Beautiful Pacific Crest Trail Journals - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehikeguy.com/2011/11/10/pct-moleskines/

<comment><USER2> These are awesome trail journals! I think one of the things I regret when I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2010 was not taking a picture of every shelter register entry I left. On the AT, pretty much every shelter has a notebook that people write their thoughts in for the day (at campsites without shelters, check the privy).

I debated taking a journal, but so much of the trail culture is in the registers that it seemed like it would be almost churlish to not share my thoughts like everybody else does. Not that my writing is up to The Hiker Guy's standard (nor is most anybody else's). It's still nice to read an entry from somebody who you haven't seen in a couple weeks and hear their triumphs and frustrations in their own voice.

With storage for digital cameras being so cheap and with smart phones being almost ubiquitous, snapping pictures seemed like the obvious compromise between participating and journaling, but I never really got in the habit.

Incidentally, if you find yourself wanting to keep a journal on a hiking trip, I highly recommend the Rite-In-The-Rain [1] soft-cover journals. The paper is wonderfully waterproof; they'll survive immersion without falling apart (the covers of the hardcover journals will warp, however). The only downside is that they don't take ink as well as normal paper. Pencil works well, but will smear like on normal paper, but I have yet to find a ballpoint that works really well, although the Fisher Space Pen [2] does well enough and will write on the pages even if they're soaked.

Lastly, I'll leave you with a truly entertaining blog from a current AT hiker [3]. I'll note (thank goodness) that most people don't find themselves in nearly as much peril as this crew. The author is a friend of a friend, and I do hope their luck improves!

[1] <http://www.riteintherain.com/>

[2] <http://www.spacepen.com/>

[3] <http://trailkit.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I challenge you to do this with a tablet that doesn't have a Wacom screen. Even if power was a solved problem, a device that is essentially a computer screen (easily the most flexible graphics medium on earth) can't get depth like this because of the rough input. For all the hype that mobile gets, paper should be obsolete, yet if you actually stack the two side by side paper is more powerful.

<comment><USER4> It is slowly getting better, but higher resolution on input is surely needed. Penultimate + Evernote are a good combo. The said, there is definitely a resolution (and performance) limit.

Longevity - analog mediums have their limits for preservation and digital have theirs.

<comment><USER5> If you write something down on acid free paper today and store it away from sunlight, bugs and high humidity, there is a very good chance someone will still be able to read it 500 years from now. If you store something in Evernote, who knows? I have letters my dad wrote in Wordstar and stored on an 8" floppy 35 years ago. If I or my kids wanted to read those letters now... I wouldn't even know where to start.

<comment><USER3> Ask Jason Scott for help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are beautiful, inspiring, and--for me at least--serendipitous. Just yesterday, I resolved to start a daily journal for personal retrospection. This post motivated me to actually write my first entry today. Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Hike Guy's journals were highly influential in my original motivation for starting a journal. For some reason I had thought of this blog post the other day, and felt that it would be good to share with other Hackers. I am glad to hear that these journals inspired you as they once inspired me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you ever go into the back country where they have first come/first serve cabins (they are spread throughout the west), there will often be journals there filled with notes from people that have been there.

I've read some great stories about people discovering things they didn't expect in the back country of Death Valley. The tall tales some write instead are equally fun.

</comment><comment><USER7> These are spectacular!

Very fitting to see the tradition carried on, and on John Muir's birthday too. Muir was a prolific journal-writer, and some of them are full of iconic and timeless quotes about nature and the Sierra Nevada mountains, as well as drawings and random observations very similar to these. "My First Summer in the Sierra" is of particular significance and can be found in published form.

You can read ("read" is used liberally here—the cursive is difficult) or just look at nearly all of them here: [http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/search/collection/...](http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/search/collection/muirjournals)

This modern-day version brings delight to my soul in this trying week. I miss these, my mountains, my home. Thank you for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER8> This guy's great grandchildren are going to be very lucky.

<comment><USER9> Both that he took the time to write, and that he took the time to scan. I'm in a losing battle at the moment to preserve (before they disintegrate or become illegible) the letters my grandparents wrote to each other and back home as they waited to get married, separated by the war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> best response to a lay-off that I have ever seen

</comment><comment><USER11> My 19-year-old kid sister left for the PCT trailhead yesterday; she's planning to spend the next six months hiking from the Mexican border to the Canadian. I wish I could have shown her this link before she left!

</comment><comment><USER5> Beautiful. I usually cross paths with PCT hikers when I am working near Carson Pass. They always look so happy. Every year it's tempting to just set aside my responsibilities and join them. Maybe next year.

<comment><USER12> What work do you do in the area?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

And now all of a sudden I'm extremely curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not all that familiar with error messages, but it seems all of the traffic has overwhelmed the Hike Guy's website.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it works fine now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the kind of "off topic" article that adds something to this site. It's genuinely interesting to a subset of people here, and it's about a real accomplishment, rather than some political screed calculated to induce rage at some aspect of politics in the US (they're always about the US).

<comment><USER15> Interestingly, it's not off-topic by definition: it's interesting and new to you. (The name changed from "Startup News" intentionally.)

<comment><USER14> Thus, the quotes around 'off-topic': it is not about the site's usual fare, but it is unique and interesting.

I'm fairly critical of a lot of political junk that gets posted, so I think it's only fair to point out something good that I believe is in the spirit of the site.</comment></comment></comment>


The evil genius - <AUTHOR> http://blog.14islands.com/post/35974780319/the-evil-genius

<comment><USER2> > _They lock us into buying music and videos from iTunes when using iPods, > iPhones and iPads._

Um. You _do_ have a choice here, you know. Ranging from choosing products from slightly-less-evil vendors to pulling a Stallman and refusing to even run Firefox or touch a computer whose chip designs aren't open source.

I don't disagree with the gist of your post, but I feel that by making it seem like people are almost forced to buy Apple products, you're undermining your own argument.

As a simple anecdotal example, I don't own a single Apple product, without even trying all too hard, and I'm perfectly happy.

<comment><USER3> It's also simply not true. I have an iPhone and listen to music on it all the time. I haven't purchased any music from iTunes, ever. I refuse to buy music with DRM so I don't. I'd rather subscribe to a service like Rdio instead or get music from the artist via some other means and import it in to my collection.

<comment><USER4> It's worth to note though, that music bought on iTunes Music store doesn't contain DRM anymore. It used to, but now it's all DRM-free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not convinced. Apple's patents haven't stopped me from being creative. No one has asked me not to design using rounded corners. How about you? I bet not.

When you buy Apple you're not just buying hardware or software. You're buying into a ecosystem and that ecosystem works really well! Now if Apple's ecosystem doesn't suit your needs then you're still free to not use it or jailbreak your iStuff.

I keep hearing this stuff and I just don't see where we lost freedom. You don't have to buy music and videos on iTunes to put it into your iStuff. Jailbreaking, though frowned upon, is completely legal now and no one will hassle you for it. Cell phome contracts? Well that's not new or specific to Apple and though it's a bummer I'm happy for it because I don't have $500 for a phone and this "freedom" everyone keeps yammering about isn't worth the extra $300 to me.

There's no loss of freedom going on here. Everything is the same as it ever was in a new form and context. Everyone loves to root for the underdog and tear down the establishment. I doubt most of us have ever really been truly stifled by patents and if we have I'm willing to bet that while you're the little guy you'll rail against them and if/when you "make it" you'll be hoarding and defending them like it's going out of style.

I'm sure most people won't like what I've said. I'm a pragmatist. Idealism is great and I get the sentiment but in the end we're just not living in the world as it "should be", we live in the world as it is.

<comment><USER6> ↑ Apple fanboy logic

<comment><USER7> ↑Ad hominem logic

<comment><USER5> Really? This is no better. How about pedantic logic? Or avoiding making a real argument logic? Or cheap way to get up votes logic? Piling on logic? Uncomstructive comment logic? Pedantic logic?

If you want to disagree then do it. What you're doing here is trying to marginalize me instead of actually making an argument.

This used to be a place where we could share our opinions and have constructive conversations and debates. Now you just get downvoted if you don't support the hive mind's opinion and what used to be called an unconstructive comment is applauded (exceptions are made, however, in cases where where the herd disagrees).

Edit: Remember what I said about all intelligent discourse going out the window once the "fanboy" retort has been put out there? Well, here's the proof.

<comment><USER8> life←{ ↑1 ⍵∨.^3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵ }

↑ Game of life

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _systematically taking this freedom away, by taking ownership of common design patterns_ \- The "ownership" part is what's important, as Western Civilizations have put private property before just about any other consideration.

I'm coming to believe that "intellectual property" is about unringing the Internet bell, stuffing the genie of everybody publishing, and everybody reading back into the bottle of gatekeeper-enabled censorship.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think that software patents have worsened to the point that there's really only two ways to solve the problem: eliminate software patents altogether (thus introducing enormous competition and innovation in the marketplace) or be damn explicit about what is protectable and what isn't. Open source has thrived these past few years because of the reuse and improvement of the technology, whereas software patents often bar off any competitors or innovators from improving on the technology. And in Apple's case here, I think it's just plain crazy to try to patent some of these "aesthetic" elements of common design (rounded corners, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER11> Apple is just strapping up for the mobile patent wars which have already begun.

