finder. Though in that case, it runs in a terminal window and isn't quite as nice as a standalone application.</comment>


Google vs. Governments (who will win?) - <AUTHOR> http://marketingland.com/googles-android-rules-found-to-violate-russian-competition-law-142759 <comment><AUTHOR> Google vs China. (A few years ago) Google vs EU (For a while now) Google vs Russia (Now)

Where/which country will be next?</comment>


The Bridge - The First Truly Universal Remote - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/50581889/the-bridge-the-first-truly-universal-remote <comment><USER2> This is really impressive. I would pay extra if their concept video did not have such attrocious background music...

I would like to know why/how they aim to replace PS3/Xbox360/Wii with this remote, at that point it smells a bit like over-aggressive kickstarter. Though I did pre-order the black one just in case!</comment>


Skin-like biosensor system for noninvasive blood glucose monitoring - <AUTHOR> http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/12/e1701629.full <comment><AUTHOR> Photo of the sensor patch and comparisons to other testing methods: [http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/3/12/e170162...](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/3/12/e1701629/F4.large.jpg)</comment>


The Forgotten Ones: HP Nanoprocessor - <AUTHOR> http://www.cpushack.com/2020/08/09/the-forgotten-ones-hp-nanoprocessor/ <comment><USER2> "This bias voltage was dependent on manufacturing variables so was not always the same chip to chip (the goal would be -5VDC). Each chip was tested the and voltage was hand written on the chip."

Wow! With today's processor tolerances, that's crazy to imagine happening.

I was also surprised the ALU was an add on. I guess it makes sense if all you need is to control something on a basic level, and not run software.

I'm curious how they handled ALU specific instructions if an ALU isn't present. Does the decode stage just convert them to no-ops?

<comment><USER3> > I'm curious how they handled ALU specific instructions if an ALU isn't > present. Does the decode stage just convert them to no-ops?

There were no ALU specific instructions. The article brushes across how ALU operations were performed, but leaves the explanation for how to the reader to understand. The ALU would have been an I/O device (likely memory mapped I/O [1]) and ALU operations would have been performed by writing data out to the external ALU, waiting for the ALU gate delay, then reading the results back in from the external ALU (i.e., input/output operations):

> If you needed support for an ALU you could add one externally (likely with a > pair of '181 series TTL). Even with an external ALU the Nanoprocessor was > very fast.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory- mapped_I/O](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_I/O)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, you can see this spelled out more in the block diagrams. Kinda looks like the operands are aliased on the program memory ROM, but I'm not 100% on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r They talk about building this on a 7-micron process, and I thought - that's odd, isn't 7-micron the state of the art _today_? Then I realized that today it's 7-nm, or a factor of 1000 better.

<comment><USER5> Arguably the number of transistors scales as the area, so 1000 __2 == 1e6.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a related note, whatever happened to HP's memristor-based The Machine?

<comment><USER7> Never panned out, they canceled it years ago.

[https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/207897-hp-kills-the- mach...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/207897-hp-kills-the-machine- repurposes-design-around-conventional-technologies)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For a second I got excited this would be a "HP" lovecraft themed software blog post

</comment><comment><USER9> It appears to have been hugged to death; archive.org link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200810145047/http://www.cpusha...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200810145047/http://www.cpushack.com/2020/08/09/the- forgotten-ones-hp-nanoprocessor/)

<comment><USER10> Can someone explain how this happens?

80 upvotes now on HN. Possibly 400-500 views. How do they go down so fast?

And archive bot manages to get past it.

I don't know how much it traffic it takes to take smaller websites down. Is it this small?

<comment><USER11> > Possibly 400-500 views

Hah, the front page of HN will generally drive upwards of 10k uniques to a page.

<comment><USER10> Oh wow. Didn't realise it's that big a source for spikes in traffic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Armed agents seize records of reporter - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/25/armed-agents-seize-records-reporter-washington-tim/?page=all

<comment><USER2> Every journalist covering sensitive topics like national security should have well-practiced digital security habits.

Edward Snowden specifically sought out Laura Poitras because she had a clue about information security.

Peter Maass, who covers national security topics and interviewed Snowden, Poitras and Greenwald [0], explains that very few journalists take appropriate precautions to protect their sources [1].

Anything less than routine use of encryption, Tor, VPNs and secure voice communication should be considered journalistic malpractice given what we now know.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras- sno...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras- snowden.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all)

[1] [http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/221003/peter- ma...](http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/221003/peter-maass- everyone-needs-to-use-encryption-a-lot-more/)

<comment><USER3> That sounds nice and all, but the real solution is to have the government respect the constitutionally protected free press.

<comment><USER4> In a perfect world, yes. But I think this is yet another signal to the people that we're not living in any utopia and it's time to protect oneself against the intrusions of the government.

Free speach is now a right that the people must enforce.

A hackerspace in Malmö Sweden are suggesting workshops for the public to teach them the use of open tools, encryption and secure communications.

It would be nice if other hackerspaces around the world joined in on this idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The bizarre thing is the actual warrant - searching for firearms-related items & documents in their house, because her husband had a 1980s-vintage resisting arrest conviction which precludes him from owning firearms. I don't have PACER access, but I would love for someone to dig up that warrant application when it becomes available and see how bald-facedly pretextual it is.

</comment><comment><USER6> The continuous erosion of our protections is alarming. How can it be stopped and reversed? Is it even possible? IMANAL, but hasn't there been a SCOTUS case or two on this very thing?

<comment><USER7> It will take decades to reverse the trend. Everyone is scared these days. A lot of what we see are a consequence of being scared-- the government being scared of the populace, and the populace being scared of the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The US has gone well beyond the "if this continues" point. It is now well across the line.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. It's a thug-ocracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Original link: [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/25/armed- agents...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/25/armed-agents-seize- records-reporter-washington-tim/?page=all#pagebreak)

</comment><comment><USER11> I am doing my best to spread these stories beyond our community...the lack of awareness about what is going in is terrifying. can anyone point me to a well sourced, succinct but complete clearinghouse that I can point people to? I am going to need to start creating one if there is nothing out there

<comment><USER12> It gets criticized by some (rightly or wrongly) for being "biased" \-- whatever that may mean, these days -- but techdirt.com is a fairly thorough and vary active catch-all summation site for these types of stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even if there's an innocuous explanation for this, the government has totally blown through the trust of communities like this one, the critical journalism community, and more.

</comment><comment><USER14> "This violates the very premise of a free press..."

