What the first web blackout looked like, 17 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://old.cdt.org/speech/cda/960203_48hrs_alert.html <comment><USER2> This was to protest President Clinton's signing of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The indecency provisions of the act were struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional the following year. Additional legal challenges took ten more years to come to fruition. More detail welcome in the comments on HN.

<comment><USER3> A good place to learn more about this chapter of the battles for online free speech is the Wikipedia article:

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

Well, except during the upcoming blackout period.

<comment><USER4> Or, during the blackout period: <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act>

<comment><USER5> Or just press escape while the page is loading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The CDA was later struck down by the supreme court, thanks to a challenge by the ACLU: <http://epic.org/free_speech/cda/>

<comment><USER7> Keep in mind that was before the Roberts Supreme Court, who had just recently declared Corporate Money == Speech (via Citizens United case).

If SOPA passes, I hold out very little hope that this Supreme Court will do much of anything to ameliorate it .

<comment><USER8> A court that takes a free speech absolutist position in one case is more likely to protect other forms of speech, not less. I'm an extreme civil libertarian and I strongly supported the Citizens United ruling.

<comment><USER9> There's no constitutional reason that the bill of rights should extend automatically to corporations (nor to robots or inanimate objects, for that matter). I'd be suspicious of any court using a first amendment argument to protect corporate interests.

<comment><USER10> If I have free speech rights, and if you have free speech rights, why should we not have free speech rights if we form a corporation and speak with one (amplified) voice?

<comment><USER11> Do you also believe that non-profits and churches should be able to freely lobby? Currently both are severely curtailed in their political speech, unlike for-profit corporations. This is why there are two ACLU organizations: [http://www.aclu.org/american-civil-liberties-union-and- aclu-...](http://www.aclu.org/american-civil-liberties-union-and-aclu- foundation-what-difference)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ouch, I feel old now. Here's the .signature I used at the time, featuring an encoded bit of anti-CDA, presumably illegal under CDA profanity.

        #!/usr/bin/perl -pl-                                     ,,ep) ayf >|)nj,,
        $_=reverse lc$_;s@"@''@g;y/[]{A-U}<>()a-y1-9,!.?`'/][} #         Joey Hess
        {><)(eq)paj6y!fk7wuodbjsfn^mxhl2Eh59L86`i'%,/;s@k@>|@g #  firstname.lastname@example.com

(Flips text upside down.. we didn't have unicode then..)

<comment><USER13> Yeah... who else thought, "Wow, 17 years ago... that was in the 80s" before realizing that there was no web to black out then?

I feel like an old, old, man.

<comment><USER14> Seventeen years ago is 1995.

<comment><USER13> Indeed... my intention was to say that it _feels_ like seventeen years ago should be in the 80s. Thanks for letting me know it didn't come across :-P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As one of the participants, I remember this well. It was the first time there was a major action from pretty much all large web sites on the internet.

iWorld (later known as internet.com) became part of the blackout and, at the time, we were one of the most trafficked sites so it was a big deal to convince the company that owned us (the company was Mecklermedia and was publicly traded) that this was a good move and that it made sense.

The blackout the web day was not the end but the beginning of the fight over the CDA. It eventually took some work but the challenge made it to the Supreme Court (the case was called ACLU vs. Reno) and it helped expand first amendment speech protection to the internet.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was too young at the time to be aware of this blackout, but I am grateful to the ones that protested this bill. The internet would not have been the same if people are scared to express their ideas/opinions/arts.

I wonder about the world we would be in if the bill had passed as it was presented.

<comment><USER3> It did pass and was signed into law.

Through a combination of people ignoring it, and the Supreme Court eventually knocking the worst part down, it wound up 'mostly harmless'.

Not every battle has to be won via a vote in the legislature.

<comment><USER15> Part of the reason it passed is that it was an amendment to the Telecommunications Reform Act, the biggest change in telecommunication regulation in the last 1/2 century so no matter what we did, it was bound to pass then.

Being involved in fighting it was a whole education in how Washington works and part of the reason I suspect we're going to have to continue fighting SOPA/PIPA for a long time to come, even if it's on the back burner right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I find most interesting is the line about knowing when to switch to black: "You can also just watch CNN; they'll announce the signing of the bill."

When was the last time you saw CNN covering bill signings?

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember placing a blue ribbon on my homepage, which was in response to this act [1]. My 9600 baud modem wasn't on-line every day, I had to pester my parents to be able to dial in - so I must have missed the black out.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ribbon_Online_Free_Speech_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ribbon_Online_Free_Speech_Campaign)

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh my god--I remember this. It's biggest legacy was that a lot of people realized they really liked black backgrounds on their web pages and left the that way. A new era in front end design was born. (But they didn't call it front end back then)

</comment><comment><USER20> One takeaway should be just how absurd the communications decency act seems given the modern reality of the internet.

This was a law written by people profoundly out of touch with the way the world was moving.

I think it should have lessons for our current struggle against the current COPA and PIPA bills, which are campaigned for, drafted, and promoted by people who have a similar disconnect with the future of information.

</comment><comment><USER21> A post-mortem: [http://web.archive.org/web/19980121045936/http://www.bababoo...](http://web.archive.org/web/19980121045936/http://www.bababooey.com/monkey/study.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> The best part of this was the concept of banding together as group of "thousands" in this blackout. As of 2007 (the latest numbers I could easily find), Wikipedia as a whole has > 2500 views per second. Of course, the English Wikipedia is the only one being blacked out as far as I know, but I expect it also is a large portion of that 2500 views/second.

And that's just Wikipedia! Seems to me that a few more people will be affected this time around.

</comment><comment><USER23> Er, 2012 - 1996 = 16, not 17?

I feel old already. I don't want to get charged for the extra year.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow... what a blast from the past! I remember that time period well when we were all concerned about the CDA (and also the proposed Clipper Chip mandatory encryption). Thanks for posting this link to the past...

<comment><USER25> The Clipper Chip fiasco was mandatory key escrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It will be interesting to see the difference, in terms of impact, between a blackout of the very nascent web of 1996 and of the very powerful web of 2012.

</comment><comment><USER27> May be this is a dumb question, cant the universities participate in blackout?

<comment><USER28> For most public universities, I'm pretty sure it would be against the law to willingly take down services. Of course, this doesn't mean students and professors couldn't participate by taking down their sites or protesting.

<comment><USER29> Here's John Baez doing just that. <http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Tangential, but I miss well-formatted monospace 80-column emails.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was the first web blackout on record, taking place 17 years ago to protest the Communications Decency Act.

</comment><comment><USER31> great flashback, all it's missing is a few <blink>'s

<comment><USER32> Or a big <marquee>; can you believe that it still works in Google Chrome? (but still just as smooth)

<comment><USER15> The <marquee> tag didn't exist yet :)</comment></comment></comment>


What do people want? How do I find out what people want? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I just started a blog called "Bad Idea a Day" (it's at that .com, but I'm not trying to advertise it). I force myself to think of a product, story, lifehack, or any idea each morning.

It's just for fun and mental practice. But so far I like my ideas, and I'm already talking to a designer about possibly turning one idea into a product.

You could do the same with a blog, Tumblr, or Twitter account named "What people want." Every morning, think of something people want. Do it again at lunch. Do it again at dinner.

Make the account private if you want, but I recommend putting ideas up in public. You're more likely to find a partner and willing free advice than to get your idea stolen.