It's an arms race, and it's irrational to place the blame on just one of the actors. To stop the arms race will take mutual action on the part of three or four different companies, or outside intervention. The former is likely to happen eventually, and let's hope that the latter happens sooner rather than later in the form of patent reform.

<comment><USER12> Thankfully these patent wars are being settled in a court of law. The system is over complicated and has a lot of loop holes (i.e. look at Oracles often unfactual descriptions of common programming terms in Oracle vs Google) but I think in the end it will eventually balance out where no one has won much more than others, even with Apples big wins over Samsung.

The USPTO is starting to address the problem (albeit slowly) and there should be many more decisive rulings in the next decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are these patents really evil, or just positioning for an endgame where everyone settles financially based on their portfolio?

<comment><USER9> I guess I'd have to ask what difference that makes? Everyone settling financially is akin to making a patent clearinghouse cartel type of thing, where only really big companies get to play. The end result? A less than free market in practice, but not in name, mercantilist policies about who gets to innovate, and controlled innovation. Do we look back on the 75 years of Bell System with anything other than mild contempt? No? Well, that's the sort of thing a "financial settlement" will lead us to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an important problem. It's fundamentally a problem with the way patents are granted, and the way they are used, and the way they are understood. let's address these in turn:

First, you shouldn't be able to patent round corners. That's silly.

Second, you should be able to patent things and then sue people for using your patent if _you_ are not using your patent in any way shape or form. An unused idea should be free for the taking.

Third, there's a great deal of ignorance about what patents _are_ , how to get them, and how to use them. Behind this veil of ignorance, bad things happen.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs means that companies like Apple can and indeed must violate the spirit of the law symmetrically with it's competitors, to protect themselves until the system is fixed.

There is no doubt it's a bad scene, but it's not entirely Apple's fault. If they exercise restraint with these patents, using them purely defensively and then with great perspicuity, then I don't see how they could do any different.

Let us all direct our feelings toward reforming the patent system perhaps by joining an organization like "Defend Innovation"[1], the EFF's group pushing for patent reform.

[1] <https://defendinnovation.org/>

<comment><USER15> Useful idiots call for reform. The patent system is intrinsically evil and must be abolished.

<comment><USER14> I see. And what do you call a person who calls names and makes absolute statements without any support or reasoning?

<comment><USER15> Is it your view that one may not express one's view without substantiating it? Because that is the premise implied by your remark, and -- guess what? -- it's an absolute statement you've failed to provide any support or reasoning for, which would make you a hypocrite. So perhaps you should clarify.

<comment><USER14> Actually, that's more of a statement of worldview, of what I find beautiful. It is axiomatic, and you are free to disagree with it if you like, but if you do, you and I can't (and shouldn't) be friends.

<comment><USER15> So, your assertions are unquestioned axioms, mine need substantiation. Yeah, we couldn't be friends.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oh Yes You Can Use Regexes to Parse HTML - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4231382/regular-expression-pattern-not-matching-anywhere-in-string/4234491#4234491 <comment><USER2> I classify this as a _parser_ using regular expressions rather than _parsing_ using regular expressions. That is, his regular expressions don't parse the document. He wrote a parser, and uses regular expressions in that parser.

<comment><USER3> This is correct. As soon as I saw his lex_html function, I could see that he was using regexes to tokenize and then basically drop into different contexts while consuming the document, thereby tracking multiple levels of state throughout. That's what a full-blown parser does and it goes beyond the scope of regular languages.

By "parsing with regular expressions" most people mean applying one or two regexes to the entire document and using, for example, the group capture facility to extract information. That is and will always be a bad idea for HTML, because HTML is not a regular language.

Applying regular expressions to tokenize a string for a parsing is actually a fairly standard pattern.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Gnu's Flex lets the user define regex's for each state of the parser... <http://flex.sourceforge.net/manual/Patterns.html#Patterns>

<comment><USER5> Flex is used by the GNU System, but it is not GNU. It is incorrect to call it "Gnu's Flex". <http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/>

<comment><USER4> You're quite right, thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Errr.. Did he just wrote an html parser (and then used it) to prove everyone that you can use regex to solve the use-html-parser-instead-of-regex problem?!

It's like if I suggest someone to use Python instead of ASM to solve a simple problem, but then someone try to prove me wrong by writing a python interpreter in ASM and then USE it to solve the same problem!

Also, that being said, I feel like the post is more a brag about "I'm the creator of a popular perl book and perl rocks your language here's why blahbahblah".

<comment><USER7> Yeah, this is pretty much what seems to be going on.

I don't think anyone has ever said that regexs can't be used _in_ the parsing of html, just that they can't be used _for_ the parsing of html. It's like someone saying "You can't use bricks to keep warm!" and countering that by saying "Observe! I have built a house using, among other things, bricks, and it shelters me from the weather and keeps me warm!" Deliberately missing the point in order to show off your housebuilding skills.

Still, it was an informative and well written article. Article, rather than an answer to a question. Why do people write these thousands of words on stack overflow, when they could publish them on their blogs. Are SO points from confused corporate employees really worth more than the adulation of the blogosphere? Actually, who cares. I almost lost the will to live just writing that sentence...

<comment><USER8> I'd rather see it in Stackoverflow. It has much more visibility there than if each person wrote it on their own blog (assuming they have one) which may not be seen by more than a handful of friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And for the next ten years, flawed attempts at imitating this will show up in production code all around the world...

I'm not saying he shouldn't have (I've certainly learned something I didn't know), but let's face it, posting this on StackOverflow is like handing a loaded gun to a bunch of children and telling them not to pull the trigger.

<comment><USER10>
      but let's face it, posting this on StackOverflow is like
      handing a loaded gun to a bunch of children and telling
      them not to pull the trigger.

No, let's not face it. How is sharing well thought out, designed solutions to problems ever a bad thing. Sure there are a handful of junior coders that now feel overly confident and will mess this up, but they'll learn.

And then there is an equal pool of good developers that are now even better thanks to the info-share.

I acknowledge I'm being pedantic, but the _Let's all nod and pretend we are way smarter than THAT group over there_ mindset gives me brain-diarrhea... you see it in every community (reddit, slashdot, HN, digg, etc.) and I've never seen it help anybody accomplish anything, anywhere... ever.

</takes off his internet-police hat>

<comment><USER11> No, using regexes for this is terrible. I could write you a program that will parse html employing GOTOs, but it's been recognized as a bad programming practice. I'm not going to do your research for you, but this is not opinion, it's the result of people studying large code bases and defect rates within them. Same goes for overly long functions, bad variable naming, poor commenting, and so on.

<comment><USER12> A correctly written regex is not a bad programming practice. The insinuation that most programmers can't write or debug a regex correctly is disingeneous.

<comment><USER11> First, correctly written code can be bad practice. Regexes are a powerful tool, and have appropriate uses. I disagree this is one of those cases, but at -4 on my previous comment, I guess most don't agree. Second, I would bet the majority of programmers are mediocre with regular expresssions at best, and even worse at reading regexes written by other programmers contributing to code maintenance issues.

Finally, I may have been "incorrect" but "disingenuous" is an insult. I'll be charitable and assume you're using the word wrong.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps it's a difference of experience, but I really haven't met a professional programmer who doesn't understand regexes but still insists on using them for non-trivial tasks. Thus my usage of "disingenuous", because I have trouble believing that such people exist, and I felt you were trying to make a point insincerely, perhaps out of confirmation bias. I apologize if it came across as an insult -- it wasn't intended as one.

<comment><USER11> No harm, no foul. They really do exist, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can use _perl's string-matching facilities_ (which really are not regular expressions at all[0]) to parse HTML.

[0] in fact it was a rather neat idea to rename those "patterns" (or something along those lines) in Perl 6. Unfortunately this name change has been rolled back. Shame.

<comment><USER14> There was some form of consensus in a recent discussion not particularly pertaining to Perl that the term _regex_ did not equate anymore to _regular expression_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Meanwhile, the highest-rated answer in StackOverflow history says otherwise:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match- open-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags- except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454)

<comment><USER16> OP doesn't actually do regex parsing of HTML, so all is well. It does regular 'ol parsing, and uses regex to chunk html into consumables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the best and academically proficient answers I've seen on SO. And if I understand correctly turns on its head the old refrain "You can't use regexes to parse HTML", of which I've always been a staunch proponent.

Now I understood the reason _why_ you can't use regular expressions to parse HTML is that HTML is usually not regular. Is this true? Does this solution in perl work because of the extended capabilities of perl regexes?

<comment><USER18> > _Now I understood the reason _why_ you can't use regular expressions to > parse HTML is that HTML is usually not regular. Is this true?_

From the comments:

Q. "The answer is you can't. HTML is not regular so be definition it can't be described by a regular expression."

A. "Your use of REGULAR in regular expressions has been irrelevant and wrong since Ken Thompson first put backrefs into regexes around 40 years ago. /(.)\1/ parses non-REGULAR languages perfectly well. Please stop repeating this nonsense. – tchrist"

<comment><USER19> Backreferences in some sense don't work because real HTML contains misnesteded tags and other bugs, so many of them, even HTML5 spec explictely mentions correction algo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A slightly more accurate summary of Tom Christiansen's excellent answer there would be: "Oh yes you can use regexes to parse HTML, but you usually shouldn't, unless what you want to do is really, really simple."

