Show HN: Gin – Golang Martini-like web framework - <AUTHOR> http://gin-gonic.github.io/gin/ <comment><USER2> Real-time code reloading from the author of Martini: Gin - [https://github.com/codegangsta/gin](https://github.com/codegangsta/gin).

Quite an unfortunate choice of name.

<comment><AUTHOR> As author of Gin, I like Gin(the drink) and the martini framework, it was a clear decision to me. I did not know about the existence of codegangsta/gin, I just discovered it with your comment :) You are right, definitely it was not the best choice.

<comment><USER3> Maybe he was referring to something like this? [http://youtu.be/wDIiPIJmXcE](http://youtu.be/wDIiPIJmXcE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does it compare to Negroni + httprouter? I see Gin uses httprouter and I guess it is the main difference.

Anyway, Gin looks nice too. I like how the routing groups are done.

I used Negroni with httprouter and it is a bliss. Just a note, gin is also a codegangsta tool to live reload your Martini/Negroni app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course you could use Negroni with Gin. Anyway, Gin is a full-featured framework on top of httpRouter, I will explain this later (eventually I would like to merge both in the future, removing one abstraction layer and tunning the performance).

Gin is also a better fit for httpRouter, it's not designed to fit any other framework. I wanted Gin to share the same philosophy than HttpRouter. Basically the Gin/HttpRouter community cares about performance, so you don't. For example in Gin, you can created thousands of nested groups and the performance will be still the same.

Gin is full-featured, to me it means: control flow, middlewares, error management (errors and panics both), easy rendering, easy validation, easy data passing between middlewares. For example you can collect errors (not only panics) and then send them to Sentry easily.

The control flow is interesting: if a middleware calls c.Abort(code) or c.Fail(code, message), the rest handlers in the chain would never be called, this is very useful when authorisation is required. [https://github.com/gin- gonic/gin/blob/master/auth.go#L76](https://github.com/gin- gonic/gin/blob/master/auth.go#L76)

Of course authorisation can be just applied to a group, you can see example in the github page. Per-group middlwares and even per-request middlewares!

We added all that features without making it significantly slower (compared to httprouter) and for sure that overhead will be reduced in upcoming releases (no API changes). If you want to use HttpRouter and you also want cool features, in my opinion Gin is one of the best choices. Just try it.

<comment><USER4> I don't think Negroni and Gin will mix well</pun>

I implemented almost the same features as Negroni's middlewares [0] in my project (a backend for grassroots referendums). I was even asked to do a Sentry middleware [1] to improve it.

I would advise you against merging projects. It would be great if you separate the route grouping code and release it as an independent library to build on httprouter (even merging them) and keep Gin as it is.

Although, my question was performance-wise because I think Negroni will be similar in performance.

[0] [https://github.com/imdario/minshu/blob/master/minshu- server/...](https://github.com/imdario/minshu/blob/master/minshu- server/http.go) [1] [https://github.com/imdario/minshu/issues/1](https://github.com/imdario/minshu/issues/1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dear god, can we please stop saying "Golang" before it's too late?

<comment><USER6> Damage is already done, just look at the comments in every HN discussion thread.

Apparently people are too lazy to write "Go Programming Language" on their searches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks neat. Very I think it was a smart choice to pick an existing HTTP router. Like was mentioned above, the name was unfortunately used beforehand. [https://github.com/codegangsta/gin](https://github.com/codegangsta/gin)

</comment><comment><USER8> Thank you for your efforts. Some people may be giving you flack for "making just another Go web framework", but I wouldn't even be looking at a Go web framework if it was using reflection. Sometimes, you just don't want to pay the performance tax of reflection. I'd actually reckon that the use of reflection is a common reason for why you see alternate implementations of many libraries (i.e. JSON encoders)

</comment><comment><USER9> Check out some middleware and a benchmark suite test at [https://github.com/gin-gonic](https://github.com/gin-gonic)

<comment><USER10> Looks like the actual results are not updated/included in the readme though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will ask to the original creator of the benchmark suite to run the tests again. My development environment is very different, adding the results for Gin would mean that I should change all the results.

Just a tip, to compare martini with Gin, you can run this:

go test --bench="(Gin|Martini)"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Firefox user. I see the first chart, but all the content sections after that are blank.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! I think I fixed it, does it work now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks excellent! I'll be using this for a little API idea I have.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why didn't you just contribute to Martini and fix the parts that sucked? It just feels odd to me to re-invent a web framework, utilizing the same interfaces so it's the same to people who use it, yet it's a completely different code base and project.

It seems you could have just helped codegangsta along instead of "yet another web framework in Go."

<comment><AUTHOR> I can explain that.

First. Martini uses reflection, it's IMPOSSIBLE to make it as fast as Gin without removing all the reflection. Obviously it would break all the API, __it would not be Martini anymore __.

Martini is not slow because a bug, it's slow by design.

Second, Gin uses the fastest http router available, HttpRouter. I strongly believe that people should use HttpRouter, it will work perfect for you unless you need regex to validate the URL. The problem is that HttpRouter is not strongly featured, it lacks things like groups, middlwares, error management, control flow, rendering...

One requirement for my startup was high performance, HttpRouter was the best choice, we added a very lightweight system on top of it, so developers are happier.

The final results, from 20x to 40x times the performance.

As I said, if you need performance and productivity Gin is probably a good way to go :) I hope it was useful.

<comment><USER13> That's fair. If the change is too big or you can't agree on the changes, there's not much to do. It may have still been possible to do a big rework of Martini or even just deprecate Martini and move to Gin...idk.

I just hate "yet another xxx in yyy" projects, but I'm not downplaying the work involved.

<comment><USER14> > It may have still been possible to do a big rework of Martini or even just > deprecate Martini and move to Gin...idk.

But again, this project (Gin) is completely unrelated to Martini. Martini itself is not that old; deprecating it would be pretty poor form given that refactoring your project to work with Gin would be A Big Deal.

If the author had forked Martini your argument would have made more sense, but we shouldn't be afraid of building something new just because someone else broke similar ground before.

<comment><USER13> Well, this is a tangent anyway. The main point was "why another go web framework" then he gave a better clarification. As you watch new languages spread, it's amazing how many web frameworks pop up. It's happening to Go and Node. I also inferred that Gin intentionally mimicked the Martini API so as to have a small learning curve and be a potential drop-in replacement.

