Q & A: Edward Snowden speaks to Peter Maass - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/snowden-maass-transcript.html <comment><USER3> For those not familiar with him, Maass is an interesting journalist mainly focusing on international affairs. He's been following the surveillance story for a bit, and has an archive of some of his articles from the past ~10 years or so here: [http://www.petermaass.com/articles/](http://www.petermaass.com/articles/)

He wrote a bunch of articles in the '90s as well, but doesn't seem to have them on his site. However his reporting on the Bosnian War was collected into a book: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679763899/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679763899/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0679763899&linkCode=as2&tag=kmjn-20)

Most relevant here, he wrote an article in mid-June criticizing the focus on Snowden and Assange as personalities: [http://www.petermaass.com/articles/we_steal_secrets_misses_t...](http://www.petermaass.com/articles/we_steal_secrets_misses_the_leak_for_the_leakers/)

</comment><comment><USER4> "I was surprised to realize that there were people in news organizations who didn't recognize any unencrypted message sent over the Internet is being delivered to every intelligence service in the world. In the wake of this year's disclosures, it should be clear that unencrypted journalist-source communication is unforgivably reckless. "

Not only the news people. My country's politicians as well. They didin't even change the standard code for voicemail, exposing all their messages to anyone with their number. For any whistleblower trust is the key. Even if you can trust the journalist/politician, you need to know if they know how to guard their communication. (Edit: typo's)

<comment><USER5> I've seen Universities have been security for their professors than politician's laptops. It's truly bewildering - then there is the fact that the technology MPs are generally not well versed in technology at all - <USER2> the myriad of awkward speeches given on tech topics in governments around the world. Does any country actually have a genuine politician with a CS degree in office?

<comment><USER3> > Does any country actually have a genuine politician with a CS degree in > office?

One U.S. Congressman, Pete Olson (R-TX-22), does have a CS degree, from Rice. He later studied law.

Engineers and physicists are slightly more common, though only slightly. And one Congressman, Jerry McNerney (D-CA-9), has a PhD in mathematics.

<comment><USER6> Rush Holt (D-NJ-12) has a PhD in physics, and more than a passing understanding of computation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Through all of this, one of the things that impresses me about him is how well-spoken he is.

Obviously, the interview was done over encrypted email, so he had the opportunity to choose his words carefully, but even so.

During the interview his father did with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, he also impressed me with his speaking ability, even under a high-pressure situation like that.

<comment><USER8> We're taking Laura Poitras at her word that she did not edit the interview. There's no way for us to know if this is what Snowden actually said.

<comment><USER7> If you want to see what irresponsible journalism is like, read Benji Smith's book "Abandoned Ship", especially the part about "Jenna McJournalist". Laura hasn't (to our knowledge) behaved like that.

There's probably enough trust between them now that he isn't going to get upset if a hash of his email doesn't match a hash of her quote of him. She's also likely smart enough to realize that he could drop her at any time and the other news organizations would be lined to up for exclusive access. So she's going to act responsibly towards her source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an interesting article, too, about Laura and how she helped Snowden:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras- sno...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html)

<comment><USER10> The older important article on Laura Poitras mentioned there (in the full version):

[http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det...](http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_detained_at_border/)

 _One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9 /11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal framework whatsoever, the Department of Homeland Security routinely singles out individuals who are suspected of no crimes, detains them and questions them at the airport, often for hours, when they return to the U.S. after an international trip, and then copies and even seizes their electronic devices (laptops, cameras, cellphones) and other papers (notebooks, journals, credit card receipts), forever storing their contents in government files. No search warrant is needed for any of this. No oversight exists. And there are no apparent constraints on what the U.S. Government can do with regard to whom it decides to target or why._

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm prepared to stand up (coward level: coward) and point out Obama's address is titled [http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/08/09/protecting-our- sec...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/08/09/protecting-our-security-and- preserving-our-freedoms) "protecting our security and preserving our freedoms" which is "..."

A King-Kong level MEH.

<comment><USER10> Obama swore to protect the Constitution

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_President...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_President_of_the_United_States)

 _I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States._

and now distracts everybody that his goal is to "protect the security." In 2006 he called G.W. Bush on the same ground!

Even the "secret" FISA court, the only court in charge of NSA, decided (in the decision that is still classified as "secret") that what NSA does is unconstitutional.

The President still does the distraction of the public with "protect the security." Don't let this remain unnoticed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope that the media keeps focusing on the issues detailed by the whistleblowing, rather than the story of said whistleblowing.

We shouldn't be distracted by a human interest story.

<comment><USER13> > I hope that the media keeps focusing on the issues detailed by the > whistleblowing, rather than the story of said whistleblowing.

Of course, completely agree.

> We shouldn't be distracted by a human interest story.

But there is a value in looking at people and using stories and those people's outlooks as our own role models for the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Definitely surprised. As one might imagine, normally spies allergically avoid contact with reporters or media, so I was a virgin source — everything was a surprise."

Ouch — poor choice of words. He indirectly classified himself as a spy. The media will be all over this. He needs to be more careful with his language.

<comment><USER15> Technically he was a spy - for the NSA. I would believe that is the context the statement is being made for his definition of.

<comment><USER16> He is also a spy in the sense he spied information _from_ NSA for the public. In some sense he is people's spy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Like his comment about the presses job to check the government. I don't know if the press still values or even consider this their job. Do we need to have a charity news organization that focused on checking the government.

</comment><comment><USER18> What a short article. It ended just as it was getting going.

Weird.

</comment><comment><USER19> There really isn't much to see here. After reading I thought I had missed something, perhaps one of those "page 1 of 30" things at the bottom. But to get the "full story" I'm told to buy some magazine or whatever. So much for releasing information in the public's interest. It's time to Jason Bourne this thing and make some MONEY off of it!

<comment><USER20> Where are you told to make a purchase? That's the full story, as it will appear in Sunday's NYT Magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "P.M.: Laura started filming you from nearly the start. Were you surprised by that? Why or why not?

E.S.: Definitely surprised. As one might imagine, normally spies allergically avoid contact with reporters or media, so I was a virgin source — everything was a surprise. Had I intended to skulk away anonymously, I think it would have been far harder to work with Laura, but we all knew what was at stake. The weight of the situation actually made it easier to focus on what was in the public interest rather than our own. I think we all knew there was no going back once she turned that camera on, and the ultimate outcome would be decided by the world."

He intended to "skulk away anonymously". Then the journalists get involved, and it seems that it was too late for that. This seems to imply the journalists had something to do with that.

I don't know how to stop this sound like and accusation or judgement, which its not supposed to be, and generally speaking Im a Guardian supporter, but I get the feeling that he was led in much deeper than he wanted by these journalists. May be he was pushed? Maybe he decided? I don't know.

Yes, it hard to get off a moving train, as it were. But I wonder if there was as much coercion as there was motivation on his part. I wonder how much control he had once the journalists got involved. Or maybe that is normal for things like this.

I'd love to know a lot more about how this worked in general.

<comment><USER22> Good comment, why is this greyed out?

<comment><USER23> Because it's based on a misreading of the article.</comment></comment></comment>


BSD Owl: A build system targeting modern Unix systems - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/michipili/bsdowl

<comment><USER2> It's a little strange to call yourself "highly portable" when you only support three unix-like platforms and even exclude some popular BSD variants.

<comment><USER3> This is a fair point. :) That said, it works on more that what is advertised. At the time of writing it also worked on the current branch of NetBSD, and OpenBSD provided you install manually a modern version of bmake.

It also used to work on Cygwin, but I am not sure of the current status.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the examples it looks quite nice and clean. I'm missing lots of info though, maybe I didn't look deep enough:

1) What if you need additional build steps, say an additional preprocessor?

2) Are these .mk templates easy to write, e.g. do they share a lot of code?

3) What if I need different target architectures on the same machine, e.g. CPU and GPU builds? Where do you define compiler flags?

4) Do you have separate debug targets?

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Also note

1) It currently supports M4 and provided that there is a simple rule to infer the name of the preprocessed file from the name of the unprocessed file, it would be easy to add another one, see [1].

It is also possible to support more complicated source generation tools, like literate programming tool. We currently have support for noweb [2] which could be used to derive more.

      [1] https://github.com/michipili/bsdowl/blob/master/bps/bps.m4.mk
      [2] https://github.com/michipili/bsdowl/blob/master/bps/bps.noweb.mk

2) I would say, they are not difficult to write, but these are Makefile, and programming Makefiles is a mindset on its own, because we never write the "glorious high-level procedure doing plop-plop fuzz-fuzz on all our files" but just move from one step to the other and must save all state in inodes. :) The folder `bps` contains code which is shared by all frameworks (langc, texmf, ocaml, script).