Actual quotations: "Even if my program is taken as illustrative of why you should not use regexes for parsing general HTML -- which is ok, because I kinda meant for it to be that"; "That was kinda my point, actually. I wanted to show how hard it is." (the latter in response to someone else who said "You can write a novel, like tchrist did, or you can use a DOM library and write one line of XPath").

<comment><USER14> That said, his HTML chunker is, dare I say, gorgeous.

If that is an example of what should not be done, I wish there was more of them like that around.

Besides, lexing HTML in 234 lines grand total, most of them being whitespace, (169 SLOCs according to sloccount) is impressive. Writing even a basic non regex-based parser is bound to take quite some space.

To me the real conclusion is not: "don't try to parse random HTML using regexes" but "don't try to write your own wide-purpose HTML parser".

Or, as Tom put it in his SO answer:

 _> The correct and honest answer is that they shouldn't attempt [trying to parse arbitrary HTML] because it is too much of a bother to figure out from scratch_

<comment><USER21> "Besides, lexing HTML in 234 lines grand total, most of them being whitespace, (169 SLOCs according to sloccount) is impressive."

I mean no disrespect at all to tchrist, but it isn't impressive at all; not because tchrist is wrong, but because _lexing isn't hard_. If you understand the problem, you can almost literally read the lexer right off the standard; indeed, that's part of the purpose of the standard. Look at it (taking HTML4 here as it's easier to see): <http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#h-6.2> You can literally read off the lexer expression for ID and NAME right from 'must begin with a letter ([A-Za-z]) and may be followed by any number of letters, digits ([0-9]), hyphens ("-"), underscores ("_"), colons (":"), and periods (".").'

Generally, if you're having a hard time putting a lexer together for some language you're creating (bearing in mind this includes the broader definition of "language" beyond just "programming language", which includes things like JSON or text formats you may create ad hoc), that's a sign that you've got an overcomplicated language on your hand. (Hi, C++! I see you over there!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You still can't use _A_ regular expression to parse HTML. Of course you can use a set of regular expressions and some other logic to parse HTML. There's shouldn't be anything surprising about this post.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the point here is don't use regexps for this. Some time ago I got into a spat with Eric Raymond about this very subject. Bottom line is that there are nice libraries for HTML parsing out there. Use one: <http://blog.jgc.org/2009/11/parsing-html-in-python-with.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And related this previous HN discussion on different SO question _RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags_ (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1487695>)

</comment><comment><USER24> In the spirit of Tom Christiansen's lexer solution, here's a link to Robert Cameron's seemingly forgotten 1998 article, "REX: XML Shallow Parsing with Regular Expressions".

      http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~cameron/REX.html

"""

Abstract

The syntax of XML is simple enough that it is possible to parse an XML document into a list of its markup and text items using a single regular expression. Such a shallow parse of an XML document can be very useful for the construction of a variety of lightweight XML processing tools. However, complex regular expressions can be difficult to construct and even more difficult to read. Using a form of literate programming for regular expressions, this paper documents a set of XML shallow parsing expressions that can be used a basis for simple, correct, efficient, robust and language- independent XML shallow parsing. Complete shallow parser implementations of less than 50 lines each in Perl, JavaScript and Lex/Flex are also given.

The syntax of XML is simple enough that it is possible to parse an XML document into a list of its markup and text items using a single regular expression. Such a shallow parse of an XML document can be very useful for the construction of a variety of lightweight XML processing tools. However, complex regular expressions can be difficult to construct and even more difficult to read. Using a form of literate programming for regular expressions, this paper documents a set of XML shallow parsing expressions that can be used a basis for simple, correct, efficient, robust and language- independent XML shallow parsing. Complete shallow parser implementations of less than 50 lines each in Perl, JavaScript and Lex/Flex are also given.

"""

<comment><USER24> If you enjoy reading about regular expressions, Cameron's paper is fascinating. His writing is concise, thorough, and very detailed. He's not simply showing you how to construct the REX regular expression but also an approach for constructing any complex regex.

I've been using the REX regular expression on and off for 10 years to solve the sort of problem the initial poster on Stack Overflow asked about (how do I match this particular tag but not some other very similar tag?). I've found the regex he developed to be completely reliable.

<comment><USER24> REX is most useful is when you're focusing on lexical details of a document -- for example, when transforming one kind of text document (e.g., plain text, XML, SGML, HTML) into another, where the document may not be valid, well formed, or even parsable for most of the transformation. It lets you target islands of markup anywhere within a document without disturbing the rest of the document.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> No you can't.

HTML is a Context Free Language (Type 2 in the Chomsky hierarchy) that is defined by a Context Free Grammar, and parsed by a stack machine.

Regular expressions can describe regular (Type 3) languages. They do not have a stack.

Note that there is a loop in the code, so it's not just regular expressions.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't the theory that for a regular grammar you can use regexp, for a context- free grammar you need sth. with a stack (= parser).

HTML isn't regular, though, is it? So if there's not (even an implicit) stack in his example, this won't work for the general case.

</comment><comment><USER27> For quick-and-dirty extraction of data from HTML documents, lynx -dump can be useful.

</comment><comment><USER28> When I need to extract data from HTML I use XPath. But to do so I have to use the combination of following tools

iconv: necessary only when the page is NOT encoded in UTF-8

tidy: used to convert from HTML to XHTML which is XML. I call it as

xmlstarlet: to extract data from the XML file using XPath.

I find XPath a much better and much reliable tool for HTML data extraction.

<comment><USER13> > When I need to extract data from HTML I use XPath. But to do so I have to > use the combination of following tools

I just use lxml.html (handles 99.999% of the HTML out there, add beautifulsoup's UnicodeDammit[0] for wonky encodings) and then use lxml's built-in xpath support on top of that.

Plus extra bonus, if the datamining paths are simple enough you can use CSS queries instead of XPath.

[0] [http://lxml.de/elementsoup.html#using-only-the-encoding- dete...](http://lxml.de/elementsoup.html#using-only-the-encoding-detection)

<comment><USER28> Thanks for pointing this out. I forgot to precise that I am using XPath on Unix/Cygwin command line or in Shell scripts. Here an example of extracting the Hacker News title;url;points;user data:

       curl -s http://news.ycombinator.com/news | tidy -quiet -asxml -numeric -utf8 -file /dev/null | xmlstarlet sel -N x=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml -t -m "//x:tr[x:td[1][@class='title']]" -v "normalize-space(x:td[3][@class='title']/x:a)" -o ";" -v "x:td[3][@class='title']/x:a/@href" -o ";" -v "str:tokenize(following-sibling::x:tr[1]/x:td[2]/x:span[1], ' ')[1]" -o ";" -v "following-sibling::x:tr[1]/x:td[2]/x:a[1]" -n | xmlstarlet unesc

<comment><USER29> Could you put some newlines in that? For some reason, my browser (IE9) is rendering that construct as a VERY long line and extending the page to match it. (no code-specific scroll-bar for me)

<comment><USER28>
      curl -s http://news.ycombinator.com/news | \
    	tidy -quiet -asxml -numeric -utf8 -file /dev/null | \
    	xmlstarlet sel \
    		-N x=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml \
    		-t -m "//x:tr[x:td[1][@class='title']]" \
    		-v "normalize-space(x:td[3][@class='title']/x:a)" -o ";" \
    		-v "x:td[3][@class='title']/x:a/@href" -o ";" \
    		-v "str:tokenize(following-sibling::x:tr[1]/x:td[2]/x:span[1], ' ')[1]" -o ";" \
    		-v "following-sibling::x:tr[1]/x:td[2]/x:a[1]" -n | \
    	xmlstarlet unesc

<comment><USER29> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> it doesn't handle script tags correctly for the example cited. anything between <script> and </script> shouldn't be interpreted as html.

<html> <head> <script type='text/javascript'> var tag = '<input type="hidden" name="foo" value="bar"/>'; </script> </head> <body> body </body> </html>

./html_input_rx test.html input tag #1 at character 57: name => "foo" type => "hidden" value => "bar"

but very cool and could probably be fixed to handle that case quite easily.

</comment><comment><USER31> For parsing HTML, I'd recommend using a purpose-built HTML-parsing library instead of bothering with regular expressions. (Though, like the author of that answer wrote, regex's can work just fine for parsing small snippets.)

An interesting fact: you can parse HTML/XHTML (correctly) with some of the popular regex implementations. (Note the word _implementations_.)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm just disappointed that he didn't use the flip-flop operator ..

</comment><comment><USER33> best part is in the answer just below this one: "1. You can write a novel like tchrist did..."

</comment><comment><USER34> Now you have two problems.</comment>


'Hush,' anonymous messaging app from developers in Myanmar - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalpost.com/article/6529176/2015/04/26/myanmars-new-anonymous-messaging-app-kind-revolutionary <comment><USER2> It would be awesome to see more technical discussion of the anonymity mechanism.

How do you ensure that users accounts are not linked Personally Identifying Information?

We've seen that when folks implement weak anonymity technologies, disaster quickly ensues.

<comment><USER3> Hi, great point. Currently, users have to use their phone numbers to login. However, user's phone number is encrypted in the db.