I am thinking it would be far wiser for the Press to assume that there is no such thing...

Just like we caution our clients to treat email the same as postcards...

</comment><comment><USER15> The warrant covers "any communications that that might be found in Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Flanagan's home related to "the acquisition of firearms or accessories."

Likely the term "communications" includes written communications, in which case they would have had to seize all written records in the home, unless they wanted search though all of them on-site. I doubt agents are experts in filtering documents during a raid.

Furthermore, if the police find something not related to the search warrant but criminal in nature (like a dead body or possibly stolen records) they can seize them, too.

<comment><USER9> Except, at least according to Hudson's story, they were very specific and limited in the papers they took. They knew what they were looking for, it wasn't about guns, and they found it.</comment></comment>


Why I Quit Googling - <AUTHOR> http://southernbeale.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/why-i-quit-googling/ <comment><USER2> Google's remembrance of Cesar Chavez instead of Easter on Easter made me switch to Bing.

Now that they're working with a politician who fights against knee-jerk, broad-reaching economic policy changes with regards to climate change, I might have a reason to switch back!

<comment><USER3> > Google's remembrance of Cesar Chavez instead of Easter on Easter made me > switch to Bing

Why?</comment></comment>


Running premortem analysis – imagining failure to ensure success - <AUTHOR> https://bytes.grubhub.com/running-premortem-analysis-imagining-failure-to-ensure-success-8b8f1a153232 <comment><USER2> Look what I discovered! If you try to think of what can go wrong, it can keep you from making a mistake! My dad just harumphed at me, but he doesn't know what's cool!</comment>


No, Teachers Are Not Underpaid - <AUTHOR> https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-teachers-are-not-underpaid-15867.html <comment><USER2> The website that this is from is backed by the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative think-tank that has been seeking to destroy pension funds for years.

[https://nypost.com/2013/06/11/hedgies-cut-ties-with-think- ta...](https://nypost.com/2013/06/11/hedgies-cut-ties-with-think-tank/)

Also, it's absurd to say that teachers in states like Oklahoma aren't underpaid when they have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/educators- acros...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/educators-across-the- us-are-using-west-virginias-teachers-strike-to-inspire-their-own-battle- plans/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would have to think more through the article to have an opinion about it overall, but I do agree with getting rid of pensions, paying them more now and contributing to a defined contribution plan. Pensions make it too easy for today's politicians to make promises using bad math that hurt the taxpayers years down the road.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a biased article from authors with an agenda.

> Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

FYI, the American Enterprise Institute is a conservative think tank known for attempting to bribe scientists to critique Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

<comment><USER5> "Ad Hominem Attacks (38) Argument by attributing prejudices or motives to one's opponent (p 159) Approach: Point out that other prejudices may equally well determine the opposite view, and that, in any case, the question of why a person holds an opinion is an entirely different question from that of whether the opinion is or is not true."

[http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Clear_Thinking/Informal_Fal...](http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Clear_Thinking/Informal_Fallacies/Tricks/tricks.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If we're _just_ talking about salary, then teachers make almost exactly the median for their education level in my state (Arizona).

To be clear: I think teachers should probably make more, but I don't know enough about it to make a strong opinion. I just wanted to look at data.

According to [1], teachers in Tempe, AZ (a suburb of Phoenix where I live), teachers make $51,841/year of income.

First, we have to convert this to a monthly income (teachers work 9 months per year, not 12[2]).

51841/9 = 5760. $5,760/mo.

(If I'm being honest, I was surprised the wage was this _high_. That seems like a pretty good wage, actually!)

Converted to a 12-month salary (which is generally what is meant by "salary")

12 * 5760 = $69,120

According to [3], the median income for a bachelor's degree holder in the state of Arizona is $62,697.

Again, I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't ask for more money. They have really important jobs. I just find the idea of teachers being underpaid to be inaccurate.

Just for fun (I know a lot of you live in the bay) according to [4] this would be like living in Oakland making $110k, or living in SF making $140k. In LA this would be about $109k.

In IA (Des Moines), it's about exactly the same. $66k.

[1]:[https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/03/1...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/03/13/top- phoenix-school-districts-teacher-pay/70177874/)

[2]:While some teachers certainly do things like summer school, off-season training, etc. as far as I can tell, the salary figures are for the 9 required months per year.

[3]:[https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Location=Phoenix- AZ/Sal...](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Location=Phoenix- AZ/Salary/by_Degree)

[4]:[http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of- living/](http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/)

<comment><USER7> While I am not in education, a large portion of my family is. My outside looking in perspective would tend to agree with all of your arguments, but a few counterpoints, I'd like to raise (based on my anecdotal evidence): 1\. Teachers do not work 8 hour days. 10-12 hour days can be the norm, especially if extra hours outside of school are needed for student aid or mandatory administrative needs. 2\. Teachers do have some administrative burden during the summer months, so technically, some work is done.

I live in South Carolina where many public education teachers make sub $50k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of sketchy conclusions in this article. Not the least of which is:

 _" Wages are not determined by years of schooling but by the supply and demand for skills."_

First off, this is simply not true in the case of executive pay, which is rigged. If we're making comparisons, let's bring everybody in. Secondly, you cannot compare a national priority with simple market supply and demand. We should be paying teachers at a premium to the market to attract those who would otherwise not go there, and also, make life not so miserable for teachers (even if we don't attract new hires) because teacher quality should not be subject to the vagaries of the market. That's why we (try) to do it in the public sector in the first place.

<comment><USER9> > That's why we (try) to do it in the public sector in the first place.

We teach in the public sector to reduce the downside risk of a uneducated, destabilizing public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In districts where teachers get pensions, they don't get social security.[1]

This fact is never discussed by conservative groups so that they can intentionally pretend like teachers are getting overly generous pension benefits. This is a significant misrepresentation through omission undermining the entire credibility of their argument.

[1] [https://www.teacherpensions.org/blog/why- aren%E2%80%99t-all-...](https://www.teacherpensions.org/blog/why- aren%E2%80%99t-all-teachers-covered-social-security)

<comment><USER3> That's not true everywhere. Not only is it based on the state, it's also based on the individual school system. My mom is a retired school teacher in one of the 15 states that the article lists and she receives both a pension and social security. We are in the same state, but a different district and my wife who is also in the school system does not pay into social security.

But in our case, even if she did get social security, it makes more sense for her to choose to get social security at a rate half of mine than get her own. ([https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/01/29/social- security-s...](https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/01/29/social-security- spousal-benefits-2017-what-you-nee.aspx))

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Of course they are underpaid.