3, 4) The system supports two variables ARCHITECTURE and CONFIGURATION which are used to selectively include a configuration file to tweak flags (like debugging, profiling, cross-compiler chain and the like) and which can be used to tweak the directory where compilation products are stored. Once it is setup it just looks like

         bmake ARCHITECTURE=Mingw32
         bmake ARCHITECTURE=Native CONFIGURATION=Release

You can see a small example in the example/langc/heat directory [3]

      [3] https://github.com/michipili/bsdowl/tree/master/example/langc/heat

<comment><USER4> Thank you! Seems to me like a sane and clean concept, i.e. how autotools and co always should have been. I'm quite fond of writing Makefiles myself, so that wouldn't be an issue. When I get around to rewriting the build system for my GPU code preprocessor framework [1] I think I'll give bsdowl another look - it's possible that it would fit quite well and reduce the amount of build system code I have to maintain myself.

[1] [https://github.com/muellermichel/Hybrid- Fortran](https://github.com/muellermichel/Hybrid-Fortran)

edit: Ah there is something I missed though: BSD Make only will probably be an issue. My stuff mostly has to work on HPC GPU clusters which are pretty much exclusively Linux based, so GNU Make support is a must I think. Do you have any plans on supporting this so it becomes portable to Linux?

<comment><USER3> bmake is very portable and it is available on Debian and Ubuntu. I am not aware of any RPM package but installing from sources is a breeze, I had it running on the newest CentOS as well as on paleontological Solaris editions, without having to tweak a single line of code.

If you look for a more engineered installation solution, give a try to PKGSRC, which is the (portable) ports tree of NetBSD – though I never used it intensively. This even used to work in a (now obsolete) Unix-like environment on windows.

When you'll find time to experiment with the Makefiles, feel free to get in touch (my email is in the source, or with the issue tracker) I will be happy to help.

<comment><USER4> See, the problem with that is the friction it causes in a HPC environment. Usually, users have no access to a package manager - so everything you want in addition to what's provided by administrators is something you have to build from source, in your home folder, including all the dependencies. And getting administrators to install new software on such a cluster can be difficult in itself. Adoption of new programming languages and libraries is slow in this space mostly for that reason I think, and if you want to have a successful framework, you need to provide it with basically no dependencies attached apart from what you typically find on these systems. Don't forget, the users typically aren't computer/software engineers, they are scientists in my case. I.e. stubborn people who don't particularly care for software if it doesn't directly help in what they're doing ;).

<comment><USER3> Also, I forgot to point out, I have an autoinstall script for bmake and bsdowl, it is here:

         https://github.com/michipili/anvil/blob/master/subr/anvil_travisci_autoinstall.sh

It will install both of them under ~/.local, so that you need to tweak your path accordingly, but you can choose another prefix with the `-p` flag, like

      sh anvil_travisci_autoinstall.sh -p "${HOME}"

If you want to customise it, you can trim most of the script (autoinstall_opam*) because you do not need this. :) And if you need something more specific, just ping me on the issue tracker for instance. :)

<comment><USER4> Hey thanks, that looks promising. I appreciate your help. I'll be busy with other stuff until around end of this year, but at some point I have to make my builds more flexible (allow any number of targets in the configurations / autodetect what's available on the machine). I'll look into it then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't 'highly portable' through m4, auto tools, etc what got unix build systems complicated in the first place?

<comment><USER6> Yeah I'd much prefer a not-very-portable but non-crufty build system that only worked on Windows, OSX and Linux (and whatever popular BSDs there are). We don't need to check whether a byte is 8 bits these days.

I was going to say this build system probably isn't that bad, but then in the features list it says it supports m4 and autoconf, which is a bit of a red flag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't got yet what it makes better than the other ten million build systems we already have. Can someone summarize?</comment>


Ask HN: Design for open source project - <AUTHOR>

Open source projects often lack good ui/ux/design. Are designers interested in contributing to open source and where to find them? <comment><USER2> I think designers are interested in doing good, meaningful design work, and some subset of designers are interested in/can afford to do unpaid volunteer design work, which could include open source projects if the project was pitched well and set up to accept design contributions: [http://opensourcedesign.is/blogging_about/import- designers/](http://opensourcedesign.is/blogging_about/import-designers/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am interested in UX and design opportunities within open source projects. Would be happy to talk, share my background, and see how I may be of service. tom [a] thegrif [dot] net :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> This site was recently posted here on HN: [http://beautifulopen.com/](http://beautifulopen.com/)</comment>


How to Add the Google +1 Button to Your WordPress Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.doitwithwp.com/how-to-add-the-google-1-button-to-your-wordpress-site/

<comment><USER2> yet another button. No thank you.</comment>


Welcome to the NumPy Community Survey - <AUTHOR> https://umdsurvey.umd.edu/jfe/form/SV_8bJrXjbhXf7saAl <comment><AUTHOR> Please join this structured dialogue with the NumPy leadership team to better guide and prioritize decision-making about the development of NumPy as software and a community.

The survey will take about 15 minutes of your time and close on July 17th.</comment>


Good Design Is as Little Design as Possible - <AUTHOR> http://theindustry.cc/2015/07/13/good-design-is-as-little-design-as-possible/

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty frustrated by the notion that design = minimalism. There is a time and a place for minimal design, but I don't believe that everything has to be that way. sure, minimalism is great in a marketing landing page, but in a house? in a car? Decoration is a key area of expression for a maker or builder, and not everything must be of purely functional purpose. Looking good is a legitimate purpose, also.

And, on digital devices, I think we've gone too far toward minimal with ultra- thin fonts, buttons with no indication of whether they are actual buttons, buttons that don't show whether they're pressed (the shift key on iOS), etc. there is a point when "minimal" becomes "too little", rather than "as little as possible".

</comment><comment><USER3> 1 button mouse ftw!</comment>


Docker: Run Docker on Every OS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/websecurify/node-vxdocker

<comment><USER2> What is the advantage of running this over a vagrant image?

<comment><AUTHOR> The advantage is that you don't think in terms of virtual machines. It feels like you are actually using docker but on a foreign OS that doesn't natively support LXC.

# vxdocker run ubuntu ls -la

is exactly the same as

# docker run ubuntu ls -la</comment></comment>


The Lives and Lies of a Professional Impostor - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/nyregion/jeremy-wilson-a-compulsive-con-man.html <comment><USER4> This reminds me of a great documentary I watched a few months ago, about this guy named Frédéric Bourdin who managed to impersonate (from a jail cell in Spain) a boy who had gone missing in Texas:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imposter_(2012_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imposter_\(2012_film\))

These guys are creepy, for sure, but also fascinating for their ability to assume new personas at the drop of a hat.

<comment><USER5> There was a great New Yorker article a while back about him. I'm sure the documentary covers the same stuff as the article, but in case anyone wants to read it: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/11/the- chameleon-a...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/11/the-chameleon- annals-of-crime-david-grann)

<comment><USER6> The documentary is so good though I recommend going into it knowing nothing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The line about how people want to believe other people and how he took advantage of that really freaked me out.

I'm definitely thinking twice about simply listening and believing people.

<comment><USER8> Good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty interesting article. The guy's clearly quite intelligent. He could have been a successful (albeit likely sociopathic) entrepreneur or scientist if his life circumstances were a little different.

<comment><USER8> He would have ruined just as many lives.

<comment><USER9> Maybe. Considering the rest of his family sounds somewhat normal, it's possible a big reason for his behavior is a result of environmental rather than genetic causes. Perhaps with a different upbringing, he would have a different personality.

<comment><USER8> Psychopathy isn't necessarily inherited.

<comment><USER9> No, not necessarily, but in many cases it has a significant genetic factor.

Sometimes that genetic factor doesn't result in truly sociopathic behavior (perhaps just courageousness or diminished emotionality and affect) until it's combined with environmental factors. And sometimes someone without any of the known genetic factors becomes psychopathic due to a terrible upbringing. But I think there's evidence of a genetic component for "true" sociopaths/psychopaths in a significant proportion of cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This guy seems to tick most of the boxes on the Psychopathy Checklist: [1]

 _Facet 1: Interpersonal_

Glibness/superficial charm - needed to be an imposter with this much success, for so long

Grandiose sense of self-worth - evidence of this in spades in the article

Pathological lying - <USER2>

Cunning/manipulative - as an imposter, definitely

 _Facet 2: Affective_

Lack of remorse or guilt - none whatsoever

Emotionally shallow - seems to be the case

Callous/lack of empathy - look at the way he treated his family!