To ensure that everyone's comfortable with it, we're adding a new feature which doesn't require the user to login.

<comment><USER4> This worries me. What exactly do you mean by encrypted in the DB?

If you actually mean hashed using a one-way function, it would be very easy to hash every possible phone number (there are not that many) to build a lookup table to deanonymise your users instantly. Even if you individually salt each hash it would not take very long at all to find the phone number for each entry.

If you do mean encrypted, then authorities could compel you to turnover the database and the key.

Why do you need to store the phone number in any way at all?

<comment><USER5> Perfect security does not currently exist. A trusted source must store the information somewhere, to authorize and validate users without spreading that information elsewhere.

You can't get around this problem unless you invent magic psychic computers. What is the point in finding every possible flaw with security here? There is a gradient of complexity, the time it takes to break these things. Currently, everything that exists is susceptible to being broken, misused, or modified.

If you assume that your attackers know everything, and have the ability to immediately find and apply that knowledge, then yes, it can seem scary. But I tend to think that the more capacity a person has to do, it's really just a bigger intellectual burden.

<comment><USER6> So it sounds like messages are associated with accounts, and accounts are linked to phone numbers, and those phone numbers are easily recoverable from a centralized database. If htat's accurate then it's not simply imperfect anonymity. It's not even pseudo-anonymous. It's about as _not-anonymous_ as it gets, which is fine for a casual messaging/chat app where no anonymity is expected. But users should not be misled into thinking it's safe to use it for anything they wouldn't say to a government official's face.

<comment><USER5> You are right, I was reacting to a pattern of argument, which is not the point that I should have been focused on. That creates more noise over more important issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is amazing (that someone is doing this). If there's anything the global tech community can do to help this team, I suspect it would be freely available -- anything to make Myanmar people better able to communicate safely is a huge win.

</comment><comment><USER8> I got autostart video and audio ads that you can't pause :( And they repeat.

<comment><USER9> Hey, I think you downloaded the wrong app. The article somehow is linked to a wrong website. Our website is [http://letshush.com](http://letshush.com)

<comment><USER8> It was on the globalpost.com site - ie the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How can the source be checked if it is really anon?

</comment><comment><USER11> For those intrigued by the state of tech in Myanmar, there was a very interesting a16z podcast about it - [http://a16z.com/2014/12/09/a16z-podcast- technology-and-the-o...](http://a16z.com/2014/12/09/a16z-podcast-technology- and-the-opening-of-myanmar/) .

</comment><comment><USER12> Great idea, but I don't get why they are _based_ in Myanmar. This is almost asking for trouble from authorities. For something whose direct purpose and sales pitch is to do something that an authoritarian government is against, I would have based the entire company outside the country.

<comment><USER13> Exactly what I was wondering. What is registering the company in Singapore going to do when the police/military/whoever come to your door?

<comment><USER3> Our country is somehow moving to a little good side, we don't really have to worry about the govt (at least for now 😁).

<comment><USER14> Do you think most of your users are outside Burma? Your website seems to be advertising the app in English and Chinese but not Burmese?

<comment><USER3> Which site are you referring to? If it is www.letshush.com, it is in English and Burmese.

<comment><USER14> The article links to a Facebook page for imhush.com which also appears to be a social network.

Looks like it could be their mistake, unless you are also launching a different app with public identities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So is this like some sort of Secretly and Tinder mix?

So then it's not anonymous, only pseudonymous.

<comment><USER16> IIRC, those are "partially weakly anonymous". There are no pseudonyms in Secretly for the "main" posts - they are anonymous, even though the anonymity isn't even remotely strong. Machine-generated pseudonyms (identicons) are used only for discussion comments there -- don't know about Hush, though.

Either way, there's nothing revolutionary about this sort of apps, but marketing statements. Anonymous BBSes are there for decades, and this app has exactly the same concept except for being a mobile app instead of a website or desktop one. The only relatively novel part here is location-awareness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please update the title to "This new messaging app from developers in Myanmar is kind of revolutionary", the submitted site uses that now. The original was very misleading.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can update a title? I didn't realize that was possible.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I forgot "dear mods" :)</comment></comment></comment>


Moving on from Highrise - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@natekontny/moving-on-from-highrise-94fb26df67e7 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this here! My team has been awesome. I've worked in a ton of places before and the thing I'm proudest about is the group that was put together here. Out of this world. If you need folks for your business, I can't recommend them more highly. I mentioned short bios of them in that post. Please reach out to them. I know they'll impress you.

<comment><USER3> @nate curious why you're leaving Highrise? You mentioned it's making millions for Basecamp, and it sounds like it's not shutting down -- were you looking for more substantial revenue/growth in order to stick around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am going to ask a question around this decision, which is based on some research we are doing with our own web app currently.

I know that Highrise was essentially a 'bootstrapped' company, in that you had to grow organically based on actual revenue and profit you made from the system.

My question is: Do you think this same decision would have been made if Highrise had received some sort of lump sum angel or venture funding? i.e. if you had the ability to make drastic expansion or ramp up resources using funding - could you have gotten the company to a level where it could start experiencing growth and revenue enough to sustain itself as much as Basecamp (the app) currently does?</comment>


Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace (1995) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/03/specials/slatalla-masters.html <comment><USER2> I was weird to hear them get a mention in Poe's song "Hello". Wonder how they came to be on her radar (or the radar of whoever was the songwriter).</comment>


Anatomy of an Ikea product: "When we decide about a product, we always start with the price" - <AUTHOR> http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9923315-1.html

<comment><USER2> During stakeholder interviews, I once toured a Lego design facility. The two sound very similar, starting with consumer realities (need, valued attributes, budget) to produce something ultimately creative.

<comment><USER3> not exactly related, but i always thought legos were really expensive

<comment><USER4> They always have been expensive. In my experience they're also worth it. Very high quality parts and they do wonders for encouraging imagination and creative exploration.

I still have all of my classic Lego sets from when I was a kid :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> the book "Blue Ocean Strategy" talks about this design philosophy a bit. "price minus costing" instead of "cost plus pricing" Meaning start with the price and see if its a viable product to build at that price, instead of build the product and mark it up to get the final price. Interesting example.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i couldn't help but think of DHH's / 37 Signal's philosophy of working within realistic constraints when I read this article

<comment><USER6> IKEA to other furniture maker: "Hey!!! We made a table first! You copied our idea. Ours has 4 legs as well. Yours is exactly the same. Take it down now."

Huddlechat was kinda cool I thought :/

<comment><USER7> Oh man.</comment></comment></comment>


List of C functions banned by Microsoft (in SDL) - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb288454.aspx

<comment><USER2> So instead of using the unsafe strcpy function, you now use the safe strcpy_s.

Joel had some thoughts on this a while ago (2005); prepending s for safe and us for unsafe to variables.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html>

<comment><USER3> Worth noting that strcpy_s actually is safer than strcpy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bruce Schneier posted about one particular function that was banned - memcpy. [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/microsoft_bans...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/microsoft_bans.html)

<comment><USER5> The fact that he calls it "Memcopy()" doesn't exactly lend confidence. I don't really see the problem with memcpy() anyway: memcpy() copies exactly the given number of bytes. If the programmer gets the source buffer length wrong with memcpy(), they are just as likely to get the destination buffer length wrong with memcpy_s().

And banning strlen() is just idiotic. The differences between strlen() and strnlen_s() (the suggested "safe" replacement) are apparently: (1) strnlen_s() takes a maximum string length argument (2) strnlen_s() returns 0 on a NULL pointer. #1 is pointless (what if the string has no predefined maximum length), and will just lead to programmers hardcoding inappropriate constants. #2 is potentially hazardous, because it hides problems: NULL and the empty string are _not_ the same thing, so having strnlen_s() return 0 for both cases is misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's nice that Microsoft, OpenBSD, and GNU all have their own incompatible versions of safe string manipulation functions. We wouldn't want anyone to write portable code...</comment>


10 tools written in Go that every developer needs to know - golang-works https://golang.works-hub.com/learn/10-tools-written-in-go-that-every-developer-needs-to-know-6d45d <comment><AUTHOR> All I see are three spinning circles.... iPhone/Safari Private mode.</comment>


Where Have All the Geniuses Gone?  - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Have-All-the-Geniuses/142353/ <comment><USER2> I've had an idiosyncratic but highly useful definition of the word 'genius' since I was a little kid thanks to my mother. She taught me that a genius is an intuitive/rational thinker-feeler-person who was lucky enough to somehow line it all up for humanity in his/her mind and bring something big into the world that changes it for the better. If you think about all the real geniuses-- that criteria holds.

There is not much academic research into genius these days but there is research into intuitive people and intuition. And there is also related work in psychology about self-actualization and the other mental-processes.

But eventually it all comes down to someone doing something breathtakingly interesting-- you can't really roll that step off an assembly-line.

I percieve one of the problems with the world right now is that lots of the most highly-competent/skilled people are sort of holding off doing big things, esp. with technology. The number of intuitive man-hours that have been poured into the subject of online advertising is staggering. Those people working on that are capable of actual works of genius. But instead they feel motivated to work for a big company on long-term useless problems. But I understand this: if you look at what the last waves of true high-tech are i.e. computer/communication/aerospace/nuclear vs. what their "fruits" have been i.e. surveilance-state/police-state/military-industrial-complex/mass production and mass proliferation of WMDs. It's quite disgusting.