<comment><USER3> I don't think forcing yourself to come up with an idea is particularly the best way of going about it. Some of my best ideas have spawned out of pure stream of consciousness. I think by doing what you do, you turn coming up with ideas into a task that you limit yourself to doing only several times a day. Morning or lunch shouldn't just be 'idea time.' Your whole life, your experiences, your interactions should be 'idea time.'

<comment><USER2> But if you're coming up with zero ideas, adding three a day is an improvement. What you call "forcing yourself," I call every writers' room and recording artist contract.

I didn't write much good material until Valleywag made me write twelve blog posts a day. Only three or four were really good -- but that's three or four more good posts a day than I was turning out before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like to ask myself what I can develop that will make someone's job obsolete. I haven't implemented any of these ideas yet, but it seems like a good way to find something that should be made. If a robot or computer can do it, why shouldn't it?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Paul says: "Make something people want." I have read all his essays and especially like the one about million $ ideas.

I want to make something people want, but I don't know what they want. How do I find out what people want?

What do you want? and Paul anything you think people want?

<comment><USER5> Start with what you want. That's what Woz did, and Larry and Sergey. If you can't find an idea there, look for things friends and family want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice Paul.</comment></comment></comment>


Programmers and Managers (1977) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/programmersmanag00kraf <comment><AUTHOR> I've been going through some literature on the management of programmers and software engineers. This text stands out by far, both for its unique attention to programmers, and in the framework guiding the author's study.

It fascinates me how much remains familiar, despite the radical changes that have taken place in computing and software development over the last half century.</comment>


Dopamine Cells Influence Our Perception of Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.simonsfoundation.org/features/foundation-news/scgb-news/dopamine-cells-influence-our-perception-of-time/ <comment><USER2> There is another article trending right now about increased Dopamine in the shower causing your executive functions to diminish and allows for increased creativity.

Seems like you could extrapolate that dopamine has a direct inverse correlation to executive functions in the brain. I'd go so far as to use New York and Silicon Valley as good examples of increased executive function and increased creativity, respectively.

I'd also relate this to the certain side-effects of Adderall, increased Dopamine causing a loss of time awareness and higher creativity, but the increase in your sympathetic nervous system causes the increased focus and awareness. Almost a best of both worlds, besides the likely strain on the body from overworking both systems.

<comment><USER3> >causing a loss of time awareness and higher creativity

whatever you're doing when you take adderall, you'll be doing for the next 12 hours before you realize how much time has past.

<comment><USER4> I wish there was a legal way to try Adderall. It's not even legal in Australia by prescription, and since I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, there's basically no chance I'll ever even get try the similar dextroamphetamine.

I'd love to see what effect it had on my focus and productivity. I've had a few amazing days before, but they're few and far between. Being able to switch that on with a careful controlled dose would be fascinating and useful.

<comment><USER3> Adderall is basically mixed dextroamphetamine salts, there isn't a big difference between generic dextroamphetmine salts and Adderall despite what the drug manufacturer likes to say.

the new hotness is lisdexamfetamine, which is just dextroamphetamine bound to lysine, making it a prodrug as your liver needs to cleave the lysine off first. reduces abuse potential.

I wouldn't lose hope, though. You might as well lose hope if you mean free and clear legal access to dextroamphetamine.

but, there are illegal options if you want to get an idea of what it's like.

I'm not recommending you go buy street amphetamine, I'm not even sure what street amphetamine is like in Australia.

you might have access to methamphetamine instead of amphetamine sulfate which can come as paste or powder as opposed to crystalline chunks/powder like methamphetamine tends to be, it's a regional difference.

The point is you could, theoretically and hypothetically speaking, acquire street amphetamine + a 20 dollar milligram scale.

weigh out and try a low dose (~20mg, orally) after breakfast first thing in the morning to experience the similar effects to those that dextroamphetamine would give you.

Would it be legal? No. Theoretically though, people use the internet itself to acquire these things, cutting out a lot of the risk that comes with buying drugs the more traditional way.

That's just a theory of mine, though. Hypothetically speaking. Allegedly bitcoin and secondary wallets are involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused. Is this saying that you would expect to experience "time flies" with high or low dopamine?

Otherwise, holy shit. Confirmation bias is likely in play, but this sounds an awful lot like my experience of daily life. Slow time, difficultly with delayed gratification, strong desire to repeat situations/actions that resulted in successes.

<comment><USER6> "When dopamine activity was high, the animal was more likely to judge an interval as short, and vice versa."

<comment><USER7> Also explains why we are miserable. When we are having a good time, time flies. When we are not time slows down. It's as if our brain is wired to fast- forward the good parts and play the bad parts in slow motion so I guess we have time to deal with them. It wired to perform, not wired to enjoy.

<comment><USER8> Put a different way, it would seem the brain might make the good times something you want to repeat and make you avoid bad times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Umm .. there's no such thing as dopamine cells. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter and neurons which activate on dopamine are called dopamine receptors. You can argue that neurons are a type of cell, but thats how far you can stretch it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Time flies when you're having fun.

<comment><USER11> ...or taking methamphetamines?

<comment><USER12> Isn't that the reverse?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was an article earlier this week on HN about the effects of stimulants on Chess Ability that was oddly consistent with this: [https://worldchess.com/2017/01/25/special-report-new- study-f...](https://worldchess.com/2017/01/25/special-report-new-study-finds- performance-enhancing-drugs-for-chess/)

In particular, players would tend to lose on time more often when taking stimulants. When framed from the perspective of this article, that effect becomes "obvious".

</comment><comment><USER14> There's also the thought that depression causes people to experience time dilation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Depression)

</comment><comment><USER15> Did they take this cell image from Project Discovery in Eve Online? Or are these actual cell photographs, since Project Discovery is based on identifying actual cells & uploading it to scientists.

</comment><comment><USER16> LSD heavily interacts with many neurotransmitters, including dopamine (particularly the D2 receptor). Is it possible its unusual time distortion is related?

</comment><comment><USER17> So this (finally?) explains the reason why (most) drugs affect perception of time</comment>


50 years of bad grammar advice - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm

<comment><USER2> Pullum makes some good points -- his objection to the irrelevant distinction between 'that' and 'which' is apt -- but I believe that his starkly opinionated denunciation reeks of silly academic spleen and ultimately mischaracterizes this concise, helpful, and even beautiful little book.

First, although Pullum inveighs against Strunk and White, he tends to direct his barbs not toward the book itself, but toward writing teachers. For example:

"Sadly, writing tutors tend to ignore this moderation, and simply red-circle everything that looks like a passive...."

This mode of criticism is rather like blaming the Bible for the sins of the Inquisition -- you can do it, but your criticism falters right away by missing the true target.

Where Pullum does criticize the book itself, he accuses it of harboring a fussy and decontextualized view of language. Unfortunately, this very criticism can be directed back at Pullum. For example, when he criticizes the absence of a passive verb in this sentence:

"There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground",

Pullum ignores Strunk and White's elegant and concise rephrase:

"Dead leaves covered the ground."

Here, "covered", an active, transitive verb taking the direct object "ground", conveys vividly what the verbose and pale construction "were lying", coupled with the prepositional phrase "on the ground", does not. Pullum's fussiness about the meaning of the word "passive" obscures S&W's point: vividness and brevity come together nicely in the active construction.

Pullum falls into an abyss of self-contradiction when he concludes Strunk and White do not understand grammar:

"But despite the "Style" in the title, much in the book relates to grammar, and the advice on that topic does real damage. It is atrocious. Since today it provides just about all of the grammar instruction most Americans ever get, that is something of a tragedy."