Failure to accept responsibility for own actions - boasted nobody knows who he really is, doesn't care about what he did to his victims

 _Facet 3: Lifestyle_

Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom - pretty self-evident, look at what he was doing!

Parasitic lifestyle - the very definition of an imposter of this nature

Lack of realistic, long-term goals - definitely, went from victi to victim, got caught, did jail time, went straight back to it

Impulsivity - pretty obvious I'd say

Irresponsibility - highly!

 _Facet 4: Antisocial_

Poor behavioral controls - obviously!

Early behavioral problems - detailed in story, early larceny and violent crime with a crossbow

Juvenile delinquency - as above

Revocation of conditional release - <USER3>

Criminal versatility - absolutely!

Many short-term marital relationships - no evidence of this, but used Angela K. Stamm

Promiscuous sexual behavior - no way of knowing

\---

In short, this is a very dangerous guy and I'd say he has no prospect of rehabilitation. It's not often you read a story of someone who satisfies every criteria and partially matches one, with the final one uncertain without delving into their past deeply.

I'm a believer in restorative justice, but in this case, for the good of society, it would be best not to let him out for a very, very long time. I'd very cautious of accepting his contrition because it was qualified and it is almost certain he doesn't care about the terrible things he put his victims through.

Psychopaths know how to manipulate, and there is definitely something wrong with them. They literally have no conscience!

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_Checklist](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_Checklist)

<comment><USER8> I know I shouldn't comment on being downvoted, but I'm genuinely curious as to what is so wrong or offensive about this post!

It went from 2 to now 0, so evidently there are people who agree with me.

<comment><USER10> I didn't vote but generally speaking I have no patience for distance diagnosis of psychopathy by armchair psychiatrists. It doesn't make for an interesting contribution, in my estimation.

<comment><USER8> That's a fair and reasonable view :-)

<comment><USER11> Also, the terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" are deprecated. They are no longer in clinical use and I don't believe you can find them in the DSM (though you can find "Anti-Social Personality Disorder.")

The terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" are fundamentally meaningless. They have no more meaning than typical insults and profanities like "dickhead" or "douchebag."

I'm glad that these terms are deprecated for several reasons:

1\. The term "psychopath" is a bigoted term. If you look up the Greek roots of this word (psyche + pathos) you find that it literally means a "suffering of the soul." To call a person with ASPD a "psychopath" is the equivalent of calling a mentally disabled person a "mongoloid." Its just needless name- calling and bigotry.

2\. The popular conception of the "psychopath" presupposes that "psychopathy" is some kind of immutable condition, one that is inherent in the person to whom the term is being applied. Yet all studies point to the importance of both genetic _and_ environmental factors in the development of what we call "psychopathy." Just as people can be victims of cancer, people can be victims of "psychopathy." Therefore it makes little sense to point the finger at the victim.

TL;DR "Psychopathy" is a bigoted and outdated term

<comment><USER8> Actually, in medicine, _pathos_ is actually interpreted more as "disease", as in pathology which means the study or science of disease. And _psyche_ as a medical term doesn't refer to the soul, but to the self or conscious personality of a person, or to quote William James: "Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions". [1]

I therefore have to respectfully disagree with you that it's a bigoted term, because a more nuanced view might consider that the term Psychopathy can _also_ be translated as "disease of the mind".

The issues around psychopathy that were addressed in the DSM-V, from what I can see, were that the DSM-IV took a categorical approach to diagnosing the illness, whereas the DSM-V takes a dimensional approach, which addressed a number of problems with diagnosing the condition.

1\. [http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/cacioppo/jtcre...](http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/cacioppo/jtcreprints/centenary.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stopped reading halfway through.. made my stomach sick. More specifically, the part where he tranfers his hosts SSN in court through forged documents while he was staying there.</comment>


APNIC is the first RIR that has depleted its IPv4 pool - <AUTHOR> http://www.apnic.net/community/ipv4-exhaustion/graphical-information#

<comment><AUTHOR> From tomorrow on, requesters will only be able to get a /24, which equals 1024 IP addresses.

<comment><USER2> A /24 is 2^(32-24)=256 IP addresses

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I meant a /22

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, double NAT is here and some pain with it ...</comment>


A website dedicated to sharing bird sounds from all over the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.xeno-canto.org <comment><USER2> The intelligence value of this is enormous. For locating the source of audiotapes and video sometimes the only thing you have to go on is bird sounds because people are smart enough to hide everything but forget that.

The CIA has consistently recruited or been very close to the world's best ornithologist since the very early 50's.

I can't remember the exact context, but in Tim Weiner's book "Legacy of Ashes" there is a humorous moment where when a division of the CIA is being shuttered, the ornithonologist on staff declares after hearing the news: "well I guess it's back to those goddamn birds".

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome</comment>


Combining Video and Movement Data to Enhance Team Sport Analysis (2018) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://publications.lightfield-analysis.net/SJLBZGSAGK17_tvcg.pdf <comment><USER2> This startup is doing something similar

[https://metrica-sports.com](https://metrica-sports.com)

(no affiliation except sharing incubator)

</comment><comment><USER3> Playsight has been doing interesting things with their smartcourt tech.</comment>


Paul Graham and his recipe for good prices - <AUTHOR> http://blog.karolzielinski.com/paul-graham-and-his-recipe-for-good-prices <comment><USER2> I am by no means a fanboy but the company I immediately thought of was Apple.</comment>


UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted to hospital over virus symptoms - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52177125 <comment><USER2> Usually, one would expect that the British PM would be treated at home; no question of non-availability of resource etc. Hospitalisation might suggest, then, some serious problems with, say, breathing - perhaps necessitating equipment not easily installed in his residence.

<comment><USER3> Ventilator use is similar to major surgery.

It appears 66% to 90% of corona patients who are put on a ventilator will die.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2020/04/02/8261052...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2020/04/02/826105278/ventilators-are-no-panacea-for-critically-ill- covid-19-patients)

So the whole "flatten the curve" thing is less useful than advertised.

<comment><USER4> >It appears 66% to 90% of corona patients who are put on a ventilator will die.

Is there a Data Source for this?

<comment><USER5> Italy Cremona [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfkbv_WQtn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfkbv_WQtn0) Italy Bergamo [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_suhYeWEcJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_suhYeWEcJg) Two hospitals, not a single patient survived ventilation/ecmo to date (two weeks ago).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/mar/27/i-shook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/mar/27/i-shook- hands-with-everybody-says-boris-johnson-weeks-before-coronavirus-diagnosis- video)

"Boris Johnson said he was shaking hands with coronavirus patients just weeks before he tested positive for Covid-19... Early this month, he insisted that people would be 'pleased to know' that the virus would not stop him greeting hospital patients with a handshake"

</comment><comment><USER6> "I'm shaking hands continuously. I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were actually a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you'll be pleased to know. I continue to shake hands."

Guess who said that a couple of weeks ago.

I really hope this doesn't kill him.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nature ignores hubris. I don't wish death or suffering on anyone, only that this enlightens him at least a little.

<comment><USER8> Please don't do this here.

<comment><USER7> Apologies, I thought that was a rather mild statement but I take your point.</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla's China Dream Threatened by Standoff Over Shanghai Factory - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-14/tesla-s-china-dream-threatened-by-standoff-over-shanghai-factory <comment><USER2> from my experience operating in China, its really pretty hostile to foriegn enterprises. If you want to import into China, you face incredibly high import duties. If you want to open a WOFE (wholly owned foreign entity), you have to recursively give them your ownership information so if you are venture backed, they will require your cap table, your investors cap table etc, etc. There is a reason there are very few American products in China outside of the biggest American brands, its simply too difficult and has too much compliance. I love China, but I do think the trade rules asymmetry with the US will need to be addressed at some point. There hasn't really been a detailed and honest discussion about this.

<comment><USER3> It was called the tpp...

<comment><USER4> Don't be naive. The TPP will no more fetter the CCP than the WTO has.

<comment><USER3> Well the US is no longer part of the tpp.... In the counterfactual world where tpp is signed by the American president I think it would have quite potent

[https://www.google.com/amp/foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/07/chin...](https://www.google.com/amp/foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/07/china- tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-obama-us-trade-xi/amp/)

<comment><USER4> Why? The US is part of the WTO, which has been woefully incapable of reigning in Chinese currency controls or limits on foreign companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The whole joint venture requirement of China is just another way for China to steal IP and money from other countries. Talk about China taking advantage of the US and EU.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like they are following after American heros:

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

        Samuel Slater (June 9, 1768 – April 21, 1835) was an
        early English-American industrialist known as the
        "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" (a phrase
        coined by Andrew Jackson) and the "Father of the
        American Factory System."