Anyway, I know why I'm working on "social technology" and "consumer technology" instead of "high technology."

<comment><USER3> > But instead they feel motivated to work for a big company on long-term > useless problems.

I remember this opinion also surfacing with the Steve Yegge OSCON 2011 presentation[1]. In which he complained about Google, and all the hard working people there, focusing on social media instead of hard problems. There was a good discussion as to why these problems are not in the forefront.

[1] [http://youtu.be/vKmQW_Nkfk8?t=5m47s](http://youtu.be/vKmQW_Nkfk8?t=5m47s)

Subsequent discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818)

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires- st...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-steve- yegge.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2814032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2814032)

<comment><USER2> I think hard problem vs. social media problem is a false dichotomy. I wish people would focus on wise problems. High tech is too dangerous at this moment, even though it's the best stuff to work on long-term for humanity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is no genius, just various levels of domain expertise. We call geniuses those who concentrate most of their time and passion into one niche, and that niche has to be one that's popularly thought of as requiring smarts to fill. I approach genius levels of juggling a tennis ball with my feet, but I don't think there are Nobel prizes for that.

If there truly is a fall in the rate of "geniuses", I would venture to guess that it's because it's so easy to take an interest in so many different areas these days.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. The internet, and hence the (more) rapid liberation of information, makes available innumerable opportunities for curious minds to dabble. I've never been particularly interested in knowing everything about something. Rather, I'm much more interested in knowing a little about everything.

There's great value to be reaped from going extremely deep on a subject, but it's just so easy to become distracted these days. I'm reminded of Munroe's Nerd Sniping: [http://xkcd.com/356/](http://xkcd.com/356/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question is really "Where have all the famous geniuses gone?" The answer is that you can no longer get famous just by being intelligent. It's just not a sexy story people want to read. People just want to shop and read about fabricated drama.

<comment><USER7> How to get rich by being intelligent? Answer: Tech

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think a strong argument could be made that they're still there, they're just non-notable:

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

As a primary example - I'm pretty sure he knows better than to become famous for his work.

<comment><USER9> Perelman as an example not famous and non-notable? Wow, I am stuggling to think of a more famous or notable mathematician alive on the planet today.

<comment><USER10> Andrew Wiles, Alexander Grothendieck to name a few.

<comment><USER11> Terence Tao

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article should be taken as seriously as Derrida is.

</comment><comment><USER13> They're where they always were: hindsight. There are _tons_ of brilliant people, but it takes a good chunk of temporal separation to be able to spot them through history and see their world-changing contributions. And mistakenly attribute things to them, and forget the shoulders they stood on, making them into even bigger geniuses.

</comment><comment><USER14>
      When we consider it at all, we're inclined to deny it,
      deconstruct it, or explain it away as an "ideology of
      genius." Geniuses of the past seem to have been perched on
      their pedestals so that we might drag them down. "People
      love to come up with reasons for saying Shakespeare was not
      a genius,"

Rihanna, Jay-Z and Serena Williams all make me squirm. When I consider them at all, I'm inclined to deny her or reconstruct her. When I read her twitter account about the Indonesian sex show or the illegal photo shoot in front of the Taj Mahal I'm inclined to deny him/her or explain them away as an "ideology of genius". Geniuses of the past seem to have been perched on their pedestals so that we might drag them down. "People love to come up with reasons for saying Rihanna was not a genius,"

</comment><comment><USER15> I think the "genius" is kind of a byproduct of transition from faith-centered worldview to knowledge-centered worldview. At the time of mentioned geniuses people were just starting to tend away from the faith in god, so the faith in higher powers partially persisted, and labeling people with great achievements as "geniuses" and making it feel like they have something others don't felt like a common sense and intuitive thing to do. So the "genius" might just be a temporary placeholder for the void that left when god was gone. As the void shrank with time, because the religion lost influence and people got better education, the need for people to have something greater then them, i.e. "geniuses" shrank too.

</comment><comment><USER16> The flame war underneath that article is very entertaining

<comment><USER17> This is why I love articles online!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe the whole concept of genius is a bit aged, weird and odd to start with? A glorified genius-concept comes uncomfortably close to the concept of a führer.

I think all men are created equal and when someone looks way smarter than the rest, most often he is just faking it?

<comment><USER19> _I think all men are created equal and when someone looks way smarter than the rest, most often he is just faking it?_

I think all men are created equal and when someone looks way taller than the rest, most often he is just wearing platform shoes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't really believe in geniuses, but I believe in works of genius. Works of genius are at least potentially producable by a large proportion of the population, but not with any reliable frequency. Perhaps then a genius could be defined as one who is a prolific creator of works of genius.

Many of us have experienced that rare feeling of self-amazement of the result of the creative process. In could be in doing a drawing, composing a piece of music, proving a novel theorem, or writing software. When you create something, stand back and say; "how on earth did I do that?", "where did that come from?". That is a work of genius.

<comment><USER20> Then we would only need to define a genius as one who has produced a work of genius, and we'd have our geniuses back. "There are no generals, only those who have at one time attained the rank of general."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Fabrice Ballard.

Enough said.

<comment><USER22> Yes, unequivocally a genius. I would also put DJB up there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> they are just dying all around us, literally. modern societies do not appreciate and actually reject them

</comment><comment><USER24> Your society is so insufferable that they've died out.</comment>


Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://kateklonick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/DRAFT-EO-Preventing-Online-Censorship.pdf <comment><USER3> If I am to believe the poster, this is a draft of an Executive Order anonymously sent to her. As per:

[https://twitter.com/klonick/status/1265850206396076033?s=21](https://twitter.com/klonick/status/1265850206396076033?s=21)

The implications are fairly dramatic if this is legitimate and were to be adopted / executed.

Specifically it would declare that sites like Twitter and Facebook are subject to the Communications Decency Act by virtue of their editorializing the content vs acting in more of a common carrier capacity. This is a really big deal for them (much more significant than losing federal ad dollars).

<comment><USER4> > The implications are fairly dramatic if this is legitimate and were to be > adopted / executed.

Can anyone give a tl;dr of what the implications actually are? Maybe I'm just tired, but I'm having a hard time parsing what this would actually do (beyond soothe Trump's feelings after getting called out by Twitter).

<comment><USER3> It would make them legally liable for the content posted on their sites. Today they can claim that they aren't responsible for it, the posters are. If they are operating in an editorial capacity, that shield is removed.

<comment><USER5> That's what its intended to do, but i think what it would actually do is kind of debatable. America isn't a dictatorship (yet)

<comment><USER6> No but we are certainly a very litigious society and I'm sure there's an army of lawyers out there salivating over potential lawsuits against Twitter.

<comment><USER5> I dont really understand US law, but isnt this just a statement of executive branch policy. Wouldn't this not affect the ability of private parties to sue? They were always able to use any argument they felt made sense.

<comment><USER6> I think on reading it again, you're correct. If 230c is challenged again and reinterpreted by the Supreme Court then maybe. On reading some of the recent cases and circuit court decisions on things like "failure to warn" maybe this entire legislation will be reworked in the next Congress. It probably needs some clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I particularly like the bit about how a provider is found in violation of "good faith" if they act in violation of their own terms of service, OR, if they restrict access to material after insufficient notice, unreasoned explanation, or acting against a user who has not had a "meaningful opportunity to be heard."

Not being facetious, I really like it.

Everyone should start by mass-complaining to the White House's reporting tool the recent Twitter change allowing people to censor replies.

<comment><USER8> Why would you report the ability to hide replies? If someone replies to my tweet with something I don't like, what's wrong with me hiding the reply? It's a lesser end result than blocking someone. I'm not obligated to platform your opinion on my post.

<comment><USER7> See that's the thing, it's not your post. It's all public.

Twitter does not have private posts like Facebook does, nor does this change purport to make such a thing. Its design is specifically to allow people to amplify their own personal echo chamber, and pre-silence disagreement.

The UI designer (hired from Facebook) who created the tool defended it with the notion that people should "want to watch people they admire have conversations" (his words).

That's not social interaction, that's television. A one way communication medium in which the screen tells the observer what to think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I only skimmed the second part, but this doesn't even seem to prevent the actions it complains about.

It's also interesting to think about reddit and subreddits. When a moderator of a subreddit engages in the behavior described here, deleting comments and posts and banning users arbitrarily, stickying editorial commentary in threads, are they acting as publishers? Are the mods now legally liable in the section 230 sense? If not, is reddit a publisher and liable even though they aren't doing the editing? If reddit can enable mods to do it without reddit or the mods being liable, why can't reddit just do it without being liable?

<comment><USER10> I wonder if this would have implications for IRC or Discord as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't a company closing to to promote content for someone else their own right to free speech?

If a company has an obligation to promote something against their will, violating their own right to free speech, how could a company like Hobby Lobby get away with an exemption on the same grounds?

I don't see this getting past federal courts, even with a heavily conservative judiciary. The fallout would be far too great.