Once again Pullum faults The Elements for the sins of its followers, not for its own qualities. But what is most important here is that Pullum first argues (implausibly) that The Elements is a grammar book, and then (incomprehensibly) accuses S&W of having written about grammar when they should have confined themselves to writing about style!

Finally, Pullum uncharitably criticizes The Elements as a "bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions." He ignores the fact that S&W explicitly recommend that writers "Put statements in positive form" (section II.19), and follow through on this prescription themselves when they recommend such practices as: "Use definite, specific, concrete language," "Keep related words together," and "Omit needless words."

(Pullum criticizes this last recommendation on the ground that it unhelpfully fails to show which words are needless. Once again, Pullum fails to cite S&W's paragraph-long discussion of the matter or to recognize that they offer over a dozen illustrative examples.)

To be sure, the Elements is not a perfect book. For one thing, language is not a static object admitting of a timeless description. Furthermore, I would not argue that everyone should use The Elements as guiding light; "de gustibus non disputandum," as Cicero said, about tastes there can be no argument (meaning that tastes do not admit of rational arguments). So if you don't like the book, fine. Still, Pullum's blinkered mischaracterization of the book serves only to get him another publication in his CV, not to enlighten his readership. Although I may be blinkered myself by having grown to love this book in college, I wholeheartedly recommend it as one of the finest and most timeless style manuals available.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps it's just me, but I've always found the that/which distinction fairly clear and relevant. Consider the following two sentences:

1\. Don't eat the apples, which are rotten.

2\. Don't eat the apples that are rotten.

To me, the first one indicates that _all_ the apples are rotten, whereas the second only suggests that some are bad and directs me to be choosy.

Of course, I know better than to assume that everyone follows this rule to the letter, but I do make an effort to get it right myself (like a good protocol implementor: liberal with input, strict with output).

<comment><USER4> But you primed your first example with a disambiguating comma. A fairer comparison would be:

1\. Don't eat the apples which are rotten.

2\. Don't eat the applies that are rotten.

#2 sounds better to me (especially for spoken English) but the difference in meaning is not nearly as obvious.

<comment><USER5> I'd just say, "Don't eat the rotten apples." Or, "Don't eat the apples, they're rotten."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To pull something like this off convincingly, you have to write better than E. B. White, which is pretty hard to do.

      The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous
      esteem in which it is held by American college graduates.

Ug. What a clinker. He sounds like Hector Dexter.

And he's not even saying what he means to. Undergrads like the book too; surely he's not deliberately excluding them? He should have just written:

      The Elements of Style doesn't deserve its reputation.

<comment><USER7> He argues that Whites grammar advice is factually wrong, and uses examples from Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker to prove his point. That argument does not depend on whether Pullum himself is a better writer that White.

But FWIW I find the first sentence much more informative than the second.

<comment><USER6> I didn't say that his argument depends on it, just that it would be more convincing if he wrote well.

If he understands something important about writing that E. B. White didn't, he ought to be able to use that special insight to produce better results, much as someone who claimed to have discovered the secret of making money ought to be rich.

You're right that the first sentence is more informative. Among its other problems, it's _too_ informative. It's like saying that pi is 3.27394 rather than 3.14.

<comment><USER8> _You're right that the first sentence is more informative. Among its other problems, it's too informative. It's like saying that pi is 3.27394 rather than 3.14._

Judgement call. "Too" informative? Perhaps for people who prefer brief sentences. For god's sake, stay the hell away from Faulkner.

<comment><USER6> It's not a judgement call whether pi is closer to 3.27394 or 3.14. It's almost as certain Pullum didn't mean to exclude undergrads from his statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Many are useless, like "Omit needless words.""

Useless as instructions, perhaps, but highly useful as mantras. Much of writing is editing/refactoring, in which case it's great to repeat to yourself "omit needless words", "Be clear", and "Do not explain too much" as you do it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I credit the article for giving me cause to celebrate on this 16th, but all past its thirteenth word is trash. The Elements of Style is an elegant book that has improved both my writing and my programming. It will improve yours. It would improve Pullum's, if he ever bothers to read it.

The meat isn't in the titles but rather in the content, the examples, and the writing itself. "Do not inject _irrelevant_ opinion" makes a poor title. So too does "Be alert for those needless words that you're bound to write". The titles are just reminders. Don't read just the titles. Read the whole book.

The 4 sentences mentioned are not examples of passives. They are examples of "there is" and "could be X" expressions that should be converted into a forceful active voice. Read the book carefully.

Criticisms of teachers and universities are irrelevant. How often do students read their texts carefully? Yet the book is short and clear. Don't get a second-hand account - not from a teacher, not from a friend, not from me, and certainly not from [this ignorant pedant] Pullum. Read the book yourself.

The book is a wonderful reference, too. Buy or borrow it and read it. Read it three times.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. In the reaction to this article, I see a lot of people betray their emotional angst when their shibboleths are threatened.

<comment><USER10> Angst is an emotion, so I'm not sure what you're saying. I think you're calling the responses overblown in a fancy and covertly insulting way. You'd be annoyed too if a carelessly inaccurate article caused people to avoid Lisp or Why's Guide or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author is a regular contributor the the Language Log (recommended).

<http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Quote from the article:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

"What concerns me is that the bias against the passive is being retailed by a pair of authors so grammatically clueless that they don't know what is a passive construction and what isn't. Of the four pairs of examples offered to show readers what to avoid and how to correct it, a staggering three out of the four are mistaken diagnoses. "At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard" is correctly identified as a passive clause, but the other three are all errors:

"There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground" has no sign of the passive in it anywhere."

What they wrote in the book:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

(section called "Use the active voice", after examples of passive voice)

The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative principally concerned with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for such perfunctory expression as there is, or could be heard.

       There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground.

       Dead leaves covered the ground.

(link: <http://tinyurl.com/cpnsxd>)

Quote:

\</comment><comment>

"And then, in the very next sentence, comes a negative passive clause containing three adjectives: "The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place."

That's actually not just three strikes, it's four, because in addition to contravening "positive form" and "active voice" and "nouns and verbs," it has a relative clause ("that can pull") removed from what it belongs with (the adjective), which violates another edict: "Keep related words together."

...

"Keep related words together" is further explained in these terms: "The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning." That is a negative passive, containing an adjective, with the subject separated from the principal verb by a phrase ("as a rule") that could easily have been transferred to the beginning. Another quadruple violation.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Exactly! That's the beauty of Strunk & White -- and here I link to John Gruber: [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/03/24/language-log- str...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/03/24/language-log-strunk-and- white)

The critic just doesn't get it.

Quote:

\</comment><comment>

Simple experiments (which students could perform for themselves using downloaded classic texts from sources like <http://gutenberg.org>) show that Strunk and White preferred to base their grammar claims on intuition and prejudice rather than established literary usage.

Consider the explicit instruction: "With none, use the singular verb when the word means 'no one' or 'not one.'" Is this a rule to be trusted? Let's investigate.

* Try searching the script of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) for "none of us." There is one example of it as a subject: "None of us are perfect" (spoken by the learned Dr. Chasuble). It has plural agreement.

* Download and search Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). It contains no cases of "none of us" with singular-inflected verbs, but one that takes the plural ("I think that none of us were surprised when we were asked to see Mrs. Harker a little before the time of sunset").

* Examine the text of Lucy Maud Montgomery's popular novel Anne of Avonlea (1909). There are no singular examples, but one with the plural ("None of us ever do").