        In the UK, he was called "Slater the Traitor" because he
        brought British textile technology to America, modifying
        it for United States use. He memorized the designs of
        textile factory machinery as an apprentice to a pioneer
        in the British industry before migrating to the United
        States at the age of 21.

<comment><USER7> There's a slight difference between someone memorizing how things work, versus whole sale theft of corporate documents, data, complex technical design, etc.

<comment><USER8> No.

<comment><USER9> That's like saying there is no difference between a verbal description and a video of something.

<comment><USER8> No, it's not.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Make them in Vietnam and let the rich Chinese buy them as status symbols.

Everyone else can stick to the Chinese lemons.

<comment><USER11> Yep. Just be sure to sell them in black.

An inflated purchase price thanks to 25% tariffs just makes them more attractive to buyers who don't care about price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the short term, Tesla needs China more then China needs Tesa. Tesla's shareholders would revolt if Tesla gave up the Chinese market.

In the long term, this will help bootstrap China's expertise in electric car manufacturing.

It's a brilliant economic policy. Foreign companies cannot resist access to such a large market - they can either partner, or watch their competitors do so.

<comment><USER13> Intel and several others successfully abandoned China without issue. The rational choice in high tech manufacturing is to say as far away as possible.

<comment><USER14> Wait, what do you mean Intel abandoned China?

<comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites)

Intel's only factory in china uses 300 or 65 nm processes. That's Pentium 4 level manufacturing, and clearly not using critical x86 IP.

They are currently building yet another US factory for 7 nm processes.

<comment><USER15> Not sure if you know about export control and the Wassenaar Arrangement. I don't think Intel can manufacture in China at the advanced node even if they wanted to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The tone of the first paragraph should tell you everything you need to know about this article.

</comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't China understand it's supposed to roll over for any tech company with the word "disrupt" in its brochure?

<comment><USER18> If you think electric cars are mockingly disruptive I would love to know what you think actually is.

<comment><USER17> Not mocking the car. Mocking the typical SV hype.</comment></comment></comment>


HN: Help me choose a Clojure project - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to learn more about Clojure and, of course, the best way to learn is to do. I'd like to do a small project, maybe around 4 to 6 weeks total, and I'm sure I could come up with something, but I thought I'd throw it open to HN and see what others might suggest, to get to know some of Clojures strengths and weaknesses. Whatever I end up doing I'll blog about and release as OSS, hopefully providing something back to the community.<p>Suggest away. <comment><USER2> Im sort of in a similar position. I've writen only a few toy apps in clojure. Im thinking about writing some sort of game. There are a few clojure versions of snake, tetris and pong floating around the net, so i have were to look at to learn, but im thinking about something a little more complicated than a tetris clone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I was actually thinking about something that could make use of concurrent programming, so maybe some kind of game that utilizes this isn't a bad idea.

<comment><USER3> multiplayer (6 player network style, or something cool like that) tetris?

MMORPG based on snake. Thousands of snakes running around trying to eat the apples and get the epic armor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm planning to learn Clojure too. I plan to write a Durus (<http://www.mems- exchange.org/software/durus/>) server. There is nothing Python specific (AFAIK) about the server and it's small and clean enough to be a good project.</comment>


Hybrid sweet spot: Native navigation, web content - <AUTHOR> http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3743

<comment><USER2> This post has been submitted at least twice before For eg: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7715833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7715833)</comment>


Trump signs internet privacy repeal - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/327107-trump-signs-internet-privacy-repeal <comment><USER2> [2017]

<comment><USER3> I had a "I feel like this already happened" moment reading the article. This clears it up.

<comment><USER2> What clued me in to even check was that both houses of Congress would have had to have passed this, and that makes no sense today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Nevada-Smith FTA: "...the backlash was overinflated given that the FCC rules never went into effect and that popular websites not covered by the regulations also use customers' data for advertisements."

<comment><USER4> "AT&T, Comcast and Verizon — put out blog posts on Friday decrying what they saw as a misinformation campaign against the bill.

They argued that..."

<comment> Nevada-Smith I intentionally omitted that bit because I didn't want to prejudice the bit I did quite. If something is true, does it matter who stated it?

<comment><USER5> Where is the true part? I see the subjective word "overinflated" and a misdirection about what "popular websites" do.

This is more a case of a press release being a press release no mater who says it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any thing positive about repealing this bill?

From the article's claims, everyone wanted this bill and Trump just tore it up because he hates Obama so much.

That may very well be the case but I believe there are three sides to every story. (Eg. The Reporters side, Trumps side, and finally somewhere in between is the truth).

So I would ask again, does anyone feel brave enough to face the wrath of the mob and provide a legitimate reason why Trumps choice in repealing this bill might have some merit?

Possibly stopping internet bullies, phisisng schemes, pedophiles, mass shootings or terrorists? Anything at all?</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you want your tax dollars spent? - <AUTHOR> In my ideal world, people should be able to tell the government where they want their tax dollars spent. I feel this could also indicate the "voice" of the nation in terms of what they care about most.<p>I would like my tax dollars to go towards education, research and mental health. What are your 3 top choices? <comment><USER2> Infrastructure, national defense, paying off the national debt, from least to most desired for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean by this? Do you want _all_ of your tax dollars to go to those three things?

Are you going to rely on other people to choose other things like road maintenance and international diplomacy?

<comment><AUTHOR> This could act as the list of preferences where I want my tax dollars to go. Money can go elsewhere where it's needed but use my preference to fill up the preferred bucket first. Like how students put in their preferences of universities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> families (support for raising children), green energy/cars/life, education</comment>


A Hidden Side of Procrastination - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/mtdvio/fears-and-limiting-beliefs-2d3 <comment><AUTHOR> My favorite limiting belief is that about our limited willpower. While it's kinda true, studies show that people who believe that willpower is unlimited perform better, than those people who believe in limited willpower. IMO, it's a perfect demonstration of how the limiting beliefs work.</comment>


Mandelbrot Fractals Using MySQL Stored Procedures - <AUTHOR> http://deepselect.blogspot.com/2006/06/mandelbrot-fractals-using-stored.html

<comment><USER2> Mwahaha, someday I'll work on an enterprise database, and I'll implement a 6502 emulator in SQL stored procedures... The database "data" will actually be op codes for a state machine; other tables will represent registers. The Java "application" that uses the database will just be a sham for the real program which is 6502 machine code inside a database table. I don't care about job security. I just like the thought of frying people's brains when they figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER3> First the Excel hack, now MySQL. Now I'm waiting for Doom written in COBOL...

Seriously, this is sweet.</comment>


Why the Story on Snowden and the NSA Doesn't Add Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/07/nyt-snowden-was-hacker-nsa <comment><USER2> _This whole affair gives me an odd vibe. For reasons I can 't figure out, I feel like everyone is holding back information. Obviously the government is, but it sure seems as if the journalists reporting this story have also declined to tell us everything they know. Maybe there's good reason for this. But I wish I knew what it was._

Perhaps it's that the information is in the hands of a 'left wing' newspaper which has a specific agenda/editorial slant and is using the information for those purposes. It makes sense for The Guardian/Glenn Greenwald to put out just enough information to cause a ruckus while keeping everything else to themselves.

<comment><USER3> You obviously aren't familiar with Glenn Greenwald. He's been extremely critical of the Obama administration on a variety of issues. What your claiming makes zero sense. There is a reason why Edward Snowden sought out Greenwald.

<comment><USER2> That's true. Could you elaborate?

PS I think you are reading something I didn't write.

I'm claiming that it makes sense for The Guardian/Greenwald to hold back because they can drip feed information that creates a long running 'scandal'. That has two effects: it keeps The Guardian itself in the news and it prolongs the story.

Perhaps you think that I am equating Obama as a "Democrat" and The Guardian's notion of "Left Wing" as the same thing. I am not.

For example, The Daily Telegraph did a similar thing with revelations about MP's expenses in the UK. They had all the information but over a period of days let out different bits of information. This is the sort of thing newspapers will do, and, for The Guardian, Snowden's leaks are a massive story. They'll milk it as much as they can.

<comment><USER4> The problem for me isn't the left or right wing nature of the Guardian, just that they, like many papers, don't have a good history when it comes to accuracy and morality.

In the UK there was a scandal when a low end tabloid 'hacked' in to the voice mail of a raped + murdered school girl. They were looking for some story no doubt hoping to hear that she had gone to meet someone.

This was a scandal that ultimately would lead to the closing of the tabloid. It was a shame though, because the Guardian made a claim too many, they asserted that the tabloid journos deleted voice mail messages, as the mailbox was full, and they wanted to hear more gossip. According to them at the time this lead to the family being given false hope about their daughter been alive.