You say deprecating it is poor form, yet this guy just built a "better" version of the framework and says we should switch to it. I don't see how that's any classier than just saying "Martini sucks."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SEC Steps Up Probe of Pre-IPO Share Trading - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-steps-up-probe-of-pre-ipo-share-trading-1449020518 <comment><USER2> [https://www.google.com/#q=SEC+Steps+Up+Probe+of+Pre- IPO+Shar...](https://www.google.com/#q=SEC+Steps+Up+Probe+of+Pre- IPO+Share+Trading) to bypass paywall.</comment>


"Regarding What's Been Happening"- Ooblets Response to Epic Games Store Backlash - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@perplamps/regarding-whats-been-happening-3af0f27d863c <comment><USER2> This should be ranking higher. This is one of the most disturbing things I've seen on the internet, in that it showcases the complete lack of empathy the "gamers" have for these two, actual real life human beings. It's turned into a virtual lynch mob over which game launcher they decided to use.

Some of the responses to that post are literally calling them crybabies because they're complaining about death threats and saying they should have anticipated that because "they offended gamers".

And I don't care how rude or offensive their original announcement was, have some damn sympathy when people receive hundreds of death threats.

</comment><comment><USER3> Obligatory flag, but I do want to know why there is an uproar in the first place? Were players in some way invested in the game's development process? This is not mentioned anywhere.

Here's an article from TNW with a different perspective:

[https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2019/08/07/indie-developers- de...](https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2019/08/07/indie-developers-death- threats-ooblets-epic-exclusive/)

<comment><USER2> They had a patreon account, and had supporters who donated money for them to work on the game. But being a patron did NOT mean you were entitled to a free game. Some people seem to conflate Patreon and Kickstarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the reddit response, in which gamers demonstrate that they're still the worst people on the internet.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/cmsuiu/ooblets_devs_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/cmsuiu/ooblets_devs_respond_to_the_backlash_received/)</comment>


Ecommerce Businesses and Competing Against Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cedemo/can-retailers-still-compete-against-amazon-5-amazon-innovations-you-can-copy-5476fab2f98b <comment><USER2> I hope there is a place for "self hosted" Amazon, like medium, good reading experience you can put on your domain and overlay personal branding on top of it</comment>


Most People Hate the Electoral College, but It's Not Going Away Soon - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-people-hate-the-electoral-college-but-its-not-going-away-soon/ <comment><USER2> The Electoral College is only hated by Democrats because it would unfairly give the coasts with the largest cities (New York and California) an unfair advantage in all future elections...which just happen to be completely Democrat.

I, for one, don't want the those two states dictating law for the entire US. The system is not perfect, but human nature has not changed in 200 years, and the founders were brilliant when it was designed.

I would have accepted either candidate because this is how a free nation works. You vote, and the results might not be what you like.

The Democrats need to clean their wounds, figure out why they lost, and actually learn the needs of the people. CNN and many of the other MSM has even tried to pass Trump's win off as uneducated white men and women, which couldn't be further from the truth.

My Facebook feed has been filled with some of the most hypocritical and childish people I have ever seen. Before the election, everyone around me was saying that if Trump supporters protest the election results, it was hurting the Democratic process. Now that Trump won, there are protests everywhere (including those same people).

Once again, it proves to me that most people only support things out of their own self-interest and if given even the slightest amount of power, they wouldn't give the other side any freedoms or rights.

It's easy to see how evil dictators of our past came to power (and no, Trump is not an evil dictator) and millions of 'undesirables' get slaughtered with ease.

I'm one of the only people I know that gives everyone a chance (even if I don't like what they have to say). I find even seemingly intelligent people seem to lose their shit and immediately argue like a teenager when there are dissenting viewpoints. Safe spaces only make this kind of behavior worse.

The problem is that it's becoming harder and harder to have a view or an opinion that diverges from the current narrative. If you want to have a civil discussion, you will be silenced, attacked (sometimes physically and online), and you might even get fired from your job (if someone decides to contact your employer or boycott it).

This is why the election polls were so wrong: many people feared telling anyone they were going to vote for Trump because they didn't want to get attacked and possibly lose their livelihood.

<comment><USER3> _CNN and many of the other MSM has even tried to pass Trump 's win off as uneducated white men and women, which couldn't be further from the truth._

If you look at polling data, there are consistent correlations between education level and stated voting intent. So while there are definitely a number of complex factors at play, but I wouldn't say that that statement "couldn't be further for the truth".

 _Before the election, everyone around me was saying that if Trump supporters protest the election results, it was hurting the Democratic process. Now that Trump won, there are protests everywhere (including those same people)._

My read on the protests it that people are overwhelmingly protesting the hate, ignorance and general obnoxiousness _behind_ the vote -- not the electoral vote itself.

And in particular, they're not employing birther-style denialist tactics against it (which you can be quite sure Trump's people would have done, had things either not gone his way).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does a flat org ever work? - <AUTHOR> I have been at a few places now that seem to want to have a flat org when it's convenient and a hierarchy when it's convenient. I've found that hierarchical structures with established roles and responsibilities work best. Flat structures seem to allow no one to have accountability.<p>In your experience have you ever actually seen a "flat" org work? And if we are being honest is what you are describing a "flat" org, or just an org that claims to be flat but in reality there are clear power dynamics and decision makers with unofficial influence? <comment><USER2> Yes. It requires a lot of trust. You cannot have any micromanagers. Typically small research companies do very well flat/shallow/leveled.

I really like galois and qumulo as examples of shallow companies.

Typically flat doesn't refer to no hierarchy, but instead no direct middle men. You may have three people who act as 'bosses' to different responsibilities you have at the company. They are actually the boss of that responsibility, not the boss of you. That means that individual is shared across a greater number of people as a resource relating to that responsibility.

Additionally flat doesn't prevent for conventional bosses, but also doesn't limit who can be that conventional boss. For this project Sam might be the boss, because of Sam's expertise. For the next project I might be the boss of Sam. Who is in charge is not defined by seniority or job title.