<comment><USER12> There was a supreme court case a while ago that enshrined freedom of speech rights for companies, I get the sense that many of the same people that complained about that then, are now advocating for the rights of companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >The draft order would push the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules clarifying the issue, potentially allowing users to sue over takedowns if they were inconsistent with companies' terms of service, did not provide enough notice or meet other suggested criteria.

I find this interesting and I'm not sure where I stand here.

On the one hand I'm not happy about an executive order that limits liability for online platforms. The onus for posts being on the user, protecting the platform, is a core part of running any service. On the other hand, this doesn't seem like it would make platforms liable for content that users post, instead it's liability for the content that the platforms choose to _remove_. I've never considered that angle before.

Would it be akin to compelled speech on the part of the platform, or does it make them more like common carriers that can't pick and choose who gets access?

I suppose the biggest risk here would something along the lines of having bad actors post content that follows the rules for a site, but is also obviously against the spirit of the site, causing the posts to be removed and opening the site to a lawsuit?

<comment><USER14> > Would it be akin to compelled speech on the part of the platform

Here's an obvious test: this would also make the operator of a personally hosted blog liable if they moderate/remove comments (or for that matter, spam), if it were construed as "the result of inadequate notice, the product of unreasoned explanation, or having been undertaking without a meaningful opportunity to be heard".

You have no obligation to provide notice, reasoned explanation, or "an opportunity to be heard" to spammers, trolls, or anyone else you feel like moderating on your private blog. You can just nuke their comments from orbit. Anything suggesting otherwise is broken, and would either mean sites can't afford the liability of user-generated content at all, or provide a perverse incentive to stop moderating at all, which was exactly what CDA section 230 was intended to _avoid_. (The whole point of CDA section 230 was to avoid discouraging sites from providing moderation, because otherwise "nobody would have any incentive to keep the internet civil". Quoting Wikipedia: 'Section 230 has frequently been referred as a key law that has allowed the Internet to flourish, often referred to as "The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet".')

That's leaving aside the "compelled speech" argument, which is an entirely separate reason to consider this unreasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I'm reading this right, platforms must act in "good faith" to restrict access to content that is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable".

That seems _quite_ broad and doesn't seem to do anything to stop the current deluge of censorship.

<comment><USER16> That text is quoted from Section 230. The reason Section 230 was introduced is that, long ago, if platforms did literally any moderation on their site, they were considered to be taking an editorial role and liable for all the things they failed to moderate (e.g., if someone posted libel, the platform would have liability for it), so there was an incentive not to moderate at all, because you wouldn't get it 100% right. For pre-online platforms this was fairly reasonable (e.g., you could hold a newspaper responsible for its columnists publishing libel) but it put a serious damper in real-time user- contributed online forum.

Section 230 said that if a platform acts in good faith for those moderation reasons you list, that doesn't cause them to gain liability - they're still in the same place as if they didn't moderate. If they exercised active editorial control, then they'd be responsible (e.g., you can't just host a pro- harassment forum and solicit other people to post harassing comments and expect Section 230 to protect you), but as long as you only do normal moderation of obviously bad stuff, you're fine.

This draft executive order says, we're interpreting that part of Section 230 to specifically not count "deceptive or pretextual actions restricting online content" as normal moderation, presumably including things like flagging Trump's tweets for misinformation.

That leaves Twitter with two choices: 1) forfeit Section 230 protection and be responsible for all the content on their site (i.e., they'd have to heavily and reliably moderate every single tweet) or 2) stop flagging Trump's tweets for misinformation and do even less moderation so they maintain Section 230 protections.

<comment><USER17> Choice 3) kick Trump off Twitter. They don't even have to give a reason like "excessive posting of misinformation". Just kick him off. No law saying they can't.

Heck, the entertainment value alone would be worth it.

<comment><USER18> He is possibly going to try to strip valuable protections from the entire internet because Twitter is fact-checking him. Imagine what kicking him off would entail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So they should just ban him and anyone else? That seems like the obvious solution to avoid any claim of them editorializing content. There's multiple cases where he violated long standing rules on Twitter.

I fail to see how this is any different than that bakery years ago that refused to make a cake for that gay couple. Or a business refusing service because you're saying things against them. Or many of the other reasons a company might decide you cant shop or be a customer.

</comment><comment><USER20> The constitution is just a piece of paper if no one follows or enforces it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here is my attempt at summarizing the order:

1\. Twitter and Facebook (and other entities that try to fact check content) will be labeled as publishers and thus can be sued in court for libel.

2\. The Federal Government will be banned from buying ads from internet companies that "restrict" speech.

3\. The FTC and the Attorney General will investigate Twitter, Facebook, and related platforms for any potential violations of law or regulation.

</comment><comment><USER22> I seem to recall we had a court ruling (non-SC) earlier that said officials that use social media can't block other users on there... something about it being a public forum or such. But if we treat it that way, then does that have implications on what people can expect in terms of limits on speech?

<comment><USER23> No, you've misinterpreted the ruling. It is not because twitter is a "public forum" that a public official cannot block a follower, it is because the public official _is a public official_ that they cannot block a follower.

<comment><USER22> I was thinking more along the lines of, would being a public official in a public forum imply that the forum administrators can't interject and add their own editorials to his speech either? At least, I can't think of situations where this happens in real life, so it's not clear to me what the implications are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Tech and policy are kind of like two different roads running in parallel. Drivers who can drive on one of those roads only, but not both, cannot effectively solve problems on that other road. The policy people get activated because of issues they perceive on the tech road, and their answer is: Write policy!

For that reason I fully expect the tech experts in question to solve this new policy problem with some technology. Maybe a new categorization and preference-indication system, giving users yet another way to ignore their in- laws' award political voice, or whatever it is that routes around this latest missive.

</comment><comment><USER25> Parts of this purported draft look a bit off. That is to say the bits being directed are things private citizens would do rather than what the executive branch itself has the authority to do. As bad as the whole idea sounds this doesn't come off as authentic to me based upon presentation or textual structure. Why is he suddenly giving direct orders to the Federal Trade Commission but separately directing a sub-cabinet agency at Commerce to file a Petition for Rulemaking with the Federal Communications Commission? That's where this starts to get inconsistent.

<comment><USER26> This order was hastily drafted by White House staff to soothe a temper tantrum the President had after a day of being extremely online. Why would you expect it to be anything but sloppy and inconsistent?

<comment><USER25> Generally I'd expect the staff to understand how the machinery of government works by this point in an administration. First hundred days is one thing. This looks more like a forgery especially after the discussions that have cropped up recently on the TeX StackExchange in terms of forging outputs.

<comment><USER26> I think based on the events of the past three years (or really, the past three months) the most parsimonious explanation by far is that the President and his staff and advisors are simply lazy and incompetent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How did a professor of Internet law get a hold of a draft EO? Are these things widely circulated before signing?

<comment><USER28> If I know anything about Trump, then his team leaked it on purpose to get an initial feedback. If it turns out to have a bad reaction then they would repudiate this copy and release some other watered down version.

<comment><USER29> ... or a more extreme one.

My sense is that they use leaks as a way to ferret out who is disloyal, not get feedback from the Press, which they hate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So after actually reading it, it seems to want two things:

* prevent astro-turfing, especially by foreign governments

* require that sites engaging in moderation basically follow some sort of rule of law-eaque process (there are rules posted, and you cant be arbitraily blocked unless you break them)

Honestly in many ways those are things i agree with, but it seems inappropriate to do it with an executive order, and much of this seems vauge and could be used as a justification to put pressure on social media sites arbitrarily.

<comment><USER16> There's nothing in the order to prevent astroturfing by foreign governments, is there? (If anything, it _limits_ the ability of sites to censor foreign governments with unpopular opinions.)

It's in the section about vague policies and opinions, but I don't think it actually _does_ anything beyond saying "China bad."

<comment><USER5> There is an implication of they are going to crack down on sites banning americans to help the astro-turfers, but nobody does that, so sounds like bs. And i dont know, maybe the section on not allowing gov to advertise on such platforms is aimed at that (if you give very strong benefit of doubt).

But yeah, i think you are right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not American and not familiar with Section 230 in any detail, but I do run a forum where I consider moderation, legality and responsibility of content. Could Twitter apply some level of automatic editorial response on particular topics rather than flag particular posts or users?

e.g., if it suspects the tweet is about COVID-19 (whether mundane or outrageous), it links off to a broader information and fact-checking page about the topic. Likewise for voting fraud or any other hot topic.

What if it were independent of the tweet itself and just one of a small selection of header links like Reddit and others are currently doing with COVID-19?

Edit: Also, could they differentiate the levels of editorial based on tier of account? e.g., claim platform-status for the bulk, but accept legal responsibility for anything by the largest accounts which saw immediate moderator review.

</comment><comment><USER31> My base level here is "Speakers Corner". This is a part of London's Hyde Park where free speech is (culturally if it legally) _extra_ protected - the idea is anyone can stand and speak there, say anything, and culturally that is acceptable - one should not be moved on or prevented.

I think that right of speaking freely in a public space is deeply important (no surprises there).

But if someone spews vile speech while standing on my front lawn, frankly I want them to stop.

So what is public space on the internet? What is the minimum level - <USER2> sidewalk vs the front lawn?

It's not twitter. Hardly anyone has access to it? It's specialised and not open in its protocols.