Now, when you consider the questionable value that this untruth added to the story (it is frankly immoral and shocking enough that the tabloid hacked the phone) and ask how was it acquired? Why was no standards of integrity followed, but mostly, why did they not think of the effect it would have on the friends and family of the murdered school girl. I mean come on, is it helping things to print such speculation?

Anyway, the retraction: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/dec/20/correction...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/dec/20/corrections- and-clarifications)

This is the most shocking example I can think of, and why I always take that news outlet with a grain of salt, expecting them to be full of hypocrisy (See auto trader sale and tax campaigning).

<comment><USER5> I consider that the Guardian performed a great public service in relation to the phone hacking investigation. Without it, the illegal activity at NI and associated corruption in the police and prison service would not have been revealed. Multiple people are in prison right now because of this. The _prime minister 's_ former press secretary and the former ceo of nI in the UK are about to stand trial. This is a big deal and good journalism.

The Guardian retracted the claim about NI deleting the messages because it could not be _proved_ , not because it was shown to be false. The police's opinion as given in the Leveson Inquiry report was that "It is not possible to state with any certainty whether Milly's voicemails were or were not deleted," [1][2]. The Guardian team originally believed, based on police sources, that messages had been deleted. When it couldn't be proved they retracted the claim. How is this not "moral"? Did it really shock you so much?

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/09/milly-dowler- deleti...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/09/milly-dowler-deletion- messages)

[2] [http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2012/05/...](http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2012/05/Witness-Statement-of-DCI-John-Macdonald.pdf)

<comment><USER4> >that "It is not possible to state with any certainty whether Milly's voicemails were or were not deleted," [1][2].

Did you read the linked document?

"These events support the suggestion that the voicemail box was full with the 10 messages that could be left, and that on 24th March, some 72 hrs after Millys last sighting, messages could be left again. Mrs Dowler's call is likely to have been made when one of the previous messages from 21st March had been automatically deleted."

So they probably didn't delete it. People here (including the guy below) have gone to a frankly worrying guilty until innocent mode. If I write something about your firm, I have to be able to prove it, not you disprove it.

Which is my point, they had a scoop, by questionable means they had found out that NoTW had been doing very immoral things. Why not leave it at that, why did they have to crank it up a sensationalist gear?

Oh of course, because when The Guardian does it, it is for the greater good! [1] When anyone else does it, its 'titter tattle'.

This is why I treat the Guardian with a pinch of salt, its not like Sun or Mirror or News of the Screws, they sometimes get some good stuff correct before other sources. It's just often they are very hypocritical, and not quite 100% with the truth. This bugs the crap out of me. Most newspapers are like this. This is why I hate most newspapers. Hell if anyone can recommend something more frequent than the economist I'd be interested!

But on this context of phone hacking, it is funny that their defence is similar to an NSA one isn't it? Intercepting private communications is bad, but when we do it, we have only good motives.

[1] - [http://metro.co.uk/2011/08/04/guardian-journalist-phone- hack...](http://metro.co.uk/2011/08/04/guardian-journalist-phone-hacking-gave- me-a-thrill-103560/)

<comment><USER6> Admit it dude. You worked at NotW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Profiles describe him as secretive, fascinated with computers, and with knowledge of things like Tor (a peer-to-peer network for maintaining anonymity for computer communications)."

Doesn't that describe most of us on HN? ;-)

<comment><USER8> and that's a great example why data retention is bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Money quotes:

 _an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world._

 _Infrastructure analysts like Mr. Snowden, in other words, are not just looking for electronic back doors into Chinese computers or Iranian mobile networks to steal secrets. They have a new double purpose: building a target list in case American leaders in a future conflict want to wipe out the computers' hard drives or shut down the phone system._

So basically he was a professional hacker. That takes a fair bit of intelligence, knowledge and experience, and is a fair bit beyond the job of a sysadmin, which is what everyone was assuming based on the title.

I guess it made sense. Unless you're Dr Evil, you probably won't call your hired mobsters "assassins" either, instead you might call them something neutral like "Situation Specialists"...

<comment><USER10> No if you where a TLA why would you use job titles that gave anything away about what the persons job was.

And how does one go from "Infrastructure Analyst" to being a government hacker looking at job postings for Infrastructure Analysts seems to indicate that it is a posh word for systems administrator.

<comment><USER11> No one hires hackers using normal job postings and titles. They show up at DefCon and Black Hat Briefings and then schmooze in t-shirts and blue jeans.

Like this: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0ejKersnM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0ejKersnM)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It was the right "strategy". If they would've released everything in one day, we'd probably already be on to the next thing by now, and the whole scandal would've lasted a week. They've done you a _favor_ doing it like this.

<comment> brown9-2 Is it the responsibility of a newspaper to create a long-running scandal, or to report on the news/truth?

I'm confused by people that say the motives of someone like Snowden or an institution like The Guardian are irrelevant yet then laud The Guardian for having a clear motive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have to admit I've been increasingly concerned that something about this is not adding up as well. I can't precisely put my finger on it. The link to wikileaks gives me pause and the more recent stuff about foreign spying which, while politically incorrect, is kind of the NSA's primary sigint job. The most recent PRISM slide release also seems to suggest a narrower and more targeted US role than was let on initially.

<comment><USER14> I speculate that the reason his Ecuador papers were revoked has more to do with Ecuador's dirty laundry than Snowden's. It's my view that this is the largest existential threat to the US Security Apparatus (e.g. Booz, et al. ) that has ever existed. Under that level, I could imagine they are pulling out all their stops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _What was Edward Snowden 's job when he worked for Booz Hamilton as a > contractor to the NSA?_

We don't know. That's the nature of jobs with security clearances doing work for Secret Government Spy Agencies.

> _The fuzziness surrounding this is frustrating. I 'd certainly like to know > more about what Snowden did for the NSA. Did he work on network security? > Was he a threat analyst of some kind? Did he actively search out > vulnerabilities in other networks that NSA could exploit? Did he do this > only at Booz Hamilton, or did he have basically the same job previously when > he worked directly for the NSA? Exactly how much does he know about the NSA > programs he's been revealing to the world?_

There are two issues here.

1) How can we organize effective oversight of secret spy agencies?

2) How can we trust whistleblowers? How knowledgeable are those whistleblowers?

For 1) we have to create strong law. We then give a small independant group oversight powers. We then have to trust the spies, and the people overseeing them, to obey the law. We have to be careful about crafting the laws, because these people want to push the boundaries of what they can do.

For 2) I guess we just have to accept that people tend not to whistleblow unless they feel strongly about something. He's been called a traitor for revealing this much. Imagine what happens if he reveals even more.

> _Or, at the very least, I 'd like to know why I can't know._

There are several guesses we can make here. i: The slides reveal information that put people's lives at risk. ii: The slides reveal information that give too much information to the enemy; or cut off information to the US. iii: The slides are not particularly relevant to the prism story. iv: The slides contradict the prism story, and giving the whole context ruins the story, and the journalists are sensationalising scumbags. v:etc.

</comment><comment> grey-area _The fuzziness surrounding this is frustrating. I 'd certainly like to know more about what Snowden did for the NSA. Did he work on network security? Was he a threat analyst of some kind?_

Frankly, I don't think any of these questions matter, and the speculation without evidence is not useful. We should be discussing the leaks, not Snowden's motivation in leaking, his background, his girlfriend, how much he understands of what he leaked etc. The motivation of a source in journalism is not really important, what is important is discovering the truth about what is happening in the world and our true relations with our government.

 _What 's more, Snowden apparently thought the entire set of slides should be revealed to the world. I'd like to know what changed his mind._

Snowden gave the documents to journalists so that they could fact-check, start asking questions, and release what they thought was appropriate. According to Greenwald he specifically mentioned that he didn't want to dump all this data, and I can see good reasons why he wouldn't want to - there are probably things in the documents that would be very damaging (and not just to reputations) if released, some documents have been redacted before release, and they require explanation and context - none of that comes with a simple dump of the documents.

There are also sound tactical reasons for allowing the administration to tangle itself in its own lies, and to prevent the story simply being buried so I completely understand why they do this. Of course the newspapers and journalists involved have their own opinions, but trying to reduce those opinions to left wing or libertarian or whatever other labels you care to apply does nothing to elucidate how they have affected the presentation of the information. On the contrary, it just allows people to dismiss the information without bothering to address its implications. Greenwald for example has been labelled extreme left-wing, libertarian, extreme right-wing and everything in between, but I think he's really interested in privacy and surveillance, not joining the left-wing or right-wing club and hating the other side. The Guardian has not pursued an agenda here that I can discern aside from trying to sell more newspapers or get more hits - they've printed stories from all over the political spectrum, and _they are not the only newspaper releasing stories_ \- the most important recent leak of 4 slides was from the Washington Post, which is also in possession of this material, papers in Hong Kong and Germany have also been given some information. Snowden was also interviewed in Hong Kong by veteran diplomatic reporter Ewan MacAskill[1] who seemed impressed with his credentials and honesty so he's not completely opaque. I'd recommend any who haven't to watch this interview with the Guardian editors explaining the process in a bit more detail[2].

