How to Accomplish the Impossible - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/harvey-mackay/how-to-accomplish-the-impossible.html <comment><USER2> I've always believed deeply in this idea. The value of delusion, or rather, calculated delusion, is extremely important to the idea of being entrepreneurial. (Genius here is a bit loosely used, but I'll go with it). The math of any unlikely opportunity (like starting a business) is against you so any logical person would think it's delusional. But to most entrepreneurs, starting a business is all that seems logical. The fastest way to make a billion dollars is take something that everyone believes is true, and bet against it. [http://ashoknayar.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/why- entrepreneurs...](http://ashoknayar.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/why- entrepreneurs-need-to-be-a-bit-delusional/)</comment>


Dead like COBOL - Is Java ready for replacement? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-cobol.html?S_TACT=105AGX02&S_CMP=EDU

<comment><USER2> A co-worker, who worked with COBOL years ago, keeps getting phone calls offering him COBOL jobs. Very highly paying COBOL jobs. He laughs at them.

In other words, a dead programming language doesn't mean that there's no demand for it anymore. What it means is that good programmers won't touch it with a stick.

So indeed, java developers shouldn't worry - they'll have plenty of jobs well into the future - the platform is just too prevalent, and especially in financial institutions that only recently moved over from java to COBOL, and will take another 30 years to make the next move. On the other hand, if you like programming and it's more than just a way to make a living, then java isn't where you want to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> If false reports of Java's demise only have the effect of making some middle- managers think twice before instinctively reaching for Java, they will at least have done some good.

What I dislike is the easiness and frequency with which we label ourselves and others as X developers for any given language X. As much as I use Java and prefer to use Ruby, neither of those two language define me as a programmer.

People typically separate off into their different "communities", where the boundaries are programming language boundaries, and they remain as loyal as church members. Language loyalty can help a language become successful, but does it have a net benefit in the software industry?

</comment><comment><USER4> Agriculture had to become an order of magnitude more productive to meet the demands of a growing population. It did this through new technology. So Java was farming the old way and with new xml libraries and closures it will become an order of magnitude more productive just like farming. Do not worry java developers the sky is not falling.</comment>


Startups Open Sourced, 1 Week Later: $10,000+ in Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/05/01/startups-open-sourced-1-week-later-10000-in-revenue/

<comment><USER2> > If you're feeling really bold, try out Evan Reas' hack: tell them you want > them in your book so badly, you'll e-mail them every day for the next 30 > days with a good reason why they should do it.

If someone were to do this to me, it would bring me from on-the-fence firmly into the "no" camp. It shows a blatant lack of respect, IMO.

<comment><USER3> _If someone were to do this to me, it would bring me from on-the-fence firmly into the "no" camp. It shows a blatant lack of respect, IMO._

That was my initial reaction as well. But after thinking about it - if the guy emailed me every day with a _good_ reason, I think I'd start to be gently amused. Could work. Irritatingly ;)

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't read the emails after day three, I'd probably have them automatically filtered by day five.

<comment><USER5> wouldn't it be easier to just send an email back saying "I'm not interested; please don't send more reasons", after reading something along the lines of _"Let them know that if they ask you to stop then you'll stop, but otherwise you're really excited about talking to them."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > AppSumo.com 24-hour special: $8,120 (keep $2,436)

So AppSumo made $5684 in profits by promoting and selling your book? What a sweet business model..

<comment><USER7> Sweet indeed... would love to hear more about this.

<comment><USER8> It's the same model as Groupon.

The article mentions that the author only requested a 30% share - to ensure that it was featured on AppSumo from what I understood. I'd imagine the normal cut is closer to 50-50.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> $10,000 per week sounds like a good haul, but his personal share was closer to $3000. If the initial rush of sales dies down, he'll be making less than he would at a job... and that's excluding the opportunity cost from all the unpaid time it took to write the book. I guess what they say about writing a book being a labor of love is true.

<comment><USER7> Not sure I follow your argument here. The thing about selling an ebook is that it's all passive income from here on out. Assuming he set everything up correctly, which it appears he has, the author has to do almost nothing to propagate the sales of his book. Sure, he could put in an hour or two a week for advertising, emailing, etc, but that's negligible. The ball is already rolling, so there's nothing stopping him from collecting money week after week while he works a _real job_ , writes another ebook, or runs a startup.

<comment><USER10> Look at the sales spike, there's no way that's a sustainable income. 80% of the sales was from one 24 hour period where he gets only 30% of those sales.

From scanning the article he didn't really say how long it took to write. There's 32 founders on the 'founders' page, sounds like he put well over 3 or 4 hours per founder. Quite a lot of transcribing and interviewing by the look of it so I'd guess at least a month.

Kudos for him for making a couple of weeks salary in a week, but put it into that context. He still only made $3,000 in a week _after_ already putting the unknown time into the book.

Ignore the $10k claim, $7k effectively went on advertising (appsumo).

imho, the real winners in the story were appsumo.

<comment><USER11> I'll need to adjust this. We talked about it again and Noah insisted on paying me more. My cut will be $3 per copy on that $7 sale (42% gross) before PayPal fees (I am not sure what that will net to). Effectively, my cut will be closer to $3k or $4k, rather than the current $2k.

I'll update the article when i can with the most accurate information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > $15 per audio hour may seem low, especially considering that one hour of > audio may take up to 4 hours to transcribe. But when you look at the > conversion rate, it's not that bad. $1 USD converts to 83 Kenyan Shillings. > I paid around $800 total for the transcribing, which converts to 66,400 > Shillings. That's about a month's worth of rent in Nairobi, the largest city > and capital of Kenya.

This bothers me. Yeah, rent and food is going to be cheap in Kenya, but an iPad will cost the same. There's a good chance it'll be costlier because of import taxes.

Of course, this is a unique case where transcriber had no feedback. In general though, you shouldn't be paying someone based on your opinion of their cost of living. It demonstrates a lack of respect, and shows that you don't treat them as an equal human being.

Maybe it's idealistic nonsense.

<comment><USER13> What's more, his figures work out to 5.3 weeks of work at 40hrs/week, for the equivalent of one month's rent (not one month's living expenses). Be a shrewd manipulator of globalization if you want, but don't try and justify away the raw deal you're giving someone to save a few bucks, especially considering those bucks would be far more valuable to the guy doing the work than the guy who is saving them.

<comment><USER14> A relative used to do transcription so while in the worst case it may take 4x as long (bad audio + intelligible speaker) he often worked at about twice real time. So that 15$ / could be anywhere from 4$/hour to 30$ an hour.

PS: At those exchange rates 66,400 Shillings = 800$/month rent which seem really high. I know people in the US paying under 600$ / month rent for fairly reasonable apartments near major city's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I read most of this. It was worth the $20. (Wufoo: "We're a fan of [ad retargetting] because it works." is probably worth $20.)

<comment><USER16> Yep, I am a fan of retargeting as well (if done within limits so as to not spook your users). So many users congratulate us for advertising Visual Website Optimizer every where on the web: Youtube, CNN, Digg, etc. They think we have big advertising budget. But we really have $500 budget per month. Retargeting works wonderfully as far as brand recall is concerned!

I recommend AdRoll and Retargeter for the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The title demonstrates why "open source" is a bad term to use. It's been loaded with multiple meanings. I thought the book was about startups that created free/open source software.

</comment><comment><USER18> The first thing that struck me was the amount of money AppSumo was keeping.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure it's as effective for 'big bang' types of things like this where you want to sell as much as possible in a brief period, but to me, starting with a Kindle version only makes a lot of sense:

[http://blog.liberwriter.com/2011/04/22/self-publishing- the-i...](http://blog.liberwriter.com/2011/04/22/self-publishing-the- incremental-way/)

That way you don't have all the typesetting and print on demand overhead; you just get it out there and see how it goes before investing in that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER20> cache - [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wHndBgg...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wHndBggSdOoJ:www.startupsopensourced.com/+startupsopensourced&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com)

Congratulations to the author, I would love to hear some reviews from those of you who have already read this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats on your success! It seems like your hard work has definitely paid off.

Just a few nit-picky things: Not sure if you are a native English speaker or not, but your analysis was somewhat difficult to follow. Spelling was okay, but there were just weird little things here and there that were confusing. Also, please link images such that they open in a new window/tab. I can't even tell you how many times I opened an image, then Xed out thinking it was in it's own window.

</comment><comment><USER21> For people doing consumer internet startups, learning how the average normal person thinks, what makes them tick, is something I'd pay for. All of you reading this here are by definition, not normal ;)

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel like I'm reading the contents of a self-help infomercial.

</comment><comment><USER11> for anyone interested, i wrote about how i dealt with the traffic here: [http://jmtame.posterous.com/startups-open-sourced-is-out- go-...](http://jmtame.posterous.com/startups-open-sourced-is-out-go-grab-it)

the story was down for the first 20 minutes. i was trying to call siong to delete the story but he didn't have his phone on him, so i was pretty much stuck with fixing it on the spot.

