Sugar Molecule Links Red Meat Consumption and Elevated Cancer Risk in Mice - <AUTHOR> http://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2014-12-29-sugar-molecule-in-red-meat-linked-to-cancer.aspx <comment><USER2> Articles like this drive panic and speculation among those who don't have enough scientific competency to ascertain the significance of differences between mice and men.(humans)

[https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-drugs-that- showed...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-drugs-that-showed- promising-results-in-clinical-lab-animal-trials-and-failed-miserably-in-human- trials)

The problem with the word 'cancer' and 'consumption' in biology is that it is a combinatorially complex issue.

There are many different types of cancer and many more types of gut bacteria for 'consumption.' [https://www.quora.com/How-many-types-of-gut-bacteria- exist-i...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-types-of-gut-bacteria-exist-in-our- digestive-system)

<comment><USER3> Except these mice were knockouts for Neu5Gc, making them much more like us, for purposes of this study. Also, humans and mice are both omnivorous mammals, so not radically different with regards to diet, potentially (squeak).

<comment><USER2> Correlation, not causation.

With 500-1000 identified/unidentified species of gut bacteria floating around, mimicking one is a bad data set.

Corollary example, we've not proved that H.Pylori causes Ulcerative Colitis, yet they coexist frequently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not a study, this is a press release based on a study. Always, always, always go to the actual study.

The actual study is [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/25/1417508112.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/25/1417508112.abstract) and it is paywalled. The main thing that jumps out about it, is that it is not just a dietary intervention; they also injected the mice with antibodies to Neu5Gc, supposedly to reproduce the levels found in the human immune system. Bad things happened only to those mice who were both fed Neu5Gc (at a concentration an order of magnitude higher than humans would encounter) and also gave them these antibodies. While this looks potentially promising, the human immunology would need to be studied, and what the effect size would be for a more typical diet is completely unknown.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's been a lot of research and people interested in grass-fed beef. I'd love to learn more about the results of this study compared to the discoveries about grass-fed beef, omega 3 and the omega 3/6 balance stuff.

On one hand you have people like this study, which did a small 1 time study indicating that there is an inflammatory effect in mice. On the other hand, you have people like Dave Asprey who have spent years testing the 'grass fed beef is less inflammatory' hypothesis in humans. One of these has a stronger indication to my own health than the others.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Neu5Gc accumulated in the tumors."

I'm not sure that that makes sense from a biological perspective, for many reasons. Neu5Gc itself is not terribly likely to be carcinogenic, its mode of action is to enervate the immune system. If anything, accumulation of Neu5Gc in tumors should mitigate cancer by triggering antibody-directed cell-mediated cytotoxicity.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the fact that the there is an explicit disclosure at the end.

Also this: "Of course, moderate amounts of red meat can be a source of good nutrition for young people. We hope that our work will eventually lead the way to practical solutions for this catch-22."

I think this is important. What amount of red meat is OK to consume? Its really hard to get people to stop eating what they've developed a taste for. But limitation would be a much more achievable strategy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Serious question: is there any reason to think that mice would be a good proxy for human health results re: meat consumption?

<comment><USER9> Mice are far from perfect proxies for humans, but when it comes to dietary and nutrition studies, they are surprisingly good matches. Others have pointed out the cost/quantity/ease advantages of working with mice. Another big advantage is that some mice (and many rats) are opportunistic omnivores, like humans. As such, their digestive systems have evolved to be reasonably similar to ours. (Key word here being "reasonably").

<comment><USER8> That makes sense. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let me know when you guys figure out whether or not salt is bad for me.</comment>


Append-only B+ Tree on Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/donnerjack13589/node-index This is in-progress project too. <comment><USER2> You may be interested in an append only B+Tree implementation in C: <https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/AODBM>

<comment><USER3> Since we're all sharing implementations, anyone interested in a similar data structure for C# can feel free to dig through (or use) my btree-based key value store:

<https://github.com/kevingadd/DataMangler>

Of interest might be the fact that it's based on memory-mapped files, and it supports multithreaded querying. Insertion is single-threaded, though.

Unfortunately, it uses a regular old B-Tree. I should probably change it to a B+ Tree for better range queries... didn't even know about that data structure until seeing this HN post. :)

<comment><USER4> Implement COLA and leap frog the competition: <http://supertech.csail.mit.edu/papers/sbtree.pdf></comment></comment></comment>


Who Does Google Think They're Fooling? - <AUTHOR> http://www.johncaruso.ca/index.php?post=369

<comment><USER2> I don't think Google is fooling anyone. They would obviously profit from a more open web. Anything that helps the web as a whole, pretty much helps Google as a whole. This is why if you care about the Internet, Google will be your ally in most cases (yes, not all). That's why they helped with SOPA, too. And they will probably continue to remain an ally in such cases.

So just because Google has something to gain from it (otherwise why would they even do it?) doesn't mean they are wrong on what they are saying about the walled gardens like Facebook and Apple. A more open Internet would help Google, but would also help new start-ups. It would help the _next_ Google as well. Imagine if every website would've been a walled garden in the early 2000's. We wouldn't even have a search engine right now, or at least not a very useful one.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I don't deny that Sergey probably cares a lot about the web being open" but he's just not allowed to say anything about it ever because his company can then index that open web and make it searchable, then put ads by the search results.

I went into this article expecting some sort of hypocrisy call-out about Google not being open enough while whining about others' walled gardens, but the OP's argument just doesn't make sense to me. Of course they'd make money off of it, that's what they do. That's what all the search engines do. What is OP so angry about?

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this really just an ad homeniem?

Would the author have the same reaction if it was made by Brewster Kahle, founder of the non-profit Internet Archive (www.archive.org)?

After all, the same points can easily be made in regard to non-profit information archiving as for profit-seeking information indexing.

</comment><comment><USER5> If something is crawlable by Google then it should be crawlable by Bing or DDG or me if I want to try and make something.

Certainly a more 'open web' would help Google, but it would also help Bing, DDG or any other dev who would like to make something interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd rather have crawable content searchable thru Google with relevant ads on the side than the shitty advertising Facebook or YouTube throws in my face, for instance. People complain (me too) but the fact is Google (search engine, not company) is the only one in position to deliver relevant advertising that doesn't bother the user. It's a win-win.

</comment><comment><USER7> The problem here is that you are posing this as an either-or question. It's certainly possible that Apple and Facebook are destroying the internet as we know it AND Google has their own agenda. You don't have to pick one or the other.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well. I don't know the details. But wouldn't facebook benefit from having social results in google a-la google+? ... If this data was crawlable / more open, wouldn't google be able to include facebook results to personalize search?