\</comment><comment>

My Russian language teacher said (Russian is my native language): don't try to write like the one who is a master in language that ignores the rules -- rules are not for them. They are for you until you master the language.

Quote:

\</comment><comment>

Geoffrey K. Pullum is head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh and co-author (with Rodney Huddleston) of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

\-----

Ah, OK. That's the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. (No, seriously, British English is different from... sorry, different than American English.)

<comment><USER4> _don't try to write like the one who is a master in language that ignores the rules_

Who says S&W is "the rules"? When Mark Twain begins a sentence with "However" or Oscar Wilde says "none of us are", those are hardly avant-garde artistic leaps.

 _British English is different from... sorry, different than American English._

Which points of Pullum's critique, exactly, do you claim fail to apply to American English?

p.s. Your comment is so verbose that it ruins the readability of this entire thread.

<comment><USER13> _Who says S &W is "the rules"?_

This is a difficult question. As far as I know, there is no organization that defines rules for English language. Unlike, for example, Russian language that has rules defined by the State Academy of Sciences. "Rules" and words for English language are stated de facto -- e.g. Oxford dictionary has "blog", while in Russia we still argue about "coffee" (is it "he", like official rules say, or "it", like people say?).

Since there are no official rules for English, here I suppose that S&W is a commonsense summary of what good English is.

 _Which points of Pullum's critique, exactly, do you claim fail to apply to American English?_

Um... That was a joke.

Sorry about readability, I had to do that "what he wrote/what it really is" thing to get readers some context.

<comment><USER4> _here I suppose that S &W is a commonsense summary of what good English is_

Exactly, which makes your defense of it entirely circular.

<comment><USER13> Yes and no. I didn't argue about the language in my comment (since I'm not a native speaker). My first point is about words taken out of context. My second point is about joke in S&W. My third point is about this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557978>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> His grammar book is $161.42 - ouch! I bought the 50th S&W Elements. It is a nice little volume and has some good advice in it. There are certainly better style guides out there - no doubt. It's a guide, not a 6lb 1860 page grammar bible.

</comment><comment><USER15> Summary: Strunk and White are grammatical incompetents.

Nonsense.

<comment><USER4> Pullum's article is so thoroughly substantiated that your comment suggests you didn't read it.

It explains things that have bugged me for years. Where did I get these vague ideas about split infinitives, beginning sentences with "However", and "which" vs. "that"? Answer: through hand-me-down versions of Strunk and White, who turn out to have been just plain wrong.

My sense of my own native language just got clearer.

Edit: it's possible that the harm was done more by over-rigid promulgation of S&W's rules than by S&W itself, but I still think that Pullum's phrase "unhappy state of grammatical angst" hits the nail on the head.

<comment><USER16> _Where did I get these vague ideas about split infinitives, beginning sentences with "However", and "which" vs. "that"? Answer: through hand-me-down versions of Strunk and White, who turn out to have been just plain wrong._

Actually, many of those bugaboos of English teachers in schools long precede the publication of Strunk's book as edited by White. Strunk would have learned his hang-ups from teachers who mindlessly passed on hang-ups they learned from still earlier teachers.</comment></comment></comment>


Greece 'Nearly Insolvent,' Bailout Won't Work: Roubini - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/36834215

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope we are not in for what played out when Lehman fell in 08, but now on a sovereign scale</comment>


German police raid homes over Facebook hate speech - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/13/12170590/facebook-hate-speech-germany-police-raid <comment><USER2> Europe is so progressive. Protecting the "social climate" of the people through censorship and raids.

<comment><USER3> What part of illegal did you not understand?

<comment><USER4> That's the whole point, it should not be illegal. Suppression of speech which does not explicitly advocate for violence is oppression. Plain and simple. You may disagree with the speech, it may be distasteful, hateful, or whatever, but no government should be allowed to oppress the free expression of ideas. You should have freedom of speech, not freedom from speech.

<comment><USER5> Freedom of speech to the extent that we have in the US is not very common. There are tons of laws in Germany specifically the limit free speech due to being very sensitive about Holocaust deniers and people who try to incite mass hatred.

Even Canadian free speech laws are much more limited than the US. See the ridiculous "twitter harassment case" from last year/early this year.

<comment><USER6> US freedom of speech in action: [https://theintercept.com/2016/07/12/after- dallas-shootings-p...](https://theintercept.com/2016/07/12/after-dallas- shootings-police-arrest-people-for-criticizing-cops-on-facebook-and-twitter/)

<comment><USER5> Three of those were people directly and clearly threatening to kill a police officer. A fourth one was saying she'd kill a police officer if she was pulled over, and got a "disorderly conduct" charge which may very well get thrown out. She was arrested and immediately released.

Freedom of speech is working fine aside from NSLs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Words are messages, and government always reserves the right to punish the use of some messages, and prevent them. And in this, it is a matter of degree, not kind.

For hate speech in Germany, I firmly believe that the story should not end at "police raids" but rather at "and the neo-nazi was adopted by Syrian immigrants and shown great love and compassion, and he fell in love with a nice Syrian girl and they will be married in the fall." But that has more to do with what the punishment is.

While I'm against hate speech laws in general because of the withering slippery-slope argument, Germany really is a special case because of the holocaust.

Last but not least, this news article implies that _we are being monitored_. We might not trigger visible action, or any action, but our messages are running a gauntlet of predicates that, if any flip to "true" will get human eyeballs on our messages, which may yield humans wielding guns in our living rooms. Such is life.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just a reminder that we are the only country with the first amendment and a constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.

<comment><USER9> Not true. Germany does in fact have a constitutional right to free speech.

>Freedom of expression is granted by Article 5 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, which also states that there is no censorship and freedom of expression that may be limited by law.

The US is in fact the only developed country that has no laws banning hate speech, including no legal recourse for outright lies like Holocaust denial.

<comment><USER10> "Free speech, except..." isn't free speech, no matter how well-intentioned it may be.

<comment><USER11> Then Free Speech doesn't exist anywhere in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem I see with this is: how do they know someone is who they claim to be on Facebook? There's no indication in the article that they collaborated with Facebook and an ISP to link a user's post with their (possibly dynamic) IP address and home address. There's a big leap from "it appears someone posted hate speech using your facebook account" to "you are guilty of posting hate speech on facebook".

<comment><USER13> Facebook is readily complying with all of this, as they do in all countries with similar government censorship. They even gave a private company working for the German government access to delete Facebook posts as they see fit.

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/15/9329119/facebook- germany-h...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/15/9329119/facebook-germany-hate- speech-xenophobia-migrant-refugee)

[http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Facebook- Hasskommenta...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Facebook- Hasskommentare-werden-nun-in-Deutschland-geprueft-3071824.html) (German)

It's not too far-fetched to assume that they have access to IPs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the German newspapers I read it was reported that the statements in question were actual calls for violence, not merely hate speech (I guess "kill all xyz" vs "xyz are evil").

So the police statement is rather misleading. To be sure, some official institutions have been involved in questionable campaigns against "hate speech" recently, so perhaps they wanted to show that they are making progress. It seems likely to me that the raid was actually about real illegal activities, rather than hateful opinions.

I think even in the US calling for somebodies death is not really protected by "free speech"?

Nevertheless it is worrying that official institutions lent their name to the questionable campaign against hate speech. (Questionable because it was initiated by several people with a track record of hate speech, and because it seems to be designed to simply silence unwelcome opinions, as hate speech is not clearly defined by the campaigners).