The math is pretty simple. There is a teacher shortage such that states like OK, UT, and AZ have passed laws that let schools hire teachers without formal training.

I don't think anyone believes that the teachers have been able to restrict the supply of new teachers (eg, in the way that doctors have been able to restrict the supply of new doctors in the US).

Thus, the overall compensation must be too low.

"Compensation" is not just salary but also insurance and retirement benefits, as well as more nebulous concepts like "respect".

</comment><comment><USER12> Teachers should be valued better than many of them are. They are professionals and the majority of them are working in very dysfunctional systems, being held to account for outcomes many of them lack the agency and or resources to improve.

Frankly, I support the strikes.

Having raised my kids, I saw plenty of no win scenarios. People being micromanaged, yet accountable for outcomes, lacking agency. It's not good.

We can, should, need to do better, and the people trying to do the hard, human work anyway deserve compensation in line with the painful nature of the work.

Most of that pain having zero to do with educatorsthemselves, and everything to do with basically everyone else thinking they can do better.

I expect downvotes. That is OK.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes, education doesn't the best students. But there's a reason for that. It's hard work, and it doesn't pay well. It's traditionally been a women's job, after all. So why would top students want to become teachers?

But of course, this is a downward spiral. Leading to a poorly educated nation. And teachers who can't earn living wages. Sound familiar?

Edit: I don't agree with the article, but is flagging it appropriate? Isn't the discussion useful?

<comment><USER14> Actually, at least in France, it used to be a traditionnaly man job... back when it was a respected one. The it shifted to a job that's looked down on, as it started becoming a woman's job. I never studie the mechanisms through which it went by, but it's a pattern that you can see in several jobs : that once male dominated, respected jobs become women dominated, not-so-respected jobs.

<comment><USER13> Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing. Sad :(

I don't mean to disrespect public school teachers. Or to be sexist. Teachers should be respected, and well paid. Regardless of gender. Because it's an investment in the future. Nations with uneducated populations tend not to fare so well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We may never truly know the appropriate salary for any employee, given the large amount of market interference that public/government schooling brings with it.

I'm not arguing for fully private schooling (though there are some interesting arguments for it), but pointing out that in any government controlled/dominated industry, the salary of any given employee may or many not have any correlation to their competency. Yes, this happens too in the private sector (dead-weight/overpaid employees exist in every industry), but we have engineered (politicized) our education system seemingly intentionally to produce these very outcomes.

Due to the ultimate intractability of the question, I am reminded of a recent funny quote: "if we want to believe something, it will accrete a protective layer of positive studies whether it's true or not." [1]

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/04/adult-neurogenesis-a- po...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/04/adult-neurogenesis-a-pointed- review/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This website is full of people doing "productive" things like building the next wave of surveillance tech (social media and adtech) or gambling (blockchains and mobile gaming) complaining about the the pay of teachers. I hope they can see the irony.

<comment><USER17> That's not an accurate description of this community.

Pick any point on the opinion spectrum and you'll find some HN users there, just like with any large population sample. But it doesn't generalize. We know this because the generalizations people come up with are wildly contradictory, except in one way: you can guess a person's own views from the generalization they come up with.

<comment><USER16> Hey dang, you like to comment and assert community values. When the fund that runs this site is busy trying to kowtow to China [0] and is surveillance and authoritarian technocracy, how does that make you feel?

[0]: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/y-combinator-is-going- afte...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/y-combinator-is-going-after- chinese-startups-with-its-first-official-event-in-china/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> it's always a bummer to see pseudo intellectual libertarian garbage on HN. I'll just point out this line, starting off the third paragraph:

> Wages are not determined by years of schooling but by the supply and demand > for skills.

Teachers are public sector employees. There is no market, so this is just untrue (yes yes private schools but this article is about public school teachers). Wages for teachers are determined by politicians that are elected by voters.

This is stupid fucking article trying to justify teachers not even being paid middle class wages and it shouldn't be on the front page.

<comment><USER3> Whether the article is biased or not, it is interesting enough to have a good conversation. It's very appropriate for HN.

<comment><USER18> The sentence that I posted is false, not biased. There is a difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I support the idea of giving targeted raises to select teachers, such as STEM teachers. Finding and keeping STEM teachers in the US is a problem. I say this, because I use to be a STEM teacher. I taught for two years and then left for the tech industry (I joined the statistic). The major factors that drove my decision were money, time, and respect. Within two years in industry, I was making more than I ever could have teaching. I also work less and feel more respected in society too.</comment>


Snap – A JavaScript SVG Library - <AUTHOR> http://snapsvg.io/

<comment><USER2> SVG integration with JS and the DOM has been elusive and underdeveloped in the past. Between this and d3, there's finally a lot happening in this space. These are very slick libs, they are thorough and comprehensive with very sophisticated authors.

I have capable and deep server-side SVG generation libraries I've written for CAD/CAM applications. I've always wanted to use them for generating all-or- mostly SVG web UIs. I can generate an SVG view straight from a model, and it's not an HTML+CSS cludge. The SVG's relationship with the data object is much more clear. With better JS manipulation support from libraries like this, the possibility of a rich and full-featured implementation is closer.

Not to mention that the browser vendors are FINALLY putting effort into truly supporting SVG, after 10+ years. It's good to prod them in this direction by demoing. Maybe we can help encourage an SVG-support vendor battle like what's going on for JS engines.

Time for me to get started on open sourcing my libs. They need to be completely broken out and made more general but I think it's time to join in and support these excellent efforts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Libraries like this come up on HN on a regular basis it seems. As I read through the site I kept asking myself "this looks great and all, but can I depend on it in the long term?".

Then I came across the "about" section where it says it was created by the creator of Raphael.js[1].

Say no more.. I'm in!

[1] [http://raphaeljs.com/](http://raphaeljs.com/)

<comment><USER4> I came across the snapsvg announcement in a Tweet by the creator:

[https://twitter.com/DmitryBaranovsk/status/39305298289322393...](https://twitter.com/DmitryBaranovsk/status/393052982893223937)

> _Here we go: new SVG library from Adobe by yours truly Snap.svg. Snapsvg.io_

I didn't know Dmitry was Raphael's creator nor that he was working for Adobe. So all I saw was "Adobe" and thought "Flash" and then, "Nah"

<comment><USER3> I hear you on the Flash stigma, but you have to figure an open source library written in a widely used language to interact with an open standard that is largely adopted won't make you suffer the same as Flash?