Another flattening idea is to distribute knowledge. Qumulo used to rotate which team you were were on every 4-7 months. I don't know if they still do this, I don't even know if they're still flat. But this forced you to understand a large amount of the codebase. You had to have a holistic understanding of their product. This made tenure highly correlated to product expertise.

For larger companies flat/shallow/leveled are harder to find, but grid companies do exist as alternatives to conventional hierarchies. JPL is A good example of a grid company. as a policy JPL allows you to assign any employee do your project as long as they have time and express interest. You often find this in parts of the national Labs as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does that mean generally speaking everyone is getting paid similarly? I wonder how pay plays into the feeling of superiority might have.

<comment><USER2> I haven't seen everybody get paid the same. But I have worked in places where all incomes are known to all employees. Typically this makes the range of incomes more narrow. Everyone liked the environments that it created. When a person got a substantial raise as a reward for a significantcompletion, you could identify what that completion was and make a case to do something similar for a similar type of raise.</comment></comment></comment>


The Greatest Use of Life: On William James - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/is-life-worth-living-the-pragmatic-maybe-of-william-james <comment><USER2> It's interesting how biographers and scholars have closeted, seemingly successfully, William James, even after the revelation of the closeting of his brother should've alerted writers to the queer content of both James' work, and the significance of the repression of said content after the Wilde trial.....

</comment><comment><USER3> don't bother. jornalism trying to summarize philosophy... not to mention way off ttopic here. not sure why this is on the front page with only a dozen points.

<comment><USER4> You're free to dislike the article, but I figured I'd point out that the author is a professional philosopher, not a journalist. The bio states that he's "professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is the author of American Philosophy: A Love Story (2016), and his latest book is Hiking with Nietzsche (2018)."</comment></comment>


Enemy within: gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease - <AUTHOR> https://news.yale.edu/2018/03/08/enemy-within-gut-bacteria-drive-autoimmune-disease <comment><USER2> It is frustrating how slow medical progress is with respect to gut biota and such personalized medicine.

This seems like the perfect place for machine learning and big data. What exactly is the hold up? Is it regulations? Is it old fashioned doctors unwilling to push boundaries?

Ive been dealing with mysterious stomach issues for a long time myself, and I'm living for the day where I can hack something together to cure myself, at this point I've lost faith in doctors; and my problems in the grand scheme of things aren't even that bad, I can only imagine how other hackers must feel...

Edit: I've been getting my own ML startup off the ground just recently, but if anyone is doing something in this area, even open source, I may be interested in collaborating, let's talk!

<comment><USER3> This place is trying: [https://viome.com/](https://viome.com/)

My guess is that human flora are orders of magnitude higher in complexity. They all interact with one another and diet. It's hard to find numbers, but at least one place indicated over 500 different strains in the human gut.

<comment><USER4> This type of analysis will probably be a cornerstone in future health assessment. Since there are more cells and genes in the microbiome than in the human body, it seems reasonable that different compositions may have profound effects. Untangling this might take a while, meanwhile, changes in food production, environmental degradation and pollution are probably affecting microbial "landscapes" in detrimental ways. For now, options are limited to experimenting with diets, switching to organic alternatives, and the most radical method, temporarily change environment to isolate or eliminate the causes. All these more or less worked for me, the last one most effective, restoring a dysfunctional gut flora, however not permanently which speaks for environmental factors beyond diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see a lot about autoimmune disease on Hacker News. I guess that it's a wide medical area, that many can relate to?

<comment><USER6> It's a set of conditions where most doctors' best answers are "beats me", where conditions are extremely variable from individual to individual, and where lifestyle changes can have drastic differences in outcome.

It is the ideal playground for the lifestyle hacker.

<comment><USER7> >most doctors' best answers are "beats me"

i take your "beats me" doctors and raise you the gastroenterologist i saw recently - he said straight out, end of discussion, "our infectionist doesn't believe in candida in the gut"

As we have that saying in Russia - "the duty to save the drowning person lies solely with the drowning person" ("spasenie utopayuschih delo ruk samih utopayuschih")

<comment><USER8> My nephew gave a stool sample your gastrointerologist's infectionist might want to have a look at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Immune responses to bacteria colonizing unusual tissues doesn't seem like "autoimmune disease". That is, unless there's cross-recognition between bacterial and host epitopes. But there are known examples of such molecular mimicry.[0] Such as "Campylobacter jejuni lipooligosaccharide (LOS) mimicry of human GM1 ganglioside and mimicry between the dietary antigen butyrophilin and myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein". So maybe this is another example.

0) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and- microbio...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and- microbiology/molecular-mimicry)

<comment><USER10> I have hashimoto's thyroiditis autoimmune condition and I read somewhere that one possible cause could be very subtle gluten allergy. So antibodies are produced to attack a specific gluten protein, but this protein is similar in molecular structure as the protein thyroid is made of, thyroglobulin, so at the same time thyroid is attacked. Is this what molecular mimicry is ? I know next to nothing about human microbiology, feel free to educate me. I really should pick up a book on it if I want to experiment with my health, any suggestions where to start ?

<comment><USER9> Yes, that could be molecular mimicry. I hadn't heard of the thyroglobulin gluten similarity. But Hashimoto's thyroiditis is associated with celiac disease, which is clearly gluten related.

As the immune system matures in late fetal development, there's a stage when all cells that can target self antigens get killed. However, some tissues are isolated from the immune system, and so there are antigens there that don't get on the "self list". The thyroid is one of them.

Everything is OK until the thyroid gets damaged, infected or whatever. Then the immune system can see it, and may develop cell and antibody mediated responses.

Like all proteins in food, gluten is normally digested, and never makes it out of the gut intact. Only the component amino acids are transported to the bloodstream. However, in celiac disease, where the gut lining is damaged, I can imagine that some gluten gets across intact. Also many other proteins and complex carbohydrates.

Then the immune system could respond to all that stuff. And some of it could share epitope with thyroid components. So if there is an association between gluten and Hashimoto's thyroiditis, it's hard to say whether gluten shares epitopes with thyroid stuff, or whether it's just damaging the gut.</comment></comment></comment>


Fuduntu 2013.1 Released - Steam, Netflix, and lots more inside - <AUTHOR> http://www.fuduntu.org/blog/2013/01/07/fuduntu-2013-1-release/

<comment><USER2> _Valve has authorized us to distribute the Steam Linux package to our users and host it in our repositories_

Suggests that Valve are happy to see Steam spread to other distributions (presumably with certain compatibility checks). A good sign IMHO; I have seem some concerned about being locked into Ubuntu.