</comment><comment><USER15> Hard to judge this without knowing specifically what was said, but it doesn't seem great.

I don't believe that government forces should enter peoples homes and imprison them for expressing their opposition to immigration, which could easily be cast as "xenophobia".

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra > Operation targeted 60 people accused of posting far-right content to a > private Facebook group

Does "private" Facebook means what I think it means? I.e. outsiders won't see this at all? What's the problem there then? Next time they'll raid my bedroom because they don't like what goes on there?

> most of the suspects were accused of posting... xenophobic... messages

What's wrong in being xenophobic, from moral perspective? Is it now a requirement for me to avoid feeling emotions against people who I don't approve?

> "strong rise in verbal radicalism"

It's definitely easier to combat verbal xenophobes than real terrorists. First of all, they don't shoot back at you.

</comment><comment><USER16> > In its press release, the BKA said that the operation carried out this week > aims to combat a "strong rise in verbal radicalism."

Raiding homes of people posting stupid private shit on the internet is also great way to get more physical radicalism.

<comment><USER17> It is more than stupid shit, it is illegal stupid shit. Please read (edit: replaced, was "the") the German legal code. From your argument it would be better not to pursue crime just because you _might_ "(to) get more physical radicalism"? That is clearly not justice.

<comment><USER18> That's right. If it's the law then it must be right. It's a simple way of thinking that has worked out very well in many situations.

Meanwhile: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela- merkel-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela-merkel- agrees-prosecution-comedian-erdogan-poem)

<comment><USER17> You forget that in Germany we have "Gewaltenteilung", meaning that legislation, judiciary and executive are separated. This is a concept that is fundamental to our country and culture. If the law is not okay it is not in the power of the executive to change, not enforce or bend it. There is a separate process for it that must be invoked. (In this case) there seems to be no critical mass that calls for changing this particular law. And you can rest assured that we have a very active public discussion about changes to the criminal code right now, with thousands of people actively participating. As you might be better informed the me, could you please cite at least one instance of what these people or people in similar cases said/wrote that should NOT the punishable, but is under current law?

 _edit_ : citing the decision to allow prosecution of Böhmermann reveals how little you understand the German legal system. The article is misleading at best and not covering the legal grounds and background correctly at all.

<comment><USER17> @frabbit exactly, but they did NOT yell "fire" but "open fire on the immigrants" (literally: in one instance the comment was posted beneath a picture of a immigrant child "you need a flamethrower to get rid of these bugs", with bugs might not be the best translation here) posted besides Nazi symbols.

At least for me, this makes a difference.

 _edit_ : I am going out on a limb here, but I thought exactly this was one of the purposes of RICO. Telling someone to commit a crime in a formed group is a crime and not free speech. I am a total amateur in US criminal code, is this understanding correct?

<comment><USER18> You are correct. Legal codes in many countries criminalize the act of speech itself.

This even goes all the way back to the concept of "assault" in anglo-saxon legal traditions[1] (which is the simple threat part of the pair "assault and battery". Many of us use "assault" to mean a physical attack, but it seems originally to be simply causing someone to fear.)

Again, though, you are arguing that because something is the law then that in itself makes it moral and useful.

Those who make slippery-slope arguments about the vesting of power in the state seem increasingly persuasive when we see the turning of the act of speaking into a crime itself. For further examples of "European" countries which illustrate the dangers you could look at Ireland's blasphemy laws which still stand.

1\. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/assault](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/assault)

<comment><USER17> I don't necessarily argue that everything is right because it is the law, I argue that THIS exact law is right. It might not be for you, but it is for me. And seemingly not only for.me, but for a lot of people in this country. Otherwise there would be a (stronger) opposition to this law. I think we might have to recognize that the German culture is different from yours (US I suppose it is) and that we simply cannot expect to agree on everything. This might be because we are grown up in the system that protects us both adequately and we therefore think it is the best one, only because it is a adequate one. This goes both ways, e.g. you are right to think your system is better while I am right to think ours is. And exactly that tolerance is what I would like to not only see but DEMAND from other people. And I believe this exact law is right in a way that it makes it harder for people that don't recognize that all people are created and to be treated equal to express and propagate their beliefs. I think you could even find a similar or maybe exact same argument for your position. I respect that but hope you have other ways to ensure no one creates a climate of fear, hatred and violence (physical and non-physical) against people that are different. This law will not be everything the German culture sets against that climate but is one piece of our puzzle.

<comment><USER18> > you are right to think your system is better while I am right to think ours > is. And exactly that tolerance is what I would like to not only see but > DEMAND from other people.

I am not interested in the personalization of the argument or grounding it in lived experience of any sort.

Objectively the system which you extoll results in censorship, in this case of criticism of a near-dictator involved in genocide against the Kurdish people.

I believe that enabling a state to censor what people can say is dangerous to democracy. I think this is adequately demonstrated through numerous historical and current examples.

Your statement of "tolerance" is meaningless because you will be unaware of other viewpoints of which you must be tolerant when they are censored.

Ironically as this discussion is deemed offensive to the moderators of HN this entire discussion has been effaced.

<comment><USER17> I can't follow. How is this incident related to any genocide, dictatorship, erdogan... what?

I have the feeling you are just cherry picking this to troll on and not interested in talking about the different dogmatics of legal systems. I didn't want to personalize the discussion, just replace "you" and "me" with "any person from your belief system" and "any person from my belief system". It looks to me that you are not interested in thinking about other people's opinion and/or belief system. Now THAT was a personal remark.

<comment><USER18> > I can't follow. How is this incident related to any genocide, dictatorship, > erdogan... what?

Really? So, you can't see the link between the German state's power to choose which speech acts can be punished and the punishing of someone for speech acts?

You cannot see the link between the Turkish bombing and starving of the Kurdish people and the historical assaults by your own country on minority populations?

I am not going to reply any more to you as you have descended to personalized abuse, but I will close with thanking you for illustrating exactly why the policing of free speech can never be allowed: there are too many people like you who are incapable of exercising tolerance and rationality, and once a lever of power and control is in your hands you will pull it.

Thank you, and god bless the USA.

<comment><USER17> "The German state" is a construct in form of a _organization_. The people who decide are forming the _structure_ of this organization. The concrete people who are deciding who is punished are _judges_. As I already stated in this discussion, we employ "Gewaltenteilung" to separate judiciary, execute and legislative. So "the state" is not able to punish anybody, it is people who punish. And they do by the rules that are set for the judiciary, which are made by the legislative and carried out by the executive. The executive has a different set of rules than the legislative and they have a different set then the judiciary. These different sets of rules are each a corrective for potential abuse of power. There is no "state" punishing anybody, it is a set of rules made by people, carried out by people, watched by people. For somebody who broadcasts that free speech is the Holy grail you act like you don't tolerate no opinion besides your own. You're basically a fanatic and revealed your own colors.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What platforms do you see having the best code longevity in 20 years? - <AUTHOR> My dad wrote some engineering cost estimation software for excel in VB 20 years ago and it's still in use and working today in current versions of excel. I find this pretty cool that his code written so long ago is still useful.
Besides Java and .Net,  what platforms do you think will have the most longevity, relevance, and interoperability decades from now?
What languages and programs do you think will still work on systems (with the future version of their VMs and interpreters) without needing to refactor.
The volatility I've seen from most languages is difficult to contend with. Even a project written 5 years ago can be a huge pain to get running on a current OS with current packages. Three examples of subsequent versions breaking compatibility with existing code: Jquery, Angular.js and ColdFusion. <comment><USER2> C++ on Windows. And only because Microsoft always changes things slowly and with backwards compatibility. Even a sudden shift like the Modern UI didn't change the backend. It's more or less the same since Windows XP.

