Ask HN: Why is Google in love with purposely-impaired languages like Go, Dart? - <AUTHOR> Google seems to invest a lot in R&D for programming languages and tooling (probably only surpassed by Microsoft, and percentually by dev-tooling-focused companies like Jetbrains), yet nevertheless, all they seem to produce seems to be "mediocre by design" in a way, or at least designed to be restrictive and/or to impair developer flexibility and productivity.
On the languages side Go and Dart seem like the epitome of "Blub languages" in PG's essay lingo. Even modern Java seems flexible and featurefull in comparison with them. Compared to Go, Rust looks like Common Lisp looked like to a Java programmer of old. Compared to Dart, Kotlin and Swift look like Smalltalk probably looked to a 90's C++ programmer...
Where is this attitude coming from? Is Google's philosophy that most programmers, including their own, are either stupid and/or irresponsible and shouldn't be trusted with powerful tools that can increase their productivity when used right? I mean, software is their business, they're not churning ecommerce infrastructure CRUDhorrhea... they should be capable of leveraging powerful programming language features to massively increase developer productivity, right? <comment><USER2> "The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they're not researchers. They're typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They're not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt." – Rob Pike

<comment><AUTHOR> > the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and > easy to adopt

All the respect for Rob Pike, but that makes no sense: _learning ANY new language_ should be even easier for someone fresh out of school, and I imagine they set a high enough hiring bar to be sure that new engineers can adapt to whatever they are thrown at. All programming languages are easy to learn...

The harder part is figuring out process that are repeatable and result in high velocity and code quality, but I'd imagine that _this is what an organization like Google is good at!_

<comment><USER3> > figuring out process that are repeatable and result in high velocity and > code quality, but I'd imagine that this is what an organization like Google > is good at!

Seems like Go is manifestation of such process. Because something like Rust is not for a repeatable process of _producing a lot of software_ by big teams with variation in experience and headcount. Rust is probably about _fewer people_ carefully designing _less_ of software, so it can be done once and stay forever.

Rust is for architecting bridges, Go is for paving streets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Programming languages are like culture. If you're embedded in one then moving to another sometimes seems like a maze of funhouse mirrors.

I once had the misfortune of changing from an Algol environment to a Cobol environment. After a year I'd gotten over my revulsion and became fluent and productive in Cobol.

It's like saying English has lots of irrationalities to it, which is true. But if it's your mother tongue and you're fluent that doesn't matter.

Go is not impaired. Go involves a set of sophisticated choices for software engineering, not for computer science research. If you're going to have many millions of lines of code and some shifting around in your staff, you don't want tricky code that takes a long time to figure out, or that obscures functionality, or that obscures bugs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cleverness is not related complexity in any way. Software is going to be complex. Cleverness is just going to make it harder to read/maintain.

I prefer Go over other languages. I like the part that there is no cleverness around it.

But why are you bothered about what google thinks of its engineers ? You can write everything in Haskell, why stop at Java/Rust ?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. enabling cleverness enables creating tool to manage complexity, and hopefully, to manage it with fewer people needed

2\. Google "sets the intellectual trend/fashion", whether we like it or not, their attitude get copied... there was quite a bit of experimentation in the 1995 - 2015 decades, we saw stuff like real macros coming to mainstream programming languages (Julia, Scala, Rust), we saw advanced type systems become liked and used (see even TypeScript which basically supports "poor man's ADTs" now), but the _" new wave"_ which seems inspired by G's language design trends seems to be all about _throwing it all away_ , we're scared s'less of complexity and unmaintainabilty that using anything more that string substitutions for code generation _when we really-really-really have to_ seems heresy.

The trends seems to have creeped even into languages like Haskell where nobody's talking about template Haskell anymore and everyone or adding dependent types or whatever, it's all about focusing on package managers and limiting new features and building more tools... Python has a growth spur with 3.0 - 3.6 but that's also freezing in a way, no bold new additions coming without endless discussions.

<comment><USER5> > 1\. enabling cleverness enables creating tool to manage complexity, and > hopefully, to manage it with fewer people needed

No. Complexity just makes it harder to read. Go try to read your own code from 5 years ago. I just fail to read even my own code flow every where I used reflections in Java to make it clever (small code which can handle multiple scenarios). Yet I can read every golang codebase in github super easily.

> 2\. Google "sets the intellectual trend/fashion"

No. People use what they learn quickly and what gets them productivity. I want to write a software to solve business problems, not want to write software because its cool or something.

Go try to read k8s code. And try to image how it would look like in haskell.

It just looks like you are trying to hate google for the wrong reasons.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It just looks like you are trying to hate google for the wrong reasons.

Ok, maybe I was a bit inflamed, actually I'm in a love-hate relationship Google's languages, both Go and Dart/Flutter, and using them more and more... _but it happens again and again and again that I just wish there were some extra features that if we had them, code would be 10x smaller but still readable :)_

Yeah, it's "over-reacting Monday" I guess :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > they should be capable of leveraging powerful programming language features > to massively increase developer productivity, right?

Here you are claiming that leveraging powerful language features can massively increase developer productivity, but you offer no evidence to back up that claim.

<comment><AUTHOR> _\- powerful features - > less code to do something -> less bugs because less code_

 _\- powerful features - > more general abstractions -> more code reuse -> less new code written -> less bugs_

It's not that simple, but it's good to start with the core assumption that _less code - > less bugs_ and what more powerful languages offer you is ability to solve problems with _less code_ while at the same time keeping that more compact code _readable_.

Or maybe big software-focused companies like G don't see "# of LOC" as a liability and don't try to reduce it while at the same time as trying to do more? Is this the core difference between a large corporation and a small startup that tries to do more with less?

<comment><USER5> > core assumption that less code -> less bugs

This assumption is false. Either the flows are written in code, are you have to have them in your brain every time you are reading some code which can handle 10 flows.

> solve problems with less code while at the same time keeping that more > compact code readable

Less code means less readable.

<comment><USER7> > This assumption is false. Either the flows are written in code, are you have > to have them in your brain every time you are reading some code which can > handle 10 flows.

No, it's not. Your interpretation of it is wrong, though. No code means no bugs, this _is_ true. Now, write a new feature, unless the code is flawless, the code-base will certainly have more bugs than before, this _is_ true. Now, write a linked-list, unless the code is flawless, the code-base will have more bugs than if using the one in the language std-lib. About language features, writing 5 implementations of a linked-list for each type instead of a generic one that it's type checked will certainly contain more bugs as it's more error prone to write the same things 5 times and keep it updated.

> Less code means less readable.

This is ridiculous. Otherwise, we'd all be using assembly. About Go, the lack of generics and simple error propagation is detrimental to being readable. Every function can fail, you don't say!. You're manually propagating the error instead of handling it here, you don't say!. That's what I think every time I go through some Go code-base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> "It must be familiar, roughly C-like. Programmers working at Google are early in their careers and are most familiar with procedural languages, particularly from the C family. The need to get programmers productive quickly in a new language means that the language cannot be too radical." – Rob Pike

</comment><comment><USER8> Is your clear faith in industry at large "leveraging powerful programming language features to massively increase developer productivity" substantiated or just taken as a given because it makes intuitive sense?

<comment><AUTHOR> What makes sense is that the number of bugs tends to end up proportional with the amount of code...

If a powerful language allows you do the same thing with 10x less code, you'll also have up to 10x fewer bugs (in practice maybe only 2x fewer, but that would still be huge).

<comment><USER5> > the number of bugs tends to end up proportional with the amount of code

This happens when the original code was clever to begin with and someone (else) came try to fix an edge case and lo and behold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently tried out Dart on a project to play with Flutter. It felt pretty much the same as TypeScript/React. I prefer using Flutter/Dart to either of UIKit/Swift or AndroidSDK/* so they're doing something right.

</comment><comment><USER10> New languages help promote economic velocity and prevent towers of babel from rising up. The features of the languages themselves are kind of a red herring that distract folks from the cause of their disenfranchisement. You can build a veritable empire on a 100 million lines of PHP scripts if you've got the resources.

<comment><AUTHOR> > promote economic velocity and prevent towers of babel from rising up

...could you elaborate what you mean by that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not that reserved keywords are the only measure of a well designed language, but it is interesting to note that Golang has 25 (which most likely contributes to the feeling of fluency earlier than many languages). Java has 50 and C++ has 82 keywords for comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> The human brain has no problem handling a 70k+ vocabulary of a natural language, just saying... until a language goes over a few thousand reserved words I'd say there's no adverse effect to them as long as they are clearly named/prefixed etc. in ways that don't conflict with frequently used words (and we know we can have sigils like $ for namespacing, # for separating function names from variable names etc. etc.

<comment><USER5> Yet very few can write an enjoyable novel which others can read.

Try reading documentations to see how the 70k+ vocabulary helped the writer and reader.