Will be interesting to see how far they are prepared to take things: will it be only Ubuntu/Debian based distros, or will they spread to others too? If Steam for Linux takes off AT ALL it seems it would be in (say) Red Hat's interest to get it working in Fedora.

<comment><USER3> There is already a version for Fedora: [https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux#F...](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux#Fedora)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh crap. And I wanted to get work done today :P</comment>


Ask HN: Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux? - <AUTHOR> I'm going to deploy into many servers in production i'm interested in performance & low cost support for multi-cores multi-sockets, high IO & CPU & Memory & Networking. Should I choose Sun Solaris or Linux? if linux I thought of CentOS as its a free replica of RedHat.<p>Thanks SunSolaris? Linux? FreeBSD? <comment><USER2> None of your requirements, at least when they're as unqualified as they are, can help you to pick an OS.

Ask yourself where your bottleneck will be, then ask yourself if the OS is going to make any difference there. The answer is very likely no.

No modern OS is going to give you any significant performance/cost advantage over another in serving regular web apps. Most of your trouble will be in setting it up and maintaining it, so go ahead and pick whatever you're most comfortable, or, if you're not comfortable, ask someone who are (and that you trust).

Also, don't pick CentOS, unless you need RH compatibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why not CentOS? what would you recommend then?

I saw that oracle are really emphasizing how their OS has much higher performance than linux I wondered if its correct or if their benchmarks are good: [http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/performance- scalability/b...](http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/performance- scalability/benchmark-results-063877.html) <http://jp.sun.com/solutions/infra/eda/pdf/solaris-linux.pdf>

So I wondered if i'm missing some tens of percents in performance by not choosing Sun Solaris...

<comment><USER2> CentOS is binary compatible with RedHat, so it's for people who need the enterprise-ness of RedHat, but can't/won't run RedHat. An example I've heard is running RedHat in production for the support, but CentOS for devs and stating. The reason to run RedHat is usually something like needing to run Oracle or a number of other very complex software suites (the keyword is complex, not better or faster) that are only supported on specific platforms.

If you're running Oracle on Sun hardware, go for Solaris, sure, if for no other reason the support. If you're running "regular" open source software on generic hardware, just use Linux/BSD. There's nothing in Solaris that'd make Postgres faster than Linux or BSD on the same hardware.

<comment><AUTHOR> What distribution do you recommend? (which is stable enough...) I wanted to choose CentOS because I know RedHat are saying they do lot of tests to their distribution before they release... so I wanted something that is fully tested and reliable.

<comment><USER2> It's been a while since I've had any responsibility over servers, but Debian has always treated me well.

<comment><USER3> Ubuntu which is derived from Debian is a good choice for servers, especially the LTS editions.

<comment><USER2> I'd be inclined to give it a try (I use and love Ubuntu on the desktop), but my impression is that Ubuntu is Debian packaged for the desktop... which isn't really relevant on a server. Debian is, OTOH, geared almost entirely for the server, already before Ubuntu came along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd use FreeBSD.

OpenSolaris is officially dead. Solaris isn't low cost for sure. FreeBSD gives you a high performing io/network stack plus extras from Solaris world, like DTrace & ZFS, plus a focus of maintainers on just these features you seem to need most. This is contrary to many Linux distros, even commercial ones like RedHat, where the focus seems to drift to different directions over time, as they are trying to please different groups of users/donators/customers.

If you decide Linux anyway, I'd recommend Debian instead of CentOS. Contrary to common belief, RedHat/CentOS distros are "enterprise-oriented" maybe in the aspect of supporting typical Java development, but when it comes to production operations their enterpriseness does not necessarily shine, esp. when things break. YMMV.

These recommendations change a lot if you must deploy Oracle databases on the machines.

Well many people want to give their 2 cents in this thread; while this is excellent, I'd like to point I'm a sysadmin of various Unices since 15 years so I claim to know what I mean and not just promote personal prefs when saying something about OSes (if it was my personal bias I'd use Slackware forever). If you had further questions and wished to ask them privately, you'll find contact links on my profile.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are unsure of which to pick, perhaps it's indicative that you're going to have other problems ahead: maybe you should hire someone to advise you and help you out.

<comment><USER6> At the very least, the OP should talk to someone in person or on the phone about this. There are simply too many possibilities to adequately answer this for a _production_ deployment.

Some questions that I (as a former SysAd) would ask:

1) How many is "many servers"? 10, 100, 1000, 10000?

2) What exactly is "performance for ... multi-cores multi-sockets, high IO & CPU & Memory & Networking"? This basically covers everything ever created. The high-performance for TeraGrid (sci. apps) is very different than E-Trade (financials) and very different from Amazon (e-commerce).

3) Is "low-cost support" $0 and 1 week of searching online forums? Or $100 and a phone call?

4) Do you like "port", "apt", "yum", "emerge", or "make"?

5) Do you need to have multiple versions of the same app available at the same time? E.g., gcc-2.97, gcc-3.2, 3.3.2, and 4.4.1?

6) Did you not know the answer to any of these questions? If so, I highly recommend you hire someone like @davidw says.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My 2 cents: Oracle is going to drive Solaris into the ground (and OpenSolaris doubly so). It's days were already numbered, like all proprietary Unixes, but while before I was betting on Solaris to be the last one standind, now I think it will probably be AIX.

<comment><USER8> _Oracle is going to drive Solaris into the ground_

On what do you base this? Larry is spending more on SPARC and Solaris than McNealy ever did! It's possible that Solaris will become less suited to (for example) HPC over time but for anything related to commercial data processing, including Java and web serving, expect for it to continue to occupy a leading position among the Unixes.

<comment><USER7> "a leading position among the Unixes": that's the position that it already occupied: the biggest fish in a rapidly drying pond. The killer combo of free Unixes on commodity (read x86) hardware cannibalized the proprietary Unix market. Where that trajectory will lead has been obvious for quite some time now. Sun's measures to try to make Solaris survive that were a) port to x86 architecture and b) open source the OS. Jump out to a bigger pond, in other words.