</comment><comment><USER11> i hope my linode doesn't crash again...

edit: reboot #1. this is like monday all over again. i'm resizing my linode to 4gb now, then will install wpcache. will be back up in 4 min.

edit: wow, that was like 20 minutes of downtime. it should be working now.

<comment><USER3> A tip for when you have a spare half hour - switch from Apache to nginx :)

Let me convince you as to why: I have a 1GB VPS with prgmr.com, and it's comfortably survived being top story on the Hacker News homepage, all whilst running my regular web apps running in the background.

Edit: If you're feeling _really_ brave (or foolish - always a thin line), you could try setting up nginx now on a random port (e.g. 8080), and if it looks OK, kill Apache and move nginx to port 80. All depends on how much your server is struggling - would it be worth 20 mins downtime now if you don't have to worry about it again?

Edit 2: Looks like you're using Wordpress - are you using a cache plugin as well? If not, install W3 Total Cache right this very instant :) If you'd like any help with this, I'll be around for the next couple of hours, email is in my profile :)

<comment><USER23> Good advice but still not entirely necessary. I run several VMs and dedicated servers and have had numerous HN front pages and other high traffic leads to 1GB VMs running Apache (WordPress without caching, even). The issue here seems to be a less than optimal Apache configuration and not having just enough memory to handle the requests properly (but 1GB seems to be a sweet spot for a regular Apache setup nowadays).

<comment><USER3> _Good advice but still not entirely necessary_

 _The issue here seems to be a less than optimal Apache configuration_

I couldn't agree with you more. The problem is my Apache knowledge pretty much well starts and ends with setting up virtual hosts. A year ago I was having serious issues with my Apache set up, and spent hours trying to reduce its memory footprint, and playing with lots of other settings, all to no avail. So I gave up, installed nginx... and it just worked. Which is why I'm so evangelical about it :)

That said, I'm certainly not against Apache; just the setup time and my abject failure. Which is, most likely, incompetence ;)

<comment><USER23> Yeah, Apache is like a giant lump of clay you need to "sculpt" into something useful, whereas nginx is a fast and empty potter's wheel waiting for you to throw the clay on ;-) nginx is definitely well worth it if you don't have complex Apache-specific requirements.

Another alternative I've been playing with lately is running haproxy on port 80 and then throwing requests to different daemons (like Apache and nginx) based on the host header.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm enjoying reading it. =)

</comment><comment><USER25> Shameless plug. For an free Skype recorder for Windows and a painless audio transcription outsourcing service check <http://scribie.com>.</comment>


Shinatra – A simple bash web server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benrady/shinatra <comment><USER2> Many people here fail to realize, this is an _excellent_ debugging server. I used to have a server to print out the body and headers of requests when building an api to make sure things were going (the right headers and request body) out as expected [https://github.com/minhajuddin/httpdebug/blob/master/app.go](https://github.com/minhajuddin/httpdebug/blob/master/app.go).

This is a much lighter and nicer version. This is going into my ~/bin/httpdebug :)

You can try sending a few curl requests to see that this really prints the headers and body.

        curl -H "api-key: Foo" -X POST --form name=Khaja http://localhost:8080/

<comment><USER3> ngrep port 80 works

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the point here is to demonstrate that one might think that web servers are mystical beasts (true) but after all, they "just" return a HTTP header and some content.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't demonstrate that very well, then. This simply delegates all of the basic server responsibilities to netcat. Where do you draw the line between 'bash web server' and simply invoking another program?

<comment><USER4> I didn't know about netcat before, so I'd draw the line exactly here :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And the HTTP client:

        exec 3<>/dev/tcp/localhost/8080
        echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.1\n\n" >&3
        cat <&3

</comment><comment><USER7> That was both funny and disappointing. I thought it world at least serve static files. Putting netcat in a for loop is hardly a web server in bash.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bash (shell-script) is a very powerful language, but a bit too complicated for the non-programmer (computer hacker). Then we got Perl, but it is also a bit too complicated. Now we have JavaScript doing the same thing, but also JavaScript (ES6) is now getting more complicated. I wonder is there a rule that says a (scripting) language for non-programmers will eventually either die or end up being too complicated for non-programmers ?

<comment><USER9> Never heard "Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it." ?

<comment><USER8> A small amount of pessimism is healthy, but something being really simple is often preferable. A key here is good abstraction. Take for example a file system, witch is very easy to use, but still useful for computer experts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Does it work on Windows?

> Of course not.

It works just fine on Windows 10 with WSL.

<comment><USER11> Works on Cygwin as well if you have netcat installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me a lot of Certbot's use of the Python SimpleHTTPServer:

      $(command -v python2 || command -v python2.7 || command -v python2.6) -c
      "import BaseHTTPServer, SimpleHTTPServer;
      s = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer(('', {port}), SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler);
      s.serve_forever()"

<comment><USER13> Out of curiosity. What is wrong with: python -m SimpleHTTPServer ?

<comment><USER14> It was my understanding that you cannot change the host or port when invoking SimpleHTTPServer that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Five lines seems like much when you consider that one can write a concurrent (using threads) C webserver in 12...

<comment><USER16> Considering C has the semicolon, you can probably write it in less than 5 because you can put almost anything on a single line.

<comment><USER11> Bash also has a semicolon. This script could be done in two lines. Or even one if you omit the shebang.

<comment><USER17> What if you remove the audio jack?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I had to look up the colon minus syntax, here's the answer [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10390406/usage-of-in- bash](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10390406/usage-of-in-bash)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's more a port responder.

</comment><comment><USER17> While googling for this, found a "Big list of http static servers": [https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255](https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255)

Not that big.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Is this a thread based server, or does it use an event loop instead?

> No.

Well, which is it ?

<comment><USER21> Neither, its using netcat + -l flag, which is (possibly) waiting for a connection using blocking networking IO.

It can only accept one connection at a time because of the netcat command being used in a loop

<comment><USER20> Oh OK.

Well, anyone can write that in a handful of lines in most languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Clickbait - A web server in one line of bash:

        $ nginx

</comment><comment><USER23> not to be that guy, but that's

1\. hardly a web server

2\. hardly pure bash

of course writing a server of anything in pure bash is a tad bit difficult, as opposed to a client - bash can connect(), but can't bind() / listen() nor accept() unless, of course, you use something to expose these syscalls, but that opens a whole another can of worms...

<comment><USER24> > but that opens a whole can of worms

Someone has actually went that far: [http://ctypes.sh/](http://ctypes.sh/).

<comment><USER23> Thank you! I've been searching for something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Whats the point of this?

</comment><comment><USER26> So this is babys first netcat server? Someone is overly proud of using a command like it was intended...</comment>


U.S. Students Rank Worst in New Sleep Study - <AUTHOR> http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/09/u-s-students-rank-worst-in-new-sleep-study/#ixzz2T56cj0aZ <comment><USER2> As a University student in the States, I can say that, other than academics themselves, this is mostly propagated by a "I slept fewer hours than you so clearly I work harder look at me and feel bad I'm so stressed kbye" mindset. I have seen many times people waiting to tweet or Facebook something right before bed to prove to the world (and elicit responses) that they were up till an ungodly hour.

It's similar to what happens in adulthood when everyone compares how "busy" they are 24/7 and display it as if it's a badge of pride.

<comment><USER3> David Hansson (of Ruby on Rails) wrote about this five years ago from a software developer's perspective, and I saw a ton of it in college. It's not just in science/technology majors either, friends in things like education were bragging about all nighters they pulled to get papers done just as much as the compsci students.

Not much has changed, and I have no idea what could be done about this problem. With a few exceptions, everyone who does this could be working much more effectively if they managed their time better and got enough sleep, but there's resistance to doing that because it's considered "normal" to be in the computer lab until 2 AM. And if you leave a 9 it's because everyone else is more dedicated than you are.

It's almost like a more freeform version of a 9-5 workday with people judging you based on how much time you put in, except there aren't any limitations on how long you can spend. And it's friends and peers you're trying to impress instead of your boss. That obsession with trying to impress friends by working all night seems tightly tied to the rise of social networking sites.

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1006-sleep-deprivation-is- not...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1006-sleep-deprivation-is-not-a-badge- of-honor)

<comment><USER4> > I have no idea what could be done about this problem

Um, how about judging people based on the quality and quantity of work/projects/whatever they produce, rather then what times of the day and for how long their rear ends are sitting at 'work'?

Destination > Journey ?

<comment><USER3> Obviously, but try telling that to all of the world's office managers. Or try convincing college students that staying up all night to get a project done isn't going to impress anyone. Knowing what to fix doesn't mean you can implement it easily.

<comment><USER4> > Or try convincing college students that staying up all night to get a > project done isn't going to impress anyone

Who cares fundamentally what other students/peers are doing? Focus on yourself, your own goals/aspirations, go out and achieve it. Stop worrying about what other people think or do.

<comment><USER3> That's a solution for an individual person, not the problem as a whole. _I_ don't do it, but you need to convince millions of people that staying up late is a actually problem, and isn't worth doing to impress people.