Sigils like $ and # are even worse. I had to maintain an old perl codebase once (# @_ holds all arguments passed)

<comment><AUTHOR> Never worked professionally on a Perl codebase but I kind of liked it when I learned a tidbit and feel a bit nostalgic that it went out of fashion :P

<comment><USER5> Try reading this Date module (which is very cleanly written compared to the codebase which I was supposed to maintain)

[https://github.com/mojolicious/mojo/blob/master/lib/Mojo/Dat...](https://github.com/mojolicious/mojo/blob/master/lib/Mojo/Date.pm)

I just find it impossible to glance over it and understand whats happening even though I know what is supposed to be happening there.

Something similar in golang

[https://github.com/araddon/dateparse/blob/master/parseany.go](https://github.com/araddon/dateparse/blob/master/parseany.go)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, that Perl code seems quite irregular / badly structured, I see some regexps are inline while others in named variables, no clear docs of what is the return of functions etc.

Beside that, the extra clarity in Go is from using a static language. Also, Perl is inexcusable for having no readable function signatures, that's really a no-go for a modern language :|

 _But for me at least, when I see that wall of boilerplatish Go code, my mind instantly ADHDs away, while those dense squiggles of Perl make me WANT to spend time and focus and solve the puzzle of what they do, I have 10x more chances of paying attention to the Perl code while reading it and maybe even spotting a bug in it :P ..._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Technically, you only need a very limited feature set to do whatever you want.

For example - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer).

<comment><USER13> Technically, most people like using things like the internet, a monitor, keyboards, etc, and ideally would like computations to finish in a reasonable amount of time and be presented in an understandable format. Bonus points if this can occur on physically realizable machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Because simple is better. _K.I.S.S._

<comment><USER15> Yes. To put it in other words "simplicity scales" in terms of number of people. It helps to commoditise things faster and lower the cost (i.e learning, operating, hiring, tooling cost etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have very little experience in compiled languages. Coming to Go after Python was not only a joy, but I was able to easily implement concurrency and improve the performance of my game of life simulation side project by something like 25x.

So to me it _feels_ like they did something right.

I guess maybe there just sometimes being a way to do something right only one way, makes searching for solutions, easier. I contrast that with another language I love, Ruby, where it can sometimes feel like there are so many ways to do things that the language isn't opinionated at all.

<comment><USER17> >Coming to Go after Python was not only a joy, but I was able to easily implement concurrency and improve the performance of my game of life simulation side project by something like 25x.

Python is notoriously bad at both these things though, so it's not a very high bar. I think a more meaningful comparison would be to languages like Clojure, Erlang/Elixir, Rust, or any other that has concurrency as one of the top priories, but makes different tradeoffs.

<comment><USER16> I know this, but I also know I struggled with C and Go felt delightfully straightforward.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Adam Neumann is getting $1.7B to leave WeWork? - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/22/20927188/wework-adam-neumann-payout-softbank-layoffs <comment><USER2> Because he has control over the company. If they don't pay the 1.7bi, then:

\- SoftBank loses 15bi

\- 15,000 employees lose their entire paycheck

(I don't disagree this is insane. But it what it is.)

<comment><USER3> A third of WeWork is getting let go regardless, and SoftBank has already lost that $15B.

<comment><USER4> Softbank will likely end up making money on this one in the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would you take 1.7B to have the reputation he'll undoubtedly have? I like to think I wouldn't.

<comment><USER6> Are you insane?

I'd take the 1.7B and fly off to an island never to be heard from again.

Caring what people think is overrated.</comment></comment>


Proposal for Website Content Reuse & Sharing - <AUTHOR> http://af-design.com/blog/2012/02/22/proposal-for-website-content-reuse-sharing/ <comment><AUTHOR> This proposal suggests extending the existing Open Graph Protocol to better define how content can be shared on third party sites such as Pinterest.</comment>


What Happened to My Country? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/what-happened-to-my-country

<comment><USER2> A fine Reddit Politics post, which is to say, not germane to HN.

Flagged.

<comment><USER3> <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

_Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did._

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's a stupid guideline.

<comment><USER3> No, it isn't. Trashing people's submissions (and other websites in the process, by implying that they belong on <inferior website>) and boasting that you have reported them to moderators is unnecessary. If they're not a spammer, you've insulted them. If they are a spammer, they don't care, so there is no need to do more than flag.

As a reader, I find it to be crossing a line in being overly imposing about your opinions. It is not really constructive or civil, which is the spirit of that guideline.

If you don't like to follow the guidelines here, I recommend reddit.com, where you can actually downvote submissions and selectively subscribe to topics of interest. ;)

<comment><USER2> Oh well. You and I will just have to agree to disagree on this point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open Medical Records System - n-s-f http://openmrs.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> We've had a talk yesterday about OpenMRS, check it out if you're interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C2QOTl7Al4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C2QOTl7Al4)</comment>


Java Is Still Free - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nFGazvrCvHMZJgFstlbzoHjpAVwv5DEdnaBr_5pKuHo <comment><USER3> The bottom line isn't all that complicated.

If you've never bought a commercial support contract just switch to OpenJDK (via AdoptOpenJDK if you want standalone binaries) and be on your merry way. Which giant company(s) are taking the lead role in maintaining the project will change, but that should have little impact on you.

If you do have a commercial support agreement, you can keep doing what you've been doing with the same company you've been doing it with.

<comment><USER4> Is there any situation in which using Oracle's JDK is preferable to OpenJDK, if you know that you dont need commercial support? E.g., maybe Oracle releases patches more frequently, or has some libraries that are more performant.

<comment><USER5> None.

OracleJDK11+ doesn't allow non licensed production use in commercial settings. Otherwise the builds are nearly identical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hint: if you want to get a discussion going, or, in fact, have your article read in the first place, don't put it on Google docs, nor medium via link shorteners for that matter.

<comment><USER7> Why not? Google Docs does not show any stupid popovers, ads or anything

<comment><USER8> On mobile, this is painful. Every one of those blue blocks stays too wide and requires manual scrolling side to side to read each line inside it.

If this were basic HTML, there wouldn't be a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, if you need a third-party to explain your scheme with a 6000-word, 20 page document there might be some sort of issues with your scheme.

<comment><USER10> Welcome to Oracle. They make their money off of taking simple things and making them extraordinarily complicated. The JDK is no exception.

I tried using nothing but the Oracle website to determine what the terms of usage are, and what the cost would be. It's confusing, buried many levels deep, in multiple documents in different places.

They use the term "processors" to refer to how 11 is licensed. They give you a per-processor price. Then in a footnote they say that you have to multiply the number of cores you use by a ratio that is different for different platforms and/or CPU models in order to determine your "processor" count.

Where is this ratio? In a different document that they don't bother to link to. Seriously. Well, there IS a link, but it takes you to the index page of massive document library. Browsing around there in obvious places got me nowhere. I finally googled for it with "site:oracle.com" and found it, but I still have no idea where on their website they put it.

<comment><USER11> > They make their money off of taking simple things and making them > extraordinarily complicated.

And then extorting money from your company via the threat of lawsuits if, speaking purely hypothetically, your company is determined - because of said processor-vs-cores distinction - to be out-of-bounds on the number of installed databases during an audit.

Oracle has all of the ethics and humanity of a lawnmower.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246)

<comment><USER10> The only inroad Oracle has made into my company has been EssBase (a component of their Hyperion platform), and we run that against MSSQL. They keep calling, hoping for more.

Last time I told the salesperson: "I will not bring any more Oracle products into my company for the simple reason that Larry Ellison is an asshole who is hostile to his customers." The response? "Yeah, I get that a lot."

Honestly, I felt sorry for the guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sure, MySQL is also still free. OpenOffice remained free until Oracle dumped it on Apache's doorstep. Neither product was ever under threat of becoming legally unfree. The problem is that people don't trust Oracle anymore. The developer community doesn't want to touch anything from Oracle with a 10-foot pole _even if it 's licensed under GPL._

I haven't used enough Oracle products to judge whether this sentiment is justified. But regardless of whether it is justified, the fact that Oracle doesn't seem to be making any effort to clear up possible misunderstandings suggests that they don't give a crap about their reputation with non-"enterprise" developers.

<comment><USER13> > The developer community doesn't want to touch anything from Oracle

Which developer community are you talking about ?

Because in the JVM community we like Oracle quite a bit since they have been surprisingly great at supporting the platform over the last decade. Actions speak louder than words you know.

<comment><USER12> The FOSS community in general, I guess. Which has a much larger presence on forums like HN than the subset that is JVM developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem with write ups like these is they send the exact opposite message of what was intended to be sent. Even those people who didn't receive the news, will now hear about this.

On the other hand, the entire write up seems to attempt to convince people to keep faith in Oracle. The problem with this kind of talk is you are the mercy of some VP in Oracle, whose one decision could change everything and given the fact they are already thinking of monetizing(and to some extent have) Java, it most certainly will.