Oracle's strategy with Solaris is going to be to squeeze every last penny from it, and when it dies it dies. Killing OpenSolaris and making it clear that open source releases of the code base will be done only "at some point" after the commercial release are just the beginning of that.

They will push Solaris in the same places where they currently push Oracle DB. Those places tend to be of very little interest to 99% of the HN croud. Java and web serving are not the kinds of things that justify stratospherically overpriced software licenses...

As for SPARC, I seriously doubt they will pour significant money into it. Trying to compete with x86 is akin to setting $100 bills on fire at this point. They will no doubt keep the Sun brand alive and use it to sell x86 based machines (which is the strategy Sun itself started of course).

<comment><USER9> "As for SPARC, I seriously doubt they will pour significant money into it. Trying to compete with x86 is akin to setting $100 bills on fire at this point. They will no doubt keep the Sun brand alive and use it to sell x86 based machines (which is the strategy Sun itself started of course)."

I believe they will. And they will also tailor it for Oracle DB and change the licensing plans to make SPARC a "wiser" choice, locking the customer both on SW and HW. The competition does it, so why shouldn't they do it also?

<comment><USER7> I still don't see a business case for it, though. Continuing to develop SPARC will cost a lot of money and won't buy them any extra lock-in. As far as DB apps are concerned Oracle is the platform, what it runs on is transparent. Edited to add: and the same goes for Java, which on Unix accounts for 99% of enterprise sw development.

As far as I can figure out the only reason IBM has to keep developing POWER is their mainframe business, which is the king of platform lock-in :)

<comment><USER8> POWER is bloody good, tho', check out the SPECInt results. If you have a workload you can't parallelize you can get double the performance of the best x64s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You left out a big piece of information. Are you going to be setting up these servers physically (colocation?) or are you going to be going with a hosting provider?

Pick what you know, though from what you have posted I'm not sure you know either of the systems you mentioned very well. Actually, unless you are a professional systems administrator then even picking what you know may not be good enough. You can setup your own servers if you are running on a low budget, but ideally you would be paying someone to take care of all your administration needs.

So, I assume from your budget you won't be buying your own servers and even if you were interested in buying your own servers you don't have the expertise to set them up properly. You will then be looking at hosting.

You should probably be looking at a hosting provider which offers managed hosting. This will be your support. Don't worry so much about the distribution, just choose whatever that provider has available.

Arguably Solaris is superior to Linux in many ways. If you want to go that route I would suggest Joyent as a provider. Linux is wide open for hosting choices. Find one you like and is within your price range and go with them.

You probably need to start out with a VPS as opposed to a dedicated server. Done right, a dedicated server is generally much more expensive than a VPS. Also, a dedicated server requires a lot of knowledge just to know what to look for.

Your widest choice of offerings for a VPS is linux. Pick one which offers a managed plan and go with whatever that plan ships with. If you have a choice, just go with CentOS. Personally, I prefer Ubuntu, but that's not on your list.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used Solaris on Sun SPARC hardware and it is a very strong environment for heavy duty enterprise applications, especially if you have to use Oracle and/or Java. But very expensive solution. With Oracle now owning them, I don't think the cost of ownership is going to be coming down, but the quality of support might.

If you are using FibreChannel and SAN attached storage, then Sun might still be a good option. But seriously I'd look at HPUX and AIX as well.

My experiences with OpenSolaris on x86 (non-Sun) hardware has been disappointing. Maybe I had high expectations due to the SPARC experiences.

These days, I only use Ubuntu Server LTS editions. APT and the Debian infrastructure meets my needs well. Also use PostgreSQL rather than Oracle RDBMS.

</comment><comment><USER11> wearing dev,sysadm, architect hats running these platforms since 1999. i had the most consistency and general usability with freebsd. freebsd is easier to maintain and learn its features, docs are great. choose the one that you need to learn the least to run, install and maintain. yes i am somewhat biased to freebsd based on my own experience. the past say about 5 years solaris gave me many headaches like library dependecies, package management. freebsd, linux have good package managements. solaris has solid reliability and performance. all things considered, go with freebsd. freebsd security is easier to learn than selinux.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, this is a question that can really fracture a community.

My two cents, from pretty extensive linux experience and one short Solaris experience: do what aligns more with your IT admin's philosophy.

My feel for Solaris is that everything is managed -- there are daemons to watch daemons whose job it is to make sure certain apps don't go down.

Linux is a bit less monitored -- "Oh, your apache process shouldn't have gone down? Shit you shoulda had something watching it."

Personally, I like the more ad hoc feel to linux. But pick whichever your sysadmin prefers. Solaris, to me, felt like I was being handcuffed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why can't you deploy whatever you've been developing and testing on? That would make most sense to me.

For me, that would mean OpenSuse, but that seems to be a minority choice these days.

Anyway, I would advise against OpenSolaris after Oracle (paid for Solaris might be OK) - see the recent leaked emails etc. When I use CentOs I am always frustrated that they are using such old software versions (Python 2.4!), but that may just be the clients I have. For stability and security a BSD is not a bad idea, but again check for versions of the software you need.

</comment><comment><USER14> Whatever you choose, stay clear of Solaris. Especially OpenSolaris (that's a dead-end).

If you're unfamiliar with both, Linux systems are easier to get used to, in my experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> So how come many "big" companies are using solaris with much success?

<comment><USER9> Many "big" companies are using Solaris (and other UNIXes) because they have been for a long time, and there is a cost to switching.

Upgrades to the kind of systems Solaris is being used (core systems and databases) tend to stay in the same course, not only because there is a lower risk in staying on the same OS/architecture combo, but also because most of those systems are old and tied to Solaris/SPARC. Unless there is a sufficiently strong reason to switch, most "big" companies prefer to pay the premium (in SW and HW) than assume the risk.

Solaris on commodity funcions is dying rapidly, if one can't already consider it dead.