It's like saying "I've got an easy solution to HIV. Just have all the HIV+ people stop having sex or sharing needles and it'll be gone in a generation." It might be true, but you can't just wish it into happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before everyone goes on about college life, the study was done on elementary and middle school students. Not to say that college life and university students aren't sleep deprived. But I feel like the exact result being reported here is even more worrisome. This isn't going sleep deprived while you're (hopefully) adding the academic final touches to your more or less developed brain, this is going sleep deprived while your brain is still coming together.

While the article tries to end on a happy note ("Don't worry! There won't be any permanent damage... if there hasn't been any permanent damage"), I feel that it's still worrisome.

<comment><USER6> > "Don't worry! There won't be any permanent damage..."

What I don't understand is how we can know that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The results of the new comparison have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal." I would read this article with a grain of salt. Although as a university student I can attest to seeing myself and my peers sleep deprived. I make sure I get the sleep I need now.

<comment> mc-lovin But they are working through the night to prepare the article for submission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's definitely a status component to it. In the US we tend to glamorize working ridiculous hours, not sleeping, and just generally being busy.

There was also the "I never study" crowd, who claimed they coasted by regardless of how much work they actually did or didn't do. For some reason both these groups were/are considered cool and high-status.

When I was in college I tended to study a fairly average amount and took an average course load. I got good grades by virtue of good study habits-most of my study time was spent wide awake and highly focused without internet or distractions. If I got tired/hungry I would sleep or eat, not force myself. I only pulled one "all-nighter" in college, and that was to read a Harry Potter book the night it was released so that I wouldn't see any spoilers.

By only studying when I was in optimal condition, it was much easier for me to retain new material. However, this gave me nothing to complain or brag about, so I quickly learned to act like I was always busy and sleep-deprived, which significantly improved my social life. C'est la vie.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a current student, I see sleep deprivation in all of my peers. Staying up late is seen as a 'cool' thing for people my age and younger, and I hear stories of kids as young as middle school going to sleep well after midnight on weeknights.

Since college, I have gone to sleep earlier, just so I can stay functional for work and classes; I don't know how these other people do it.

<comment><USER10> I like staying up late. Even on weekdays, I'm usually up until 1 AM or so. On weekends in college, I recall often seeing the sun come up during the summer.

I thought that was fun, but never thought of it as cool. And while I like staying up late, I really don't like being sleep-deprived.

I really despise the culture wherein sleep deprivation is a badge of honor. And I hate the implicit pressure I feel when I am working with people who wear it as such. It's hard to cite studies showing decreased overall performance when you're confronted with, "I've only gotten 15 hours of sleep all week since I've been working so hard!"

I don't know what to do about it though.

<comment><USER11> I used to enjoy sleep deprivation. In hindsight, that was me self-treating depression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Our educational system promotes lack of sleep and needs to be changed. I'm currently a freshman in high school, but have been consistently getting 3-4 hours of sleep each night. School doesn't give us enough time for extracurriculars during the day so they end up eating into the night.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would be interested in seeing the average school starting times for these countries. I always thought it was ludicrous that high schools had students waking up at 6:30am to get to a 7:15 am math class (Anecdotal evidence: this was my HS schedule junior year).

<comment><USER14> My elementary school (K to 5th grade) was 8:35am I think, middle school (6th-8th) was 9:05am and high school was 7:55am. Times were mostly stagnated though I think for the bus schedule. Certain AP courses (such as AP Chemistry) started an hour earlier, but that was the only exception. Not sure how they decided who should go to school first though. That has always made me curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm sure that lack of exercise is also playing a role in this though it was not mentioned. Many kids are quite comfortable sitting at home on the computer, playing online games and instant messaging instead of leaving the house.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems fairly obvious to me that cramming and sleeping poorly will lead to the same bad results as any long term code crunch would have.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if the excessive levels of alcohol consumption in U.S. universities correlates to their lack of a good sleep as well?

<comment><USER18> I can't imagine that US students drink significantly more than the average Dutch student. Maybe more but not something like 20% more.

Edit: what I meant: students drinking much seems to be universal. Pretty sure that German and Belgium students do the same. International students also party often but that might purely be because they are abroad.

<comment><USER19> Is there the same sort of binge drinking culture there as in the US, though? Anecdotally, more than half my friends in college would get blackout every single Friday and Saturday (in addition to 4-5 drinks during each weekday) -- it was severe enough that they always got DTs whenever they tried to take a break for midterm/finals studying.

<comment><USER18> I never really mingled with the worst of them but this not something that many students do. Drinking in the weekends and on weekdays sure but regularly getting a delirium tremens (if that's what you mean with DT) made me sit up in my chair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been sleeping poorly for the past 4-5 years. I'm trying to change that over the next three months.</comment>


AI in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gk6mxKXKTk <comment><AUTHOR> A news agency in China uses an AI news anchor.

The speed at which China seems to be adopting and implementing the latest deep learning technology into everyday life is truly astounding. There is no doubt it is going to be one of the top countries contending for the world leader in AI in the next decade or so.</comment>


Wow: Regular Expression Generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.txt2re.com/

<comment><USER2> Very cleverly done.

Unfortunately the output is terrible - both unusable in your code and unusable to learn from.

<comment><USER3> I agree. It's a clever hack, but instead of spending the time learning how to use this and then using it for all of your regular expressions, you could just learn regular expressions yourself. It's as simple as learning the syntax and then keeping a handy bookmark to some of the less-commonly used special characters, in addition to plenty of practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> UI needs work, as it seems a bit busy, but otherwise seems fine enough.

</comment><comment><USER5> Am the only one who thinks this app is pretty hard to use?

</comment><comment><USER6> <3 Regular expressions have always been one of my problems!</comment>


Hospitality business Sonder confirms new investment, $1B+ valuation - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/11/airbnb-competitor-sonder-confirms-new-investment-1b-valuation/ <comment><USER2> Sonder is well positioned to continue to outpace its competitors due to strong consumer demand for a clean, consistent and convenient experience while traveling.

For those interested, here's a link to their job board: [https://grnh.se/f4fb16682](https://grnh.se/f4fb16682)</comment>


Moral Machine: Gathering human views on moral choices made by machines - <AUTHOR> http://moralmachine.mit.edu/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, looks like they're having server issues.

</comment><comment><USER2> They got killed by Reddit. No pun intended.</comment>


The lessons of Bulletstorm and the problem with price-points - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-05-29-the-astronauts-in-2014-USD60-for-a-game-is-a-little-insane <comment><USER2> Good article, bad choice of quote to take out of context for a title leading to a load of comments about history and inflation.

That's not at all the point here. It's about persistent, clunky notions about hit-making in the game industry.

 _> 'The problem with the AAA world is not the games; the problem is the structure of assumptions and arbitrary targets that surrounds them.'_

 _> 'Gotta tick those boxes. Gotta justify that $60 price-point. And here's the rub: in a digital world, whether AAA or indie, those restrictions should be irrelevant.'_

I think that's spot on.

\---

Note: The original article/HN title was 'The Astronauts: "In 2014, $60 for a game is a little insane"'. HN has since been updated to something much more descriptive.

<comment><USER3> People talk down about AAA games, but Skyrim despite being an ok game at release is far better value for money than any Indy game simply from all the free content. Modern graphics engines and real world building take capital and lots of it.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you can objectively say that. I spent many hundreds of hours in Minecraft, which I paid something life $5 for back in infdev. I also spent less on both Dark Souls games and sure enjoyed them more, but I wouldn't call them AAA (though that may be debatable).

A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience.

<comment><USER5> Minecraft is the outlier, not the rule for indie games and for multiple reasons.

It has a modding community larger than most actual game communities for indies. That's extremely rare in indies (and even AAA's!) to achieve an Elder Scrolls level of modding. Some of the modlaunchers/modapis that I use have more versions and active development than some indie games I play, and that's before we consider the mods themselves (hundreds, almost thousands, available for every MC point release) which are almost all separate projects being actively maintained.

And two, Minecraft is a procedurally generated emergent game, an rarity among all games.

My point is that it's wrong to use Minecraft as a generalization for "indie" game, when it breaks most of the rules/paradigms that most indies follow.

">A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience."

Yeah, like Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas.

<comment><USER6> It is not the rule, but neither is it an outlier. From the last several years I'd also point to indie games like Terraria, Starbound, Kerbal Space Program, The Binding of Isaac, Torchlight, FTL, and Spelunky.

<comment><USER5> Eh I don't like the list. IMO only Terraria and Starbound should be in the same category. Throw Cubeworld in there too, even though the dev wasn't capable of handling the demands of modern indie games and the project fell from popularity. There's some space ones like Space Engineers and StarMade.

Games like torchlight are ARPG's played on rails, with zero emergent gameplay. Same with BoI when I played it, it's a rougelike not an emergent game. It wasn't a world to explore but levels to complete in order. KSP can be emergent but requires you to play very specifically to experience the content. FTL is cool but it's linear by design, no exploration, no freedom, no building, no game world destruction etc, just running from and attacking things on a mostly linear random path. But FTL is a game to play and finish, Minecraft is an emergent experience, a world to work on until you abandon your world.