Apple always moves fast and discards old concepts. If you don't keep up, you quickly become irrelevant. Linux is stable, but unpredictable. It's always the flavor of the month. And the lack of unification means that it's hard to fully support all distros in the present. Never mind the future.

And the web is changing faster than I change my phone or laptop. It's probably heading towards a fast and messy death. Maybe it's just me. But web apps and sites are just begging for a revolution.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The main thing working against C++ is that bugs in the software, which (by luck) have no bad effects, might behave differently with new versions of the runtime. I think that Microsoft's SxS runtimes might even help that not happen either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any command line program that is compiled and plays by *nix's rules or by Win32's rules, in theory, should still be able to run in 20 years.

UI is always the sticky issue, it will almost always change, and the underlying api with it. Will iOS and Android stick with their apis and run times? They're just too new to say. The browser is, almost by definition, supposed to change.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's why my dad's software is still usable. the UI was simply an excel spreadsheet. Since spreadsheets haven't changed that much it continues to do its thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some Java code is rather remarkable for longevity. I also expect the core Unix and GNU tools to still be in use for decades at the least. The Linux kernel will also probably still be around in some form.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think java for sure ( not only in a Cobol way, but still strongly used) and well, most probably some evolution of javascript

</comment><comment><USER7> Scala. You get to leverage the JVM and existing Java libraries, without losing access to modern language features like type inference, for comprehensions, typeclasses, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Scala is awesome and I love the idea of multiparadigm programming languages but I've read quite a lot about scala's compiler being nearly impossible to maintain due to its complexity. This means future changes in all likelihood WILL break old code like they did before in the 1.7-1.8 migration. That plus the fact that there is no binary compatibility between major versions probably makes Scala the best Anti example for what I was asking.

<comment><USER8> The Scala team has a large test suite and compiles against more than a million lines of code from published Scala code bases in the wild on regular intervals.

They also guarantee that if something compiles against a major version without deprecation warnings it will also compile against the next major version.

The only difference with Java is that Scala developers actually deal with deprecated things instead of letting them accumulate with every release and that binary artifacts are forward compatible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Go

</comment><comment><USER10> Wordpress will never die.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could see that being around for a while. but do old projects actually work on the latest version of the platform?

<comment><USER3> Breaking changes used to be the norm. These days, I think it's less likely, but no way it stays that way for 20 years.</comment></comment></comment>


What every founder should know about designers - <AUTHOR> https://scoutzie.com/blog/what-every-founder-should-know-about-designers/

<comment><USER2> "the best designers wouldn't dare having anything less than a gorgeous site."

LOL!!

This is the type of advice you get when you have marketers writing articles about how to hire "top" designers.

Most of the successful guys I know are WAY too busy to worry about having a gorgeous website. Some of the best designers I know use a Tumblr blog. One busy friend of mine hasn't even bothered to change his default wordpress theme.

There are many amazing designers that get their work purely through word of mouth. Websites are only really useful if you need work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Much of this advice is terrible for a startup.

A client-services model isn't a good fit for a startup, due to the iterative nature of a product in search of a business model. The entire article implies a waterfall approach where a designer goes into a cave, does some work and presents it for "review".

Instead, a good "startup designer" will be an empathetic generalist (UI/IA/Front-end) with good market sense. It's important that they're comfortable skipping a lot of "design process" and rapidly iterating with engineering (their "familiarity with flat design" notwithstanding).

Also, many great designers don't have portfolios. That's because they're busy doing real work. Ask to see real work.

Despite the linked article, if you're early stage you should go unicorn hunting. It's critical to hire from the A-list for the inaugural team.

<comment><USER4> > Also, many great designers don't have portfolios. That's because they're > busy doing real work. Ask to see real work.

A great designer will always have a portfolio...its essentially their CV. Asking to see real work is quite difficult if that work is proprietary.

<comment><USER3> By portfolio, I mean a fancy, well-manicured site that shows static mocks. I'd rather see a real product. Coincidentally, the two people I've given offers to in the past month were the only two we interviewed who didn't have portfolio sites.

<comment><USER4> If they are trained designers, they'll have portfolios with some amount of intermediate work, not just static websites, but maybe wireframes, graphic design output, storyboards, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just an ad for scoutzie. I've never heard of them and I'm sure the "top designers from around the world" haven't either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, they have. Freelancing isn't everyone's cup of tea, and sure, when you can grab 100k+ for a project, you don't need to be listed on a website, but we have quite a few really stellar individuals.

Don't hate, appreciate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great advice for finding a decorator — someone who slaps a coat of paint on a wireframe or draws a pretty logo.

Startups should hire a Product Designer. A generalist who can execute on product vision, interactions, and aesthetics. Someone who can hold the whole picture in their head and help mould it into something great.</comment>


Should Facebook police thought? – reflecting on the leak of its rulebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/should-facebook-police-thought-reflecting-on-the-leak-of-its-rulebook <comment><USER2> Unless they can effectively manage fake accounts used by third parties to disseminate psychological manipulation on sections of the world's populace, then yes, they should police it as much as possible. Facebook is not a necessity, but it is integrated into the world's social norms. We may as well call it its own country. And any country needs to have laws.

</comment><comment><USER3> FB obviously cannot police thought. They can police expression. That's a strawman if I ever saw one!</comment>


Thorium: the element that can power the world - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/11/07/thorium-power-everything/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedly

<comment><USER2> Tiny ubiquitous nuclear fueled power sources.

It'll be great! What could go wrong?</comment>


Has Google Killed the Need for Native Apps? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/theopriestley/2015/11/18/has-google-killed-the-need-for-native-apps/ <comment><USER2> For any app that can run as a web page, this model will work.

For apps where latency and responsiveness are important factors, locally installed and run apps will continue to rule.

Given how powerful and inexpensive microprocessors and GPUs have become, it makes no sense to go entirely to the thin client model. WebGL is a good example of a hybrid technology.</comment>


Israeli test-tube steak smells real, feels real… and may even be kosher - <AUTHOR> https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-test-tube-steak-smells-real-feels-real-and-may-even-be-kosher/ <comment><USER2> Looking forward to all the new cancers this will bring into the world</comment>


FB stock down to $27 dollars - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:FB?

<comment><USER2> I don't see any point on putting FB's stock value on HN everyday.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, as if it mattered. It's like checking today's weather to decide whether climatic change is true or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's getting to the point where we might as well just implement a feed of Facebook's stock price at the top of every HN page.</comment>


Is Kip Litton a Marathon Fraud? (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/06/120806fa_fact_singer?currentPage=1 <comment><USER2> Article from 2012. Yes, fraud. Done.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here we go again... (flagged)</comment>


Commercial Drone Rules to Limit Their Weight, Speed and Altitude - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/15/386464188/commercial-drone-rules-to-limit-their-speed-and-altitude?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews

<comment><USER2> "relatively benign"? These restrictions are terrible. Either the policy makers are being purposefully malign, or they have zero understanding of the progress currently taking place in automated transport.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not limit the use of drones with weapons all together?</comment>


Simple voxel explanation - <AUTHOR> Hi everione! Can someone explain to me how in the h<i></i> works a voxel engine?? I'm a razonable programmer, but if you could explain in details wold be great. Thank you! <comment><USER2> So, instead of dealing with flat triangles with get rasterized to picture elements (pixels), a voxel engine deals with volume elements (voxels).