In most companies merely migrating Java versions is a process that happens over several months if not years. Asking people to change their entire install bases, and expecting them to not worry about it is pointless. These people have to redo not just regression tests but a range of security tests. And of course even after all that you are still not sure about the future.

The right question to ask at this point is, about the alternatives.

One of the greatest things about Java is the library ecosystem. The language itself is not that enjoyable, but Java has had so much money driving behind it that you will find pretty much a library for every thing on Earth.

The only languages that can match that ecosystem are Perl and Python. And may be Javascript.

My only concern with Java is related to Clojure. I liked that language as a practical alternative to Lisp, if Java has no future, then Clojure's biggest sell 'Java interop' doesn't have a future too.

<comment><USER15> > The only languages that can match that ecosystem are Perl and Python. And > may be Javascript.

Nope. Python as well as Perl are pretty slow compared to Java on JVM. To replace Java you need to move to either C# or Go. The key thing would be licensing terms and available frameworks. Smart CIOs with lots of Java baggage in their companies should be investing in transition to C# given the state of things. It would be pretty stupid if you are starting new development on Java at this point.

<comment><USER14> Very interesting to see Go as a choice. On sheer library numbers Go would still come short compared to Perl/Python. But Go's simplicity is actually huge accidental positive.

One of things that I remember from the past is applications used to be developed as giant Monoliths. Which is why you needed all that OO, templates and generics related magic to work with.

These days people don't develop applications that way anymore. Adding to which microservices architecture has taken off really well. People tend to write their binaries as applications that do one thing well.

Go is actually a very practical language for today's everyday work.

<comment><USER16> go is simplistic, not simple

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why don't the bigwigs like RedHat + IBM just fork it already ?

Take OpenJDK , GPL the IBM runtime and slap some stupid coffee inspired nickname on it. People will trust that more than they trust Oracle anyway...

<comment><USER18> Because Oracle is continuing to put a lot of R&D resources into Java and is generally not doing a terrible job with nice work around modernizing the language, contributing non trivial innovation around e.g. the Graal project, etc. Like them or not, Oracle is doing a lot of heavy lifting and most of it is released through Openjdk as 100% OSS under the GPL.

So, neither IBM nor Red Hat have any big issues with the status quo. They get to do their own thing, support their customers, and they get to ship openjdk with no strings attached.

<comment><USER14> >>Oracle is doing a lot of heavy lifting and most of it is released through Openjdk as 100% OSS under the GPL.

At some point they are going to want see some profits in return given how many Android phones are being sold. And needless to mention how much of world's software runs on Java today.

<comment><USER13> Oracle took over Java 8+ years ago.

Don't you think if they wanted to "see some profits" they might've done it already ?

<comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc).

 _Oracle has sought upward of US$8.8 billion in damages due to the commercial success of the Android system._

Nothing wrong with it, of course. If a company wants customers to pay for their products, then they are right.

People just need to know before hand, than being sold on it as free, and then asked to pay $XK per installation box a few years down the lane.

<comment><USER19> While I don't agree with their tactics, Google was - by their own word - <USER2> using Java. This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

<comment><USER14> >>This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

That depends on how commercially successful your product is. I don't think it would even make logical sense for Oracle to go after every single start up that uses Java.

But lets say tomorrow news came out that a big reason for AWS's success is Java, then all of a sudden you are going to see Oracle want some of that money.

Please note I'm not saying expecting people to pay is necessarily wrong. I'm only saying people need to know what they are signing up for.

<comment><USER19> And all I'm saying is that Google was _not_ using Java, they were using an alternative implementation of the same APIs (derived from Apache Harmony). The difference is that using Java™ gives you a license to the copyright and patents (and hence protection from Oracle), whereas using something else does not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why doesn't Google provide an OpenJDK distribution like Redhat, IBM, etc do? It's still free guys, but here go download it from some other guy.

<comment><USER21> That would be cool but maybe they dont want to be sued or something... Were they just in court for java ?

<comment><USER22> An OpenJDK fork would be covered as Sun released it as GPL, meaning everyone could fork it. Google based its "Java" implementation on Apache Harmony, which was never licensed, never passed the official conformance tests and would have cut into Suns Java ME business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who is the author?

<comment><USER24> There's a long list of authors at the bottom.

<comment><USER23> Signatories and backers, not authors.

<comment><USER25> According to a sibling post some of those names are of some of the authors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Better source (not google docs):

[https://itnext.io/java-is-still-free-c02aef8c9e04](https://itnext.io/java-is- still-free-c02aef8c9e04)

<comment><USER26> That's not the canonical source, though. From the HN guidelines:

"Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is original Java still alive? That's the question.

Yes, the whole AP CS curriculum is based on it, Google's Java can somehow be called its continuation. But despite of all of that, the overall feel is that Java's development and developer scene is rather morbid.

>The developer community doesn't want to touch anything from Oracle with a 10-foot pole _even if it 's licensed under GPL._

Yes, that's exactly the case here. Oracle pigeonholed Java back into the category of "corporate software stuff" language, just as it was getting close to being called a normal programming language

<comment><USER28> It's definitely not the trendy language anymore. We still have a lot of it because of legacy products and a generation trained on it mostly. But new languages are objectively better and getting adopted at a faster rate than ever. What young programer wants to write java nowadays? When you have Golang, Rust, Swift, Python, etc.

<comment><USER29> > What young programer wants to write java nowadays?

One who wants to earn good money working with legacy stuff?

<comment><USER30> It's more than "legacy stuff" as well. People always hear "Java" and immediately think "legacy application". I find it quite amusing. It's this weird idea that somehow nobody would or could ever write a new application in Java. Yet here we are with RedHat Thorntail (previously Swarm) and other modern frameworks written in Java and ready to deliver solid large-scale performance.

<comment><USER31> I like it that way. Keeps my rate high while doing trivial CRUD applications.

On a serious note, I still think Java has one if not the best ecosystem of any language. Fast JVM, lots of high quality Open Source libraries/frameworks, tooling (IDEs, monitoring, debugging) and if you have a problem you probably are not the first one and usually find an answer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which VPS hosting providers supply native IPv6? - <AUTHOR>

Now that IPv6 is supported just about everywhere in desktops and servers, which hosting providers can supply global IPv6 connectivity to their VPS offerings? It isn't enough to just support IPv6; they also have to provide transit to the IPv6 Internet and IPv6 connectivity to the IPv4 Internet via a gateway.<p>With a hosting service like this, it is feasible to go to 100% IPv6 only inside your own network. <comment><USER2> Rackspace, Linode, and prgmr.com all offer native IPv6 to the global IPv6 internet. You could set up one of your hosts as dual-stack running an IPv4/v6 gateway and then go IPv6-only within the rest of your network. I don't believe any of them provide the gateway themselves, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> AWS can do this I think but you need to use an ELB (elastic load balancer) to handle the ipv6 connection to the internet and use ipv4 between the ELB and your EC2 servers. Someone please chime in if I have this wrong.

</comment><comment><USER4> RamNode</comment>


I don't know how to create a website - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/mortoray/i-dont-know-how-to-create-a-website-3768a4e6b31e <comment><USER2> Be a part of the movement against frameworks and bloat with us!

Step 1: Buy a cheap domain and cheap hosting plan for like $8 a month.

Step 2: Load in a ton of genuine content that you can use HTML and CSS to make look pretty.

Step 3: If you need to transform data in some way, either do it in javascript or embed a link to a video demo of external software.

Step 4: Use a 3rd party tool to accept payment by credit card.

Step 5: Promote your content and grow a community via 3rd party community sites like HN, youtube, reddit, twitch, etc etc

</comment><comment><USER3> semi-OT: curious why you submitted the medium post instead of the version on your website?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not have a good reason. A lot of my recent stuff isn't technical, so it's only on the Medium pages. I guess I tend to post those links often now.</comment></comment>


Winner Take All US Pres. Election? Not If Electoral College Critics Win Cases - <AUTHOR> https://hosted.ap.org/republicanherald/article/e7bcc365bb354952912ea85dc28ac157/winner-take-all-not-if-electoral-college-critics-win-cases <comment><USER2> I'd much rather see proportionate electoral distribution from states over trying to dismantle the electoral college system.

<comment><USER3> Why? Then you just get a less accurate estimate of the popular vote.</comment></comment>


'Minecraft' Creator Excluded from Anniversary Due to 'Comments and Opinions' - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-excluded-from-anniversary-due-to-comments-and-opinions-exclusive-1203200050/ <comment><USER2> I am probably just going to get buried but I don't think this is a simple as many people will think it is.

To me this is another indication of how excessively polarized worldviews are. And I think it goes for quite a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum. There is a strong tendency towards one political extreme or another.

It's to the point where people are basically living in alternate realities from each other.