<comment><USER6> You are right they don't necessarily compare well to Minecraft as systemic games. But they have procedurally generated worlds, and rival the best AAA games in terms of amount of gameplay they offer, and at a fraction of the price. I have over 200 hours into Spelunky, and it still frequently manages to surprise me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From my perspective the value of games has plummeted because I do not enjoy many of the AAA titles. I dont like looking down the barrel of a gun and shooting humans (or human like formations of pixels).

I would pay $60 upfront and $10 a month to play a RTS like command and conquer or SC2 (not the new new MMO one) that is on a long lived or persistent map w/ set teams (factions).

It has to have no annoying timers, not feel like grinding and cannot charge me incremental dollars to get further in the game "recharge" packs, "advisors" to unlock end game functionality, or premium currency that (in practice) cannot be obtained otherwise.

Hell, I might just quit my job and learn to build this game.

<comment><USER8> You might find folks to help you with that project, but lets work the business mechanics a bit to see if you could get it funded.

$10/month - So how much load does the game put on a server? And what sized server? That's important because if you have a bunch of dedicated AWS instances they can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, if you put them on demand you will have to figure out the latency issues.

The game is going to change quickly, and as you said its multiplayer and 'persistent maps' so lots of memory? Recovery if you lose a machine in the middle of the game? And a staff of Game Masters who can help angry 11 yr olds trying to get their 'Mom's crappy Dell' to play the game with a decent frame rate.

To put it a different way, I would love to play that game too, and I would pay $10 a month, but could I run it at $10 a month in at least a cash flow break- even mode? Turn based games are easier with their arbitrary latency allowance, RTS gets to be less easy. Especially if one player lagging out freezes the map for everyone? So perhaps the game engine isn't the challenging part, perhaps the backend stack is a harder challenge, or the support infrastructure. I don't know but I wonder about that some times.

<comment><USER7> Continuous value could be added from a few game mechanics:

1\. Games could have a true end. One faction wins, game over, server reset. 2\. Different maps. Could be worked in the "game over" scenario or could be running concurrently. 3\. Different "ages": the game code could adequately work with past, present and futuristic units, giving users different experiences when they play.

As for AWS costs, I really have no idea the kind of load you would get from that game, but given a C3.xlarge is about $175 a month (or less for reserved), I'd be shocked to hear that you cannot serve at least 175 concurrent users from that server-- giving about $1500 a month profit per server utilized. IMO dev costs, engineer time etc will far far outstrip the infrastructure costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article is good, but I agree that the headline taken out of context is highly misleading.

In the context of the article it makes sense. But out of context it appears to be saying that all games should cost a lot less than $60, which really isn't the point.

In fact to justify a luxury price point you just have to give people something they really want. For example, right now lots of people are paying $150 to get into the beta for Elite: Dangerous, a game that I presume will be substantially cheaper in full release:

[http://elite.frontier.co.uk/](http://elite.frontier.co.uk/)

If $60 is insane then $150 is totally nutballs, yet that is what a nontrivial slice of people are paying, because this beta is giving them something they want that they can't get any other way.

(Note: In the alpha, people were paying $295!)

<comment><USER10> Elite is a game that is of (sadly) extinct genre geared towards people that when they played that games are now in their earning prime.

Same with the people that threw money at obsidian, Brian Fargo and Tim Schaffer.

It is paying premium price for a product due to supply demand.

//I miss Freelancer so so much.

<comment><USER11> // and Wing Commander including Armada, Descent, and Freespace (even Star Wars Tie Fighter). The last Space Sim that I found was Strike Suit Zero ([http://store.steampowered.com/app/209540/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/209540/)) which is nice, but not as epic as the WC series.

<comment><USER12> Descent is still actively being played in a modern incarnation. You can find the info to get started at [http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php](http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php) or the short version at the top of [http://descentrangers.com/Home/Index](http://descentrangers.com/Home/Index)

[disclosure: I'm one of the cofounders of DCL, a junior officer in Rangers, and my wife is the primary developer of D1x-retro.]

I also have friends who actively play and mod Freelancer. Their team is at [http://ripteam.com/](http://ripteam.com/) [Disclosure: I'm a member of team RIP, though only in their Descent 3 division.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I bought (well my parents bought) FFVI (III in the U.S.) and Secret of Mana for I believe $80 each in 1993-94. That's $127 in today's money. The standard SNES cart was like $50, or $80 in today's money. Games have gotten a lot cheaper even as game budgets have exploded.

<comment><USER14> They may have gotten cheaper if you count it like that, but standard SNES games were not riddled with bugs on release day.

(On PC at least) it's quite common for a AAA game to launch riddled with bugs. Recently it was Watch_Dogs which costs 60€ on Steam, yet it has a lot of performance issues, the publishers client has connectivity problems etc.

<comment><USER13> So the problem is not that $60 is insane for a game, but rather that games these days are crap?

<comment><USER10> AAA these days are crap. The majority of them. When you scale the team to a thousand people on 4 continents you are doomed to slide into mediocrity. Too many moving parts, too many demands to satisfy, too much content to be able to polish it effectively, budgets that don't allow innovation and risk taking. You know Assassin's Creed 3 in all of its boring shining. In the indie and mobile there are gems of pure brilliance for fraction of the price.

The only AAA title so far this year that game me good value for money was Reaper of Souls, mostly because devs listened to the public and for a change made the right decisions.

<comment><USER15> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law)

The majority of games have always been crap. Nothing is new. Rose tinted glasses mean we only remember the good games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the title is misleading. It implies $60 is too much for the game. But I took the opposite from the interview.

> "The saying in the industry right now is, 'If you want to sell a game for > $60, to the player it has to feel like $200.'"

> "Bulletstorm was a $60 game for $60. And these days $60 for a game sounds > basically crazy, when there are literally hundreds of high quality games out > there for a much smaller price - even on console. In 2014, $60 for a game is > a little insane."

I believe that, economically speaking (and I now almost nothing about this), customers pay the value they percieve the product has. Chmielarz is actually saying that some games have a bigger value that the price they are sold. That they priced the game right but some other games of equal value were sold cheaper.

Or, in other words, people are paying less for games than they should.

I could rant for hours about this, but I'll refrain from it. I just wanted to add this clarification.

<comment><USER17> You're right, of course. The reason for this is that digital entertainment is long-lived, cheap to produce and practically free to distribute, even moreso than film and literature. As the demand has increased, the supply has exploded, and the market has responded by emphasizing infungible goods, perishable goods and rent-seeking (franchises can be argued as all three).

As supply exceeds demand, prices tend towards manufacturing costs rather than utility provided. Suppliers therefore have to either increase demand or reduce supply (big publishers), or segment the market (small publishers) to maximize profit.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how much of this sticker-shock is due to psychology and the new market of cheap games? In New York, as far as I know, Broadway theater prices haven't really changed...and you are paying $60 for 2-3 hours of sometimes crummy seating, for an experience that, visually, doesn't compare to a $20 IMAX screen. And yet not many theater goers really cringes about having to pay that fee because there is not a mindset that non-discounted shows should be any cheaper...Hell, I even paid $200 for nearly the worst seats in the house at "Book of Mormon" (back when it was new and really really hot)...of course it helped that BOM was actually worth even the inflated stubhub price...

I remember back when I was in grade school, me and my brother were so excited that we saved up enough to buy Ninja Gaiden...for the NES, not XBOX...and someone then stole the game, which was our first new game in a loooong time (we were not a wealthy family). $50 had a lot more value in the the 1980s...and that game was very primitive by today's standards...so thinking about that stolen NES cartridge makes me laugh with a bit of a wince

<comment><USER18> You also have to take demographics into consideration. I'd imagine the average gamer has much less spending money to play with than the average Broadway theater patron.

>and that game was very primitive by today's standards

Is the _game_ primitive, or did it _look_ primitive?

I think it's important to make the distinction, because for all the fancy technology that goes into making a AAA shooter look cool, the actual _game_ underneath it all is never terribly sophisticated, and usually even less so than the average FPS from the 90s. Yet people nowadays will claim that something like The Legend of Zelda, where you have a fairly nonlinear adventure through a huge world, is more "primitive" than a modern game where you are basically guided on rails from start to finish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> More important than price is engagement value. If I spend four months with a game, I don't mind the $60 price. Some notable examples for me: Skyrim, GTA-V, and Dark Souls 2. However, I have played games with little or no engagement value. BioShock 2 lasted less than 2 weeks (2 play throughs).

<comment><USER20> Unfortunately engagement value is only weakly linked to the price tag. It's expected a AAA title costing $60 to give at least 70 hours of entertainment, but beyond that it varies vastly across titles and players.

Usually, games with multiplayer features last significantly longer than single player games, but there are exceptions like the ones you listed which all have high replay values. Also, genres matter, open-world sandbox games lack the intensity but enjoys longevity, the price could hardly reflect that.

Then there's Minecraft, which keeps its charm after months, for some people even years. And it cost a lot less than the typical AAA titles.

I feel the pricing model in gaming industry is so rigid and backwards (although no so much for casual games, eg. in app purchase and mulitplayer games eg. esport games and MMORPGS). Some movement toward more flexible pricing mechanisms to reflect games' contents will undoubted benefit both game makers and players.