<comment><USER5> Suffer the same fate as Flash?

The fate of sustaining comfortably for more than a good decade you mean?

<comment><USER3> ?? I never wrote "Suffer the same fate as Flash". Please reread my comment. I was referring to the previous poster's apparent pain with Flash. Not the fate of Flash itself.

<comment><USER5> Sorry then, I guess I picked up a subtext which you (or the grandparent post) did not intend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In a comment on a thread about SVG libraries recently, here on HN, I opined that the world was long in need of a library that takes pre-made, artist created SVG and manipulates it: a jQuery for SVG.

And here it is and I am very grateful. Thank you, Dmitry. Thank you, Adobe.

We also need a world where once again Adobe create great open technologies and fund their development by building superb commercial tools for them.

I eagerly await new tools that work with Snap!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome. One of the problems I've had with Raphael is that it's explicitly not supposed to be an SVG library, so SVG-specific features tend to go unsupported. SVG groups are probably the most obvious example of this.

<comment><USER8> Without knowing this fact about Raphael, I was about to reply to another comment prematurely. I was going to complain that having the same author as Raphael doesn't explain why Snap.js exists, instead of a better version of Raphael.

Thank you.

<comment><USER9> There's a helpful "Why Snap?" page that points this out, as well as that it supports animation.

<comment><USER10> SMIL is the SVG animation markup. Sadly very few people have every used it. SvgWow.com has a bunch of great examples like: [http://svg- wow.org/camera/camera.xhtml](http://svg-wow.org/camera/camera.xhtml)

<comment><USER11> There's an awful lot of Javascript backing that animation, I can't see where it's being turned into SMIL. At the very least it's definitely not static on the page, since the definition of the animation is entirely in JS: [http://svg-wow.org/camera/camera.js](http://svg-wow.org/camera/camera.js)

Does it write SMIL somewhere near the end and then let it run, or does it just run in JS? Skimming through I couldn't tell, but I don't really have time to read more closely.

<comment><USER10> Some JS is still used, certainly. However you can define the animation steps, timings, recursion, panning, zooming and many other facets purely in SVG/SMIL. When I wrote a financial world map visualization and drill down tool, 95% of the animation logic was in SVG/SMIL. The JS just called start/stop on the various animation elements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> today i recovered this [http://web.archive.org/web/20080426161839/http://www.fragmen...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080426161839/http://www.fragmentarisch.net/svg/drawingboard.php) via waybackmachine. i coded this in 2006 (its optimized for IE6 and the (at that time cutting edge now for a long time deprecated) adobe svg plugin). basically a LOGO like language in svg and js.

the good news is: it still works (webkit), the bad news is that i still dont believe that SVG is the future. fool me once ...

<comment><USER13> Care to share why?

<comment><USER12> personal disappointment is pretty high up on the list: i was an early adopter SVG ninja, i believed in the revolution, and the revolution didn't happen.

and i understood why: SVG is a technology invented and specified by a committee built upon a technology invented and specified by a committee (XML). now combine this with the most anarchistic technology in the internet, i'm talking about the one technology that is still untamed in it's raw from, mischievous and sometimes plain dumbevil in it's details, yes, i'm talking about the DOM. that's why working with SVG always felt clunky and massochistic to me.

so if you touch SVG always use a high level clever abstraction. and well this seems the point of snap.svg. maybe i will give it another try. but the thing is, whenever i use a high level abstraction i will sooner or later go down into the pits again, because i want to know how it works and whatever else i can make it do, and then i will probably hate myself again for giving svg another shot....

<comment><USER14> That's like saying you don't believe in memory allocation and pointers because they're "untamed" and "mischievous". Sure, low-level APIs/formats are a pain to work with, but that's the whole point of abstractions like this. If you hate yourself for learning how something low-level works, that sounds like a personal problem. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Be sure to also follow our Twitter account @snapsvg for updates!

-JD @jonathanAdunlap

</comment><comment><USER16> This may cause confusion with the Snap Framework [1].

[1] [http://snapframework.com/](http://snapframework.com/)

<comment><USER17> These two products are far from the only ones to use the name "Snap."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like a good replacement for the vector side of flash and is partnered with Adobe. The SVG looks very clean and it is nice to have it load SVG files and create on the fly. Also awesome that it is made by the developer of the Raphael library.

One problem with intensely declarative content is bad naming, verboseness and strange groupings/ordering. Silverlight had this problem and SVG has it a bit in terms of content from other programs like Illustrator, SVG exporters etc. Adobe will probably be developing tools to edit this maybe? SVG support is still a little lagging and the web is missing vector frameworks since Flash has been sidelined with mobile.

<comment><USER19> There's a great little node.js-based tool called SVGO for removing the fluff and optimising SVG files: [https://github.com/svg/svgo](https://github.com/svg/svgo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice and being made by Raphael author certainly does not hurt, still, the examples section could really do with bit of work: out of the 4 examples only 3 works proper for me and only the simply coffee maker and mascot bits are really smooth. The game is jerking about and not working proper on FF24: [http://snapsvg.io/demos/#game](http://snapsvg.io/demos/#game)

</comment><comment><USER21> I find a bit strange not to have contributed in svg.js ( [http://www.svgjs.com/](http://www.svgjs.com/) ). Not Invented Here ?

<comment><USER22> The author actually just gave a talk (actually finishing it) and he explained: he did not like the code style (svg.js does not use semicolons at the end of the lines).

Well that is what he said. But I believe having created Raphael.js in 2008, much before svg.js existed, also influenced his decision.

<comment><USER21> why not forking then ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Check your mobile device performance with two quick demo links:

snap.svg coffee demo (click wheel to animate) [http://snapsvg.io/demos/#coffee](http://snapsvg.io/demos/#coffee)

d3.js chart demo (click buttons to animate) [http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3943967](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3943967)

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow. Snap looks beautiful. Nice one, Dmitry.

I've been enjoying working on my own SVG library, Pablo[1]. It's inspired in part by the fun I've had using Raphael, and wanting to explore what can happen when SVG is a first-class citizen of a library.

[1] [http://pablojs.com](http://pablojs.com)

<comment><USER19> When I added the ability to import existing SVG images into Pablo, and to export the generated SVG in different image formats[1], I was pretty thrilled by the possibilities of having a JavaScript bridge between the design tools and the web app, the designer and the developer. And I see that Snap is also totally aligned to this kind of interaction between the web app and the external graphics tools, like Illustrator, Inkscape and SVG Edit.