And some people may react to that with "yeah, it's one worldview that is intolerant and wrong and one that isn't" or if they are from the other side "yeah, it's one worldview where it's ok to be say you are white and another where it isn't". But it's way more than that. The hint of intolerance (or on the other side, political correctness) is used to identify people as being in the enemy camp. And it is then a proxy for their worth as a human being and all of the other beliefs they might supposedly have are grouped together.

I wonder if another political operating mode is possible.

<comment><USER3> I mean Notch's views are literally that some people are less than people. Not tolerating that isn't bad.

<comment><USER4> Could you cite your source on that?

<comment><USER5> A minute of Googling gave me this: [https://twitter.com/notch/status/22330335379333120](https://twitter.com/notch/status/22330335379333120)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I mean, while it's weird and sucks that the original creator of Minecraft won't be there, Microsoft is definitely free to distance themselves from outspoken individuals that don't reflect the PC culture they're going for.

I certainly wouldn't want someone whose only relevance is armchair Twitter warring representing something that brings my company substantial (?) revenue.

I guess for an ideological disclaimer, I vehemently disagree with his politics, but I'd take the same position for a bellicose liberal.

<comment><USER7> > I certainly wouldn't want someone whose only relevance is armchair Twitter > warring representing something that brings my company substantial (?) > revenue.

Did you refer the creator of Minecraft as "someone whose only relevance is armchair Twitter warring"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would be asking too much to request that he limits his talks to the subject of Minecraft at a Minecraft event? Does he have a history of giving unprompted politically-charged speeches in public, or is it just Twitter? If not, then I'd say this is an unnecessary letdown for the game's fans.

<comment><USER9> Should black US athletes limit their talk to the subject of sports, and refrain from politically charged moves such as kneeling for the anthem, or giving the black power salute at the Olympics? Should video game or other 'tech' panels stick to the topic, and not proselytize how important diversity is?

<comment><USER10> I feel like this is sarcasm but the real answer is you should act appropriately for your surroundings. Someone else's event is not your platform, especially so in this case.

<comment><USER11> Correct. A slave on a plantation should simply do their job. It is never appropriate to espouse political opinions in a place of business. The promotion of business interests trumps any humanistic interests, which have their set places and times to be addressed in a quiet and easily ignored manner.

<comment><USER12> Comparing the expectation of relatively apolitical professionalism to slavery is absurd.

There are valid reasons why keeping the workplace apolitical is valuable. When it isn't, one political group usually established dominance and suppresses the opposition. The workplace becomes an environment where a subset of political views monopolize conversation, and a large portion of workers are alienated as a result. If your goal is to hire the best employees regardless of political leanings, then maintaining an apolitical workplace is a good choice.

<comment><USER11> >f your goal is to hire the best employees regardless of political leanings, then maintaining an apolitical workplace is a good choice.

My point is that your goals do not trump everyone else's goals just because they're reasonable business goals. There are things in life that are more important than hiring the best employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > has increasingly ostracized himself with his Twitter comments, including > transphobic statements and comments about a "heterosexual pride day," and > that "it's ok to be white."

Is it _not_ ok to be White or heterosexual? This kind of exclusion over these statements likely harms Microsoft's reputation more than it helps it.

<comment><USER13> It is worth reading the history and intention of this phrase for context. [https://qz.com/1144783/the-rise-of-the-alt-rights- catchphras...](https://qz.com/1144783/the-rise-of-the-alt-rights-catchphrase- its-ok-to-be-white/)

<comment><USER12> > Persson's is not an isolated tweet. "It's ok to be white" was invented by > the trollsters of the "politically incorrect" messaging board on 4chan. The > phrase was carefully designed to trick progressive, left-leaning Americans > into saying the contrary—that it is not ok to be white—in a strange > nationwide campaign to finally expose anti-white bias.

And it's evidently working. Taking offense to the phrase "it's okay to be White" is falling straight into the trolls' hands. If we want to stop the machinations of said trolls then we should stop taking offense to the statement, since taking offense to the statement "it's okay to be X" necessarily implies that it's not okay to be X.

If Microsoft was aware of the phrase's history then their behavior is even more counterproductive; they knowingly walked into this trap.

<comment><USER11> Even so... Setting traps and then trying to blame others for falling into them? Does that sound like the behavior of a trustworthy and admirable person?

<comment><USER12> I think you're missing the point. Who knows what Notch was trying to accomplish by saying "it's okay to be White". For all we know he saw people taking offense to the phrase, and was perturbed by people evidently claiming that it is not okay to be White (the link you provided included responses to the phrase that included calls for "white genocide") and wanted to emphasize his own view that being white is not something bad. If you want to portray Notch as some kind of white supremacist aligned person, then the onus is on you to prove it. The likelihood that he is part of the overwhelming majority of people that don't really care about 4chan and other obscure internet subcultures is significantly greater.

The point remains, the overwhelming majority of people will not take offense to the phrase "it's okay to be White" and will be perturbed by the people who do take offense to this phrase.

<comment><USER11> Out of context, "it's ok to be white" is not a disagreement with the phrase "it is not ok to be white", it is a disagreement with the phrase "it is ok to be non-white." The overwhelming majority of people both agree with the latter and find the former to be irrational and obscene. If he's going to comment on something so divisive, he'd better add something to the discussion beyond additional ambiguity, or else he's just fanning flames and race baiting.

> [He] wanted to emphasize his own view that being white is not something bad.

Obviously. Perhaps emphasizing that view in this context does more harm than good? Is that possible? Perhaps when someone says something obscene and stupid, you don't pile on with additional obscene and stupid responses?

<comment><USER12> > Out of context, "it's ok to be white" is not a disagreement with the phrase > "it is not ok to be white", it is a disagreement with the phrase "it is ok > to be non-white."

How do you interpret "it's okay to be X" to "it's not okay to be non-X"?. When somebody says "it's okay the be gay" they're actually saying it's not okay to be straight? This line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny.

In my view the phrase "it's okay to be White" means exactly what is says: that it's okay to be White. It's totally fine to say "it's okay to be White and it's okay to be {Asian, Black, Latino, etc.}".

> Obviously. Perhaps emphasizing that view in this context does more harm than > dood? Is that possible? Perhaps when someone says something obscene and > stupid, you don't pile on with additional obscene and stupid responses?

But there's nothing obscene or stupid about saying "it's okay to be White" or "it's okay to be gay" or "it's okay to be X" (at least as long as X isn't something illegal or otherwise objectively harmful).

What's stupid are the people getting riled up about the phrase "it's okay to be White". It's needless outrage that fuels resentment. The fact that it got started by 4chan makes it even worse. The people that insist on taking offense are fostering needless outrage _and they 're being played by 4chan_.

I'm particularly confused at why you persist in trying to condemn the phrase when you are fully aware that 4chan intended for people to condemn the phrase and thus portray themselves as harboring negativity towards whites. Why are you doing exactly what 4chan wants you to do?

The article you posted even advises against the bevhavior you're engaging in:

> Lundberg's expert suggestion is not to reject the phrase. "I think that the > best response is to deny them the pleasure of the fight—of course it is ok > to be white: now how can we make it ok to be a person of any color?"

<comment><USER14> It's like saying white lives matter or blue lives matter, yeah, duh, no segment of society that wields power has ever questioned that. When you say one of those phrases you're being obtuse and just distracting from a conversation that needs to be had. At which point I've got to assume you've got nefarious reasons for being obtuse.

<comment><USER12> > It's like saying white lives matter or blue lives matter, yeah, duh, no > segment of society that wields power has ever questioned that.

This is evidently not correct, since a significant portion of the population is offended by the phrase "it's okay to be white". If someone is being obtuse in this conversion, I'm going to go with the people that insist that no segment of society thinks that it isn't okay to be white while simultaneously denigrating the people who say "it's okay to be white".

What on Earth do people hope to achieve by condemning the people who say "it's okay to be White"? I get that a segment of the population interprets statements about a specific group as implying that the statement doesn't apply to other groups (e.g. people saying "Black Live Matter" is racist because it implies that only Black lives matter), but it should be plainly obvious to see why objecting to the phrase "it's okay to be white" is not a good idea. Apparently this is the work of 4chan as a means of duping people into making anti-white statements. If so, then the trolls have had a resounding success: they even managed to dupe a significant portion of HN commenters.

<comment><USER11> It _is_ ok to be white, it is just not something that needs to be said, and derails the discussion from things that _do_ need to be said.

<comment><USER12> > It _is_ ok to be white

Then why are we taking offense to the phrase? Worse yet, why are we taking offense to the phrase despite knowing that the alt-right _wants_ us to take offense to the phrase because most onlookers will see it as anti-white (which is a reasonable conclusion, for the overwhelming majority of people that don't follow internet culture).

<comment><USER11> Grass is green. Water is wet. The sky is blue. It's ok to be white.