<comment><USER21> > _It 's expected a AAA title costing $60 to give at least 70 hours of > entertainment_

Does that include multiplayer? Personally I'd be surprised to find a majority of AAA single-player games to have that much content, barring the Skyrims and Fallouts. For me, playing the same game past around the 20 hour mark starts to feel like a chore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Given that games cost $50 in 2000, they should be costing $68 in 2014 based on inflation alone. So if anything, games are much cheaper today for much more content on a man-hour basis.

<comment><USER23> agreed. on a cost to earnings to enjoyment level, you save a few hours salary, buy game for $60, and enjoy it for 10+ hours. its still a deal.

<comment><USER4> Eh. In 2000, paying $50 for a game meant much more than 10+ hours of enjoyment (assuming it was a game you liked). For all the polish and technological prowess of modern games, I think most of us consider them a ripoff because of just how little substantial content and replay value there is in many blockbuster games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> $60 is a misnomer. Games don't cost $60, just like movies don't cost $15/viewing. Games cost $60 for those that want to play them at release time. Gamers who can wait, will pay anywhere from $5-$30 for AAA titles. The economics of games have shifted and new categories have opened up (e.g. freemium) but this kind of pricing is quite reasonable, and I don't really see the author's point.

Furthermore, what's the alternative? Mobile, as a platform, has been out in force for a few years now, and though there are a few gems, I've been largely disappointed with it. Mobile gaming hasn't really evolved into producing true, quality AAA titles.

<comment><USER25> That's part of the problem. The game publisher gets like $30 of that first sale, which for some game represents 10 users when you include the people who buy it used. So the people that fund the game get ~$30 for the game and Gamestop makes $100+. At some point gamestop needs to fund games to keep their business model afloat.

It's better for the publisher to make an online game that can't be resold.

<comment><USER24> I was actually thinking digital sales, like steam and the xbox online store etc. This is a good model. It feels like a healthy ecosystem. Released games are at the $60-70 price-point, which decreased as they gradually migrate into the long-tail of sales.

Gamestop lucked out this console generation when Microsoft caved. I sincerely believe they won't be so lucky next gen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ironically in the case of Bulletstorm it made a ton of sales primarily because the Xbox 360 version included early access to the Gears of War 3 beta. If it wasn't for the backing of Epic Games and EA, the title would likely have tanked. Personally I'm glad it didn't, I loved the game and always thought it was very underrated.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Japanese game industry is a great place to look if you want to see companies that understand this principle. Companies like Atlus (now owned by Sega) are almost as big as any other AAA developer or publisher, but they've flourished by producing concentrated, well-polished semi-niche titles, with (by modern standards) fairly small teams and budgets, and doing it _consistently._ Their games give me a similar feeling to a lot of the games of the 80s and early 90s, which were made by core teams of under a dozen (or even half a dozen) people that were still (unlike modern indie games) supported by large corporations and not just a couple dudes in a basement. It's a "third way" to the game industry (compared to the West, where there seems to be little in-between the indies and the AAAs for whom millions of sales is a failure) that is arguably closer to its roots than either.

</comment><comment><USER27> _cough ahem_ Uh, everyone, the article's headline is a bit deceptive, at least when out of context. It's not about how games should cost less than $60 to the consumer. It's a good article, I suggest reading it before commenting.

(At the time I wrote this, it was on the old title.)

</comment><comment><USER28> I think a big challenge for companies making console games is that now when they're competing with the biggest franchises they're not just competing on graphics and gameplay, they're competing on time. The best selling triple A games have deep multiplayer experiences that can suck gamers in for 40 to over 100 hours. When a gamer plays one game for 100 hours instead of 10 games for 10 hours that means they're buying far fewer games.

Then, even if you make a game witha good multiplayer element, you're still struggling against the tide because you need a big enough player population to keep players engaged. It's the network effect working against you. If all of a given gamer's friends are playing Call of Duty they're less likely to invest in the multiplayer of another game. Or when they do go to another MP game and there aren't many players available for matchmaking, they just give up and move on.

The point was well made in this article that what needs to happen is that the game dev industry needs to set more sane goals and sane budgets. There's not a lot of room for games with $30+ million budgets because of the amount of copies that would have to be sold and the fact that gamers only have so much time to play. The only way to get around that would be to significantly expand the player base, which is not happening.

</comment><comment><USER29> I know this is about price point but I feel that some things are being glossed over a bit - mainly the release date and the competition. At that time Mass Effect 2 was just _killing_ it and all other games were feeling the heat. Other good titles run over at that time included Homefront, Rift, Crysis 2, etc. My memory is a bit vague but I do remember thinking about how terrible they were marketing Bulletstorm.

</comment><comment><USER30> Who pays full price?

For a long time I played the Wii and picked up mostly used games.

Recently I got a Playstation 3 and a Vita and joined Playstation Plus where you get a pretty generous set of free games. These are not the latest blockbusters but instead the really great game they are following up.

On the Vita I haven't bought a single physical game, but I do get good sales offers a lot. For instance, I never would have thought of getting Killzone Mercenary for full price but at $20 it is a awesome game and great value. I liked it so much I bought a used copy of the Killzone Trilogy. Later on there was a sale on Persona 4 Golden and that too was excellent value.

My son tried "Need For Speed Most Wanted" on the Vita and we went looking for PS3 NFS games at Gamestop. I hear "Rivals" is a good game but I can buy him two older games that are quite different for a lot less, have a lot of fun, and even have it written up in GameFAQS!

<comment><USER31> Someone has to buy it at full price for you to get it at a 'used' price. Still, Steam sales and sales in general is how I keep my library full of games I've never played.

<comment><USER32> That's totally untrue :)

If a game sells poorly , there's more pressure to discount it heavily and quickly. But, if you like a game, you should try to buy it at full price as that incentivizes them to make more games "like" it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What's annoying me with the article/opinions expressed, is that AAA games should have multiplayer.

I think it's annoying, and I'm always thinking about what would have made it to the game if they didn't spend time and money tacking multiplayer on top.

Obviously I must have a pretty unpopular opinion since all the new games have multiplayer now :(

</comment><comment><USER34> Since people have complained about the article title, we've changed the post to use the subtitle instead.</comment>


The Three Projections of Doctor Futamura (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigfpe.com/2009/05/three-projections-of-doctor-futamura.html <comment><USER2> For a second, I read "Doctor Futurama".

<comment><USER3> I read that consistently until I saw your comment</comment></comment>


A few new papers by Robert Harper - <AUTHOR> http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/a-few-new-papers/

<comment><USER2> The link to "Cache Efficient Functional Algorithms" on the linked to page is wrong, it should be [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/papers/iolambda- cacm/cacm.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/papers/iolambda-cacm/cacm.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> This guy is so prolific, it's truly astounding. And nearly every paper is a gem.</comment>


Groovy should have a clear governance structure - <AUTHOR> http://kohsuke.org/2015/01/20/groovy-project-should-have-a-clear-governance-structure/

<comment><USER2> > Is the name "Groovy" trademarked? If so, who owns it? How about the domain > name? How is the decision making done? Who becomes committers?

Groovy 1.0 had a copyright message saying Groovy was a registered trademark of Codehaus. However, I couldn't find it in the online U.S. trademark query service at the time, and in Groovy 1.5 the notice had been removed. When Groovy's creator James Strachan left the project, he still refered to Groovy at Codehaus as the "current reference implementation" in his last ever mailing list posting.

Codehaus currently lists 5 people as "despots" [1] viz Jochen Theodorou, Guillaume Laforge, Paul King, Ben Walding, and Cedric Champeau. One of them, Laforge, has always claimed to be the "Project Manager" but recently started pitching himself as the "creator". Another, Theodorou, claims to be the "Tech Lead", although Laforge stopped using that title for Theodorou after Champeau was employed by SpringSource/Pivotal 3 yrs ago. Another despot, Walding, is the Codehaus administrator who has nothing to do with Groovy, and Groovy is the only project that has him listed as a despot.

Groovy isn't only losing its Pivotal funding but also its Codehaus repository soon: "Codehaus hasn't made an announcement yet, but contacted some of us privately so far. But they mentioned a mid-February deadline, after which _all_ projects will have to have been migrated elsewhere. Everything hosted at Codehaus will disappear. JIRA, website, mailing-lists, Git/SVN, Bamboo..." [2] Some of the developers are promoting a new internet address [3] but I don't know who controls it.

I'd agree that the ownership problems related to the brand, codebase, support, channels, and what not, makes the whole mess is a legal nightmare. Pivotal obviously decided simply terminating funding was more profitable than trying to split off a separate business and sell it all to someone else.

[1] [https://xircles.codehaus.org/projects/groovy/members](https://xircles.codehaus.org/projects/groovy/members) [2] [http://groovy.329449.n5.nabble.com/GPars-Web-site- revolution...](http://groovy.329449.n5.nabble.com/GPars-Web-site-revolution- help-sought-tt5722181.html#a5722194) [3] [http://www.groovy- lang.org/](http://www.groovy-lang.org/)</comment>


Prison without guards or weapons in Brazil - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-44056946 <comment><USER2> The problem to think in those `Apac`s as a better way to the prisional system in Brazil is that it cant be take in the whole country.