The obvious next step is for a drop-dead simple visual interface to choreograph the graphics and the animations, with hooks into the rest of the JavaScript application. It could might be a game, interactive art, a visualisation or anything with graphics. Flash is dead, but there is nothing that exists for the open web that is as intuitive and fun to use as the Flash IDE was.

It must be just a matter of time before a tool as brilliant as the Flash IDE comes along for the open web, and I can imagine it makes a lot of sense for Adobe to be in on it.

[1] [http://pablojs.com/api/#Import-Export](http://pablojs.com/api/#Import- Export)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I feel like whenever one of these gets posted, it should have a compare / contrast with d3.js

<comment><USER4> The OP's description makes it pretty clear. This is a library that seems specifically geared toward those who create SVGs in programs like Illustrator. That it is described as "jQuery for SVGs" should imply that it serves a different need than D3, as one usually does not call or think of D3 as the "jQuery for SVG data visualizations"

<comment><USER25> The moment we start calling things "the jQuery of..." we're no better than startups that are "the Facebook of..." :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I just watched some demos of this at the HTML5 Dev Conference - there are some cool uses.

The game on the PBS homepage uses a prototype version of the library:

[http://pbskids.org/](http://pbskids.org/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Snap.svg being able to parse existing SVG:s I've generated with Sketch is totally awesome. Even more awesome would be the day when Sketch lets me play around with animations and timelines and then generate Snap.svg instructions.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are blend modes other than "normal" usable in browser SVG yet? [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=437554](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=437554)

</comment><comment><USER29> I had a really time figuring out what this is, but the "Getting Started" page shows off the API a bit. Wonder why they didn't just call it Raphael 3.0.

<comment><AUTHOR> Raphael has a really complex abstraction that does loads of magic to make it work on IE.

So I'm guessing this way they can map directly to SVG and not worry about breaking APIs and compatibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This library really looks great; I was wondering if charts (financial, statistics,...) are supported, for example, by connecting to data sources in JSON, etc

<comment><USER31> I wouldn't mind taking a closer look at that. They do have a data API to store individual key value pairs [http://snapsvg.io/docs/#Element.data](http://snapsvg.io/docs/#Element.data)

Definitely different than what I'm used to in D3js, but worst case scenario you would have to loop through each key value pair. Worth testing out.

<comment><USER30> You're right, noahmarc, it's the same for me, I'm now too used to working with D3j, that I definitely need to find my way in Snapsvg library, as it really looks promising; maybe it'd be better to arrange a high level specialized class library to handle not only worst case scenario, but even common chart functions, as the Api itself looks quite low level code...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is svg serialization supported? I looked in the doc but couldn't find anything.

*Edit - toString()?

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't see the animations on iOS 6 and Android mobile devices. Why not?

<comment><USER34> According to this advanced SVG is not supported by Android.

[http://caniuse.com/#cats=SVG](http://caniuse.com/#cats=SVG)</comment></comment>


Wikipedia not held responsible for defamatory content in court case - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/26/wikimedia-foundation-legal-victory-italy/#Italian

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't stress how important a precedent this.

If Wikimedia had been held responsible, would have made the same sense as blaming the builder of a wall for an offensive writing on that wall.</comment>


New forum that has no users - <AUTHOR> http://serenia.space/#!/ <comment><USER2> Like 4chan?</comment>


In JavaScript, why does (null + null === 0) return true? - <AUTHOR>

I could be convinced into thinking == would return true if null was treated as 0 (so 0 + 0 = 0), but with ===, this doesn't seem right at all, especially considering:
typeof null === 'object'
and
typeof 0 === 'number'
Can someone explain? <comment><USER2> I don't really know (I don't have that in depth knowledge of javascript) but it is probably like you said, because you are doing a sum, it treats null as 0, so (0 + 0 === 0) is true.

You can do the same with false: (false + false === 0)

And also (true + true === 2) is true

Edit: The same way as if you do "" \+ 1 you get "1" because it assumes + as string concatenation

</comment><comment><USER3> The + operation is evaluated first, and + coerces nulls to zeros. This looks like:

(null + null) === 0

(0) === 0

true

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, it looks like JavaScript coerces null to the type against which it is being compared.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > null + null

0

> +null

0

Looks like JS converts null to 0 when it's used in a number context.</comment>


Apple stops hiding Samsung apology on its UK site - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/11/08/after-backlash-on-reddit-and-hacker-news-apple-stops-hiding-samsung-apology-on-its-uk-site/

<comment><USER2> Nope, this is pretty substantial evidence that they never attempted to hide the court-mandated statement (again, not an apology).

The website is now identical to apple.com in that it also shows the iPad image in conjunction with the iPad mini image. Some other European websites also switched over, like apple.it. The iPad image is apparently not vertically responsive, while the iPad mini image is.

This should bury this stupid story. Apparently there are enough conspiracy nuts out there. Why do people believe crazy stuff like that?

<comment><USER3> Why defend Apple? They've completely abused the patent system and caused the courts (and ultimately taxpayers) money for things that don't benefit us, the customers.

I'm not saying Samsung is any better; the courts really need to crack down on these types of things, and Apple has so far avoided the wrath of the courts.

I for one hate this new patent troll Apple. Patents are to drive and protect innovation, and Apple has been trying to stifle just that.

I think the courts should have been more specific as to where to place the "court-mandated statement", such as just below the product line, but above the legal stuff everybody skips, since that's where the most customers will see it without obstructing the flow of the page.

It's just underhanded for Apple to hide this rather trivial statement that nobody is likely to actually read. Many of the people on Apple's site are likely to be on Apple's side anyway.

<comment><USER2> I, too, hate what Apple is doing. That should cut that crap. I think all patents should be abolished.

I, however, also hate cheap polemics, distortion of reality, cynicism and conspiracy theories – so this is sort of where all of that meets. And Apple very clearly didn't hide anything. That's just dumb polemics.</comment></comment></comment>


The If-by-whiskey fallacy - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey <comment><USER2> If by "if-by-whiskey" you mean the fallacious, flip-flopping, cowardly practice of pandering, then certainly I am against it. But, if when you say "if-by-whiskey" you mean the circumspect, open-minded, responsive practice of consideration, then I am certainly for it. This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

<comment><USER3> If by "if by 'if by whiskey'" you mean to circularly employ the same manipulative tactic of deceptive self-promotion, then I am certainly against it. But if by "if by 'if by whiskey'" you mean to strategically exercise the same practice out of admiration of its effective and pacifying avail to reason, then I am certainly for it. That is my position. I will not waver.