</comment><comment><USER9> So you believe providing ad content isn't to the benefit of consumers?</comment>


Elixir and Ecto – Multi-Tenancy Through Dynamic Repos - <AUTHOR> https://underjord.io/ecto-multi-tenancy-dynamic-repos-part-1-getting-started.html <comment><USER2> "Ecto is the database [we know and love from the Elixir ecosystem]."

I've read blog posts where the very first sentence was more wrong than this one, but not a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> _facepalm_ Yeah, yeah, that's fair. I should have caught that in editing. Thanks, I'll fix that up.

Now if you don't know or love Ecto, that's another matter. Can't help you there ;)</comment></comment>


Fossil - source control w/ built-in bug tracking and wiki - <AUTHOR> http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki

<comment><USER2> Just when I thought I had settled on hg, something new comes along that gives me second thoughts.</comment>


How to Intern for a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wepay.com/2010/03/18/how-to-intern-for-a-startup/ <comment><USER2> so if Karl was so great, and made such huge contributions...why wasn't Karl made a co-founder at the end of his internship?

Frankly I think working for a startup is stupid unless you get a ton of equity to make the time worthwhile AND know that the company is capable of hitting a big exit. Why? Because you are expected to put in the same time, make the same sacrifices and take the same risk as the founders, but in the event of a cash out you get squat.

Everyone always thinks of Google and Apple early employees who cashed out big, but that's selection bias, most startups crash and burn...and those which don't have smaller exits, after the VCs and founders take their cuts, as an employee you'll be lucky to make up the difference in salary you gave up by not going to work for Google or MSFT.

<comment><AUTHOR> My co-founder and I had been working almost a full year before we got accepted to YCombinator, and we made some pretty substantial progress building out our back-office financial partnerships and getting savvy in the payment space.

Bill had walked away from a very lucrative job in finance, and I left a pretty prestigious scholarship at NYU law.

We were far from conception stage when we brought Karl on board. When he agreed to work for us, he knew he was going to learn a lot, get the YC experience, make some good connections, and see what it was like to work for an early-stage startup without having to make a life-changing commitment. If the company went belly-up, he could just go back to school in the fall. In fact, he _did_ go back to school at the end of the summer.

If we went belly up, Bill and I would have been shit out of luck. Karl only came back _after_ we raised money and offered him a salary.

There is no way we would have hired Karl had we not had the opportunity to work with him over the summer. But he _did_ choose to work with us, and he was rewarded with a position that he would have had no chance of getting otherwise. He still has the option to go back to school, but if he does, he will have a head start on most of his peers.

Karl has been an incredible part of our team, and I am thrilled we have him. That being said, we did not need Karl to get where we are, which I think is the one prerequisite for giving anybody founder status (and the commensurate equity).

I worked for a startup (poverty level wages) right out of college. It was one of the best experiences I have had, and without it, there is no way I would have started this company. I wasn't doing it in the hopes that one day I would be anointed a founder.

<comment><USER3> _Karl only came back after we raised money and offered him a salary._

Did you offer him any compensation during that period to stay? I am guessing no. Isn't it unfair to offer him equity only if he works for free without any guarantee of compensation? What if you were stringing him along for free labor?

 _If we went belly up, Bill and I would have been shit out of luck_

Employee compensation should not be related to how much risk the employers have: it should be related to the market value of the employee. As others have said, Karl also took a risk. If your company went under, all he would have on his resume is an unknown company with less money than if he went for a paid internship at Google etc...

If you are paying below market rate for talent, you should compensate through equity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unpaid software internships are for suckers.

* If an intern is providing value for the company, they should be paid.

* The barrier to someone providing value as a programmer is extremely low. A bright, hard-working sophomore CS major should be getting paid as an intern.

* Students are often at an information disadvantage, in that they are not aware of how valuable they are.

* The idea that internships at Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, etc don't offer the ability to write production code is ignorant of these programs.

* Companies which are willing to take advantage of an information disparity to underpay interns are also likely to underpay their other full time employees.

</comment><comment><USER5> Way to go Karl.

I have a similar story from the other side. About 3 years ago I was a sophomore in college looking for an internship. I knew I wanted to get into a startup but didn't know how to get in touch with one.

I asked HN if anyone knew startups in the NYC area, a few people responded. I emailed a few, I received a few responses. Most of them were unpaid, which I MIGHT have been able to do but I do need money to support myself so it would have been a few days at that internship and a few working a paying job. I felt like a lot of the offers were just a dude in some apartment in brooklyn hacking on a project that was calling himself a startup (again, ok, I'd do that) but the ideas were not that good. I won't list them here, but suffice to say it was weak.

Eventually I got in touch with Bug Labs, and over the course of a few weeks hounded the crap out of them until finally they relented and agreed to an interview. They were not looking for interns - I think there were about 8 people at the time and they had 1 round under their belt but that was it, and working out of the old del.icio.us office which was quite cramped at that point. I distinctly remember being asked "So what can you do for us" because they really didn't think an intern could be of help. I think they pictured me making coffee.

Anyway I convinced them somehow to start me a few hours and a few dollars, and go from there. It became clear that I could contribute pretty quickly and I went to full time and they paid me more what interns were getting paid elsewhere, and the whole thing worked out really well. I came back the next summer and there were 2 other interns. I came back last summer and there were enough interns to have an area in the new office called "intern city", which had 5 or 6 guys of various levels of commitment/pay/hours.

It was a great experience for me, vastly more responsibility than I would have gotten at a "big" company like the article mentions, and I think I helped Bug Labs a bit too. Not to mention the guys I was working with were some of the smartest people I've ever met, and I got to be in NYC every day. I would say it was one of the best decisions of my career to "Ask HN" that day.

Oh and now that I and the other interns have convinced them its worth having interns around (and you're in the NYC area) apply for one!: <http://www.buglabs.net/jobs>

(edit: weird coincidence with the kschultz/kschults thing to these stories)

<comment><USER6> That's pretty cool. Thanks for sharing. Do you have any suggestions for a someone looking for an internship in the middle of no where?

<comment><USER5> Its still about networking. In my case it was HN -> intermediate group of people -> contact at Bug Labs -> interview. After working at Bug Labs for a while my girlfriend was looking for a job and I introduced her to someone I met at work who knew someone whose wife needed an intern. Neither were advertised jobs. So my suggestion is find the tech crowd and see if they can help you. Right now I'm looking for a job in a completely different part of the country so I'm facing a similar struggle, you really should search for companies that match what you are looking for, don't necessarily search for people advertising internships. Once you find those companies figure out how to talk to SOMEONE and work from there. Linkedin might be helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note unpaid internships are illegal in many countries as they breach employment regulations (i.e. minimum wage, etc.)