The notion that Linux is less advanced is bogus. In some aspects Solaris is more advanced, in others Linux has the lead. What matters is what's the best choice for a each task given constraints of cost, reliability and availability of skilled technicians.</comment></comment></comment>


University dumps professor who found polar bears thriving despite climate change - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/20/susan-crockford-fired-after-finding-polar-bears-th/ <comment><USER2> Flagged. The Washington Times is not a reputable source. If people want to discuss this, please replace the article with one that isn't a dumpster fire of deliberately misleading information.

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

She was paid by a conservative think tank for years and didn't disclose her conflict of interest.

<comment><USER3> Would people consider it a conflict of interest if someone was paid by a liberal think tank for years and published research in line with that viewpoint?

The question should be weather the research is replicable, not who funded it.

<comment><USER2> > Critics point out that none of Crockford's claims regarding the effects of > climate change on polar bears has undergone peer review, nor has she ever > published any peer-reviewed articles whose main focus is polar bears.

Keep in mind that peer review is the _lowest_ bar for academic quality. It's _barely_ table stakes.

<comment><USER3> Don't believe I said anything regarding peer review.

<comment><USER4> Peer review usually means people tried to replicate it. Lack thereof usually means most reputable scientists won't even give it the light of day because it's not based in reality.

<comment><USER3> Peer Review is basically just gate-keeping for journals. It has nothing to do with replicating the research, just with verifying that the person submitting the paper crossed their Ts and dotted their Is rigorously enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Canadian universities have had some questionable incidents around free speech [1]. So I wondered as I was reading this if this is, as the prof says, "cancel culture."

However there's this ... "Crockford is a signatory of the International Conference on Climate Change's 2008 Manhattan Declaration, which states that "Carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse gas' emissions from human activity...appear to have only a very small impact on global climate," and "Global cooling has presented serious problems for human society and the environment throughout history while global warming has generally been highly beneficial." Between at least 2011 and 2013, she received payment from The Heartland Institute, in the form of $750 per month" [2]

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsay_Shepherd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsay_Shepherd) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_J._Crockford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_J._Crockford)

</comment><comment><USER6> Seriously? Washington Times has mixed factual reporting, not reliable: [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington- times/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-times/)

<comment><USER7> And I am to trust a site called Media Bias / Fact Check website because?

<comment><USER8> Because they list and link to the reasoning behind their opinion. You can read the sources and any extra information and form your own. This is not simply "we think it's bad, trust us".

<comment><USER9> Honestly, trust this is bad because we said so is not a logical response. At least hot link to the opinion of why.

<comment><USER10> The link seems to say more than "this is bad because we said so".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems to come down to he-said / she-said?

> "There is no evidence to suggest that Dr. Crockford's adjunct appointment > was not renewed for 'telling school kids politically incorrect facts about > polar bears,'" said Ms. Parkin. "The University of Victoria, in both word > and deed, supports academic freedom and free debate on academic issues."

vs

> Ms. Crockford accused officials at the Canadian university of bowing to > "outside pressure," the result of her research showing that polar bear > populations are stable and even thriving, not plummeting as a result of > shrinking Arctic sea ice, defying claims of the climate change movement.

\</comment><comment>---

I guess I was hoping for a better argument given the headline? Is there a strong basis for cause-effect here?

It doesn't seem like Ms. Crockford was a tenured professor either. Her former position was as an "adjunct professor". I admit that I'm ignorant to college- politics, but hopefully someone can fill me in on some of these facts.

<comment><USER12> At least in my experience with Canadian institutions, an adjunct professorship is largely an honorary title. It is typically unpaid. You can supervise graduate students and apply for some grants, but that is about it. Also it is not meant to be permanent... You receive it for a fixed duration (say 3 years) and have to renew it. Renewal may be based on several factors but certainly may include how well you work with people from the school in question.

I don't know anything about the case being discussed here, but my expectation is that the non-renewal of an adjunct status cannot be compared with getting fired as a tenure or tenure-track professor.

Disclosure: I own her book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just so we're clear, this is a Washington Times article. It must be a reflection of a complete shift of internet culture rightwards that this rag has been upvoted here significantly.

<comment><USER14> This is a good argument for having the ability to downvote things here. Not sure why we can only upvote.

<comment><USER15> You can downvote comments once your karma reaches a threshold.

Stories can't be downvoted, but they can be flagged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm seeing some warning signs in this article when I dig into the sources:

> University of Victoria economics professor Cornelis van Kooten warned of the > threat to free speech on campus. "I think the climate change movement has > done extreme harm to academic freedom," he said, and the movement isn't > alone.

Why are we interviewing economics professors about suppression in the Climate science?

Then we get to Judith Curry[0]:

> Her Polar Bear Science blog came under fire in a 2017 study in the journal > BioScience by 14 academics, including Penn State climatologist Michael E. > Mann, decrying the influence of "denier blogs," which Georgia Tech professor > emeritus Judith Curry blasted as "absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever > seen published."

On whom Wikipedia says:

> In 2019 she stated that she would not "bother with" peer-reviewed journals, > in favor of publishing her own papers so that she could editorialize and > write what she wanted "without worrying about the norms and agendas of the > 'establishment.'"[1]

It's very hard for me to find a source here in support of her that isn't spending a lot of time using coded language for, "the establishment is corrupt, you can't trust mainstream scientists, you can only trust this fringe group and the reason no one agrees with us is because they hate us, not because we're wrong." It reminds me a lot of when I was growing up in a Creationist community, and I'd hear regular reports about the 'brave' scientists that would get fired because they rejected fossil record evidence.

I'm not going to outright say bias doesn't exist in climate science, but if a publication like the Washing Times wants to claim it does, I'd expect to see much more compelling evidence than this article provides.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> OP, I feel you could find a less biased source to cover this story for the same reason I don't post outrage articles from left-leaning websites despite my being outrageously lefty.

</comment><comment><USER18> Susan Crockford's research is a crock, read up on why here: [https://www.desmogblog.com/susan-crockford](https://www.desmogblog.com/susan- crockford)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted this just to see what people would say. I'm working on a project in media and this thread is good research, believe it or not.

</comment><comment><USER19> For context in where this is coming from: [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm confused by the comments. Is it fake new because WT is the source, or is it fake news because we have a legitimate source (e.g. University's or professor's statements) that actually confirms that it's fake?

I'm not, personally, familiar with WT but seems there are a lot of jumping to conclusions happening here.