<comment><USER4> If by "If by \"if by 'if by whiskey'\"" you mean you're offering me some whiskey to help with trying to comprehend this level of nesting, then yes please :-)

<comment><USER5> What is the fixed point of this function? Is there one? Quick, someone apply the y-combinator!

<comment><USER6> For some reason this reminds me of Quine Central[1]. :-)

[1] <http://blog.sigfpe.com/2011/01/quine-central.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this a fallacy? It seems that the speaker is clearly being satirical, especially given that he prefaces his speech with

" On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be."

And then proceeds to argue for _both_ sides of the issue.

Perhaps politics in 1950's Mississippi were just as solidly partisan as our national politics are today. In that case, perhaps Mr. Sweat's satire was meant to try to influence the partisans to, at least somewhat, understand the other side.

<comment><USER8> I think this is a generous interpreation.

Seems more likely that he was simply pandering to both sides, and/or trying to dodge responsibility for a position altogether. The history of political speeches is pretty rife with this sort of tactic, although seldom as memorable as in this case. Politicians and public figures who don't want to alienate either side of an argument will often pay lip service to both sides.

<comment><USER9> I find that more of a negative interpretation.

The easiest way to avoid responsibility is to not talk about the issue all together. Here he managed to outline the positives and negatives of both cases. If his view of whiskey's positives and negatives line up with yours, perhaps he understands and feels about the issue the same way you do and might make the decision that you would make in the same position. If not, you actually don't like his stance on the issue.

I think it's more interesting to consider the concept he isolates, though, and it's bothersome that we can so cleanly map the concept he considers to issues we have today.

<comment><USER8> _"The easiest way to avoid responsibility is to not talk about the issue all together."_

Yes, but often politicians and public figures aren't given that choice. In this case, the man in question was either a judge or a lawyer at the time, and it seems likely that he was being asked or compelled to weigh in on the issue. His speech was a way of satisfying the weigh-in requirement without taking a controversial stance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "If by C programming, you mean writing unreadable code with memory leaks that is impossible to support and violently breaks in unpredictable ways, then I am against it.

If by C programming, you mean writing elegant code that dances with the machine producing blazing code, optimized to the technology and problem at hand, then I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not compromise."

I really hate to say it, but I haven't seen this if-by-whiskey technique so formally named, but it does give me great insight into political double-speak. And perhaps it'll give me a few outs from tough situations. :-)

<comment><USER11> On the other hand you made an example that was accidentally valid. The axis of good/bad code exists independent of language. But there is no such thing is good/bad (morally) casks of whiskey.

Get to work strongly implying that C is the actual cause of all these things with no externalities, and then you get toward the fallacy.

<comment><USER12> >there is no such thing is good/bad (morally) casks of whiskey.

I disagree -- just as someone writing C can do it well or poorly, someone drinking whiskey can behave well or poorly.

The spectrum of drunken behavior is a big one, and does include moral and immoral activity...

<comment><USER11> That is the drinkER, not the drink.

mathattack was focusing on the programming language. To parallel the whiskey morals they need to focus on the act of programming, or on the programmer. Not the language.

<comment><USER10> I interpreted it as more of a longwinded way to take both sides of an issue to not anger either side. C programming seemed less controversial than something like guns or abortion, but perhaps not around here. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This immediately made me think of abortion and the terms pro-life and pro- choice. I am both pro-life and pro-choice by the literal meanings, but many in the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" camps seem to use their terminology to paint the other side as bad (i.e. the opposite side is "anti-life" or "anti-choice" by default, even though that's not necessarily true).

<comment><USER14> Is there a situation where the belief that abortion should be illegal does not oppose a woman's ability to choose abortion? Of course the central premise of opposition to abortion is not (usually) opposition to choice, but "anti- choice" isn't technically an invalid characterization.

<comment><USER15> The central premise of opposition to abortion is whether the baby gets a choice. It's not "anti-choice", it's insisting that everyone involved have a fair say in the matter.

<comment><USER14> That's clever, but I'm guessing (maybe wrongly) that you'd wan't that baby raised in a belief system that says it will go to hell if it commits suicide. There's still no choice of whether or not to live. That's probably a good thing, but it's still technically opposed to choice.

<comment><USER15> Of course there's a choice then. Strongly influenced perhaps, but even the most devout believer can choose to sin or not. If he's dead by another's choice, he doesn't have any choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The given example is more clarification than fallacy. He's against bad things and for good things? What could be clearer? :)

<comment><USER17> Finally somebody I can get behind; we need to get this guy into office.

Does anyone know of any other examples of if-by-whiskey being used today?

Is it useful for politicians or would it completely backfire, where any opposition would try to say "You are quoted as being pro-alcohol: calling it the philosophic wine" or "anti-alcohol, calling it the devil's brew" and pick the paragraph that suits their needs?

<comment><USER18> "Does anyone know of any other examples of if-by-whiskey being used today?"

The whole debt debate. If by spending you mean crippling debt being left to our children, interest paid to furreiners, etc etc, it's bad and everyone who supports it is bad. If by spending, you mean the concrete things that we are spending money on, of course this specific thing is so wonderful that it's worth it and anyone who says otherwise is bad, and in fact I may I just go out on a limb and say that we need _more_ of this sort of spending.

(Lest you think I'm being partisan here, there's a very clear pattern in the last 20 years on which party in the US wants to spend, and which party wants to cut, and it's not D/R or liberal/conservative in either direction. The pattern is that the majority party wants to spend, and the minority party wants to cut. One can not help but cynically observe that what really bothers the minority party is majority's successful ladling out of the pork for patronage to the other guy's constituents, rather than any sort of real offense about spending. And thus, to be clear, the reason I chose this as my example is that you can find instances of the same individual giving both halves of this speech, playing both sides of the argument, separated by about a decade and one flip of the majority party.)

<comment><USER19> The minority party certainly did not want to cut from, say, 2002-2004. If anything, the dynamic was just the opposite: Stimulus bills didn't have enough "state aid". Medicare Part D had a miserly donut hole. Special education was being woefully shortchanged if the Federal government didn't honor its "promise" to pick up 100% of the cost. Oh, and don't forget that we weren't spending enough on body armor and the VA.

I think your theory needs tuning.

<comment><USER18> Pity Google doesn't have a "please just let me search in 2003" mode. Democrats got tons of mileage out of Bush-era deficit complaints, though. I'm pretty comfortable with my general thesis.