<comment><USER8> Source: [http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/blog/are-unpaid- internshi...](http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/blog/are-unpaid-internships- illegal/)

The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division created a test to determine whether a "trainee" or intern is considered an "employee" based on a 1947 Supreme Court decision that evaluated whether "prospective train yard brakemen were 'employees' within the meaning of the Fair Labor Standards Act." The test requires that all 6 of the following statements are true about the intern's time with the company.

1\. If the training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in a vocational school;

2\. If the training is for the benefit of the trainee;

3\. If the trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;

4\. If the employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and, on occasion, the employer's operations are actually impeded;

5\. If the trainees are not necessarily entitled to employment at the completion of the training period;

6\. If the employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

This is the law. If any one of these six statements is not true about a given internship, then the interns are considered "employees" and are subject to the monetary provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. That means that the interns are entitled to minimum wage and overtime compensation.

<comment><USER3> I think there may be a loophole.

Without naming any names, there was a law based start-up (with lawyers on the board and founders) in the US that wanted me to work for them for free for a while, and then maybe be hired as a salaried employee.

I declined the offer since it seemed like a poor deal and the company was in dire straits, but they told me that they had at least one person work unpaid for several months before being hired.

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure the only loophole is the necessary authorities not knowing about it.

<comment><USER3> Are you saying that because you actually read the laws, or are you just trying to sound clever?

Lawyers are a careful bunch, always having long disclaimers on their websites. I have trouble believing they would bet the future of their million+ funded start-up by depending on the ignorance of authorities. The IRS isn't stupid.

<comment><USER9> I've heard of this consequence of that act a few other times and never heard "but you can get around it if ..." So it's just a guess, but not one that's _totally_ unsubstantiated.

And plenty of people break tax laws. I read (on HN, I think) that something like 1/3 of people who work as private contractors under-report their income (which is part of why the IRS is cracking down on "contractors" that really are more like employees). Lots of people work under the table. Until the IRS started asking for the SSNs of people's dependents, lots of people had fictional dependents. (Millions fewer dependents were claimed the first year it was required than the previous year.) The IRS can only audit a tiny percentage of filings.

And if it were a 100% unpaid internship where they didn't even pay for a plane ticket or anything, there might be no trace of it anywhere that an audit would see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for the high praise, Rich.

If anyone's got questions about the experience, I'd be happy to share. Short version: freaking awesome!

<comment><USER11> What made you decide to intern at a small startup versus a larger company? How would you describe your experience at wepay?

<comment><USER10> I never really applied to the larger companies. It seemed like most of the really cool opportunities there were full-time positions only. My friends that had done internships at bigger companies hadn't enjoyed it very much, so I was looking for something small.

When I met Rich and Bill, WePay jumped out at me because it was the most startup-y of all the startups there that day. Every other company had a product and was trying to build it up. WePay was just an idea at the time, and it was obvious that I'd be deeply involved in the building and shaping of the product, rather than adding on to something that already existed.

Asking me to describe the experience is such a broad question that it's hard not to answer in a similarly broad manner. If you've got specific aspects that you're curious about, let me know. As for generally, I absolutely loved it (which is why I'm back here now). I certainly learned way more during three months than I had in two years of school.</comment></comment></comment>


PilotKit - <AUTHOR> Super-easy local site
development
PilotKit is a robust local WordPress, Joomla and Drupal manager for Mac. You won't be disappointed with the ease of use, performance, and features.
Link: https://pilotkit.co/ <comment><USER2> Two things:

1- link the post to the URL instead of creating a post with a link in the description. 2- Link is not working.

<comment><AUTHOR> link is working fine for me. [https://pilotkit.co/](https://pilotkit.co/)</comment></comment>


Space Shuttle computer has 1MB of RAM - <AUTHOR> http://astroblog.cosmobc.com/2010/03/27/did-you-know-the-space-shuttle-runs-on-only-one-megabyte-of-ram/

<comment><USER2> Here is an article about developing the 'perfect' software that runs the shuttle:

"They Write the Right Stuff"

<http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print>

<comment><USER3> And it's 260 engineers to write 420 KLOC. This is why software is buggy; it's to expensive to make it not buggy.

<comment><USER4> And it required 380 engineers to build the Burj Dubai.

The only difference is for most software projects it is acceptable to have "bugs" as customers will still pay for it, even if it's in a poor state of quality. But "bugs" in a 2,717 ft tower are unacceptable.

It comes down to, in general the cost of a bug in most software is relatively low compared to other engineering disciplines. Of course if the software is critical support systems for Astronauts that's a different story.

<comment><USER5> The Burj Dubai, like any other structure is full of bugs.

The point of engineering is to make a system that is resilient to a certain level of faults. That's why the tower doesn't collapse if there is a 0.1 mm crack in one of the bolts.

<comment><USER6> It also depends on how you define a "bug". A car that crumples too much and injures the driver when hit at this angle or that angle within these speeds could be considered a bug. In which case, counting the number of knobs that fall off, plastic that cracks, and parts that wear out prematurely, not to mention discoveries of toxic fumes / paint / etc, cars _do_ have thousands of bugs.

<comment><USER5> The main problem with software 'engineering' is the fragility of software. In a structure you know there will be cracks, so you choose a material that is ductile enough that a crack can't grow to dangerous size in the lifetime of the component. The problem with software is that generally a single bit wrong is a total failure.

I was involved in a case with a turbine blade fracture. The user claimed that there must have been a flaw, and yes the crack must have started at a single atom sized crystal flaw in the meta. But the choice of alloy was such that the crack would have grown at a rate which means it was under the failure size for at least twice the inspection interval - where the customer missed it.

<comment><USER7> _The problem with software is that generally a single bit wrong is a total failure._

This doesn't mesh with my experience to be honest. I often come across code that contains nasty bugs but is still somehow working accidentally. And even more often, there are bugs that stop just _one feature_ from working while the rest of a large system pretty much acts as if the bug didn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember my Digital Circuits prof saying the Apollo Flight Computer was constructed out of thousands of NOR-gates.

At the time I was struggling to comprehend how to construct a basic circuit, so I was wow'd (and still am).