I find the disturbing allegations of unregulated, widespread, and deep surveillance used for economic and political ends _far more important_ than Snowden's role in all of this, and I think he'd agree with that. While it's tempting to get obsessed with Snowden, his character, his job, why he leaked etc, and create grand conspiracy theories surrounding it, it's more healthy to discuss the facts we do know and their implications for how we use the internet. More information will come to light in time, and the information we do know raises serious questions about just how far state surveillance should be allowed to go.

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ewenmacaskill](http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ewenmacaskill) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdz...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdzzZB7Xgo)

<comment><USER16> You kinda sounds like you agree with Snowden's message, appreciate his risk, but then want him just left to hang out to dry? Surely this bloke deserves protection? If he is forgotten while people deal with the allegations, he'll rot.

I do agree that the issues are important, but the life of one human being, especially the one who made the debate possible, has to be as important. If publishing personal stuff protects, and at the moment it seems that keeping him in in the public eye is probably helping keep him alive, then so be it.

Also, freedom is partly about how we treat individuals in the extreme. The US reaction to this says a lot.

<comment><USER17> In the world as it exists today, whistleblowers against the US virtually forfeit their lives. He's a dead man walking, and by talking about _him_ instead of the larger issues you give leverage to ignore the larger issues.

This is always the way it works - ad hominem, discredit the person, imprison/kill him as an example, roll cute summary stories in the press about what a deranged maniac he was, and the populace forgets all about the larger issues once the human interest drama is wrapped up.

So please, accept that he's thoroughly and truly fucked, and try to make the incredible orwellian surveillance state they've built the focus.

<comment><USER18> "He's a dead man walking" \- surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? Their image is already shot. The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.

<comment><USER19> > surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? > Their image is already shot.

I can't figure out how this would actually matter to Obama, more than a few speeches' worth. Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were Obama's most fervent supporters, who won't be voting for him again anyway. The administration's main political foes seem to recognize that there's a big issue here (after all, slightly more than half of their constituents think that the NSA actions are "hurting Americans"[1]), but don't quite know how to capitalize on it, since they were all in favor of things like this before the story broke. The outrage within the US about this is spread so evenly across the usual parties that it's not clear that there will be any actual fallout for future elections.

> The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.

I would suppose that if they choose to kill him, they'll try pretty hard to do it in a way where it's not provable that the US killed him. Future-leaks-wise, though, it might seem beneficial for people to _suspect_ that the US killed him, since presumably that would deter future leaks to some extent.

[1] [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/fox-news-poll- mix...](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/fox-news-poll-mixed-views- on-nsa-surveillance-program/)

<comment><USER20> > Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were > Obama's most fervent supporters…

No, Obama's most fervent supporters want to hang Snowden for treason, and Greenwald along with him. They're quite happy to use the word "treason" for both of them.

Ever since the leak supporters of Obama on blogs and Twitter have been attacking Snowden and particularly Greenwald with ferocity. [1]

A derogatory term has recently been coined and is now being applied to anyone on the left who supports Snowden and Greenwald. This term, "emoprog," basically translates to "whiny progressive." The complaint is that emoprogs, instead of falling into line and unquestioningly supporting whatever Democrat is president, whine disloyally about principles said president is violating or not pursuing with enough vigor.

So no, Obama's most fervent supporters wish Snowden and the whole issue would just go away and find infuriating the disloyalty shown by Greenwald and his emoprog supporters.

[1] [https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/351829186991759360](https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/351829186991759360) [https://twitter.com/Johngcole/status/349308095987593217](https://twitter.com/Johngcole/status/349308095987593217) [https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/348879008747896833](https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/348879008747896833)

<comment><USER21> You're both right, its just one of you is talking about Obama's most fervent supporters _prior_ to the Snowden case, and one is talking about Obama's most fervent supporters _in relation to_ the Snowden case. These are mostly not the same groups of people, and overlap only to the extent that both include the practically policy-blind cult of personality than any major politician (or celebrity more generally) will end up attracting, but this is a fairly small slice of either group of "fervent supporters".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. I can understand that governments may have shadowy departments doing illegal things we don't know about, but the whole scope of Prism seems to be too wide. When people talk about it, they describe computer systems I couldn't even begin to imagine, let alone design.

Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year. I just don't believe it's technically possible.

Add to this the emphasis by _all_ parties on Snowden and his shenanigans, and I'm just left confused.

<comment><USER23> > Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for > the grad sum of $20M a year. I just don't believe it's technically possible.

That's because it is not possible. The $20M/year number is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg for one little program that seems to be more like the GUI on top of the data from all the other programs. The NSA alone has a budget on the order of $10B/year - the entire (american) "intelligence-industrial complex" is estimated to be around $50B/year.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I do find it baffling that Greenwald hasn't written an article detailing his relationship with Snowden, the timeline of when they began communicating and when Snowden started at BAH, if they are in contact still, etc., at least to dispel any questions people would raise about it.

I suspect Greenwald would say he hasn't done this because he thinks that Snowden isn't important to "the story", yet he still happily tweets snarky things about Snowden and what other journalists write/think:

[https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351910567210004480](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351910567210004480) [https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351453433989054464](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351453433989054464)

</comment><comment><USER24> Snowden is the red herring. It is more interesting for news cycles to talk about a person. What he does, what he likes. It is hard to talk about "the government". There is no one person to interview, we can't find out what food "the government" likes etc. We should be focusing on the leaks and the systems that allowed the surveillance to happen.

</comment><comment><USER25> I find it very interesting that there is only one photo of Snowden, and that nobody has seen him.

<comment><USER26> That photo is a still from a video interview he had with The Guardian.

<comment><USER25> But always _that_ photo. Never a different photo. Seems odd to me.

<comment><USER27> It's simply become memetic. Why bother combing through the video for a different still when you can use the same one everyone else is?

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure if you're being ironic because you answer your own question. A newspaper wants content that is different from its competitors. It takes little effort to "comb through the video" to grab another screenshot. I also find it odd that everyone is using the same still.

<comment><USER6> _A newspaper wants content that is different from its competitors._

Except in this case the Snowden image is not "content". It is an icon: visual shorthand that catches the eye and identifies the topic. In a story about a corporation, they would use that corporation's standard logo rather than a unique picture of the generic corporate campus.

All of the pictures of Snowden's girlfriend in various poses and states of undress? Now that's content.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Gentle Introduction to Ember 2.0 (Tutorial) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jamesfuthey/a-gentle-introduction-to-ember-2-0-8ef1f378ee4 <comment><AUTHOR> Questions & Feedback Welcome. Thanks!</comment>


Android Things Reportedly Discontinued - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/qRNp7jWY <comment><USER2> Who is that guy?</comment>


After over a decade of Vim, I'm hooked on Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://changelog.complete.org/archives/9861-emacs-1-ditching-a-bunch-of-stuff-and-moving-to-emacs-and-org-mode <comment><USER2> I did the same thing and stuck with it for a year. In the last couple months I decided that I needed to stop tweaking every last thing and wasting so much time and compromise by using the tools that allow me to be the most productive.

I dropped my highly customized emacs for Omni Focus (org-mode), Mail.app (mu4e), SublimeText (general emacs, org-mode), Mendeley (org-ref, helm), MS Word (LaTeX-mode). I never stopped using PowerPoint because it's the standard in science and the couple times I tried Beamer (directly and through org- export) were a nightmare for having multiple figures per slide. I also sometimes use Excel now, though Python is still more often the better tool. I have not found a good personal knowledge base; right now I am using Evernote.

I have several collaborations and projects. Keeping my tasks organized needed to be easier than org. Working with other people in formats that will make them happy to work with me was also critical. Even with things like Overleaf and ShareLaTeX, it is too hard to collaborate with others.

Giving up plain text formats and version control are challenges.

<comment><USER3> I have also tried to live with Emacs for about a year. In most respects it is absolutely great, inline LaTeX rendering, org-mode is like having Jupyter in your text editor (and a lot more), Magit is hands-down the best Git porcelain.

However, I have found that both with Spacemacs and vanilla Emacs + packages I basically end up with a Rube Goldberg machine where it is hard to see how things work and fit together. Combined with the tendency of packages to break very often, I frequently had the feeling that the ground was crumbling under my feet.