The crudest form of this would be something like Minecraft, where the world is literally made out of cubes. More advanced work would be something like what Ken Silverman did back during the Build engine days, a modern example of which can be seen here: [http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/pnd3d.htm](http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/pnd3d.htm) .

The current state of the art appears to be something like voxel quest ( [http://www.voxelquest.com/](http://www.voxelquest.com/) ) or Atomontage Engine ( [http://www.atomontage.com/](http://www.atomontage.com/) ).

~

If you want to learn a bit about voxel engines, Flipcode had a decent series on landscape engines: [http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Realtime_Voxel_Landscape_En...](http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Realtime_Voxel_Landscape_Engines- Part_1_Introduction.shtml) .

Basically, the main problem is raycasting into a scene. To learn more about that, I'd look into octrees as a start ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octree) ).

</comment><comment><USER3> Voxels are the 3d equivalent of pixels: little cubes in space. A voxel engine renders a lot of cubes quickly. When everything you are rendering is an aligned cube of the same size, there are a lot of easy options you can apply, like not rendering faces of cubes that are next to each other.

That's the basic gist. Everything beyond that is optimization.

<comment><USER4> "A Pixel Is Not A Little Square, A Pixel Is Not A Little Square, A Pixel Is Not A Little Square! (And a Voxel is Not a Little Cube)"

From: Technical Memo 6 Alvy Ray Smith, July 17, 1995

Link: [http://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf](http://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Voxels, in most voxel engines, _are_ cubes and not points in 3-space. Likewise, in most modern retro-styled pixel art games, the intent really is for the pixels—from the game engine's perspective, not the display's—to be squares. Often a game's pixel is rendered using a square grid of multiple display pixels per engine pixel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You might want to take a look at Craft[0] which is a simple clone of Minecraft implemented in C, that should get you the basic idea of a voxel engine since the codebase is quite minimal for the available features.

[0] [https://github.com/fogleman/Craft](https://github.com/fogleman/Craft)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Very thank you to all of yours!</comment>


Review: Tesla's Autopilot from Boston to Chicago (1,000 Miles) - <AUTHOR> https://driverlessratings.com/news/1-000-miles-on-autopilot <comment><USER2> This is kind of useless. Once you've spent 100k on a car it's a lot harder to give an impartial review.

What would be more useful is having the site test drive with its own writers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your feedback but respectfully disagree. We think that real reviews from real people will result in a more comprehensive view of the overall safety and reliability of a given vehicle rather than a one-time test drive. There are definitely negatives in some of the reviews we are collecting as well.

<comment><USER2> It's a big internet with room for both approaches.

I just personally would write off anyone who claimed Autopilot left them refreshed after a 1000 mile drive (it just doesn't work like that in my experience since you sill have to be constantly alert and holding a moving steering wheel). Reads more like an attempt to brag about AP on Twitter turned into an impromptu review.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft to pay more than half a billion to jump-start WP7 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dollars-windows-phone-7/

<comment><USER2> How much money have they lost on MSN?

[http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/ho...](http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/how_is_msn_losi.html)

Microsoft has $36 billion in cash. They could loose 1/2 billion on Windows Phone 7 for 72 year and still not run out of cash.

That's why they could buy a company (Danger), have a ton of developers work for quite a long time on Kin and then throw the whole project away and shrug it off.

<comment><USER3> Investors need sexy emerging new markets. They don't want to hear another billion in "growth" sucked from the same ol' stones (Windows and Office) that you've managed through boring OEM bundling deals. Zzzzz, wake me when Ballmer throws something or sweats in a different way.

MS needs to take their Surfaces and Couriers out of the pipeline and onto the shelves. If not, then they're trying to just compete with the other conglomerates in tech, like IBM (who set aside $20B just for acquisitions) or Cisco, the kings of war chests with ~$45B. Hell, even Google is catching up with them, and they come out with new stuff every month. Granted, most of them don't hit it big (or at all), but they're steady releasing betas, and acquiring like Cisco used to back in the late 90s, early 00s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh, There's a Windows Phone 7 now?

For a minute there, I thought the WordPerfect antitrust case had taken a strange turn, given that WP7 shipped in 1996 or so.</comment>


Tesla's Model 3 Shatters Record in Electric Car Crazy Norway - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-26/tesla-s-model-3-shatters-record-in-electric-car-crazy-norway <comment><USER2> It's kind of crazy how much the subsidy for electric cars is in Norway. Just as an example:

Norway: Tesla model 3 dual motor: 442,300 NOK = $51,200 Norway: Base Volvo v60: 548,800 NOK = $63,500

USA: Tesla model 3 dual motor: $48,500 (before savings) USA: Base Volvo v60: $38,900

Just kind of goes to show how much of a different decision buying a Tesla is in Norway.

<comment><USER3> Nitpick: They are not subsidized, but tax exempt. On the flip side, fossil fueled cars are heavily taxed. And I mean _heavily_.</comment></comment>


Do you move your legacy or behemoth systems to containers? - <AUTHOR> I work in IT but has never been responsible for the operations of a large information system (say,  PeopleSoft installation, or some legacy systems).
I do a lot of amateur containerization (also for non critical production systems and a lot at home) and I find it fantastic to drive everything through a checked-in Dockerfile which is handled by a CI/CD system (in my case on GitLab).
While I understand to a point the advantages, I am wondering what kind of roadblocks there are to move existing large systems to that paradigm (the ones which are rebuilt and upgraded anyway, usually with all fingers crossed).
Is this a performance issue? Deep incompatibility? Fear of going into a non supported space? The fact that experts in these systems, as good as they are, never cared to peek outside of their comfort zone?
Or something else? <comment><USER2> What's the pain you're trying to solve?

Start by asking the users and managers of the large legacy system, "what are your pain points?" Typically you'll find that the pains have nothing to do with the ability to deploy quickly or start up lots of little containers in different places.

These large legacy systems are rarely installed from scratch, and have all kinds of complex setup configurations that we're done by outside consultants or vendor employees. Folks may not even know what it would take to rebuild and redeploy the system from scratch. There's no ROI for the company to take risks by redeploying it in a different way.

It's like asking, "Drones are awesome. Why don't train companies switch over to them?" You have to first understand the problems that train companies need to solve. If you really wanna get drones into that market space, you don't talk to the train companies: you talk to the train customer's companies, find THEIR pain points, and use new technologies to win the customers over.

That's exactly what containers are doing: they're being used by brand new apps that disrupt legacy systems.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand after asking the managers of an actively developed legacy system you might find bringing on new devs, or up new testing or integration environments is a major pain point.

That the skills to rebuild are in house - it's just that the process takes so long that bringing up a new environment stops other tasks. (The users here might say that bringing new features on line is taking too long)

In which dockerizing, at least for development, might be a very good thing.

But starting with the pain and talking to the managers and users is absolutely the right first step.</comment></comment>


Sometimes moving on is the best decision - Short Brad Feld Clip - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/brad-feld-lesson/ <comment><USER2> The more you get used to change, the better off you'll be in the long run! However, easier said than done!</comment>


Project Maelstrom (beta) - <AUTHOR> http://project-maelstrom.bittorrent.com/

<comment><USER2> How do you maintain your privacy with a torrent-based network? Aren't there lots of trackers? Will we be able to encrypt our packets and send them as TCP so we can bypass ISPs?