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

<comment><USER9> That is'nt very surprising for a person working the semiconductor design industry. Actually there are no AND/OR/NOT gates fabricated on a modern IC.

They are all NAND gates, since they have better electrical characteristics and are Universal Gates (they can form AND/OR/NOT gates in some combination).

What is surprising is that they used NOR gates - while they are Universal Gates as well, their fabrication apparently leads to poorer electrical properties.

<comment><USER10> NAND gates have two PMOS (pull-up) transistors in parallel and two NMOS (pull- down) transistors in series. This matches well with most CMOS processes, in which NMOS are faster. NOR gates have two PMOS in series and two NMOS in parallel, so either your pull up time will be significantly longer than your pull down time, or you're going to have to make the PMOS pretty big.

None of this really mattered at the time; the Apollo used resistor-transistor logic (RTL), which in turn used bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) instead of the CMOS (C is for complementary, meaning NMOS and PMOS) used for most digital logic today. In RTL (there are analogous logic families using CMOS too), instead of having a pull-up network of transistors, there is a weak pull-up resistor that makes the output high by default, unless it is pulled down by a network of (usually NPN) BJTs. In the case of an RTL NOR gate, it is just a bunch of NPN BJTs in parallel for the pull-down network, so it's pretty efficient ( <http://www.play-hookey.com/digital/experiments/rtl_nor4.html> ).

Sorry for the longish post.

<comment><USER9> oh wow.. I had completely forgotten about RTL.

Thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Similarly, the Russian Soyuz capsule's computer ran on only 6 kilobytes of RAM until it was replaced with newer systems in 2003, which most probably was the cause of its subsequent crash-landing in Kazakhstan."

Really? Really?

<comment><USER12> Really (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-1>). That was the first flight of the new Soyuz TMA with a glass cockpit.

The capsule's failsafe mechanisms where triggered and the it fell back to the harsher ballistic reentry instead of the normal controlled one (nobody was harmed). It seems that a system which has been in use since 1979 somehow got confused by the sensory data. Some sort of odd bug, they have never been able to reproduce it.

Fallback to ballistic reentries also happened later with TMA-10 and TMA-11 – in those two cases a damaged cable and a pyro bolt malfunction (which nearly got the crew killed) were responsible respectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The guidance computer doesn't have enough RAM to contain the code for the entire mission, though. They have to load in a new program once the the orbiter is in space, and another one before it de-orbits.

There's a fascinating (and very detailed) series of lectures on the Shuttle's design online on MIT's OpenCourseware site: [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Aeronautics-and- Astronautics/16-88...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Aeronautics-and- Astronautics/16-885JFall-2005/CourseHome/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER14> For those interested in software issues in aerospace, you might want to listen to Episode 100 of Software Engineering Radio: [http://www.se- radio.net/podcast/2008-06/episode-100-software...](http://www.se- radio.net/podcast/2008-06/episode-100-software-space)

It features an extensive interview with a guy from DLR, the German equivalent of NASA. They talk at length about culture (freedom to fail), practices (extensive re-use), and ballpark performance metrics (on the order of < 10 LOC per programmer per day).

</comment><comment><USER15> The shuttle computer does what computers do best: crunch numbers. I'd be interested in knowing what sort of hardware that RAM plugs in to, and also exactly how fast operations need to be completed in order for the shuttle to not fall out of the sky.

<comment><USER16> The shuttle uses 4 separate 1.2MHz IBM AP-101 operating in lockstep / redundant systems, with a 5th running an independent system. I assume the fifth is setup in case of software failures.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AP-101>

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

PS: It's easy to forget just how old and hacked together the Space Shuttle is: _Historically, the Shuttle was not launched if its flight would run from December to January (a year-end rollover or YERO). Its flight software, designed in the 1970s, was not designed for this, and would require the orbiter's computers be reset through a change of year, which could cause a glitch while in orbit. In 2007, NASA engineers devised a solution so Shuttle flights could cross the year-end boundary.[38]_

<comment><USER17> That's weird. Why would they even need date logic in the flight software?

<comment><USER18> It probably has something to do with where to point the thing during re-entry. The shuttle would need to be able to land on different days in case something went wrong. Actually, the date stuff is probably used for all sorts of orbital calculations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Always when this story comes up, I reference this: <http://www.dreamsongs.com/LessonsFromNothing.html> \- a Lisp guru talking about this story.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pretty interesting. Designing the whole system from scratch and being able to remove all unused overhead associated with 'modern' OSs certainly helps being able to fit it all in 1MB.

<comment><USER21> That, and it was built a few decades ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The kind of programs that go into space shuttles and airplanes are quite different than the windows and os x systems out there.

Their task are very specific not really leaving room for flexibility. You can almost compare the importance of these systems working exactly as expected with the physical parts of the shuttle.

</comment><comment><USER23> Some (if not most) of the on-board shuttle programs are written in HAL/S.

<http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Appendix-II.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL/S>

</comment><comment><USER24> I just hope they don't follow the example of the British Navy(installing Windows XP in nuclear subs).

P.S. A BSoD would indeed really become a Blue Screen of Death.

</comment><comment><USER12> And now it's going to the junkyard. Together with the shuttles that never lived up to their aspirations. Sad, really.

<comment><USER25> Given budget constraints and the level of safety required in something like the shuttle I think they have lived up to realistic aspirations.

<comment><USER12> The Shuttle did well for what it was. I still think, though, that the original plan for a lean little ship which can bring people into orbit would have led the Shuttle to a better future. Instead it became this overblown space truck.

But, yeah, it's not all black and white. Building the ISS would have been very hard without the overblown space truck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how that was all written. Is it mainly hardware, assembly or a language such as Forth?

<comment><USER27> Most of it is written in a custom language called HAL/S (High Level Assembly Language / Shuttle). Some of the nitty gritty is written in assembly.

HAL/S looks a little bit like basic or FORTRAN. It was designed to be very readable and uses some interesting formatting. When you print out a module (lets say GG1ASC), it uses three lines for each line of code so that the superscripts and subscripts are above and below like they should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd like to hear how the code of the new commercial space companies, like SpaceX, compares.

<comment><USER5> They use the same industrial computers ands real-time OSs that modern airliners use, and which Nasa uses on more modern kit.

The shuttle software isn't necessarily a good engineering solution.Spending the same time/effort/budget on a more critical part might have saved some of the shuttle failures.

If you think of it in aircraft terms, is it better to spend $ making the avionics software 99.9999% reliable rather than 99.999% or is it better to fit smoke hoods/more exits/better weather radar etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> an probably some of the most audited code on the planet</comment>


Doctorow, How to Destroy the Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/doctorow-how-destroy-book

<comment><USER3> The publishing industry needs to change, and it should take Steam as its example.