These things being true does not imply they are relevant. "It's ok to be non- white" is true and _poignant social commentary_ , and thus I value it for the latter. The truth in it is necessary, but not sufficient. "It's ok to be white" is a fact, but it is simply a fact. It is nothing _more_ than a fact.

>why are we taking offense to the phrase despite knowing that the alt-right wants us to take offense

I'm not taking offense to the phrase, I'm taking offense to the willingness of someone to say it where it is unwarranted. The phrase is not offensive. The willingness and desire to offend is. Exercising that willingness by employing an otherwise true statement is both offensive and cowardly.

In any case, I do not make decisions based on the whims of the Alt-right. What they want and what I want are not going to be intentionally correlated or anti-correlated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19779708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19779708)

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow. I've been a minor Notch fan since way back when MC first dropped in alpha. I've seen him go through some serious emotional crap but this makes me think he's abusing something.

This is sad.

<comment><USER2> Everyone gets emotional sometimes because that's how humans work. Some people are just more honest about revealing their emotions and also may be celebrities so people magnify the drama out of proportion to what it really was.

Also, just because someone has a different worldview than you doesn't mean they are crazy or a drug addict.</comment></comment>


Harvesting The Biosphere: Book Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Books/Energy/Harvesting-The-Biosphere

<comment><USER2> I really enjoyed the look and feel. Much like the NYT Snowfall. Finally some innovation in publishing.

<comment><USER3> I'll agree it's somewhat refreshing compared to the standard design, but anything that requires a "scroll down" notice needs some further work in my opinion. The full screen background images switching from section to section is interesting but the left side being left column being taller than the right feels awkward and unbalanced.

Either way, nice to see that B.Gates is actively blogging and continuing his philanthropic efforts.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you. The fact that you have to tell users what to do next with arrows and etcetera is much the same as using narration in a movie. It works, but it is a little like cheating. Nonetheless, I like the evolution away from standard text on a page with a picture or two.</comment></comment></comment>


A Tool to Organize Our Many Organizers - From Pakistan - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/technology/circuits/02proto.html?ex=1346385600&en=0e320da24a760a82&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> From the looks of the screencast, the tool is truly awesome. There's only one problem. I've waiting for this site to open up for at least 2-3 years now.... I almost forgot about this site until this article came about...</comment>


IBM Gives Cloud Computing a Seal of Approval - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/11/23/ibm-gives-cloud-computing-a-seal-of-approval/ <comment><USER2> Not sure why anyone would doubt IBM's commitment/understanding of cloud computing - the author of this article included.

IBM has been pushing the "On Demand" brand/thinking for years - since 2002 in fact... On Demand has a lot in common with cloud computing today.</comment>


Sexually Transmitted Allergic Reaction to Brazil Nuts [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.jiaci.org/issues/vol17issue03/10.pdf

<comment><USER2> For those jumping straight to the comments: It's an allergic reaction to semen of a nut eater, not Sexually Transmitted Allergies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Title (of the article) likely to be misleading:

The allergic reaction is not itself sexually transmitted. The brazil nut allergen is sexually transmitted (via semen) causing an allergic reaction in someone known to be allergic

</comment><comment><USER4> This was covered on qi: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Ktn7YXoJQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Ktn7YXoJQ)

</comment><comment><USER5> Like we really needed any new reasons to eradicate the brazil nut from this earth.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this /r/wtf?

<comment><USER7> It doesn't seem that shocking to me. It seems fairly logical.

And I've never seen a study posted to /r/wtf.</comment></comment>


Crop circle reveals ancient 'henge' monument buried in Ireland - <AUTHOR> https://globalnews.ca/news/4329755/henge-crop-circle-monument-ireland-farmer-field/ <comment> Anthony-G The article content isn't too bad but having "crop circle" in the headline is ridiculous when the phenomenon of crop circles has nothing to do with the subject of the article. In addition, the article itself starts off with some mis-leading information.

It begins by implicitly indicating that "U.K. archeologists" were involved in the discovery (discussed in other comments). It also states that it was "drone enthusiasts" who captured the image in the first place. In fact, the drone belonged to an _Irish_ historian, Anthony Murphy, who lives in the area and has been researching, recording images of and writing about the Boyne Valley monuments for the past two decades – so not just a random drone enthusiast. After making his discovery, he reported it to the National Monuments Service, an organisation that is part of the Republic of Ireland's _Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht_.

The coverage by the Irish Times is much better than the linked article:

* Initial report: [https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/scorched-earth-d...](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/scorched-earth-during-heatwave-reveals-new-monument-at-newgrange-1.3561326)

* Follow-up article: [https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/newgrange-more-u...](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/newgrange-more-unparalleled-prehistoric-sites-discovered-1.3565502)

Further background on Anthony Murphy: [https://www.mythicalireland.com/about/about-anthony- murphy/](https://www.mythicalireland.com/about/about-anthony-murphy/)

<comment><USER2> crop circles: or does it??

The archeologist studied at Reading and Sheffield so probably from the UK. He is only one archeologist so unless there are only hiring foreigners probably better to say British and Irish. You never hear UK and Irish because of the north. Maybe UK and Irish of the Republic archeologists?

It's gets interesting alright. I am getting a sense now that the "South of Ireland" thing only exists because it's impolite to talk about Republics too much in Britain. It can be great to pointing out the most northernly point in Ireland is in "the south".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Henge" meaning "big round structure of unknown function with ditch on the inside of a bank."

Several sites are presented, in close proximity. At least one appears to be mostly earthwork, and could be a classic "henge". In the most interesting one, I see no evidence of ditch or bank, just postholes and trenches in concentric circles. This one may be a large circular building. Of course, crop marks provide fairly limited information.

<comment><USER4> Nit, but we know pretty well what the Neolithic structures were for now. It used to be the case that hey were a mystery.

<comment><USER5> So what were they used for? I thought it was still a mystery.

<comment><USER4> Celestial clocks for telling the seasons, and locations for convergent gatherings ever X seasons. The megalithic stone structures at least. The smaller but more numerous wooden pole circles (horseshoe shaped really) were centers of local villages, the Neolithic equivalent of a fort or medieval castle.

<comment><USER6> Unless you can produce a very strong source that those solutions are now considered universally to be true, I don't think you can say that to be definitely so.

Firstly, looking at the actual henge, though the defence hypothesis is strong, there are several henges throughout the UK that lack the defensive structuring, but still take the right form, making it at least partly unlikely. Secondly, they seem to have been built away from population areas. Whilst a strong theory, it hasn't solved those problems, and so other solutions hold equal weight.

Secondly, the celestial clock theory is actually fairly weak. Only about half of the henges featuring large stonework actually line up with astronomical events, even when modeled for the timelines we think they were put in place for. Some might be reasoned to track stars, some mountains, and so on. It doesn't quite fit, especially as their north-offsets are very consistent.

You have some theories, which are popular theories, but so far as I'm aware, there are other equally popular theories held by the people in the field, and this isn't considered to be 'solved'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This discovery was possible by the current draught conditions in Ireland that's close to reaching the 1 month mark without rain (which in Ireland's terms is as rare as rain in the desert, if not rarer)

<comment><USER8> It's also been much wetter there during the spring. Been a problem for the local bee populations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like this is the location on Google Maps: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-6.4832216,763m/data=...](https://email@example.com,-6.4832216,763m/data=!3m1!1e3)

<comment><USER10> While it could be my eyes playing tricks on me, the not stone circle one that is further away looks like it can be seen in the sheep field and the field beyond. Though it could also be my eyes playing tricks and finding patterns that I expect to be there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article starts with:

> U.K. archeologists are crediting...

And spends the rest of the article citing a researcher from University College Dublin.

Ireland is not part of the U.K.

<comment><USER12> Northern Ireland is a part of the UK

<comment><USER13> County Meath (where the "henge" was discovered) is in the Republic of Ireland...which is not Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a province within the UK created after the partition of Ireland the landmass in 1921.

Dublin is in the Republic of Ireland and the capital city.

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

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

<comment><USER14> Thanks for being clear about the Republic of Ireland vs the landmass, unlike knolan!

<comment><USER11> You may find this useful. [https://youtu.be/rNu8XDBSn10](https://youtu.be/rNu8XDBSn10)

<comment><USER14> Posting youtube links without explaining why anyone should watch them is not considered useful by most HN people. I looked at the start, and it didn't seem useful for the issue at hand, which (to me) is that the Republic of Ireland and the landmass named Ireland are two different things.

The Republic of Ireland doesn't include Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

The landmass named Ireland does.

I'm surprised to see that you are still missing that, but, ok, as an American maybe I'm not really understanding what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is of course Éire, not the U.K.. But the same is going on in the U.K. too.

* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44746447](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44746447) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17489990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17489990))

* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44806069](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44806069)

* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-4...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-44812713)

Things submerged under reservoirs are becoming temporarily accessible, as well.

* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-44771632](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-44771632)

* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-4476...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-44767269)

</comment><comment><USER16> _Davis says the buried structure caused the drought-stricken plants above ground to ripen at different rates, because the earth was deeper in some places than in others. This created a green-and-brown pattern in the plants that corresponded to the buried ruins._

Can someone please explain why this is the case? Is it because plants try to grow their roots deeper during droughts in order to access water that can't be obtained at the surface?

<comment><USER17> Assuming the round circle was built of stones, plants growing over stones tend to develop stronger, more entangled roots. These plants become hardy than similar species of plants growing nearby over loose soil. Rock crevices also tend to accumulate water which these plants should be able to use when other adjoining plants are dying. I think this is the reason why the circle became apparent during this drought.

<comment><USER18> Considering the wording, I'd expect the plants simply shoot their roots as deep and wide as they can, since those above stone can't sink theirs as far as the others they get less access to water and nutrient and thus mature slower for lack of resources. So they're still green while the others are already past that point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting how there's also one of those little islands in the same field. Don't know what they're called but I've seen enough Time Team to know they sometimes hide archaeological treasure. Something either too cumbersome to move or something marked for preservation.

Either way britain feels like a giant trove of discovery when you pay some attention to popular archaeology.

<comment><USER11> Sorry to keep banging the drum, this is an article about Ireland, not Britain.

This constant confusion is really annoying for Irish people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> That looks extremely circular. I'm not sure the association with "crop circles" aids credibility.</comment>


This sculptor got heavy metal poisoning from working with mussel shells - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4931720/this-sculptor-got-heavy-metal-poisoning-from-working-with-mussel-shells-1.4930128 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-46842671/how- a-s...](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-46842671/how-a-sculptor-s- artwork-slowly-poisoned-her)</comment>


How 2 people started Remember The Milk (simple todo list with 300K users) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2007/08/introducing-remember-milk-pro.html <comment><USER2> I wonder what they did to get the word out about RTM?

<comment><USER3> Vote it to the top of sites like this? I'm pretty annoyed I read that article/advertisement.

<comment><USER4> 34th rules of business. Everything and Everyone is a product... no explanation needed :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why doesn't Google buy them? The stuff they've done to integrate it with GMail (via a Firefox extension [I think]) looks impressive!

<comment><USER6> My goodness, that couldn't possibly have been the plan all along! Nobody would want to work for an evil corporation like Google. Also, acquisition is not a viable exit plan. Last but not least, they don't seem Googley enough.

Oh, wait -- you were serious? Because I wasn't... I will feel a teeny tiny bit bad for these guys if Google doesn't buy them, because it's so obvious that acquisition is their desired endpoint. Not that they haven't created a desirable product for people to use and Google to acquire, mind you -- it just doesn't seem like any sort of an afterthought.

<comment><USER5> My goodness! You couldn't possibly think I was stupid enough to think this wasn't the plan!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do any of you guys use it? I do, and so far it has worked. I created a smart list that shows all the tasks I have completed so far because if you only make it show you what you have to do, it can be overwhelming, but if you use it to show also what you have already acomplished, that sort of balances out the effect.

</comment><comment><USER8> An alternative I develop in my spare time: <http://tudulist.com>

Tudulist stresses the "tool to work together" point btw.

</comment><comment><USER9> What is your source for 300k users?

<comment><USER10> <http://www.rememberthemilk.com/about/> : they say they have over 350K users

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> nice little story, they were a bit slow with the pro accounts but I like the pricing. If they get 1 percent of their 300k users to upgrade thats $75000 a year.</comment>


80,000 Hours career plan worksheet - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MBpwNLl3AgsKi4Yh4PZ2X30PYy4gV9xK2xgqXKevaVQ/edit <comment><USER2> Being in my 40's and reading this, the only thing I can do is quote Tyson:

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson

<comment><USER3> Following that metaphor: it's always a good plan to wear a mouth guard so that your teeth don't get knocked out.

<comment><USER4> I dont know what serves as the mouth guard in your analogy but it sure as fuck won't stop you from getting laid out.

<comment><USER5> Nah, but you might still have your teeth afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to down play the usefulness of this, but be careful not to follow others ideas that your ultimate goal in life is X career plan. I have more of a "life plan" than a "career plan" since money and hacks/resourcefulness is pretty easy to the HN crowd relative to many other groups. Especially in the west, it takes talent to starve here.

A work/life balance is what some people enjoy, while others want a work/work or life/life balance.

For example, I am not interested in being worth X millions when I'm 60 at the cost of skipping >50% of life. Even money doesn't help with certain objectives (especially when you must trade time).

You have to balance what you want to have accomplished in life vs what you want while living life.

<comment><USER7> This is a good post.

I was just having a discussion with someone on HN who considered $200k pre-tax to be affluent, and suggested that if you couldn't save $80k post-tax annually, you're doing it wrong. Having lived at $30k, $200k, and now more, I know that $200k isn't as lofty as it sounds. The dollars never seem long enough.

It's all about living a life worth living. Part of that is buying time by paying for services - from remodeling, to plumbing and electrical, to landscaping and tree maintenance, to cleaning.

Once you have a family and sufficient means, the projects that you used to DIY to save money become tasks that you hire out to save time. Do I want to spend the next six to eight weekends building a massive Ipe deck, saving thousands of dollars, or do I want to pay someone to build it in two weeks so that I have weekends devoted to family, friends, and hobbies? Do I want to spend several hours a week cleaning the entire house, or do I want to pay someone to clean it while I am at work?

This can also be applied to subjective enjoyment. Do I want to drive an A-to-B economy car, or do I want to drive a high performance vehicle which I subjectively enjoy driving?

I usually choose buying time and buying enjoyment.

<comment><USER8> I get the point about picking and choosing where to spend your time and where you delegate things to others, but if living within your means expands with your means to that point, it's no wonder you find what's honestly a windfall to not be lofty.

And to take a different track than the anti-materialist route, I would ask you to think about how not taking advantage of that salary to save an amount of money that could be the salary of a few people put together is basically abandoning a ton of leverage to just leave a job or take other risks that would be infeasible to someone who's standard of living closely tracks their salary.

In choosing to buy the degree of things you buy and dismissing the sort of leverage a more "frugal" lifestyle could buy you (quotes because I'm using frugal in terms of still spending 6 figures a year), you're selling freedom of a different sort.

(That said, I don't know enough about you or what you spend your money on or what percentage of your income you're spending outside of what you detailed in your post to suggest you do anything other than think about that angle. I don't mean to suggest anything negative about your character.)

<comment><USER7> It's not a matter of salary or saving for me anymore. I've brokered a few patent acquisitions, each of which would have allowed me to stop working altogether. And it was an abrupt transition from earning $200k to netting a somewhat unexpected and fortuitous 8-figures.

BUT, I still stand by my statement that $200k isn't as much as most people think it is. Sure, you can minimize and scrimp on your house, your vehicles, your children's institutional education, etc. and squirrel some money away for a brighter future a couple of decades from now. But that route was never very appealing to me. It felt like I was selling present-me short for the benefit of future-me. Sure I saved money, utilized 401(k)s and Roth IRAs (until I was priced out), heavily took advantage of SEP IRAs, had a liquid safety net, etc.

But I also didn't save $80k post-tax cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Imagine you think on that worksheet and... "What is a fulfilling career to you" -> "I don't know..." "What is your most valuable career capital right now?" -> "No idea, if I knew how to turn something I have/can do into capital I wouldn't be planning things on that level would I?" "What global problems do you think are most pressing" -> How the hell should I know? this is only based on what I read in the media, I have no exposure to those problems. "Which of your options are best?" -> "What? I don't even know which of the options might be worthwhile, let alone having criteria and confidence to judge them in the absolute..."

Etc. Etc. You get my point: based on my observations of decision making of people around me, our real difficulty is not in asking those questions, rather it's that we simply do not know what the answers might be. We have no insight. We don't know our greatest strengths (or weaknesses), we don't know what's our biggest career capital, we have no idea what the ideal career for us would look like etc.

We have little way of knowing other than trying things out and seeing how they work out. It's easy to say "ask yourself question X", but the problem for people is that they simply do not have answers to those kinds of questions.

So what can be done about this? Maybe if you get an experienced mentor who will guide you through answering those questions, that would be progress. I would love to see tools for that kind of thinking.

<comment><USER10> Knowing what you want is half of the job indeed.

And then somewhere down the life you change that phrase to "knowing what you need" and you start all over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I was 25 years old I made the plan to move to SF, find a technical cofounder and start a fast growth company.

5 years later I achieved that goal.

My plan was nowhere near the detail of this but there were steps along the way. Things changed a lot, and not everything was done in the order I originally planned.

With that said, having a clear vision of where I wanted to be and loosely how I was going to get there meant that I could turn down opportunities that may have led me astray, or which didn't further my career/life goals.

YMMV.