I don't wanna say that EVERYONE is bias, just curios about what really happened.

<comment><USER10> I believe it's the source that is the issue. It's "fake news" in that the source is extremely biased, and therefore untrustworthy. Not that we _know_ the content is strictly composed of lies.

<comment><USER20> But.. every news outlet is bias and "propagandist", NYT has A LOT of eye rolling, leftist extremism fueling articles, WP as well, even New Yorker is super bias (New Yorker is more fun to read though..) but all of the above also have gems. I still glance through those as it is important for getting a full picture and not just a picture of one of the political bubbles.</comment></comment></comment>


Why C# is not a good choice for web development? - <AUTHOR> http://afshinm.name/why-c-sharp-is-not-a-good-choice-for-web-development

<comment><USER2> Even now, with the project already ongoing, you can still set things straight. Put your project in source control. Then create a "master" branch that will contain the code released to production. Develop new features in a separate "develop" branch. If you need to fix something in production without updating to the version in development, create a new branch off "master", fix the issue, commit and release this new version, merge it into develop, and carry on.

A workflow like this, or other variations, is a good practice even if you work with platforms that support deploying single classes/files instead of packages.

For an example, see: A successful Git branching model ([http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching- model/](http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/)).

See also the book "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master" ([http://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic- programmer/extracts/toc](http://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic- programmer/extracts/toc)).

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like the wrong project type is being picked. If they used a Web Site Project rather than a Web Application Project the files would be compiled JIT in the same way as PHP and Python.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd547590(v=vs.110).a...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd547590\(v=vs.110\).aspx)

Having said which the page title is wrong, the issue is with Microsoft's web deployment system and frameworks. C# as a language is still a nice language and shouldn't be lumped with the other parts of the .NET stack.

</comment><comment><USER4> As others have said this is really a source control problem but still there's a workaround. Just copy the production dll and use .Net Reflector (or similar) to decompile it back in to C#. Make your edits, recompile and upload.

</comment><comment><USER5> so you blame a compiled language for your poor dependency management and app architecture? it's not C#'s fault, it's how your app is put together.

And your excuse for not having the app under source control is a cop-out and shameful. Enjoy your scripting languages and short-cuts...</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to start teaching my 9 year old son programming - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I really like some of the coding "games" that teach the concepts. For example [https://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/](https://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/) but there's a bunch out there. I think it's important for kids to have fun with it so that they're motivated to keep learning.

Also Scratch: [https://scratch.mit.edu/parents/](https://scratch.mit.edu/parents/) (Aimed at 8-16 years old)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you everyone for your feedback. I will keep everything simple and stop. Cover advanced stuff later on. I will follow links mentioned by Jemmeh.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does he even know fractions yet? It sounds like you're setting him up to hate programming.

<comment><USER4> why do you need to know fractions to program? There is a myriad of things that can be accomplished without knowing fractions. It is more important that they have a grasp of logic and cause and effect. And or just a curiosity as to how things work, if I do x then I get y.

<comment><USER3> >why do you need to know fractions to program?

Try explaining a float to him if he doesn't understand division. You're pushing rope. The kid will learn programming, if he's interested in it, when he's ready.

<comment><USER5> Not all languages have the distinction between floats and ints. A whole generation grew up on BASIC!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Rise of Content Farms - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16010291

<comment><USER2> What _The Economist_ doesn't mention here, but should, is that content farms negatively impact both the experience of anyone who wants to buy something online and that of anyone who wants to sell online.

Lots of small businesses succeed by creating "long-tail" content, and using it to get organic traffic. A ceramic mug company, for example, could have a blog that also told readers how to paint ceramic mugs.

The Demand Media model is to outrank that content (of course), and then to monetize the ranking with contextual ads. So the article's content must be meaningful to search engines--but it _can't_ be a complete answer to whatever the visitor was searching for. If it is, they'll bounce; if not, they'll keep clicking, ideally on an ad.

Someone who controls the ad (and captures the profit from transactions) can have a more relevant and useful call to action. The article, for example, can end with "Ready to paint _your_ ceramic mug? Order a mug painting kit now, and get 10% off!"

Instead, the mug company will notice that their traffic is dropping since they can't rank for the same long-tail content. Instead, they'll start paying for traffic. And when they do, Demand Media gets the money for their next article.

</comment><comment><USER2> _The results are sent to an army of 7,000 freelancers, each of whom must have a college degree, writing experience and a speciality._

I don't have a degree, and Demand Media signed me up. I wonder if they've raised their standards.

<comment><USER3> I do, and writing experience, and they didn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> " _AOL, a web portal which was recently spun off from Time Warner, a media giant_ "

Quite the grasp of history there...

<comment><USER4> The quote is entirely accurate. AOL was spun off on December 9, 2009.

<comment><USER3> A man is lost in a balloon in fog; a building looms up out of the fog and another man looks out the window. The man in the balloon says, "Excuse me, but can you tell me where I am?" The man in the building says, "You're in a balloon." The man in the balloon thanks him, because he answered the question perfectly correctly, yet in such a way that he was given no new information, thus allowing the man in the balloon to conclude that the building was Microsoft Customer Service and he was therefore in Redmond, Washington.

<comment><USER5> Ironic that we're reading this article from a bastion of "pay for high quality" and such is the quality we receive.

<comment><USER4> Seriously, what would you have preferred?

"AOL, a web portal which was recently spun off from Time Warner, a media giant, but which a decade ago actually bought Time Warner."

Is that better? Does it make any difference?

<comment><USER3> Seriously? Either assume that thinking people who have an interest in business already know what AOL is (instead of implying that there is mysteriously an adult businessperson who has never heard of AOL), or in your definition of "AOL", give a concise summary of its history with a time horizon greater than three years. The sentence that was actually included was jarring in its isolation from reality, and that's not really what you expect from the Economist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some thoughts / insights

Demand Media (DM) only covers the surface of a topic. Never a deep dive. Thus by nature, they are a lead generator. That's why they have descent ad rates and can pay real wages for content. But IMHO, they haven't begun to really profit from this position.

In content farming, whoever pays the most to their writers ultimately wins. The best writers are attracted to the best paychecks. Because DM invested hundreds of millions in established domains, they bought traffic and offer better cash versus just posting on your own blog.