The way I see it, the economics of publishing are entirely backwards right now. A creative producer, who wishes to distribute their goods to the masses, should look for a distributer in a competitive market. The current system is that the distributer looks for creative producers, and filters out lots of artists that it doesn't think will be successful. This is as absurd as a trucking company looking to nurture manufacturing businesses so it has more things to ship.

Let's consider the issue of pirating. It's not a false dichotomy to state there are two kinds of pirates. The kind that can afford the item they are pirating, and the kind that can't.

If someone pirates an item because they can't afford it, the producer isn't losing any potential income, because the pirate has none to give regardless. Stamping down on this kind of piracy is pointless.

If someone pirates an item they can afford, however, then you've got problems. What this indicates is that someone found pirating to be more convenient than the legal way of buying the item. Would people really buy more items instead of pirating them if it was more convenient and pleasant to buy the item legally? Steam certainly indicates so. Take a look at the thousands of Reddit comments on steam. One of the remarkable themes that emerges from those comments is this kind, "Downloaded this from Steam, even though I already own the CDs, because I didn't feel like looking for them" or "Bought it on Steam after I torrented it". (If you don't believe me, seriously, look for youself. Also note that Reddit users are basically the demographic of people who pirate out of convenience.)

What this indicates is that traditional publishing as done in the film, book, or game industries haven't been keeping pace with the consumer's desire for convenience. You can blame an uncompetitive market for that. If creative producers were able to select from a gamut of publishing companies and evaluate cost versus effectiveness of sales, etc., then publishers would be forced to innovate. And also to offer better deals to artists.

Of course, the established industry is resistent to change, which is why we are getting all of this DRM. They are approaching the problem of downloading for convenience in exactly the wrong way. Instead of trying to make purchasing games, music, movies, and books more convenient (like Steam has done with games) they are trying to make pirating less convenient. Guess which approach would be more efficient, but would actually take some thought and overhaul of the current system? Amazon is moving in the right direction with the Kindle.

<comment><USER4> Still though, the shitty thing with Steam (or why Valve is so evil) is the fact that the customer can not act as a reseller if he/she is either unsatisfied with the game or is just tired of playing it.

I don't really know what sort of model (subscription?) Steam has implemented here, but it appears very monopolistic and evil given the PC gaming market.

<http://www.digitalruin.net/node/55>

<comment><USER5> But on the other hand you do get some advantages in return for that sacrifice of your 'reseller' right. For example, the ability to use your game wherever you want, however many times you reinstall or whatever.

Theres a real risk Valve or any company that controls your software could go bust - and then you'd be in trouble, but in my opinion Valve is more trustworthy than, for example, EA - since you can at least redownload your software and use it more than some fixed number of times.

<comment><USER6> Valve has also stated that in this situation, they'll release the keys to the Steam servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> DRM isn't the main issue. Most book readers don't know or care about it particularly. Yes, eventually ownership products should be DRM-free, but raging about it from a moralistic standpoint isn't helping with the key issues.

We need affordable, high quality readers with convenient, low priced books. DRM-free would be great, but if some DRM lets the transition happen more quickly, then so be it.

Hulu, Steam, etc all show that DRM can be useful and create compelling products.

I would also remind all web startup founders that the SaaS model is basically DRM. One of the major benefits of server-side code is that it is very hard to pirate. You don't "own" your instance of Basecamp, you just rent it. And there's nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER8> _the SaaS model is basically DRM._

How is that DRM? With DRM, you _have the machine_ in your hands, and yet you can't do what you want with it. If you don't have the machine, didn't pony up any money for it, then I don't see that you have a right to complain.

Bits are not hardware, and hardware is not bits.

<comment><USER7> We're talking about audio files, ebooks, and software--it's all bits. The difference is just on whose drive the bits reside.

"Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to try to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices." (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management>)

The current best way to control access to software is to run some key components on the server side in the SaaS model. From a business perspective, it accomplishes the goals of DRM beautifully--because the DRM naturally flows from its purpose and structure.

<comment><USER8> _the DRM naturally flows from its purpose and structure._

To me that's just a fancy way of saying, it's on their server, they get their way. Not a problem, so long as I can do it my way on my machine. Therein is the big difference.

<comment><USER7> You can always do it your way on your machine. No one is forcing you to download DRMed content.

DRM protects content by keeping key components encrypted. SaaS protects content by keeping key components server side. They're two technical approaches to achieve the same goal. I suspect the reason that no one objects is that SaaS uses the language of "subscription."

I just have a hard time seeing why a DRMed program that runs on a client is morally repugnant while a functionally similar program running partially in the cloud is perfectly fine.

<comment><USER8> _You can always do it your way on your machine. No one is forcing you to download DRMed content._

The DMCA contradicts you.

 _DRM protects content by keeping key components encrypted. SaaS protects content by keeping key components server side. They're two technical approaches to achieve the same goal._

Not at all. "Possession is 9/10ths of the law" is a long standing common law principle. The way companies can "own" stuff you have in your possession runs counter to that. Not a good thing, IMO.

<comment><USER7> What DRMed files is the DMCA forcing you to download? _You_ make the decision to engage with companies that use DRM. No one is forcing you. (I don't mean to defend the entire DMCA, just the idea that you're being forced to download DRM)

"Possession is 9/10ths of the law" is not a useful principle in cases where there is a contract. It seems that you want to force others to _not have the option_ of entering into certain contracts, because you find them distasteful.

<comment><USER8> _It seems that you want to force others to not have the option of entering into certain contracts, because you find them distasteful._

[citation needed]

Really, have I ever asked for legislation? I don't think I did. Please point this out in the thread. My _actual_ position is that DRM and SaaS are two different things, because the former restricts what you can do on machines _that you possess_. You reply by pointing out that you can simply choose not to participate. However, my fear is that DRM on home computers and laptops will become as widespread as DRM in DVD players. And yes, this battle should be fought in the marketplace. This seems to be working so far, somewhat. Or is it?

That's an interesting point. If I wanted to buy a _new_ laptop or desktop completely free of DRM, how easy or hard is it for me to do so? Well, leave out any machines that come with Windows or OS X installed. Those contain DRM. Leave out machines with HDMI -- this also contains DRM. I think I'd have to build my own machine or custom order one.

I think we're in danger of becoming a world where non-DRM hardware is hard to attain. There is far less danger of restrictive SaaS. If we don't like one provider, we simply move to a different one. The market for SaaS is still a bit more "free."