<comment><USER12> I've always wondered about this, how do people just "decide" to start a company for the sake of itself. I've always though that companies are kinda grown organically, i.e. you have a problem you want/need to solve and it turns out to be also commercially viable.

I have projects like that, i.e. have been scratching my own itch. Sadly none of them have taken off financially or otherwise despite the great effort.

If I had to start a business/project just for "fast growth" I'd be totally clueless how to ago about it?

Is it just about picking the "hottest shit" whatever that is at the moment and trying to ride that wave?

<comment><USER13> I know some serial entrepreneurs who do decide to just "start" a company. They usually start with fairly broad research, looking into a lot of different industries, and then when they hear the whiff of an interesting problem dive really deeply into it.

However, doing so requires strong entrepreneurial insights. I don't recommend it for first-time founders, as starting a company for the sake of starting a company is often a recipe for building something nobody wants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Before I got to the bottom of the document I wondered if this was a bigger thing I'd not heard of before, and indeed: creators of it: [https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career- planning/](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-planning/).

I quite like the idea of an "ABZ" plan. It's often far too easy to think things will just carry on as is. Thinking about these things, for me the "Z" in particular, is something I don't think people do enough until it's too late. Thanks for providing a template doc like this as a low friction way to actually start doing it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I you don't need a more complicated plan than: work a lot, teach others, have fun, never stop learning. You can't plan opportunities..

<comment><USER16> But you need to be prepared to seize opportunities that are congruent with your aspirations; in fact sometimes you need to make these opportunities happen.

Planning therefore is important, but because so many things in between happen, your plan should consist of a far reaching vision so as to allow you to learn along the way, including taking paths that may end up in temporary setbacks. If you don't fail, you don't learn.

<comment><USER17> And while you're learning, your attitude and world understanding constantly changes so much that you trash the plans of naive older self almost yearly, no?

<comment><USER16> Absolutely true. I have changed and changed and changed, and keep changing my world view over time. Some of my core principles though (honesty, fairness, empathy, strong family ties, etc.) remain; and hopefully will stay this way forever :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're looking for a more holistic plan, one that doesn't just focus on career, check out Self Authoring ([http://www.selfauthoring.com/](http://www.selfauthoring.com/)) and specifically the Future Authoring course. It was put together by clinical and research psychologists, and has been administered to University students with pretty profound results.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't help but feel career plans, even inherently flexible ones such as the 80000 hour plan, discourage serendipity and encourage sunk-cost thinking.

I'm not saying this is a bad idea, just that for _the specific HackerNews demographic_ it may be a bit of an anti-pattern.

<comment><USER20> Yeh, I'd also like to know whether the HN demographic really has a hard time at finding work?

<comment><USER21> It's not super hard to imagine. It's not like awesome jobs grow on trees, or that they're giving them away at the airport. If you're one of the few people in the world who can simply point to their ideal company, declare "I shall work there!" and then [poof] you're there, then congratulations on your good fortune. For the rest of us, finding the next rung on the ladder is an endless struggle, and there are not a lot of practical "how to" resources out there.

I'm 40, have been working in technology for close to 20 years, and have had the great fortune to have stayed employed for most of those years, but for the entirety of this I've considered myself "underemployed". I've woken up each day thinking "boy I could be doing so much more if only I wasn't limited by [ ROLE | COMPANY | GEOGRAPHY | BOSS | ETC ]. Don't get me wrong--I feel grateful that tech is one of those careers where you at least have a chance to improve where you are, but these opportunities are still few, far between, and you have to pound the pavement to find them. You do need to plan and you need to ask the right questions of yourself. I like this article because it provides some structure for your plan and helps you to think about the good questions to ask yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This was copied out of the book "The Start-up of You" by Reid Hoffman. They point this out on their website, but they should really point it out on this Google Doc as well since it's pretty much entirely unoriginal.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like this because it provides structure and some more concrete (yet still general) advice. Too much career how-to is wishy-washy cliche: crap like "do what you love" and "follow your passion" and "never stop learning". That's fine if you're looking for spirituality. Not so much if you're looking for a solid step-by-step structure to follow.

</comment><comment><USER23> Assuming the 10000 hour rule of gaining expertise and toning it down, because in a job you cannot just do deliberate practice for 10K hours :-), I guess a single fulfilling profession for 10 years, where you learn, become good enough to extract mileage out of it and then moving on to a new career, should be plausible.

Anyone out here who has done that, much like Tarzan, holding onto the one career while switching to another? I have not yet given this a deep thought, but it looks cool to have multiple professions in a one lifespan but am not sure how to do it. Or is it that as life/age happens and we just have to stick to 1 career/profession. Any thoughts appreciated.

<comment><USER24> I'm an electrical engineer 12 years out of college. I did design work for 5 years, became an electronics quality manager in operations, then design validation test manager in R&D, and now questioning what to do with my career ... I'm leaning towards data analytics guru ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > What are your best medium-term options (3-15 years)?

> 1\. What global problems do you think are most pressing?

The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets w/ statistical indicators, AKA GlobalGoals, are for the whole world through 2030.

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

[http://www.globalgoals.org](http://www.globalgoals.org)

<comment><USER25> "Schema.org: Mission, Project, Goal, Objective, Task" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12525141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12525141) could make it easy to connect our local, regional, national, and global goals; and find people with similar objectives and solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." \- a good friend of mine

</comment><comment><USER27> "What is a fulfilling career to you? "

I'm out.</comment>


Google undeleted whocalled.us after a front page article on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> Last week I posted on HN that 'Google deleted whocalled.us for "Pure Spam" and replaced it with spam' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9050343).
I appreciated reading your thoughts, and it made me feel better because the worst part of it all was feeling like nobody could hear my protests that they made a mistake.
I made 8 reconsideration requests, which are messages you send Google to ask for a human to manually review the penalty. All of them were denied with the same automated response.
It did not feel like any humans actually read or thought about the situation, so I felt voiceless.
As usual, if you make a public scene, a large corporation will often notice, and look closer at that individual's issue. I think that's what happened in this case.
I happened to notice today that whocalled.us was back in Google, and the "Pure Spam" manual action had disappeared. There was no notice or explanation, and it feels like someone at Google saw my post, and quietly fixed it.
I thought it was important to notify HN about this.
I don't know how to feel about this. I already removed AdSense from the site, and gave up on it. From a shortsighted view, I should be happy, and thank Google.
But this experience showed me that Google has more power over my website than I do. <comment><USER4> I saw your previous post and could not find egregious blackhat SEO stuff. The backlink profile was not too healthy though, with around 250 domains responsible for over 7000 backlinks. You said you got a spam warning on Google Webmaster Tools: These penalties are hardly ever permanent.

> As usual, if you make a public scene, a large corporation will often notice, > and look closer at that individual's issue. I think that's what happened in > this case.

> I made 8 reconsideration requests .. all of them were denied.

Probably because you did not show a good will effort to clean up your act. At least you do not tell us what were the contents of these reconsideration requests. For all we know it was: "Reconsider me!"

From your previous post I gather that you were heavily annoyed with the unnatural links actions and warnings. Instead of cleaning up your act for Google you focused on a suggested unnatural link to claim it was all BS.

> As usual, if you make a public scene, a large corporation will often notice, > and look closer at that individual's issue. I think that's what happened in > this case.

I do think that the people at Google notice a prominent post on HackerNews. But I do not think that they manually removed a spam penalty to avoid bad publicity. If anything: allowing spammy sites in the index without even a slap on the wrist is not good for publicity at all (and very visible to the users). I think the pre-set penalty period was over, or a recrawl found a cleaner site.

> But this experience showed me that Google has more power over my website > than I do.

Google has more power over their search engine index than you do. You are free to do whatever you want to do with your website.

I do have a question: The DuckDuckGo widget you had on your site (now changed to a general link), was that an official widget? Did money exchange hands for placing such a widget/link on every page of your site? I am wondering why a site-wide link to a commercial page is not 'nofollow'-ed, and if that may have brought you unwanted quality guidelines attention.

<comment><USER5> A lot of the "spamminess" comes from practices that were perfectly acceptable back when Google came out, or which are encouraged by the standards which define how the Web operates. For example, each phone number in his database has a specific URL which you can use to access it. Many of these pages have similar features, being that the whole point of the site is to aggregate discussions about suspect phone numbers. This is a similar profile to the "download" sites that have proliferated, except that in this case each URL links to something useful, where the URLs on the download sites link to nothing useful.

Further, the whole point of the Web is to link pages together. That Google penalizes one site author for what other site authors do is a problem with Google, not a problem with the author. In the previous posting he indicated that Google asked him to contact the various site authors and ask them to remove their links. Why should he have to do this?

<comment><USER6> "In the previous posting he indicated that Google asked him to contact the various site authors and ask them to remove their links. Why should he have to do this?"