I suspect it's not even facebook - is it just plain HTML on a plain server, perhaps plainly hosted in your own home?

This is going to be an interesting debate.

</comment><comment><USER32> There is no point in me saying this, because people are literally living in parallel universes at this point, but I feel that hatred for Trump and anything associated with the right is blinding people.

What most young people or people on the left seem to want very badly is for tech companies to remove viewpoints they disagree with. Unfortunately the reality is that this is in fact political censorship. And it will lead directly to the type of censorship that China has.

Go ahead and click the downvote button until my viewpoint disappears. It doesn't matter anymore. I actually think that the possibility of real free speech online, if it ever existed, is dead anyway. Because, bizarrely, people are begging for more censorship.

<comment><USER33> Indeed in a parallel universe but in the end they'll lose those battles one after the other because they are on the wrong side of history.

People on the right need to be more vocal here and elsewhere, we can't let the children and their feelings, run the ship or it'll end badly.

<comment><USER34> I'm doubtful that it does any good to provide opposing viewpoints in these threads unless you have something surprising to say, either facts or insight.

The effect on reality of a HN thread isn't much and it's not really a place for nuanced discussion.

The twitter thing doesn't matter because the solution is obvious - we need decentralized platforms where such behavior isn't possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how this platforms that use community moderation might be held liable under this.

</comment><comment><USER35> Would someone more knowledgeable about Section 230 be able to comment on whether this EO would be solidifying the protections afforded by Section 230? I'm thinking that by making a deeper, clear cut line in what platforms can/cannot do to maintain protections, there is now less legal wiggle room for entities like the MPAA to push for moderation of content. For example, if Google completely scrapped the Content ID system for YouTube, would the wording in this EO put them firmly on the side of being a platform, not a publisher?

</comment><comment><USER5> I feel like this is fake or some internal draft that was never going to see the light of day.

But if its real, i wonder what will happen to silcon valley. Part of the reason why internet companies like the united states is the legal environment is conducive to making online services. If that goes away, will companies move to other countries

<comment><USER36> Regression to 4chan? Assuming this continues as-is they can still moderate the site to remove obscene material, but otherwise have to act like platforms.

I don't think this draft will survive for long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Wonder if with this we'll all enjoy equal representation on twitter's search engine, timeline & promoted tweets, or will they continue to discriminate based on rank

Twitter's algorithm determines who sees my tweets. Based on internal criteria my content is ignored while other's is promoted, limiting my exposure and damaging my brand

/s

</comment><comment><USER38> The large tech platforms are defacto digital public squares. The recent trend they've taken on to censor content they disagree with is unacceptable and bad for society. And yes, it is evidence of them behaving as a publisher. This censorship trend was bad enough previously, but it has become a lot worse and more egregious during COVID-19, where only the word of certain public agencies are allowed, even though they've been wrong several times. Various platforms have deleted many reasonable COVID blog posts that go against the grain, even if they're logical and worthy of consideration.

I'm glad this move from the President will shine a light on the issue. In the least it may result in viable alternatives to Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, and Google springing up.

<comment><USER39> > In the least it may result in viable alternatives to Twitter, Reddit, > YouTube, and Google springing up.

I'm looking forward to this. If smaller social networks (or even federated networks) gain more traction due to this governmental shakeup, it will be harder to get censored as people can switch to the server that has the moderation style, or features (such as no ads but fees) they like.

There could be a silver lining in all this.

<comment><USER40> You would need a growing network effect to follow on to that alternative platform for it to be a true challenger to the mainstream social networks. Otherwise it will stay in the fringes of the internet.

Although it is more difficult to censor a decentralised social network, attracting and migrating existing users from other social networks with a growing network effect on to a new platform is even harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Really seems far less harmful than EARNIT, not that it replaces it - in fact it could be a gambit to get the big web companies to play along with passing EARNIT

</comment><comment> jerome-jh "Our Founding Fathers protected this sacred right with the First Amendment to the Constitution, [...]"

Does not this sound like sci-fi, straight from the beginning?

</comment><comment><USER42> If nothing else this is going to provoke a crucial test for social media "platforms" and has the potential to alter them permanently going forward, whether they win or lose.

As someone who's quite anti social-media, and the effect it appears to have had on our societies, I'm interested in how this plays out either way. It feels like a test that has been a long time coming.

Regardless, it seems the next rational step is for Trump to quit Twitter and encourage his base to do the same, or for Twitter to ban Trump and provoke his base to leave. Trump staying active on Twitter after this, or Twitter allowing him to, would be something beyond bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER43> This will actually backfire on him spectacularly, as the social media platforms will go all-in in every way they can think of to defeat the leagues of bots promoting his message and therefore hinder his opportunity to get re- elected.

It's as if a President in the late 1800s-early 1900s declared war on the printed press.

They're going to reject his targeted ads, they're going to aid Democrats in swing states to persuade the undecided swing-voters... it's going to be mayhem.

</comment><comment><USER44> If you're Twitter, don't you seriously consider deplatforming POTUS at this point?

I understand that no small amount of their traffic has to do with him using Twitter as his primary megaphone to the world, but they are under no obligation whatsoever to continue to provide him said megaphone.

One only has to hope that if that were to happen, no one would show him the Presidential Alerts functionality on all of our phones...

</comment><comment><USER41> So what about this purported order establishes new censorship ? Surely censorship has not become synonymous with interfering with the right of online services to the moderate their content as they see fit ?

</comment><comment><USER45> He's literally going to attack twitter via presidential powers because they dared calling him out on lies?

I'd say that's insane and childish but I think we're a little past that already

<comment><USER46> It's not only that, youtube and facebook have been sensoring legit content and comments that are non related to Trump. This guy is too narsicistic to express what the real issue is, but we are having a problem with these platforms right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> He should sign an executive order to stop the Corona virus.

</comment><comment><USER36> How did this end up on the third page so quickly?

</comment><comment><USER46> Nobody thinks there is a big problem with online censoring that needs to be dealt with?

<comment><USER16> Not really - there is certainly a "problem" of major social media platforms banning abusive/hurtful _behavior_ , and for whatever reason, such behavior seems to not be evenly distributed across the political spectrum, but there is not a big problem of them banning _ideas_ or good-faith or even mostly-good- faith debate. You can find tradcaths on Twitter, threepers on Facebook, tankies on YouTube, and literally /r/politicalcompassmemes on Reddit.

Certainly no platform is anywhere close to banning the ideas or platform of the Trump campaign or the Republican Party - they get debate and discussion but they certainly are not censored. They are firmly within the mainstream.

(I also think, in a broader sense, that people need to not rely on big for- profit tech companies for unpopular ideas. I think it's good for society that everyone from the boogaloo folks to the Unabomber get to be able to publish their ideas, even - and perhaps especially - when those ideas involve violent revolution to the social order. But I also think it's foolish to expect platforms that are profiting handsomely from the stability of the social order to fairly convey those discussions, especially if any of those ideologies gets close to making a difference. So, even if I thought that we had a problem with the big tech companies censoring discussions, it doesn't seem like a problem worth solving.)

<comment><USER48> Ummm... Reddit permanently banned theDonald using dubious reasoning. By "coincidence", in the election year.

<comment><USER16> But /r/conservative and plenty of other pro-Trump subreddits are doing just fine. Is there an _ideology_ that has been censored from Reddit, or just _behavior_?

No platform should be obligated to keep disruptive users around simply because those users happen to have a certain political belief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I feel like I can see Trump's editorial influence in this. "Put in that stuff about China yeah China and lyin' Google, don't tell me it's ranty and doesn't make sense, put it in"

<comment><USER50> It makes sense. If Trump demonstrates that some (most?) of these companies act on behalf of or at the request of a government to suppress embarrassing facts/comments, it challenges the assertion this is "only" about flagging misinformation. It also raises the question of "What else are they suppressing?"

Neither point will be fun to respond to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are a conservative cheering this on, ask yourself what you think would have happened when Trump was using Twitter as a platform to raise questions about Obama's birth certificate? Do you really want the government to be effectively regulating the treatment of every social media post as they see fit?

<comment><USER38> I think requiring viewpoint neutrality via regulation from platforms that behave like utilities is perfectly reasonable.

<comment><USER51> In what ways is Twitter like a utility?

<comment><USER34> I wouldn't say utility but the courts ruled recently it's a public forum; the same logic applies.

<comment><USER51> What courts? What does "public forum" mean legally? I don't think what you are saying has actually happened and would appreciate a link but I think there is none.

So again, in what way is Twitter even slightly _possibly_ like a utility?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Jesus Christ, we're really doing this aren't we?

</comment><comment> 4x5-Guy It would seem to me that this order tramples on the First Amendment. No matter how much the executive wants to trample on twitter, they are still a private company and can publish or not publish what they wish.

<comment><USER36> Could you expand further on that?

I don't see anything in the order that prohibits speech, instead focusing on questioning if Twitter et al. qualify for platform protections. Plus some other ad-money ammunition.

An argument could be made that this EO itself violates the first amendment as it's clearly in response to the tweet fact checks, thereby silencing twitter?