<comment><USER7> _DRM and SaaS are two different things, because the former restricts what you can do on machines that you possess._

Okay, i think this is our only serious point of disagreement. I guess I just care _how_ I am restricted, not where the specific restrictions come from, or whether they take place locally or on the server.

Going forward watch for all consumer software that can conceivably go SaaS to do so, as client-based programs become completely unprofitable. They'll say it's because of the advantages of the cloud, but a large portion of it will be because SaaS achieves the goals of DRM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just bought my first electronic book recently in PDF format, without any DRM. As a "book person" I might consider getting an ebook reader at some point in the future, provided that the copyright/licensing issues are clarified and nobody is restricting what files I add or remove from the device. Retailers or publishers should not be able to remove or modify books on an ebook reader without the permission of the owner of the device/books.

Personally I wouldn't knowingly purchase anything which contained DRM, although I realize that probably most consumers aren't as hardcore on these issues as I am.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another strawman, lending books.

I've found over and over again that a book that I loan to someone, or one that someone loans to me, remains unread.

Same with games.

The game is changing under your nose. Major titles and books for cheap prices. Consumers win big.

The practical result is that all producers of creative content are in a race to zero.

I considered building an indy flash/silverlight game recently. But if you can get great AAA games for $5, how on earth can you compete with that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Many people - probably most - don't care. My wife buys new pop fiction hardbacks and gives them away when done reading them, she doesn't want to have the burden of the book to store somewhere or lug around. She used to throw them in the trash until I yelled at her about it and we gave a bunch to the library. The goal is to read the material cheaply and conveniently, not to own a copy of the material.

<comment><USER12> For some, it's the exact opposite: buying a copy of something you've already read, in order to lend it out or display it on your bookshelf. [http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/08/08/the_book_st...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/08/08/the_book_stalker.html)

<comment><USER13> This is why the focus on One True Model (book ownership or license rights) strikes me as a red herring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My books/games are available for re-download anytime/anyplace. I can't lose my books/game disks. Half price products. (I can buy it again if I need to).

I don't understand the problem. DRM == strawman?

<comment><USER14> Anytime? Or until your kindle breaks, or Amazon decide to stop offering the service. or your ebook supplier gets bought by a competitor and discontinues your device. Or they decide to introduce a new fee structure that you don't want to pay?

Anybody notice any small print in their contracts where Amazon offer free, eternal downloads of books to any future device

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Kindle supports small independent publishers:

<https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin>

</comment><comment><USER15> I recommend reading the full speech: <http://thevarsity.ca/articles/23855>

</comment><comment><USER10> With the concern over carbon, isn't digital delivery of goods a win/win?

<comment><USER14> Not if it includes digital 'taking back' of goods you thought you owned - <USER2> your dealer decides to get out of the market, or change their business plan or you don't want to sign up for their next offering.</comment></comment>


DOW under 10,000 - <AUTHOR> http://finance.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3A.DJI

<comment><USER2> is it too late to get our $700 billion back?

<comment><AUTHOR> What 700 billion? >:-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Population by postal code in Germany? - <AUTHOR>

Been digging on the official German statistics page but can't seem to find anything. Would someone know where else I can get that kind of information?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> [http://www.allmapdata.com/?s=germany+population+by+postcode&...](http://www.allmapdata.com/?s=germany+population+by+postcode&submit=Search)

[http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=977c56fe98774436b025...](http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=977c56fe98774436b0252cd6bb1192f8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have an idea of how much these datasets are?

<comment><USER2> I don't, sorry</comment></comment></comment>


A slide deck that is also a text adventure game - <AUTHOR> https://potomak.github.io/gist-txt/#737a452d6f38c2b87403/

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here: I've done this for yesterday's Manhattan.js to talk about "How to make games with gist-txt[0]", an adventure game engine I built.

[0] [https://github.com/potomak/gist-txt](https://github.com/potomak/gist-txt)</comment>


Andrew Yang says the US should seriously consider switching to a 4-day workweek - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-yang-4-day-workweek-longer-weekend-improves-mental-health-2020-5 <comment><USER2> I know there's data to show this could work, and I'm not against it personally, but this has to be the worst possible moment to be trying to get people on board with a _decrease_ in economic activity.

<comment><USER3> Why would it be a decrease?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Engineers Suck at Building Great Products - <AUTHOR> Why Engineers Suck at Building Great Products? We will be giving a panel discussion at SXSW on 3/12 3:30pm. (http://schedule.sxsw.com/2017/events/PP66341), based on our research and own experiences on building products. Would appreciate any insights and thought from this community. <comment><USER2> Do they really?

I don't think so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You're not asking HN here but promoting your event.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken. Was hoping to collect some opinion and insights on both sides and bring them to the panel discussion.</comment></comment>


Facebook is using the Menlo Park Police Department to reshape the city - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3akm7/how-facebook-bought-a-police-force <comment><USER2> This article is an interesting example of using careful wording to paint one side as maximally sympathetic and the other as maximally unsympathetic. It's the kind of thing that should be read in high school classes to help train critical thinking.

In the beginning, there is not much information, but an extraordinary amount of editorialization, where neutral things get adjectives slapped onto them to make the reader know what side they're supposed to be on. I went through and collated them:

> dutiful compliance occupying communities mostly white deeply unusual > isolated campus imperial fashion latest conquest snatched up alarming > sinister in its own image manipulation tiny technotopia

In the middle, there's the classic catch-22. Facebook is causing gentrification and "displacing families" when its employees move into poor communities. But when its employees choose to move in elsewhere, it is an "isolated" "tiny techtopia" that is "excluding the communities from their wealth". As usual you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Later, it finally concedes that bikes actually are constantly stolen from Facebook, which is the whole point of its actions in the first place, but goes to great lengths to avoid calling it stealing:

> "You have an extremely poor community that is being flooded with toys of > wealth, and these things are going to happen"

> "teens in low-income areas [...] should not be detained or ticketed for, > say, using a Facebook bicycle to get to school"

> "[parents should not have to worry] about their kids having a bad > interaction with the police over a stupid bike"

I live in Menlo Park (though not a tech employee) and almost had my bike stolen last week. I would be pissed off if the police caught the thief and let them off because it's "a stupid bike". It's how I commute, I can't function without it, and I can't just buy another one.