It's easier to keep the desired inmate's behaviour in an Apac because they select who they want (so, they can avoid someone who might bring trouble, an option that the entire system doesn't has); another point is the inmate's fear in going back to a "normal" prison.

I live in Brazil, and discussions related to Apac already happened in some groups that fight for humans right, and I've never seen one of them thinking in Apac as a solution to our prisional system.

<comment><USER3> But conversely, in Norway at least the possibility of being transfered to open prisons like this is a motivation for many prisoners to behave better as well. It doesn't need to solve the problem alone.

<comment><USER4> So motivation to avoid prison altogether doesn't work (given the need for prisons) but prisoners _will_ be motivated by the possibility of transfer to a better prison? Not sure.

<comment><USER5> When you're caught you're caught, when you're in you'll want to make your stay as pleasant as possible.

Crime reporting and solving rates are relatively low, so most people get away with it [1]; only half the crimes are reported, and of those, less than half again (for violent crimes) or less than a fifth (for property theft) are solved. Statistically speaking you have less than 10% chance of getting arrested, and depending on the crime, even less chance of getting convicted.

So yeah, your odds of not going to jail when committing a crime are pretty good.

[1]: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/01/most- violent...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/01/most-violent-and- property-crimes-in-the-u-s-go-unsolved/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't help but dream that private prisons could do like this and save money on guards, cooking, property, etc.. housing aggressive prisoners have got to be expensive, compared to housing non-aggressive ones.

I guess that either (a) regulation mandates security / poor conditions, or (b) nobody is quite crazy enough to try and make money by disrupting the private prison business :)

<comment><USER7> In Norway, we tend to follow a non-aggressive approach to prison and despite much higher standards than say in the US, the cost per prisoner isn't significantly higher.

Prison guards in Norway are essentially university educated social workers. American prison guards from what I've read are essentially just guys with a stick. They just get a couple of weeks of training.

Guards in Norway work closely with prisoners and do activities with them and get to know them. This leads to lower levels of aggression. I've seen accounts of other European visiting Norwegian prisons remarking how much more calm the atmosphere is.

When you lock up people and treat them as animals you create anger, resentment and aggression which they take out on each other or the guards if given the opportunity.

I believe this is a principle which applies to all walks of life including how you raise children. Children who live under strict regimes which are heavily focused on punishment don't act well. They easily become violent and lack self control.

If there is always an overwhelming force present to punish every transgression you make, all you learn is to be behave when you are under threat. When that control is gone you have no ability to control yourself.

<comment><USER8> How do Norway prisons deal with formation of gangs, which are essentially small businesses that seek to "disrupt" the prison economy?

<comment><USER9> Norway has a relatively low level of crime, it's probably a factor in their successful prison system

<comment><USER10> And their successful prison system is a factor in the relatively low level of crime.

<comment><USER8> But why aren't gangs forming in Norway? Lack of poverty? Lack of substantial immigration?

In other words, why isn't MS13 infiltrating Norway, if there's no competition for their illegal activities?

In the United States, for instance, there's a huge market for gang formation, and gangs thrive despite constant fighting for territory.

<comment><USER4> What's Norway's current stance on immigration? Depending on that, they may be finding out about gangs soon.

<comment><USER11> Norway immigrant population - 16.7%, US - under 15% (incl. "illegal" immigrants).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If this were done to the least violent, least likely to be a problem inmates, it would be largely white collar criminals.

I wonder how people would feel about that given name liked Club Fed are already thrown around.

<comment><USER13> How's that attitude been working out for them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What a wonderful story. Nobody flees from love, indeed.

This is an idea with tangible value. Not just for Brazil, either.

<comment><USER15> But (not) fleeing from discipline is not such a guaranteed win.

This model is good for non-violent inmates, but it doesn't work for all cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great, too bad due process is a joke in Brazil.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not disagreeing with you, I'm just American and uninformed. Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER17> It is horribly inefficient and takes way too long. Even if a judge decides something, people may simply appeal to a higher court. This can go on and on until they run out of either courts or money. I've read about legal cases that began in 2002 and only finished in 2013. It is likely that the defendant will be free during this time. Also, prison sentences are 30 years maximum.

American legal system seems to move much faster. They apparently encourage people to make deals and bargains rather than risk legal defeat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everything is perfect with the absence of conflict. Throw conflict in the mix and it falls apart quite quickly.</comment>


Chinese city to launch man-made moon to light up skies - <AUTHOR> http://www.atimes.com/article/chinese-city-to-launch-man-made-moon-to-light-up-skies/ <comment> T-A Relevant math here:

[http://jxcrystals.com/publications/Mirrors_in_Dawn_Dusk_Orbi...](http://jxcrystals.com/publications/Mirrors_in_Dawn_Dusk_Orbit_AIAA_Tech_Conf_Final_2013.pdf)

Money quote: "Applying this formula for a mirror in orbit at an altitude of 4200 km gives a sun spot diameter on earth of 42 km".

The report claims "The satellite would be able to light an area with a diameter of 10 to 80 kilometers, while the precise illumination range can be controlled within a few dozen meters", so either it's in a lower sun- synchronous orbit [1] (and maybe there is more than one) or it's a parabolic reflector [2] with controllable focal length, and there is no cause for concern. [3]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun- synchronous_orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit)

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

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

<comment><USER2> And they're assuming $0.1 per kWh, which is ok for the US, but could mean faster ROI around the world.

[https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average- elect...](https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity- prices-kwh.html)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the-...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the- price-of-electricity-in-your-state)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Colour me moonglow sceptical blue. At an altitude of 500km these 'moons' would cross the sky in a few minutes. Geosynchronous orbit is about 35,000km, but at that distance any artificial satellite would need to be vast to cast any significant light. Regular satellites at that distance aren't naked-eye visible.

This report is, at best, seriously garbled.

<comment><USER4> They can be visible its just relatively rare and only happens at certain times of the year depending on altitude when the solar panels line up. Flares like these are pretty much just a tiny accidental version of this already, something intentionally designed and controlled to produce them would in theory be pretty easy.

My main thought is how well will this deal with the thrust that large of a mirror will be producing. It will essentially be a solar sail. Maybe they plan to rotate it during the day to provide the thrust to put it back into position?

[https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/530024-geostationary- sate...](https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/530024-geostationary-satellite- flare/)

<comment><USER3> Interesting thanks, I didn't realise they ever got that bright. I've also captured geosynchronous satellites when imaging the Orion Nebula, they show up as parallel tracks.

There is a big difference between producing a visible flare and actually providing illumination at that distance, that would require a huge surface. My best guess is that the original press release was talking about a paper project rather than anything there are any real plans to do.

<comment><USER4> There a large difference is but those flares are all produced by relatively small surfaces that aren't designed to reflect significant amounts of light (quite the opposite in fact) and a purpose built device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am sure the astronomy community will be thrilled... Infinite light pollution.

<comment> nevi-me I was thinking the same thing. I don't know how much light they will emit, but as someone who grew up in a village with very little light pollution; even something like a "satellite light" results in some pollution.

I used to be able to see many constellations with the naked eye, until they put up 3 lights that are about 20m tall. My astronomy interest has waned as I can't see much with the lights. Now cue the "moons"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what the impact will be on wildlife that depends on the hours of darkness?

<comment><USER4> If it works as intended it should be mostly focused over the city so the effects will be a lot lower than if they were illuminating a random patch of forest. I doubt they're particularly concerned with the environmental impacts though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, until now, "light pollution" meant artificial sources. (i.e. with different colour and spectrum signatures such as CFLs, LEDs, etc.) Florida Atlantic University studies the impact of light pollution on plants[1] and animals[2] but I suspect many studies only partially apply to something like what Chengdu is doing because significant solar (or lunar) light pollution hasn't been available to study.

Just a few concerns off the top of my head that I hope Chengdu will consider or at least study if it moves forward with this: circadian patterns, melatonin production, restful sleep, feeding patterns of nighttime predators (even in cities) including exhaustion of food sources (e.g. insects) that would naturally be difficult to find.

Well this will probably improve human and traffic safety, but seriously hurt astronomy and dark sky appreciation for those who live there. And it's a given that all-seeing surveillance footage resolution will be improved!

[1] [http://cescos.fau.edu/observatory/lightpol- Plants.html](http://cescos.fau.edu/observatory/lightpol-Plants.html)

[2] [http://cescos.fau.edu/observatory/lightpol- environ.html](http://cescos.fau.edu/observatory/lightpol-environ.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a closer-to-ground design from over a century ago: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower)

<comment><USER9> And a reflective one: [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/10/using-giant- mirror...](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/10/using-giant-mirrors-to- light-up-dark-valleys/100613/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Every satellite I've seen crosses the sky in seconds. How does an orbiting mirror provide consistent illumination? Can it orbit as show as the rotation of the Earth and still maintain an orbit?