He shouldn't have to do that. It's incompetence on Google's part. The solution to spammy links, is to drop their value to zero, not to generate a penalty for the site that is the target of said spammy links. This is a flaw in how Google has chosen to handle low quality sites and spammy links. The incompetence aspect is that they failed to be creative enough to find a better solution, and fell back to using a hammer approach.

<comment><USER4> This used to be the "solution" to spammy links: Drop their value to zero. This caused an entire eco-system of spammers with the mentality: "I'll just generate 1000 links without the prospect of a penalty in the hope that 10 links stick. I then bill my client for a 1000 links, since there is no way to see which links are devalued".

Google's creative solution was to make sure to webmasters that: yes, these links do hurt your rankings. Instead of linkbuilding and diluting the precious link-signal, these spammers now offered link-profile-cleaning services (Mission. F-cking. Accomplished. [http://xkcd.com/810/](http://xkcd.com/810/) ).

<comment><USER7> So wait, if you want to take somebody else's website off Google, all you have to do is make a bunch of spammy links to it?

This is insane.

Spammers should now be linking to a site and then telling the site owners, "If you want to get your Google rank back, pay us $1000 to take our links down."

<comment><USER8> This is a thing, in case you're wondering. At my current job, there was a spike a week ago with more than 1k spam links. We've no idea where they're from, or how to disassociate ourselves from it

<comment><USER6> It takes some effort, but you can disavow those links:

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fixing mistakes without accepting blame or acknowledging the error always bothers me. Does it stem from the fear of a lawsuit-happy society, or embarrassment?

<comment><USER10> I suspect that a lawsuit-happy society is a good part of it.

Having been on the other side a few times (the one who quietly fixed an error without acknowledgement), there are a number of other factors at work as well:

1\. Sometimes, fixing the error is within my power but talking to the customer is not. For example, when I was at Google, I was an engineer - fixing a bug was something I could do merely with a code review, but talking to the outside world was forbidden by company policy, and I didn't even know who the people were that were authorized to speak to the outside world on company behalf.

2\. Very often, the error is one of several dozen in a bug queue, and you just want to fix it and move on. Talking to someone - particularly a customer - <USER2> a big mental context switch; it means that 5 _other_ people won't get their errors fixed at all.

3\. Sometimes the error is a distraction from your normal job duties, you feel like you can do a good deed by taking 5 minutes of your day to tweak a config file, but you don't want it to blow up any larger than that, and usually once a user has your attention they feel free to ask you to fix all their _other_ annoyances. This is a big problem with working on open-source software; I've never yet had a good deed take less than 5x the amount of time I budgeted for it, and usually involve a few people mad at me. (I often find out later that many other people are very appreciative, but the latter never seem to speak up).

I think the fundamental problem is a mismatch between our expectations as human beings, which are shaped by millenia of face-to-face interactions, and the reality of modern society, where we are just a ticket number to a faceless corporation. Internet companies like Google and Facebook have roughly a million users per engineer working on the product; Whatsapp has 50 million. Imagine the scale of insignificance of any one problem; by the numbers, a user of a consumer product is roughly as consequential as a hair on your head. That could be why we get such shitty service from basically every major consumer company out there.

<comment><USER11> This seems likely:

"fixing the error is within my power but talking to the customer is not."

<comment><USER12> To be fair, "a temporary ban expired automatically" seems equally plausible...

<comment><USER13> The name appearing on the front page of HN may have changed how many people were searching for the site and clicking its link, taking it from the spam bucket to the content bucket.

It may have also changed google's view on which people are searching for and visiting the site. Before, its search traffic was people searching for phone numbers, a random cross section of people who get spam phone calls. After, its a specific name brand being searched for by possibly well connected tech workers who are logged into google+.

<comment><USER12> Fair points, yeah. I think this is akin to fitting curves to a single data point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a possible case to be made that Google should be regulated in some way, perhaps as a public utility, with requirements for human interaction. It's unacceptable that they have as much power over the Internet as they do and still hide behind the facade of a machine.

<comment><USER15> You might make a case for regulation if a) you could show that Google is a monopoly and b) Google used its monopoly power to shut out competition or control market pricing. But, at least in the U.S., the former is not true - <USER3> market share of 75% is necessary to establish a per se monopoly - unless the latter is true, and the latter is patently untrue. "Attract a lot of eyeballs" is not, thank goodness, grounds for regulation, or Twitter and Facebook would surely be regulated.

There is no facade. Google search is algorithmically driven, and no one has ever shown that its algorithms discriminate unfairly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Your experience is scary-pleasant. Perhaps someone should start a peer- reviewed list : why-google-blacklisted.me where the top voted ones would stand a chance of getting reviewed by non-bots at Google. In all likelihood, a situation like this gives nightmares to entrepreneurs on a daily basis.

Edit: Another recent similar incident: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873149)

<comment><USER17> So in essence you want thousands of people to volunteer their time and energy to do the work that a multi-billion dollar corporation should be doing in the first place?

"Don't be evil" at this point is a punch line

<comment><USER16> You didn't give an alternate solution?

Someone mentioned here there's a million to 1 user to engineer ratio. As much as I would want Google to fix the issue, I don't expect that happening anytime soon. If all of us can collectively help the community fix bugs then why not? Just like countless other crowdsourced intelligence tools (e.g. wot browser extension, ad blockers etc.).

<comment><USER17> Isn't it obvious?

The alternative solution is that google takes responsibility for the quality of their search results and actually pays people to work on it. I know they like to pretend that everything is automated but we all know it clearly isn't.

And no, they don't need to hire a $300,000 a year engineer to do this work. You don't need advanced programming knowledge or experience to be able to judge whether a website has a real case when they submit a reconsideration request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It could also be that someone from Google saw the post and put in a request for reconsideration on your behalf too. Unfortunately, a perk of working at Google means that any requests by Google employees get extra consideration (at least with several issues friends have had to deal with involving Google taking down videos/channels on YouTube)

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't it likely that they just made a minor "algorithm" update that fixed the real reason why your site was penalized?

Maybe they reset your penalty as a "thank you" for bringing it to their attention?

</comment><comment><USER20> Google search is FAR more human-driven than they'll ever admit to - for legal and PR reasons.

<comment><USER17> I think most people who are even remotely interested in SEO know this to be true.

<comment><USER20> Or remotely familiar with modern machine learning. With a company of that budget, all important systems ultimately go through a supervised learning layer. Practically nothing important uses unsupervised learning end-to-end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am the cofounder of a company that serves as an alternative to AdSense. Get in touch with me: firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER17> what does this have to do with adsense or its competition?

<comment><USER22> OP gave up on AdSense.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't there a 'Number of Users Online' feature on HN? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Adding a single small feature doesn't take up that much space, but what differentiates this small feature from another? Why not add that one, too? Therefore only features that provide significant value exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> What problem does that solve?

<comment><AUTHOR> Many. You could for instance use it to post a submission when lots of people are online.

Suppose that would just create a huge influx of new submissions though now I think about it.

<comment><USER4> Does it help to solve the problem of keeping the community from degrading? That seems to be the main thing that PG cares about when adding features to HN. If the only thing it make easier is targeting submissions for maximum karma and visibility, then it seems to me like it would be more likely to damage the quality of the community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do you want one?</comment>


McConnell: Net neutrality bill 'dead on arrival' in Senate - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/438133-mcconnell-net-neutrality-bill-dead-on-arrival-in-senate?rnd=1554848198 <comment><USER2> This is just reporting on party politics and effectively contains no information.

<comment><USER3> I kinda agree, except that if McConnell says the bill is DOA, then it is.

And this bill is relevant to HN because net neutrality is.

Unsurprising news, though. Despite popular support, the GOP doesn't support it, and they control the Senate. Why would they pass this? (from their perspective)

<comment><USER4> Why would they pass it? Because the majority of Americans want it and they are supposed to represent us? Because it's good for the country? Because they're supposed to put country over party, not the other way around?

There's lots of reasons.

<comment><USER5> Your representative represents you, among many. That's the vote you share. Representatives are supposed to put state or district above everything else.

<comment><USER6> EDIT: Parent edited their comment to no longer reflect who McConnell represents.

"Only 33% of Kentucky voters approve of McConnell and an overwhelming 56% disapprove." [1]

[1] [https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/431002-poll-33-of- kent...](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/431002-poll-33-of-kentucky- voters-approve-of-mcconnell) (Poll: 33% of Kentucky voters approve of McConnell)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's mind blowing to me that Senate procedure still allows one party/person to control what bills even are voted on, whether that bill would gain majority vote or not. One person should not be able to say no. Let the votes speak for themselves. Even if they are just bought. This needs to change.

<comment><USER8> > _It's mind blowing to me that Senate procedure still allows one party > /person to control what bills even are voted on_

McConnell doesn't wield absolute power. The Senate can remove him at any time. His leadership is a matter of efficiency and convenience, not necessity.</comment></comment>