In the end I can't find any reason to be upset -- I don't think there's a difference between ~10,000 Menlo Park residents independently complaining to the police about theft, and Facebook (who hires ~10,000 Menlo Park residents) merely collating them. Facebook isn't getting a say in Menlo Park affairs because it's a big corporation, it's because its employees make up a significant share of the population. That is fair.

<comment><USER3> > I don't think there's a difference between ~10,000 residents independently > complaining about theft, and Facebook (who hires ~10,000 Menlo Park > residents) merely collating them.

With respect - if you don't see a difference between stealing an individual citizen's bike and stealing one from a fleet owned by a company worth half a trillion dollars, perhaps you should be the one working on critical thinking skills instead of lecturing others.

<comment><USER4> Legally, I see no difference. It's a matter of equality under the law. Everyone, including corporations, has the same property rights as everyone else, all theft is illegal. This is beneficial for decreasing instability and corruption in a society.

I would guess your underlying contention is the wealth disparity, but that is a different issue with better solutions than weakening property rights for rich people or corporations.

And prefacing your comment with 'with respect' does not excuse accusing those who disagree with you of having inadequate 'critical thinking skills'.

<comment><USER5> Legally doesn't mean anything in this scenario. What you should be doing is looking at how the police execute these things in practice.

Which is that typically the police don't give a single shit about stolen bikes or anything like that unless you're rich or, apparently, Facebook. The poor already have weaker property rights than the rich, because if they were to report their bikes as being stolen the police would scoff at them and continue doing jack shit. Or worse, if you're a minority.

And generally speaking, Facebook encouraging confrontations with the police which are historically very dangerous for minorities even if they've done absolutely nothing wrong is probably a bad idea.

<comment><USER2> > Which is that typically the police don't give a single shit about stolen > bikes or anything like that unless you're rich or, apparently, Facebook. The > poor already have weaker property rights than the rich, because if they were > to report their bikes as being stolen the police would scoff at them and > continue doing jack shit. Or worse, if you're a minority.

This is just totally wrong. Police have scoffed at all property theft I've ever reported to them, and it wasn't due to malice, it was because doing anything about it was basically impossible. I suppose I could have demanded they spend 10 hours a week scanning Craigslist for my stuff, but that is a waste of time for them. The same applies to everybody I know who has had stuff stolen.

Facebook's bikes are different because they very obviously belong to Facebook and are clearly, visibly being used. It's like cattle branding, it makes it much easier to recover property.

<comment><USER5> If you very obviously branded your bike so that it was completely and indistinguishably yours, do you think the police would bother to hunt down the person who stole your bike?

Because from my experience and knowledge, the answer to that would be a firm 'No'.

<comment><USER2> I'm getting very confused with all of your comments. Do you want more policing of theft in poor communities, such as East Palo Alto, or less? I currently live in the rich part of Menlo Park (thank god for subsidized housing). Do you think there should be more policing of bike theft there, or less?

At some point, I thought your point was that more policing in poor communities was bad, because disparate impact on them is the problem. But later you seem to be saying that more policing in rich communities is the problem, because they get better service. And now you seem to be saying that actually, there isn't enough policing in my (rich) community. From my perspective your position has flipped three times.

<comment><USER5> My position hasn't 'flipped' at all. I'll break it down into two points.

The first is that you claimed the police would do something about these thefts if the item was easily identifiable and visibly used. My counter argument is that even if you had a bike that was perfectly unique and identifiable, that the police wouldn't do anything unless you were wealthy and/or a corporation which has increased influence on them.

The second point is that Facebook attempting to police this behavior and bend the local police to its will has a net negative effect for the local population, because as the article points out, the police are racially profiling people in order to figure out if someone stole the bike or not, and are harassing/arresting people because of it.

You're trying to break down a complex argument into something black/white as 'more policing/less', which is also exactly what your original argument did in trying to play down the arguments the Vice article was bringing up. My point has been that it's never that simple, and allowing corporations or the rich to influence how the law is executed is a Bad Thing because it leads to two different classes of citizens when it comes to law enforcement.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarifying. My response has two points as well.

The first is that thinking about "Facebook" as ordering more policing is misleading, because its influence in this case is not more than the 10,000 residents would have had individually. In any case, if there were 10,000 new residents in a town who experienced a lot of theft, they could band together to demand better police services, and you would expect more officers to be hired. I don't think there's a difference here if those residents are represented by a "community leader" or a Facebook HR employee. It's collective action either way, and its power fundamentally comes from people living in Menlo Park, not Facebook's valuation.

The second is that more or less policing of petty theft is _always_ going to have a disproportionate impact on poorer communities, because people from such communities commit most of it. This is not a moral judgment or a talking point or anything else -- it is simply a fact, one which even the community leaders quoted in this article are perfectly aware of, despite trying to word around it.

This is the contradiction that I'm trying to point out here. There are many examples in this thread of middle/upper-middle class people experiencing property theft. The majority of the time, when you can track where the property went, it's a poorer community. So in your preferred situation where even individual, middle-class citizens can get the police to spend hours hounding down their stolen bikes, it would _look_ a lot like richer people sending their police into poorer communities to "harass" the people there, which you also said was a bad result. To repeat, there is _no_ way for police action against petty theft to fall equally on the rich and poor, because richer people don't need or want to do it in the first place. That's why I don't know what you actually want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One other way to look at this narrative is "Facebook provides bicycles as an employee benefit. They are to be used only by employees. When someone took them off campus, Facebook assumed theft and notified the local police. When they discovered that the person was in fact a Facebook employee and entitled to the use of the bicycle, they dropped the charges."

You can still argue about the legitimacy of private corporate-owned property as an employee benefit at all, along with the potential racial profiling that led people to assume that a Hispanic man was not a Facebook employee. But I'm not sure that their actions would've been all that different if it had been a white brogrammer that took the bike home - they'd probably call the police, the police would investigate, and if it was found to be an employee, the charges would be dropped.

<comment><USER7> As a white dude who has had many experiences with cops, I can tell you that if a police officer asked me if I stole Facebook bike I was riding, and I replied, "no, I'm an employee," they _might_ ask for some kind of evidence before letting me move on with my life.

I've seen how different my friends of color are treated by cops everywhere in the US, and pretending that's not a thing is either ignorant or disingenuous.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what colour your "friends of colour" are, but if we assume black, I'm sure a properly dressed black person (which is what I'd expect from a Facebook employee) won't receive as much scrutiny as one that wears baggy pants.

<comment><USER9> Let me try to rephrase your point: A well-dressed black man will get less scrutiny than a poorly-dressed black man,

but you don't address at all that they're still both more scrutinized than their white counterparts?