<comment> 4x5-Guy In the First Amendment, the government is not allowed to either promote or attack speech. The courts have ruled that some speech, such as hate speech, does not have this protection. Just by deciding whether or not the government will spend ad-money on a platform or not, based solely on what is said on the platform, is one form of the government either rewarding or punishing that platform. I can't comment on the platform protections at the moment.

I'm going to say I believe the courts will block this, but it will look good to Trump's base in an election year.</comment></comment></comment>


Wikileaks Unveils 'Cherry Blossom' – Wireless Hacking System Used by CIA - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#Cherry <comment><USER2> I really hope that Wikileaks:

A. Works with companies to get these vulnerabilities patched. I know that US media outlets are paid to be hard on Wikileaks when it does this to harm its reputation, but the campaign of negative publicity is less important overall than the quality work getting vulnerabilities fixed and for it actually improves the reputation over the long term with those who are familiar and closer to the security field.

B. After the vulnerabilities are patched, release the source code and documentation for these vulnerabilities to expose the companies, techniques and to corroborate the editing done for the story. The security community will grow from these examples and the public will have better information about what companies to avoid.

C. Publish more good journalism about the types of cyber-weapons wielded by intelligence agencies.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would really like to know more about the involvement of the Stanford Research group in enabling these exploits. Speculating on a whim here, but it wouldn't seem like much research would be needed with the exception of perhaps either WEP/WPA injection/extension/decryption attacks OR wireless frame injection attacks that exploit the data link layer.</comment>


Amazon's plan to fight counterfeiters will cost legit sellers a ton - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/29/amazons-plan-to-fight-counterfeiters-will-cost-legit-sellers-a-ton.html <comment><USER2> What a surprise. Amazon is a terrible company. They built it on the backs of smaller sellers and are now turning around and pushing them away.

There is always a subtext to Amazon's actions. The reality is that margins are decreasing for everyone (even the original manufacturers) and by forcing people to prove that they are an 'authorized reseller', it also allows these manufacturers to not only control the largest secondary market in the world, but profit handsomely from it.

The rich get richer and the rest of us are slowly pushed out of the marketplace and forced to work for the rich.

I used to be an Amazon seller about 5 years ago. They banned my account, held my money for 90 days (which nearly bankrupted me) and I couldn't actually talk to a real human about what happened.

I only got canned responses telling me they were sorry, but the information was proprietary to their business and they couldn't tell me why I was banned. I had 100% feedback and bent over backwards for all of my customers. I still didn't ever figure out why I was banned.

Jeff Bezos is a snot-nosed, Arrogant, child, in the body of an adult. What they do is criminal and they should be investigated and shut-down.</comment>


Ask HN: Who do you trust when it comes to sharing your ideas? - <AUTHOR>

When you come up with that idea that YOU think is great, do you take a deep breath and keep the secret in?  Or do you have a few people to share it with?  Who are the people that you can trust with your ideas? <comment><USER2> I have no qualms with sharing my ideas with anyone that will listen. I find that I solve problems I'm struggling with, and develop new ideas when I force myself to explain concepts and ideas to people, technical or otherwise.

Ideas are to be shared. Good, quality code (with an appropriate license for attribution) should be shared as well.

You might ask where I draw the line? I draw the line at whole applications (I would never give someone the entire source to a webapp I charged money for), or physical goods that I need/use (servers, hardware, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> I was just asked this by my girl friend the other night, as I was telling her I am taking part in the Hackernews November App launch Challenge thing.

I had put on the facebook page my idea and explained that I am doing it to learn how to program myself, as my day job is creating the best customer service in the world, and has never really touched on writing code myself.

I was nervous about sharing my idea because of the fact that anyone who has been learning to program for more than 5 days (I am on day 4) has a huge head start on me and could launch the idea way quicker than I could.

However, What I got back from the community was more encouragement and enthusiasm. And I even was politely asked by one of the guys if I wanted to partner up on the idea as he seemed to really like it, instead of him just taking it for his own.. as he is studying comp science in university i think.

This being said, I am a huge advocate on the fact that every idea has been thought of before and people are going to make the product whether I tell them or not.

So in conclusion, I think telling anyone who will listen about your idea is the right move. You don't have to tell every detail of course, but the feedback, encouragement and opinions of the people who would listen to me have been a big help in this project for me.

<comment><USER4> Do you work for Zappos, or somewhere else that decided to "steal their idea"? ( _Creating the best customer service in the world_ )

<comment><USER3> Our CS has been compared to Zappos by a lot of people, but no we are not Zappos. We focus on email support right now and I think we are better than them so far at email :)

That being said, I really look up to them and hope to keep improving and becoming the best :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I try to share with anyone that will listen. My ideas tend to improve when I am forced to verbalize them. Also, getting external feedback at the earliest stages is really valuable to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some people worry people are going to steal their ideas. In reality, most people are far too lazy to do anything.

The only reason I've ever been 'stealth' with an idea wasn't because I didn't want to share the idea; it was only because I didn't want to talk up an idea that I only ended up taking half-way.

And I agree with everyone here; almost more important than the idea is your ability to explain it - your pitch. The best ones are natural and conversational, and that takes telling and retelling. The only secrets I keep are the confidences of other people that share their ideas with me in private. Besides, you telling someone else your idea is a datapoint for yourself in regard to your own enthusiasm for the idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm quite open with ideas. I don't think they are worth much. I'll share them with IRL friends, people I work with, online friends, strangers on IRC/forums/etc.

I'll even email a company, tell them I have this idea for X (that relates with Y which they already have) and ask them if they'd like to hire me to help them build X. Sometimes that will get you a nice contract job. Most of the time it will fall on deaf ears. I haven't had an idea stolen yet this way.

</comment><comment><USER8> I typically run my ideas through a few friends on IRC first. They'll play devil's advocate on my ideas. If I still like it I'll draw up a little spec or general overview, and then I'll share it with some co-workers and best friends. Depending on how excited I am at this point and how much work there is to do, it might get done or it might be in my queue of things to look at later.

I have a lot of stuff marked "Later".

With regard to someone stealing the idea, I don't really worry about it. I regularly give ideas I've had away, especially if I think I'll never make them.

A few years ago a friend and I were at a restaurant and there guys were trying to figure out something to build on the iPhone, my friend and I had just come back from an amusement park in southern California and I suggested a custom map of amusement parks that has points of interest for all the restaurants and rides and gets you there within the boundaries of the pathways in the park. I had the idea earlier that day, but I would never build it myself, so to me it was fairly useless.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a lot of stuff marked "Later". The sad story of my life... But why wouldn't you make that app? Didn't it seem like a great idea at the time?

<comment><USER8> Mainly because of the amount of time I would have had to devote to it, and the amount of things I would have had to learn. It was an idea of "That would be cool to have." It wasn't a project I would be passionate about. I go to amusement parks about once every other year.

I'd have to have been in the park a lot to map out points where you could walk, write the algorithms for navigating the park from any random point of interest to any other random point of interest in a reasonably efficient way while following the boundaries of the pathways. I'd have to have kept the app updated when anything changed at the park, including things like "For two weeks, this one path is blocked off because construction is happening" which happens fairly regularly at Knott's Berry Farm.

Although those are all challenges I could have overcome given the time and resources, it wasn't something I would be very passionate about and it would die out as a result.

I've had a lot of reasonably good ideas, and some of them have worked out rather well in the past. Most of them I don't pursue more than as an idle thought. Those I choose to work on I do as a result of how much fun they will be, how passionately I feel about what I'm building, and how challenging I think it will be. A few weeks ago How I Met Your Mother inspired the idea for <http://www.notanewyorker.com/> and that was something I said, "I'll build it tonight, I have nothing better to do." It's a cute little website, and the biggest motivating factor was I thought it would be funny, and using Python on Google AppEngine would be interesting because I've not used it to build anything like that. I found I hate Google AppEngine now though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I usually share the idea with my wife, my best friends, and former co-workers that are friends. It is better to get feedback early.

<comment><AUTHOR> ever worry about someone just taking your idea?

<comment><USER10> No use. I'd rather worry about executing it - and telling lots of people puts me into a place where I "must" execute (or fear someone else doing it, as you said) or let it go.

Works well, saves time.

<comment><AUTHOR> wouldn't that cause unnecessary pressure?

<comment><USER10> Nope People don't have time for your ideas. They have their own to worry about. Instead they keep asking you about it - that kind inspires me :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to share your app ideas with the world and see what everyone thinks, you can post them on App Garden (<http://appgarden.ambitiouslemon.com>). I launched it just yesterday. There are more details about it in this blog post: <http://bit.ly/cdjlV1>

</comment><comment><USER10> I share my ideas on my blog, twitter, co-workers. Trust them with my ideas? I don't believe they are mind - I believe I just happen to rendezvous with them and so could anyone else.

Ideas don't matter. Execution does.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe that location, interest, and sometimes a random event bring up ideas. I can't believe that 'anyone' can have my very idea. By that I mean, that sure, for every idea i have, someone else may have that very idea, but not everyone does. Agree?

<comment><USER10> yip

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to say lifetime friends, but I'm not sure about them either</comment>


47 Top Technologists Submit Comment on NSA Spying - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/nsa-review-panel-tech-comment.pdf

<comment><USER2> I'll read this later, and I applaud their effort, but really, the review group is only meant to pacify, and they don't need technical guidance for that.

Feh.</comment>