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone tried it?</comment>


Lance Armstrong had to hack his blood - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/lance-armstrong-says-winning-tour-france-impossible-without-155251628.html

<comment><USER2> I have often wondered why doping or drug use is made such a big deal out of in pro sports, it seems to me that all sports incorporate technology over time, why is that wrong if it involved drugs? I don't get it, as long as they are consenting adults and it is their free choice?

<comment><AUTHOR> I tend to agree with you. My assumption is that society has a moral problem with it because they feel it is not the traditional implementation of technology - but the hacking of biology. Messing with "God's handywork" to gain an edge or improve your performance is a bitter pill for many to swallow.</comment></comment>


Language design: Turtles all the way down, please - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/02/turtles-all-way-down-please.html

<comment><USER2> _Of course, there would also be things like this:

2 = 3

Which would now pass blithely though the parser only to raise a NoMethodError at run time because numbers do not implement an update method (At least, not in Ruby. Legend has it that this was legal in early versions of FORTRAN._

I recall a friend telling me a long time ago that REXX allowed this, but he no longer remembers and I can't verify.

<comment><USER3> When I read the "lvalues and references" part, I thought about functional programming and equivalence. That is, an interpreter where you can state:

        f(g(h(x))) = n

and any time the first was mentioned, it would be substituted with the second, and vice versa, whichever allows the evaluator to simplify to a greater extent.

Then, thinking further, are there any programming languages that rely on the sorts of math where f(f^-1(x)) is simplified to x without being evaluated?

<comment><USER4> " _Then, thinking further, are there any programming languages that rely on the sorts of math where f(f^-1(x)) is simplified to x without being evaluated?_ "

Mathematica?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always taken "turtles all the way down" to mean the fixation that Lisp/Forth/Scheme/Smalltalk/etc... people get about implementing _everything_ in their language of choice, all the way down to the OS and even silicon if they can. This is almost always an enormous waste of time (unless the goal is only to have fun and learn) and of no import to your 'average user'. The scripting language guys came along and got popular because they concentrated on what their languages were good at, and happily interacted with C (and now Java).

Also:

> I think it's a good thing when languages are highly consistent, in the vein > of Scheme, Smalltalk, and Forth

Yes and no. It's very elegant, but in the end, I'm not convinced that that's what (most) people really want. Elegant is often a thing to be admired from afar, rather than something you use every day. I'm also in agreement with Larry Wall that sometimes these languages get too hung up on their Elegant Paradigm and forget to be practical.

<comment><USER6> As a programmer who've used Lisp and Scheme for commercial projects, I object to that, although I admit there's a tendency in the circles of these languages that pursue ideals obsessibly.

However, "turtles all the way down" has also very practical implications. I have been saved more than once because Lisp/Scheme have the way to tweak very low-level stuff within it so that I can tune the whole program to meet the performance requirements without changing the large structure of the program. And don't take the Scheme guy's discussion about Elegance by their word---we know that tools of day-to-day jobs has to have a kind of dirtiness (I don't despise that; in fact, I rather like to play with lower bits, UI, or legacy workflow,...). We only believe that keeping an eye on the ideal will serve as a long-term guide.

<comment><USER5> I don't mean that _everyone_ is that obsessed; suffice it to say that enough people have the mentality that they want their entire environment to be in Lisp/Scheme/Smalltalk (the last of which is pretty much that way by design) to have created a culture that is, on average, more concerned with that kind of thing than the scripting languages were - they were too busy getting things done, piggybacking on Unix, C, and Windows to some degree. Note that the Java people have also gone in big for 'turtles all the way down', but that's easier with millions of Sun dollars at your back.

My point wasn't that Scheme/Lisp/etc... are impractical languages, or unusable for real work, but more along the lines of "ok, these are great languages, languages that have changed the way everyone thought - so why aren't they more popular? What went wrong?"

One very specific example - I recall fooling around with Scheme a while ago, and the implementation I was using didn't even have a string-split (string -> list). Easy to implement? Sure, but also evidence that it wasn't being used for the sort of practical things I wanted to do with it.

<comment><USER6> Your point taken.

If you feel to taste Scheme again, check out mine <http://practical- scheme.net/gauche/> . It has string-split :) Seriously, it aims at being a handy tool for day-to-day scripting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested in these ideas too. But when there's a clear, obvious antecedent to the discussion it seems to me that it should be cited.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA237CA...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA237CA238&q=turtles+avi+bryant&btnG=Search)

<comment><USER8> Ok, here it is:

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

<comment><USER7> With all due respect, that's misleading. I'm talking about the application of the turtles meme to a very specific software idea, the one which Alan Kay called recursive design and that you happen to be writing about. As far as I am aware, this particular use of the turtles metaphor was introduced by Avi Bryant in a 2005 post and popularized by him in various interviews since. Surely credit should be given where it is due, especially when an idea has a well-defined origin. It's like writing a whole post about Blub without mentioning "Beating the Averages".

(While it is true that the wikipedia page contains a reference to Bryant at the bottom, it's a very obscure reference, and this could hardly be a more specific idea. It's very possible that Avi got it from someone else in the Smalltalk world, but if anyone knows of an earlier published reference I'd be curious to see it.)

<comment><USER8> If I am responding directly to someone, I will link to them. If I think there's value to be added for the reader, I will also link to an essay like that.

Other than that, I do _not_ insert links and footnotes and citations into every blog post. The footnotes would outnumber the paragraphs if not the sentences.

Should I link to Alan Kay every time I discuss objects? How is that different? Or for that matter, if someone discusses the signal-to-noise ratio in programming language idioms, must they mention a post I wrote that was popular at the time?

And FYI, I have written about Blub and linked to Paul's essay as well as written about Blub without linking to Paul's essay. You are right, the two things are exactly the same and I have treated them the same way.

I choose to link or cite when I think it improves the reader's experience. In this case, I didn't think so, and after re-reading AVi's post, I still don't think a link belongs in my post. You could force it in, perhaps by adding a post script "If you find this interesting, you may also like..." or by adding a parenthetical remark "(TAWDry languages have other benefits, like...)."

But you know, that isn't what you are arguing. You do not appear to be arguing that a citation would improve the user experience of the post. Or at least, that's not how it reads. Your comment reads like I have written a scholarly paper and violated the rules of citation. Is that really what you are saying here?

There is a saying that I will attribute to Jerry Kaplan (since I read it in the forward to his book "Startup"):

"Your ideas will go further if you don't insist on going along with them."

Avi hasn't emailed to insist that he go along with that metaphor. Which is probably part of why it is spreading.

<comment><USER7> The value to the reader of being pointed in a rich new direction is obvious.

I'm not saying that you wrote a scholarly paper. I'm saying you introduced a (fairly esoteric) metaphor with a clear and unambiguous origin and failed to mention it; that struck me as ungracious. As for "forcing it in", it couldn't be more relevant. You named your post after it.

<comment><USER8> > ungracious

Oh goodness me, that word is redolent of drawing rooms and mannerly discourse.

I present you with two options:

1\. There is a comment feature on the post, and it permits you to include hyperlinks. Help yourself. That's exactly what the comments are for, to allow _you_ to suggest avenues of investigation for other readers.

2\. If you think there's a rich connection that ought to be mined in prose, write a blog post and go into as much detail as you think appropriate. I'd like to read it.

<comment><USER7> _That's exactly what the comments are for_

Good idea! Don't know why I didn't think of that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>