What is your point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Facebook should be called to account if they broke any laws and were not prosecuted for it. I don't see any evidence of that in the article. What I do see is an article heavy on racial overtones, as if trying to manufacture outrage at Facebook.

What should a large company do in this case? Who should pay for the extra civic services that a company's presence causes? Residents?

<comment><USER2> > What should a large company do in this case?

If you pay, it's "sinister". If you don't pay, it's "parasitic". If you get your own, it's "mercenary". In all cases it is "dystopian".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Menlo Park, an affluent, mostly white city of 35,000

To repeat from the previous time this was posted: According to their own source, Menlo Park is 70% white, but this includes Hispanics, who make up 18%. Assuming they were mostly counted under white, this leaves whites as barely over half of the residents - certainly less than the 61% non-Hispanic white of the US as a whole [1]. So why does Vice try to frame Menlo Park as some sort of white stronghold, when it's less white than the US on average?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity)

<comment><USER12> What the stats don't tell you is that the city is divided by a 8 lane freeway where the affluent folks live on one side and FB campus is on the other side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The dutiful compliance of the police—first chasing after Facebook property > that Facebook employees left around the community as litter, then standing > down when told by Facebook that the culprit was part of a special, protected > class—is a minor instantiation of a broader issue: Just how intertwined > Facebook and local police have become.

I don't get this characterization at all. Facebook thought that some of its bikes were missing, thought they were stolen, contacted the police, and told the police to do nothing when they figured out the bike was being used by a Facebook employee. How is this problematic or even not normal?

<comment><USER14> Have you ever been a victim of property theft? The police caring is highly irregular. Feels like justice for the rich.

<comment><USER2> I've had stuff stolen from me plenty of times, and the police never cared because there was nothing they could do about it. My stuff was here, now it isn't, what are they supposed to do?

Obviously it's different if the owner of a stolen thing literally sees it out on the street, which is what happened in this case.

<comment><USER15> I've had phones stolen and found them on eBay. I have had the buyer of said phone give me the identity info of the seller (when they refused a refund). I've gone to the local, quiet, PD with this information, along with the seller's eBay shop which had over 100 laptops and phones, almost all listed as "activation locked", "unknown PIN", "no charger/no case/no accessories".

"Well, he probably didn't know that they were stolen". "Other than the message on the screen of mine at least that says "Stolen phone, please call, reward offered...?"

They couldn't care less.

<comment><USER16> Law enforcement is highly subjective and irregular. This is the true danger of things like facial recognition, ANPR, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Constant emphasis on 'people of color' makes it hard to read and dilutes the main point. Such obsession to view everything through the length of race is mind boggling. This is seems to be a US thing.

I mean, you steal a bike, you are responsible. Whether you're mostly brown, mostly white or mostly blue is irrelevant. As simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Calling the "Facebook police unit" \- a group of city police officers assigned to the Facebook campus - the "privatization of the law" is quite overblown, especially when compared to the actual private police departments that exist across the United States.

If the residents of Menlo Park don't like how their police department operates, then they can elect new city leadership to change the police department accordingly.

Compare that to university police, which is often controlled by the university trustees. Who elects the trustees? It usually isn't the undergraduates, which comprise the majority of the university's population. Whether it's the state governor, legislature, or alumni, the decisionmakers charged with administering the police power do not answer to those against whom that power is used.

It gets worse with railroad police, which are wholly owned, funded, and operated by private railroad companies, and have national jurisdiction.

The powers of the state should never be in the hands of a private corporation, organization, or university, but what's happening at Facebook isn't that at all.

</comment><comment><USER19> >The dutiful compliance of the police—first chasing after Facebook property that Facebook employees left around the community as litter, then standing down when told by Facebook that the culprit was part of a special, protected class

Wow, I didn't realize we were already living in a corporate anime dystopia. I mean I knew it was on the way, but holy cow I guess it already happened.

</comment><comment><USER20> What's really astonishing to me is Facebook can't develop a mobile app to secure the bikes to prevent unauthorized riding and to hold their employees accountable for littering the city with discarded bikes.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is something that could be mutual opportunity, instead it has become a conflict.

What does a bicycle cost F13? What is preventing F13 from providing bikes and shopping carts to the community , as a service?

Why would F13 want to pass up the opportunity for data?

<comment><USER22> What is F13?

<comment><USER21> its an acronym for F@(3 13oo|<

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you're rich enough you not only get to ignore laws you don't like, you get your own police force to do your dirty work. Whether that's kicking out Latinos in Menlo Park today or rounding up slaves back in the days America was "great," it's a long-standing tradition with roots going back hundreds of years in America.</comment>


Ask HN: Eli5 why Angular 2.0 is getting negative attention - <AUTHOR>

Could someone explain to me why it seems like a lot of people have a negative view of Angular 2.0? I have a very basic understanding of Angular but I was planning on taking a deep dive and learning the framework in the next couple of months. I honestly hate the idea of learning Angular now and then having to relearn everything once 2.0 comes out.<p>Since I don't have a solid understanding of Angular, would it be better to just go all in with React and focus on learning that instead of Angular? <comment><USER2> Angular 2.0 won't be out until Q4 2015 the earliest.

There is going to be a migration path from 1.3(x) to 2.0, but it may not be a simple one.

Support for 1.3(x) is not going to drop suddenly.

From the folks I've talked to, there's no reason to panic.

You're not going to be re-learning everything for 2.0, you'll just have to modify you're thinking a bit.

Frameworks come and go, but React and Angular are both great for current and future products.

Don't buy into the negativity and cynicism. If everyone did, we'd still be writing shit in BASIC and PASCAL.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Support for 1.3(x) is not going to drop suddenly. >You're not going to be re- learning everything for 2.0, you'll just have to modify you're thinking a bit.

This is completely understandable and eases my mind, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Angular 1 still has an great community and is getting updated all the time. A lot of documentation is available for it, it's also very mature and it's still one of the best tools for the job.

Developpment is constantly adjusting/renewing, even though this time we know that in a year are so we have to learn something new... It happens all the time, so i wouldn't make a big deal of it.

What if you chose React based on your current opinion and next year React version 2.0 (or whatever) changes the entire core...

Just choose the right tools for the job. Angular 1 will still be getting support and bugfixes next to Angular 2.

<comment><USER4> > What if you chose React based on your current opinion and next year React > version 2.0 (or whatever) changes the entire core...

React is heavily used in production at Facebook (~10k components), and any breaking changes are going to have an upgrade path. Facebook is essentially always running React master.</comment></comment>