I am mostly back to vim now for editing (+ Things for todos). For presentations and text I use one of {LaTeX, pandoc Markdown, Deckset.app Markdown}.

<comment><USER4> Packages breaking is a real problem. I've found that explicitly versioning them (eg comitting their source) has made this much less of a problem.

<comment><USER5> You may be interested by the straight.el package manager.

[https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el](https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el)

<comment><USER4> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vim has been a bit of a mixed blessing for me. I rarely actually use vim, but I use the keybindings _everywhere_.

It's great because I can fairly comfortably move between most editors because most editors have a vim mode.

The downside is that most editors don't have a complete vim mode, so it's never 100%.

<comment><USER7> Ah see what really bugs me is that most vim modes _do_ try to be a complete vim mode (and the fact that they never succeed just adds insult to injury), they always try to be a vim emulator instead of providing vim-like keybindings that make sense in the context of the editor.

I do appreciate that I'm very much in the minority here though.

<comment><USER8> Neovim has a plugin api that let's it be used as a "real vim" back end for text editor plugins.

<comment><USER9> And I'm still searching for the good Python and PHP IDE that implements it. I'm hoping that Jetbrains will, as I use IdeaVIM in a few if their products, but right now I always have to switch between the IDE for general editing and VIM 8 or NeoVim for terrific macros or some hardcore surgery. Having that power right in PyCharm or any other decent IDE would be a dream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surprised to see no mention of spacemacs[1] so far - you get the evil keybindings with the helm user interface.

[1] [http://spacemacs.org/](http://spacemacs.org/)

<comment><USER11> I wanted to love it but it takes longer than Atom to start up on a new iMac.

<comment><USER12> You are supposed to use it with emacsclient. You run spacemacs as a daemon the first time and just connect to it all the subsequent times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It sounds like he never wanted vim to begin with. He wanted an IDE, which vim isn't. Vim is your editor and Unix is your IDE.

Effective vim does not start with a lot of plugins IMO. If you expect more than an editor from vim, you have come to the wrong place.

<comment><USER14> I've been using vim for over 10 years. This is, imo, the happy path to being very productive in vim.

1\. Learn basic movements and insert/normal mode

2\. Learn advanced movements. When you want to insert some text learn the fastest way to move your cursor to that location in normal mode. Learn the different way move from normal mode to insert mode.

3\. Learn find & replace commands.

4\. Learn macros for repetitive tasks.

5\. Learn when to use visual mode.

6\. Improve .vimrc file. Remap keys to reduce keystrokes based on your personal workflow.

7\. Learn about buffers.

<comment><USER15> This seems about right, I would add that it helps a lot if you go to vimgolf and try some of the exercises people do. It will make you do things differently and expand your vim horizon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used Vim for 15 years, then switched to Emacs+Evil. Vim is the best interface, Emacs the best platform. Emacs+Evil combines both.

<comment><USER17> Haha, I used vim for a few years before switching to emacs. My brain just does not work modally. Still miss the dot though.

<comment><USER18> ummm [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Mo...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Modes.html)

<comment><USER19> I believe this is a different sense of _mode_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#Interface)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been using emacs for years, and I certainly did the whole "oh wow use emacs for everything" bit. Over time, I've pulled back and don't use many plugins outside of helm and flycheck.

I can not for the life of me understand the appeal of org-mode. It's probably just me, because most other organizers don't work for me, but if you're going to do a file-based organizer, it seems like you want a way to easily pull stuff out of old files so your working set isn't spread out all over the place.

<comment><USER20> > I can not for the life of me understand the appeal of org-mode.

I used emacs for nearly two decades, and I agree.

I tried - so hard - to get into org-mode, but just couldn't do it. I'd use it religiously for a week or two, and then the inertia was just too high. Or maybe I really didn't need all the features. Who knows.

Saying you "don't get" org-mode is blasphemy in the church of emacs, so I just assumed something was wrong with me and kept my mouth shut, and used it as a very simple todo list.

I would, however, use org-mode if I were say, working on a PhD or doing long- term public research where keeping everything in an open format was essential.

<comment><USER21> I stopped using org-mode when I moved from academia to work as a programmer so that fits with what you say.

<comment><USER22> I use org-mode for work actually. Kind of similar to this but less devops:

[http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate- devops.htm...](http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-devops.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I guess I'm all alone over here with my love of nano - yes, its not as powerful as emacs (or even vi) - but it works well enough for what I need a text editor for.

<comment><USER24> Since we're plugging for minority editors, I'm going to do what I always do on editor threads and mention kakoune. Modal like vi, but with a different take on the paradigm, modern, embodies the "UNIX is your IDE" philosophy. Integrates in an unobtrusive way with tmux and X11 because window management is out of scope for the editor. Lets you attach multiple clients to the same session, supports multiple buffers. I'd used vi (and later vim) from 1997 to 2017, but kak won me over and I've been using it as my primary editor for over a year now.

<comment><USER25> After bouncing off emacs and org-mode, I'm enjoying re-acquainting myself with the Leo editor, an extendable outliner written in Python with some nice literate programming features (the editor itself is written in an outline), and acceptable vim emulation.

[http://leoeditor.com/](http://leoeditor.com/) pip install leo

<comment><USER26> I think the Leo editor is the only editor that can come close to Emacs in terms of power. However, the docs are just so, so bad. And the functionality out of the box leaves much to be desired. I couldn't find the keystroke to comment out lines of code. There were a few other changes in behavior that I wanted that I'm sure are trivial to fix in Leo via scripting, but things aren't documented.

I really, really want Leo to become more popular - but until there are better tutorials and documentation, I don't think it will go anywhere. And I'm at the stage in life where I can't afford to spend too much time figuring Leo out - there are too many other high value things to learn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My resistance to putting my life in Emacs these days is that half my time is spent on mobile devices. I know org-mode exports a variety of formats, but how easy is it to interact with my todo list or add notes from my phone? If popular services all had APIs I could see hooking Emacs into them, but they just don't in general.

I read the posts so far from this article, and was hoping to see the mobile angle addressed.

<comment><USER28> Beorg for iOS solved this problem for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interestingly, vim got the second place (after Visual Studio) in a recent C++ developer survey: [https://isocpp.org/blog/2018/03/results-summary-cpp- foundati...](https://isocpp.org/blog/2018/03/results-summary-cpp-foundation- developer-survey-lite-2018-02)

I wonder what's the go-to setup for C++ development in vim.

<comment><USER30> Many developer, especially on linux, only ask for syntax highlight

They use linux command line tools as the development environment

Personally, i find working without intellisense or intelligent auto-completion very hard, but it seems many developers don't find this as important as i do

<comment><USER31> At work and play I use only vim to write C++, Python, Javascript, bash and web frontend stuff. Only plugin is rainbow parentheses. Manpages and web for docs. My system is very flexible and I wouldn't have it any other way.

<comment><USER29> So besides not having intellisense, you also don't have things such as go-to def/decl, show type info, switch between header/cpp files, etc... Not to mention debugger integration, right? Do you work on large scale projects with this setup?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I used to use pure Emacs, but switched full-time to Vim keystrokes after I got stuck for the billionth time trying to figure out the "undo direction". After a certain point, I realized that I really just needed Vim, since I never really used any of the features in Emacs except the text editor.

Now I mostly just use NeoVim, and with its async support and a lot of the plugins for it becoming excellent, I really have no desire to go back to Emacs...except that I keep hearing about org-mode.

One of these days I might go and try out one of the several plugins for Vim that try to tack-on org-mode, but as it stands I've gotten my NeoVim configuration so customized it would take quite awhile to actually replicate in Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER33> Yes, the good ol' org-mode. I also consider it the core killer feature of emacs. However I found it doesn't match into all my processes. A text editor you can drop into different kinds of work processes. But a whole engine that uses formatted files as data storage is different. With emacs and org-mode the whole thinking is inside emacs. that's fine if you want to use it for everything. But if you just want to use org-mode and drop it into different contexts it fails.

It's still great tho, no criticism intended.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have been using Emacs for 20 years, and still discover cool new things every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER35> I like toys as much as the next nerd, but how do people see the perceived value of such tools? Personally, I am relatively unconvinced about the advantages of tools like emacs or vim over anything "regular" people use. IMHO Tools should be evaluated by the results they produce, and so are we seeing anything amazing from the users of these tools versus people who just use a notepad or whatever other generic system?

<comment><USER36> I too would like a clear answer to this, I've made numerous attempts to learn vim and emacs and can find my way around in both, but I never broke my habit of the old school CUA keybindings and arrow keys so always found myself gravitating back, especially when more full fledged IDEs and such were an option. ReSharper C++ is a major time-saver on a daily basis for me and I have a hard time thinking that would be easily replaced.