<comment><USER11> Yes, a satellite can appear to cross the sky as slowly as you want it to if the altitude is correct. This is how geostationary satellites (like the GPS and many communications ones) work - they are at the right altitude so that they are orbiting the earth at the same speed it rotates.

<comment><USER12> GPS is not geostationary, it's in a MEO about 12k miles up (GEO is about 22k miles) and they orbit about twice a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds good in theory but would be interesting to know how prevalent cloud cover is in the city.

<comment><USER10> Or smog

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if there's more than meets the eye behind this?

<comment><USER15> "That's no moon...."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone seen Goldeneye recently? Great movie.

</comment><comment><USER17> Vegeta did it first.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cf. Austin, Texas.</comment>


Let's sunset C/C++ - <AUTHOR> http://trevorjim.com/lets-sunset-c-c++/ <comment><USER2> Excuse my french, but: What a load of bullshit.

It's not the language, it's the tools.

Add a static analyzer pass to each C/C++ compiler which is switched on by default. Add clang-address-sanitizer-style code when compiling in debug mode, and also offer runtime checks as option for release-compiled code. Both combined would have caught 99% of memory safety issues that pop up now and then.

If necessary extend the language with optional ownership keywords a'la Rust, and allow me to switch off features I don't require to reduce complexity.

Most important of all: provide options that I don't need to pay at runtime for memory safety with precious CPU cycles.

<comment><USER3> No need to panic, nobody is coming to take your precious pointer arithmetic away. If you want to write unsafe code, go ahead. But we also have to acknowledge that we as a profession are not able to write secure code in C/C++. We're talking about classes of security bugs that just don't exist in managed languages. Bugs that can't happen in languages like Rust either because it forces programmers to indicate ownership and lifetime of memory.

There's always a trade-off between performance and security, but with better tooling support the price for secure code will be very low. Right now security is bad because we look at security as a feature. As something that is added to a project, instead of as something that guides the entire design.

Your suggestion that static analysis can fix this is wildly optimistic, because C/C++ code for a modern browser uses memory pools, pointer arithmetic, just-in-time compilation, and shared memory between object instances, threads and processes and so on. It's hugely complex, and correctness can't be verified with some sort of static analyzer or with added runtime checks.

<comment><USER4> >But we also have to acknowledge that we as a profession are not able to write secure code in C/C++.

You can't write safe code in any Turing complete language. That's the whole point of Turing completeness. The only reason why memory attacks are as common as they are is because C like languages are the most popular ones.

If we replaced everything written with C to a "safe" language like, I don't know Haskell?, we'd have just as many zero day exploits of the monads within programs.

<comment><USER3> There is a huge difference between a program that computes the wrong answer and one that corrupts memory, hijacks a shell, and installs a rootkit.

Javascript is turing complete but it's trivial to write a (slow) javascript interpreter in Python that allows anybody to run any javascript program without any risk to their machine. No memory attacks possible. To privilege escalation possible. No unchecked stack overflows. The system would be sandboxed and secure. It will just work or fail gracefully.

It's only when we increase the complexity of our runtimes a thousand fold and when we cut corners to squeeze out higher performance that all the nasty vulnerabilities start to creep in.

<comment><USER5> For pure Java perhaps. But native code is inevitable, and it has no such protection. So in practice Java is not a lot of protection.

<comment><USER6> I didn't understand how Java relates to his comment about JavaScript + Python.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, its because I'm an idiot. Anyway, secure languages use native code, and that's still a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is quite ignorant of why C/C++ is used.

It is used for that exact memory control and access that this article demonizes so that we can have efficient and thought out systems.

When those systems aren't well thought out or secure you have security issues. C/C++ lets you build a wobbly treehouse _and_ a secure fortress. It is up to the developer which one is made...

<comment><USER8> A place where your reasoning breaks down is when one comes to define "the developer".

There are a few legendary developers in the world I would trust to write secure C/C++. Others may be able to do so, by luck.

Would I trust an organization of 2000 people all developing the same large code base? I know there are processes that can be adopted, such as using clever static analysis tools and rigorous review by security professionals.

But time and time again, the community says "Yay, we've invented X, this makes a huge class of security bugs obsolete". Then Y comes along and opens the playing field again. (e.g, X=Data execution prevention, Y=Return oriented programming).

This keeps happening. It takes some arrogance to believe that a safe large system can be built in an unsafe language, these days.

<comment><USER9> This will happen regardless of C or C++.

<comment><USER8> I agree with this and bilbo0s. There exists no panacea. But C/C++ leave a lot of unholstered footguns lying around to play with :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So what language to you propose we use to rewrite all video and audio software? Javascript, Lua, Brainfuck, what? Sure make every numeric value a double, nobody ever wants a char. Don't allow contiguous blocks of memory. Or if you do check every access is within the bounds. Its all safe! Nobody cares that suddenly we can't decode an MP3 in realtime.

Are you going to outlaw assembly too?

What utter insanity.

<comment><USER11> I suppose the answer would be Rust or similar because they _aim_ to be as fast as C/++; however, that is currently only a goal and most certainly not the reality (according to some source I read a month or two back that I can no longer find).

I also hope to end C/++, but it's simply not time _yet._

<comment><USER12> Please show me how to implement a graph library without using unsafe in Rust.

<comment><USER13> This argument is very flawed, since you are _forced_ to use `unsafe` when you need anything communicating to the outside world (which includes, obviously, `println!`). The very point of Rust is to limit the unsafe surface, not to completely eliminate that.

<comment><USER12> First of all a graph library does not communicate with the outside world.

My point was that even for the ubiquitous task of implementing a graph structure, unsafe is necessary.

So while Rust may provide a clean separation between unsafe and safe code (enforced by the type system), the original problem remains: How do we ensure correctness of the unsafe parts of the code.

<comment><USER13> For what it's worth (and I intentionally didn't point this out in the parent), you _can_ make a safe graph library in Rust with a typed arena (slightly less ergonomic and faster) or a refcounted smart pointer (slightly more ergonomic and slower). But this still does not validate your point, since the memory allocator is in many cases unsafe.

On how to ensure correctness of the `unsafe` code: that was what we were doing with the entire C/C++ code for decades, so what's the problem? We could however concentrate on the much less amount of code if we were using safer languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ugh... these kinds of extreme posts really piss me off. Yes, C is unsafe. Yes, there are safer higher level languages, but there's a reason C is used. Because it's _REALLY_ freaking fast, and allows you to actually tune how memory is used.

The issue with C is not the language itself. It's the complexity of the project. Once a project reaches a certain size, no programmer will be able to keep the entire thing in their head at one time. That's why the bugs appear.

I have no issue with saying that C is hard to work with in giant projects. If you have an issue with that, write the sections of code that bottleneck in C, and then glue them together with a higher level language (I personally like Lua for this).

Also, the post is mainly complaining about security issues for Chrome. Assuming Chrome is rewritten in Rust or Go, will these security issues vanish? Of course not. Bugs (especially security bugs) will exist in all software, whether it's written in C or Ruby.

So the results of rewriting all C code in the world is: slower, less optimized code and continued existence of security bugs. Sounds great.

<comment><USER15>
      > Assuming Chrome is rewritten in Rust or Go, will these security
      > issues vanish? Of course not

It's true that they will never _vanish_, but all of the ones related to memory safety, which are the ones the article focuses on, shouldn't happen in Rust:

      > 70% of the high-risk bugs in Chrome 44 would have been prevented
      > if Chrome were written in a memory-safe language instead of C/C++.

(it's true that it's not 100%, because someone could still write bad code in an unsafe block, but that's a _significant_ reduction in the surface area, which should lead to a similar reduction in errors.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "I don't see many people in the security industry taking up this call..."

[http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0324/](http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0324/) [Criticizing the Rust Language, and Why C/C++ Will Never Die ]

"It is crystal clear for every sane programmer that C/C++ is not going to die in the nearest future. No one is going to rewrite almost all of the existing desktop applications, operating system kernels, compilers, game and browser engines, virtual machines, databases, archivers, audio and video codecs, tons of other C-libraries, and so on and so forth, into other languages. This is a huge mass of fast, debugged, and time-proven code. Rewriting it is way, way too expensive, risky, and, honestly, doesn't seem to make sense except in the heads of the most frantic Rust fans. The demand for C/C++ programmers has always been high and will remain so for a long time to come."

Seems like just more proselytizing from Rust fans looking to expand their ranks. Of course more people in the security industry are not taking up this call, because it is a ridiculous suggestion.

<comment><USER17> To the point that Intel has poured millions of dollars into researching how to make C code safe.

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/introduction-to- in...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/introduction-to-intel-memory- protection-extensions)

This is the real cost of language features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses". -Bjarne

</comment><comment><USER19> Another way to look at it: the ones that can write that software are still chosing C/C++. The ones who would like to use Haskell/Rust/Java are discussing online.. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> C still got a right to exist even in the very sensitive mission-critical environments, as long as MISRA requirements are followed (and, the good thing is that they can be automatically enforced).