<comment><USER20> Try the "Custom range..." under "Time".

[https://www.google.com/search?q=special+education+spending&#...</a>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps it's a fallacy that you can be both in favor of a particular thing and also against that same thing?

I have the feeling that if I heard that speech I would actually believe that Soggy is both for and against whiskey. I don't think I'd vote for him, but I would believe him.

<comment><USER22> That's not what he meant when he said it though. After characterizing the supporters of prohibition as drooling religious fanatics, he made some pretty good points about the judicious use of alcohol as a social and physiological enhancer.

He was acknowledging that alcohol could be used for good or for bad things, and he was (maybe from our perspective only) making a good point about the use of polemic, misleading, and ridiculously overblown rhetorics. His was a reasonable argument, a witty meta argument, and a biting satirical observation all at the same time.

The point is, "Soggy" wasn't really undecided on the issue. Hell yeah, I'd vote for that guy.

<comment><USER23> "After characterizing the supporters of prohibition as drooling religious fanatics"

But they wouldn't see that characterization as inapt, or insulting, so it's not a very strong or brave position to take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was half expecting an alcoholic connotation of Paul Revere, e.g. two if-by- whiskey, one if-by-beer.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is it considered a "fallacy"?

<comment><USER26> I guess it could be considered very similar to the "no true scotsman" fallacy.

"If by scotsman you mean..."

Not sure what it has to do on the frontpage though.

<comment><USER27> Maybe this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5059806>

and this

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5061140>

<comment><USER26> Heh, interesting angle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This seems like a more schizophrenic version of the no-true-scotsman fallacy. In that it can be used to show support for something (often some ideal) whilst distancing oneself from any negative consequences of that.

</comment><comment><USER29> Highly recommend this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth- Edition/...](http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth- Edition/dp/0156482401)

Which talks in detail about the "informative" and "affective" connotations of words (it's a lot more entertaining than it sounds). Only slightly related, but I was just reading in the book how we have the terms "light meat" and "dark meat": because ladies and gentleman in 19th century Britain couldn't bring themselves to say "leg", "thigh" or "breast" – even of a chicken!

</comment><comment><USER30> Seems to be related to the straw man:

The question is "Should whiskey be prohibited or not?" but he takes it to be "Is there anything good or bad about whiskey?" or "Do I think whiskey is good or bad?".

</comment><comment><USER31> They need to add this to <http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/>. And if you haven't been there, you should check it out!

</comment><comment><USER32> If you follow the link to Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat Jr's wikipedia page...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_S._Sweat>

...you get a great audio recording of the speech (over 50 years later, and not by Noah)

</comment><comment><USER33> This is like Microsoft. It is great when it works and isn't causing troubles, but a bottomless hell when forced to look at the event viewer...

</comment><comment><USER34> I've heard of this!!!

</comment><comment><USER35> Just politicians being politicians.

<comment><USER36> If by politician you mean a tireless statesman, fighting the good fight, a champion of worthy causes that benefit us all, then I enthusiastically concur.

But if by politician you mean a low, corrupt, power-mad petty puppet jerked around by evil special interests, then sadly I have to agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> He condones what is widely seen as good about whiskey and he condemns what is widely seen as bad about whiskey. That is the stance he's getting across, and it's one which is also sort of (unsurprisingly?) the sum total position of the people he represents.

</comment><comment><USER38> He's against irresponsible drinking to the point where it will cause harm to oneself and others, but for responsible drinking to the degree that it will confer benefits.

I don't see a fallacy here.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think the canonical example on Wikipedia is false in that it is historically where the name comes from, but it's not itself a fallacy at all.

From the description of the fallacy the "if-by-whiskey" fallacy would be someone taking either one side, or the other.

So the "canonical example" is not at all an example of the fallacy but simply the roots of the name of the fallacy.

<comment><USER40> Not at all. When Mr Sweat asks "if by whiskey you mean..." he's making it explicit that his opinion depends on that of the questioner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> A litmus test of moral cowardice.</comment>


The Young Successful Drop Out – The Most Dangerous Lie in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.bandwidthblog.com/2011/05/10/the-most-dangerous-lie-in-tech/ Young successful college drop outs - A poisonous lie being spread to kids. <comment><USER2> very dangerous

</comment><comment><USER3> What if someone has an innovative idea,but does not know how to make money out of it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Play it safe I say and finish up at college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> awesome post!</comment>


Can We Please Stop Fighting the Native vs. Web App Wars? - tomh- http://readwrite.com/2015/02/27/native-vs-web-apps-ceasefire

<comment><AUTHOR> Unbelievable that the author claims that Gruber is wrong about accessibility without offering any evidence.

</comment><comment><USER2> k</comment>


Deadly Voyager: Hemisphere-wide inferno from a comet strike only 13kya - <AUTHOR> http://deadlyvoyager.net <comment><AUTHOR> For some reason, back in 2010 bunches of geologists really hated this idea and desperately tried to suppress it, going so far as to--apparently!-- deliberately fail to replicate findings, and then report that as if the original findings had been fabricated.

The latter have since been replicated by dozens of researchers. Throughout the Western hemisphere, a thin layer exactly the same age everywhere is black with charcoal and laced with platinum-enriched melted particles and nanodiamonds.</comment>


The Trouble with Barbie Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-trouble-with-barbie-science#g <comment><USER2> Try playing with a 2-year-old girl sometime. If you build her a tower made out of blocks, is she going to patiently nurture and protect it like a good mother-figure, or hit it to watch the blocks go flying? Little girls love destruction every bit as much as little boys.

When they get a little bit older we start seeing different behavior. Little girls play with dolls because we buy them dolls. Little girls wear dresses because we buy them dresses. Little girls start emulating princesses because all the little-girl movies we let them watch have princesses as role models. Fart jokes will still be hilarious for a while, but eventually that becomes "gross boy stuff". Yes, there is evidence that male and female minds work differently, but we certainly do our best to force them to develop along different paths!

Physics and math are tools for understanding and manipulating the universe around us. If you want to get young students interested in math and physics, don't try to get them to understand a deep proof about why 1+1=2. Fire some balls at each other and then get them to calculate momentum transfer. It's in human nature to enjoy seeing stuff like that happen, and understanding it so we can control how that stuff happens in new and entertaining ways is a phenomenal motivator.