<comment><USER37> I think Vim for me is solely in the 'fun' category. I mean, actual text editing is a pretty small portion of the time I spend on programming - thinking, reading, and debugging are much more significant for me.

That said, I think that a well-set up version of vim is probably the most fun anybody can have while editing text. I actually enjoy doing finnicky and tricky textual tasks. You feel like a wizard literally every day. That's worth something for me.

I actually picked it up because I wanted a new natural-language text editor, and I figured vim would probably still exist in 20 years, and I don't like learning new things. It's been an unmitigated blessing in this role - and it's also pretty nice for programming, if a little bit more annoying to set up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> To be honest, Emacs never worked for me. It added too much complexity, for too little gain.

M-w, to do a copy. Or some other hobgoblin that I need to remember, when all I need is just a browse-able menu. I just need the shortcuts, for when I repetitively do an action, multiple times in a row, where it's quicker to just hit the keys, instead of using a menu.

Maybe it was cutting edge in the 1990s, but then computers got much faster, with more memory. And the graphical IDEs like Visual Studio, and Eclipse, blew it out of the water.

Today, when I'm coding in Python, then I just use an editor like Notepad++. I get enough syntax highlighting hints from that to avoid obvious coding errors.

Most of the time, I'm on Windows. I secure shell into the Linux server, and open the file from there. Then it saves back to the server. Then I run my code on a shell. This setup works pretty well.

If I need to review the code while on the shell, then I just open it in Vi. Or just open it in Windows.

<comment><USER39> Well that doesn't copy. That closes Emacs. No wonder you're having trouble! Use M-w.

You can do what you need using Emacs. Instead of context menus, you search for a less used command using M-x. It helps if you have ido-mode or helm. The latter, in my opinion, makes it a beautiful experience.

I tried moving over to JetBrains IDEs. It was too painful. I can see its value in a language where it can write most of the code for you. Otherwise, Emacs all the way.

<comment><USER38> Are you purposely being dense?

<comment><USER39> Oh I see what you did there. Nice try squirt. C-x C-c closes Emacs. I mean M-w and C-x C-c are so damn close together it's unfortunate you might mix them up, right?

That sort of crafty edit-a-roo is mighty frowned upon in most circles. And to be so rude! Now that, sir, is crossing the line.

I guess if I'm really dense, I can't purposefully be dense, can I?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> No mention of evil, which is always my first question when I consider trying Emacs: how will I get past not having vi bindings?

</comment><comment><USER41> I like both, but I still absolutely love two features of vi:

\- hjkl movement keys (which depends on multi modes)

\- . (dot) to repeat the last command

But honestly, there are so many fantastically useful features of vi that it's hard to give up.

I learned Emacs because of Clojure, and I got reasonably proficient with it. Thanks to Emacs, I now am much more efficient in editor boxes and terminals because of ctrl-p and other movement keys, as well as jump to begin/end of line, etc.

But vi is preinstalled in more places (even if it's a weak minimal installation), so it will get used rather than me installing emacs on some system I only need to be on for five minutes.

Vi also seems more performant. I haven't attempted to measure, but it sure feels like it has lower latency than Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER26> >But, critically, automatically embedded in that note is a link back to what I was doing when I pressed C-c c.

That's neat. How do I do this? My setup is almost a decade old.

</comment><comment><USER42> I recently tried giving Emacs another shot, as it was my first love, with Spacemacs and it was terribly slow. I couldn't believe how long it took to boot up and how choppy it was compared to SpaceVim.

Having started with emacs to use with LISP/Clojure I ended up with Vim because it's just felt lighter and the key layout more logical. And much of the plugins were comparable or superior, with the exception of LISP languages.

<comment><USER43> Your last sentence is interesting. As a vim user, I've always regarded emacs as having a much better ecosystem. The only plugins that I've found superior in vim are those related to text editing (for example, new operators).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> _When my new job added Slack to the mix, that was finally the last straw._

And later...

 _So I found myself switching from Thunderbird and mairix+mutt (for the mail archives) to mu4e, and from xchat+slack to ERC._

If being able to use Slack from Emacs was the main point of this, he is going to be very sad in a few weeks.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16536254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16536254)

<comment><USER45> FWIW apparently emacs-slack uses Slack's API rather than the IRC gateway, so it will actually stay working (for now), or so I've read: [https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack](https://github.com/yuya373/emacs- slack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I still use Vim (neovim) but switched my notetaking to Org Mode + Evil. It's great, especially capture templates and the export features.

</comment><comment><USER47> emacs is nice when you want an editor that has modest/ecent support for a variety of languages. Sometimes you can get a better experience with a flagship language ide, but if you use a lot of different langs or 'botique' langs then emacs is a good common denominator

</comment><comment><USER48> In short, org-mode was the gateway drug for me, and since I don't have any religious feelings towards any editor I found it easier to switch entirely, rather than keep using vim for code.

Although emacs is my main editor I still use vim and try to keep the memory of keybindings alive.

</comment><comment><USER49> I really like the idea of Emacs/org-mode for everything, but my perception is that image support and mobile support aren't very good (compared to, say, Evernote). A pictures is worth a thousand words, so having pictures as part of my notes is crucial.

<comment><USER50> Image support in org buffers is pretty good, not sure what's the situation in mobile (I use orgzly, which AFAIK doesn't support images). If you want previews for URLs and such, I think you'll be better off with Evernote (though you could probably automate the screencap + linking when doing captures, if you're into that)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've wanted to learn emacs for a long time, but every time I try it I get overwhelmed after 5 minutes, close it and swear to try again later. One of these days...

* edit-- not that it looks all that hard, just the sheer amount of things to learn makes it daunting.

<comment><USER52> that's why I love spacemacs - with the default setup, you hit the spacebar and a text based gui with all the possible options pops up. it allows me to continue to actually work instead of floundering about for some simple action while hammering the keyboard shortcuts into me through repetition

<comment><USER51> I'm giving spacemacs a try now, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> You would think that anyone used to Vim would have problem with Emacs as they can't keep up with speed of us issuing commands :)?

</comment><comment><USER54> After 18 years of Common Lisp, and nine years of developing a Lisp implementation ...

... I'm 24 years into using Vim and counting!

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm bi as well. I prefer using both. I still code in c in vim. C++ always in emacs.

<comment><USER56> Let me guess: you are not aware of YouCompleteMe.

</comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea I began to force myself to learn vim but I never got over that initial hump and there was nothign really to draw me in. I can't remember why I began to look into emacs but org-mode drew me right in. I discovered magit at around the same time and I begun what I can only describe as a love affair with emacs that continues to this day. I just can't imagine a life where I use computers without emacs.

<comment><USER57> [https://vim-adventures.com/](https://vim-adventures.com/) it's fun if you're wanting a little evil(-mode) in your life.

<comment> cup-of-tea I did that! I still remember navigation keys and some other things to this day. A little vim is essential for working on Linux when I can't install emacs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This thread has been a revelation to me because I honestly thought "users of Emacs" were a myth like Big Foot

</comment><comment><USER59> Have you tried VS Code?

</comment><comment><USER60> I see emacs I upvote :)

<comment><USER60> Actually got -4 points for this comment.

Apparently you shouldn't take any side in an HN flame war.

<comment><USER61> From the HN guidelines:

 _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading._

<comment><USER62> Although the parent comment didn't really seem to be a _literal_ comment about voting. That's what the ":)" was intended to indicate. It was just a general, friendly pro-Emacs comment. Downvoting everything that isn't super serious makes for pretty boring reading too. The first comment on this post, something along the lines of "My pinky hurts just reading this" was actually pretty funny. It was removed because it was immediately heavily downvoted.

Seriously, aren't your day jobs stressful enough? Do you have to be _that_ uptight? I don't remember HN being like this a year or two ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Can't delete my comment so i'll edit it to something different. Please ignore.

<comment><AUTHOR> I remap Caps Lock to Control for exactly that reason. On my ideal keyboard, though, the keys immediately to the left & right of the spacebar would be Control, then Alt, then Super. On my _really_ ideal keyboard the next key out would be Hyper, but sadly the USB spec doesn't provide for it.

<comment><USER64> Maybe the ideal keyboard would also not have a huge space bar, but two thumbs keys that would act as both space and a modifier if hold.

<comment><USER65> TECK (seemingly out of production) has three keys in place of spacebar by default configured as (backspace)(enter)(space)

Using thumbs to activate those works really well!

[https://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/truly-ergonomic- mechani...](https://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/truly-ergonomic-mechanical- ergonomic-keyboard)</comment></comment></comment></comment>