<comment><USER17> MISRA makes C look like Ada with C syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Secure software can be written in C or C++ (they are two different languages BTW). For example, OpenBSD and OpenSSH. Both are written in C and both have very good security records.

<comment><USER17> You are joking in regards to OpenSSH right?

<comment><USER21> No, not at all. It's likely the most secure remote access software that you could use.

[http://www.openssh.com/security.html](http://www.openssh.com/security.html)

<comment><USER17> Except when it isn't

[http://www.saintcorporation.com/cgi- bin/demo_tut.pl?tutorial...](http://www.saintcorporation.com/cgi- bin/demo_tut.pl?tutorial_name=OpenSSH_vulnerabilities.html)

[http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-97/pr...](http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-97/product_id-585/version_id-121223/Openbsd-Openssh-5.3.html)

<comment><USER16> Any secure remote access software is the most secure, except when it isn't. This is a tautology, doesn't reveal any deep insight.

<comment><USER17> The point being that the amount of available exploits shows it is far from being secure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> To this, I can only agree. I love C and I can write secure software in it, but the costs of doing that are generally not worthwhile in today's market (if they ever were).

C will still have a place in its niche, but it shouldn't be considered the standard general-purpose language any more.

Our processors have gotten so fast we can run slow-motion versions without even noticing (smartphone & tablet CPUs), so don't tell me anything other than C would be "too slow".

C is unbeatable as long as riding rodeo on your raw CPU is all you could ever want. But software has evolved, mankind's dependency on software has evolved, and so have our expectations & standards. It's time to learn the lesson and move on.

<comment><USER23> Niche? C and Java are the most used languages in the world!

<comment><USER22> Niche as in "where it makes sense to use it because the strengths of the language support your important goals and the weaknesses don't kill you" as opposed to using it because it's one of the most used languages in the world.

<comment><USER23> Which emphasizes my point. There are few places where C's strength is not prevalent and its weaknesses won't kill you.

<comment><USER22> Depending on your skill, which is a scarce resource in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article claims that the problem with Flash is not so much Flash itself, but that it's written in C/C++. It "proves" the point by listing a bunch of high-profile exploits in various other systems, then repeats the claim that C/C++ is the problem, and advocates abandoning C/C++.

That's... not exactly proof. It's barely even evidence.

Yes, you can argue "all these programs have all these flaws, and all are written in C/C++". And that's true. They are written in C/C++, and they have these flaws.

Now let's look at the programs that do the same kinds of things, and are as widely used, and are _not_ written in C/C++, and compare the number of exploits... oh, you don't have a handy list of equivalent programs to compare? Go work on that; I'll wait.

The fundamental problem is that these programs are trying to safely handle hostile input, with attackers having essentially infinite time to experiment and craft attacks, including attacks that the authors didn't know that they needed to defend against at the time the code and/or the spec were written.

Would the whole world be safer if everything were at least written in Java? Yes, it might be _safer_ , but not _safe_. And it would take more resources, and often take longer to start up. And it would be vulnerable to bugs in the design and implementation of the JVM, which would become a single point of failure for a lot of software. That world would, perhaps, be somewhat safer, but it wouldn't be the security paradise that the article envisions.

Not everyone is a fool who doesn't use the tools you think are best...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think a lot of comments in this thread are too harsh. I am a C programmer myself and see the value of it in embedded systems, operating system kernels etc.

While it is possible to write correct programs in C and C++ (which are very different languages, but usually mentioned together because of their names and history), it is too easy to make mistakes that are not caught by the compiler. It is easier to be sloppy in C than in say, Go or Rust. I have seen this in my own code and also in others' code.

C is not the only way to write system programs. Oberon, Inferno are good examples of OS environments written in safer languages.

But I agree that some of the disadvantages of C are also its advantages.

The author of the blog post has more followup posts:

      http://trevorjim.com/why-safe-languages-are-the-best-way-to-achieve-memory-safety/
      http://trevorjim.com/an-unsafe-legacy/
      http://trevorjim.com/unsafe-at-any-speed/

[edit: fix typos, rephrase a few sentences, fix links]

</comment><comment><USER25> C++11 is pretty "memory safe". But obviously it allows the programmer go low- level and deal with dangling pointers if he/she wants. After all, the programmer/engineer is supposed to be a professional that can handle these things and make autonomous decisions.

<comment><USER17> Exactly!

When I use C++ alone, I use it like e.g. Ada or C#.

When I use C++ in a team, I cry how they make it C with a C++ compiler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As of yet, a browser (in particular the JavaScript JIT) cannot be implemented in a safe language.

It is not even clear how a safe language that would permit this would look like.

Thinking that banning C/C++ magically solves all problems is naive.

<comment><USER26> > It is not even clear how a safe language that would permit this would look > like.

If this hypothetical browser is implemented in a safe language that runs on a JIT-compiled environment itself, then it could compile JS to that same safe language and allow that same runtime environment to JIT-compile the resulting compiled JS.

Would that make sense? (I have no empirical data to back this up, but i'd like to know if at least hypothetically this approach could work)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "This is a huge job"

I don't think the author fully appreciates just _how_ huge, and how many new bugs would be introduced by rewrites on that scale. It might be reasonable to say C/C++ should be deprecated for new projects, but truly vast amounts of C/C++ will remain with us for the foreseeable future. Perhaps a better approach would be to ease integration of new code written in memory-safe languages with older code written in C/C++, which tends to be tedious at best nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER28> C++ is safe enough, provided you use the tools like Intel Inspector, valgrind, and static analyzers. With C++11 memory corruptions became a somewhat rare occurence.

<comment><USER17> Which most developers actually don't use, specially the 9-5 developers.

<comment><USER28> Indeed. C++ is incredibly fragmented, I guess that could cause its demise before safety becomes an actual concern for language choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm confused when the author says the DOM is garbage collected only in IE/Blink. How is DOM memory managed elsewhere? At first guess, I thought the JavaScript runtime (which surely always uses garbage collection) would manage the DOM, but I'm guessing that's not actually the case. Who is typically in charge of memory management at that layer?

<comment><USER15> Spidermonkey has a GC which manages DOM objects, so yeah, that claim would appear false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there even an operating system not written in asm/C/C++ to run these "secure" non-C/C++ applications?

<comment><USER15> You only need a tiny bit of asm to have an operating system in Rust. No C required.

<comment><USER30> Is there an OS yet in Rust though? Google tells me about these projects: [https://github.com/ryanra/RustOS](https://github.com/ryanra/RustOS) [http://scialex.github.io/reenix.pdf](http://scialex.github.io/reenix.pdf)

<comment><USER15> There are a number of hobby projects, but nothing you'd want to use in production yet. That of course doesn't really change the amount of assembly needed.

(Also, there's been a lot of rumbling about MirageOS, see [https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/unikernels-in- rust/2494](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/unikernels-in-rust/2494) and the linked MirageOS mailing list thread)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I do appreciate a good troll once in a while but they shouldn't rise to the top page of HN. It gives them ideas above their station.

I have a burning question tough, What pray tell safe language would you use to write the original garbage collector, because Garbage collecting is only a form of abstracting good pointer practices away, helping programmers write complex programs easily.

<comment><USER32> Who said anything about a garbage collector?

[https://www.rust-lang.org/](https://www.rust-lang.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If it's a joke it is quite good.

Your post is full of memory leaks, can you rewrite it with a better language... Please.

</comment><comment><USER34> garbage collection makes not a language safe

</comment><comment><USER35> Absurdly absurd ideas and ramblings. I suppose we can write our "safe languages" in "safe languages" then we'll never have need of really programming anything ourselves. We can simply pat together what ever is "safe" for us to do in our little play sandbox and act like we're adults who understand the problems faced when programming in "real" languages.

This would be similar to replacing all automobiles with stuffed animals because, who in the world ever heard of stuffed animals getting into pile-up wreaks on the freeway and causing death misery and misfortune.

<comment><USER36> Rule 20.4 (required): Dynamic heap memory allocation shall not be used.

Good luck writing misra-compliant web browser.

And yes, safe languages can be written in safe languages. See rust and servo.

<comment><USER20> > Good luck writing misra-compliant web browser.

I'd be delighted to see one. Statically pre-allocating a large continuous chunk of memory for the whole browser process lifetime would have been great.

<comment><USER37> And then, what do you do with that chunk? Since the amount of memory you need depends on the website (e.g. some might need memory for a canvas, others might display large tables, etc.), presumably you take parts of it and allocate them for the various tasks you need to do? So you just write your own dynamic memory allocator.

<comment><USER20> > So you just write your own dynamic memory allocator.

If the entire pool is reclaimed once page is rendered (and there is a way to handle the running out of space condition) it may not count as a rule violation, no more than incrementing an array index counter.

And, browser is hardly a mission-critical appliance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My problem with this article and its statement is that it's saying to "sunset" C/C++ because it causes problems but the problems are caused by an incompetent user, not C.

I see so many articles complaining about C letting you shoot yourself in the foot but no one who would shoot themselves in the foot should be handling a gun.

"You know you wouldn't have so many splatters on that painting, Mr. Pollock, if you would just let a computer handle that brush for you!"</comment>