Painting a physics text-book pink isn't going to work any better on girls than painting it blue would on boys. Girls like more of the same stuff that boys do than we usually think. It's human nature to like those things. The problem is that some of the lessons girls are taught about what it is to be female contradict their human nature. Painting the book pink is an attempt to appeal to girls via the faulty lessons they've learned. Instead of doing that, we need to help them unlearn those faulty lessons and appeal to their human nature. e.g. Little girls should like explosions too.</comment>


Ada Lovelace was not the first computer programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.true-equality.net/archive/2010/07/08/ada-lovelace-was-not-the-first-computer-programmer.aspx <comment><USER3> If I do say so myself, a much better analysis of Ada Lovelace's contribution is my own blog post "Lovelace's Leap": <http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/lovelaces- leap.html>

For those, that don't know I run a charity called Plan 28 that is working on building Babbage's unrealized Analytical Engine: <http://plan28.org/>

The OP confuses the Analytical Engine and Difference Engine and from that I would guess his grasp of the subject matter isn't deep. To his point that Babbage wrote programs for the Difference Engine (sic) (I'm sure the OP means the AE), there are programs in The Science Museum in London on punched cards waiting to be executed: <http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/program-waits.html> They were prepared by Babbage.

<comment><USER4> Came here to say exactly that, thanks for making the case more elaborate than i would have made it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "He is a libertarian, atheist, _anti-feminist_..." I stopped reading when I saw his self-description

<comment><USER6> Is someone's self-labeling as _anti-[insert any politically correct opinion]_ a good reason to dismiss one's argument?

<comment><USER7> No, but he sounds like a complete dickwad. What sort of sane person is against the notion that women should be equal? I doubt his understanding of feminism is much deeper than some garbage he read on an MRA site once, and thus it follows that he's likely to be wrong about a lot of other things due to having an axe to grind whilst simultaneously being an ignoramus.

I mean look at the description of his YouTube channel:

"What is equality? We in the men's rights movement believe in equality of opportunity, that as long as the playing field is level then the outcomes should not matter. _The feminists tend to believe that equality of outcome is what matters_ , that the columns under men and women must match for there to be no more sexism. So what really matters at the end of the day is what you are comparing. Rights or outcomes? This is the foundation of our debate."

So essentially his entire worldview is based on a complete strawman. Skills.

<comment><USER8> It's really irritating how feminists insist that anyone who disagrees with their very narrow and _totally contradictory_ views of what it means for "women to be equal" is against equality for women.

<comment><USER9> It is really irritating how people insist on using the term "feminist" to refer to a narrow, incoherent media trope.

<comment><USER10> Someone clearly let the straw feminists out of the closet again. HSSSSS!

<http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=341>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The first, one of the first, why does it really matter? He's clearly using this as a platform to attack things that feminists say in order to feel good about himself.

<comment><USER11> He wants to out modern feminism as a movement based on emotion and propaganda, not fact.

<comment><USER9> By firmly planting his argument in emotion and polemical sloganeering ... and thereby showing the unworkability of this approach to discussion? (Pretty sophisticated!)

<comment><USER11> Google "feminist math". I thought his argument was emotional but also referenced enough original sources to be credible.

It is kind of stupid to think Babbage wouldn't have written programs for his own machine.

That being said, Grace Hopper is one of my heroes. It's like having a black friend so you can feel free to criticize Obama! Haha.

<comment><USER9> I googled it. Did you mean the first link? It looks well written and interesting from the first couple paragraphs.. The whole list? Yeah, I'm familiar with the topic.

I think the article's author's central premise (to paraphrase: that Ada Lovelace is a phony promoted by other rank phonies for [unexplained, mostly inscrutable but surely, somehow base] political and/or emotional warm-fuzzies) is 110%, really pretty low-grade, claptrap.

Consider the question of Lovelace's role in CS ...

From the perspective of the author of the Ada language[1], call him Jean: he probably must have had some kind of psychic crush on her, right? Any of us (males, I mean) might assume.

From the perspective of later 20th century CS historians, who presumably bestowed the title "first programmer": Babbage was a hardware engineer; of course he designed the assembly language, in tandem with designing the machine; but since the dawn of computing, and still today, there exists a decided, if fuzzy line, between hardware and software "engineers'. And Lovelace owns the innovation of considering numbers as representations of any possible discrete item beyond mere numbers (hm, maybe Leibnitz did this earlier, but that really doesn't count, does it?[2]), which is /key/. So, call them, respectively, first hardware architect, first software programmer. Fair enough?

I think we can definitively settle the question with a time machine - <USER2> presume that Charles and Ada would be quite pleased to discuss all such trivia over tea with an esteemed time-traveller. -- Now you have a new, better project that trolling HN threads (jk ;-P).

And no, he referenced nowhere near enough original sources to seem even vaguely credible on such a complex, controversial topic. (See also the first reply in this thread, from jgrahamc - who does give the sense of having actually researched the labyrinthian topic.) And yes, Admiral Hopper. What is with white girls? And how many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

No offense.

[1] "Ada was originally designed by a team led by Jean Ichbiah of CII Honeywell Bull under contract to the United States Department of Defense (DoD) from 1977 to 1983 to supersede the hundreds of programming languages then used by the DoD." [wikipedia:Ada (programming language)] [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#Symbo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#Symbolic_thought)

<comment><USER11> No offense taken. I'm just tired of rah rah feminism. It's so boring. Just stop dividing people along ridiculous lines.

To answer your question, it takes no feminists to screw in a light bulb because they will lobby the government to make some man do it for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Babbage may have written programs for his Analytical Engine while he was building it.. so that makes him the first computer engineer, but I think the term "programmer" implies that someone specializes in writing "client" instructions for machines - thus, it is still valid to say that Lovelace was the first programmer.

<comment><USER3> That seems like a nonsensical argument. Babbage's preserved notebooks which Plan 28 is studying clearly show Babbage designing the machine and instruction set (both of which changed over time) with specific programs in mind. There are even programs on punched card that he prepared. He clearly was programming.

Also, given that there was never an Analytical Engine built no one was a programmer in the sense of being a third-party who merely prepares programs for the machine rather than being involved in its design. The only way Lovelace could have prepared programs was if she was intimate with the design of the machine.

The design of machines and their programming going hand in hand was extremely common in the early days of computing. Just read about the IAS machine that von Neumann worked on, or Turing's design of the ACE. This was natural because they would have programs in mind when designing the instruction set (see, for example, the fact that the Pilot ACE had floating point because the designers knew what they were going to use it for).</comment></comment>