DM will ultimately crash directly into the way of traditional media outlets. And it will be the aggregators like google news and huffington post who win. Like many businesses, it's the distributors who make the lions share of profits.

</comment><comment><USER7> this could be easily fixed if Google would allow people to ban domains permanently in preferences.

</comment><comment><USER8> _To earn a decent living, freelancers have to work at a breakneck pace, which has an obvious impact on quality._

I don't know, does the increased communication power and productivity of technology break even here? (assuming it's used correctly)

Is the average journalist using modern tools to their full potential?</comment>


Rebuilding the Antikythera Mechanism out of Lego | Casting Out Nines - <AUTHOR> http://castingoutnines.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/rebuilding-the-antikythera-mechanism-out-of-lego/ <comment><USER2> To quote Conan the Librarian, "You're Late!":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991557></comment>


Adventures in Python optimisation - <AUTHOR> https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/10/13/adventures-in-python-optimisation/ <comment><USER2> Seems to me that it would be more efficient to modify BeautifulSoup's decoded xml output rather than doing a bunch of string search/replacement/copying.

</comment><comment><USER3> Instead of going through each file len(note_range) times wouldn't it be better to search for noteref-[0-9]+ once and then bump the number on each found occasion?

<comment><USER3> Or more concrete do:

      s = """
      But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and
      expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the #endnote-1
      master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure
      #endnote-10 advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man
      that produces no resultant pleasure?
      """

      import re

      def bump(match):
          return '#endnote-{}'.format(int(match.group(1))+1)
      r = re.sub(r'#endnote-(\d+)', bump, s)
      print(r)</comment></comment>


Surviving A Long Distance Relationship: Startup Style - <AUTHOR> http://blog.equala.fm/post/54517083758/surviving-a-long-distance-relationship-startup-style

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the tip :)</comment>


What is best options for a CMS for a 1000 page encyclopedia type site? - <AUTHOR> What is best options for a CMS for a 1000+ page encyclopedia type site?? <comment><USER2> Might as well go with MediaWiki?

[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki)</comment>


Seagate Begins Volume Shipments of Helium-Filled HDDs, Reveals Their Final Specs - <AUTHOR> http://anandtech.com/show/10284/seagate-begins-volume-shipments-of-heliumfilled-hdds-and-reveals-their-final-specs <comment><USER2> Wow, when I was a wee intern at Maxtor's server division ten years ago, I vaguely remember my boss talking about helium-filled drives. I never realized the technology had another decade of development to go! Though I guess it's possible the tech is purely Seagate's, and Maxtor's research was lost in the merger.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure it's been possible for a while, but just wasn't really necessary. Hitachi's been doing it for a few years already, for what it's worth.

[http://www.storagereview.com/hgst_ultrastar_helium_6tb_enter...](http://www.storagereview.com/hgst_ultrastar_helium_6tb_enterprise_hard_drive_review)

<comment><USER4> Correction: It's HGST (now merging with Western Digital), not Hitachi, and the HGST Helium-filled drives have been available for several years. Seagate is playing catch-up.

Disclaimer: Works for HGST/WD

<comment><USER5> Off-topic, but I had to ask -- do you have any information as to whether future HGST drives will be manufactured using WD shops, or visa-versa?

I'd be very sad if HGST lost their prestigious lead as the most reliable drive manufacturer due to being taken over by WD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another reason to be concerned about peak helium: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science- news/7959624...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science- news/7959624/World-helium-reserves-are-running-out-Nobel-laureate-claims.html)

<comment><USER7> How would hydrogen work instead? Or is it not trustworthy enough if there's an oxygen leak inside and a spark occurs?

<comment><USER8> Large power station alternators are hydrogen cooled.. that's right the whole alternator is filled with hydrogen. you have to monitor how close you get to the upper explosive limit.

at a tenth the windage and ten times the heat transfer capacity of air, the stator and rotor can be a hell a lot closer and magnetic coupling more efficient therefore massive savings in construction and more efficient energy conversion to electrical energy

<comment><USER9> Strange, but true:

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen- cooled_turbo_generato...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen- cooled_turbo_generator)

\- [http://www.power- eng.com/articles/print/volume-113/issue-6/f...](http://www.power- eng.com/articles/print/volume-113/issue-6/features/hydrogen-cools-well-but- safety-is-crucial.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Warning: may change the pitch of MP3 files.

<comment><USER11> This... is a funny comment. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Helium-Filled: yey ! Seagate: hmm..

Aren't Seagate the least reliable HDDs in most of the HDD statistics from data centers ?

<comment><USER5> According to BackBlaze's data set, Western Digital are the least reliable: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive- reliability-q4-201...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive- reliability-q4-2015/)

Seagate and Toshiba tie for 2nd, but HGST drives are _by far and away_ the most reliable.

<comment><USER13> Wait, WD are the LEAST reliable, but HGST are the MOST reliable... Isn't that the SAME company?

<comment><USER14> They're only the same company in ownership; both operate independently of each other

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Helium is notoriously hard to contain. I wonder what the MTBF on these drives is going to be?

<comment><USER16> They're rated for 2.5 million hours.

<comment><USER17> Ballpark, that's 100,000 days or 300 years. So I guess that's MTBF, not "rated for", which gives even more the impression that we are talking about per- device lifetime expectancy.

MTBF means that, in the expected lifetime of all devices combined, the expected time between failures is 2.5 million hours.

So, if you buy 3000, one will have a failure within about a month (assuming expected lifetime is larger, but that is not stretching it)

Also, MTBF says nothing about what happens outside the expected lifetime. If that is 10 years, whether they all break down on the first day of year 11 or somewhere between year 10 and year 100 doesn't affect MTBF.

So, what do they expect the lifetime of these devices to be?

<comment><USER16> Yes, it's MTBF, which is what the comment I was responding to asked for.

The warranty is 5 years, and from the datasheet the AFR is rated at 0.35%.

[http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product- content/enterpris...](http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product- content/enterprise-hdd-fam/enterprise-capacity-3-5-hdd/enterprise- capacity-3-5-hdd/en-us/docs/100791104b.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Also note that that is "over a five year service life". So, they do not guarantee the helium to be still there after that. Given the nature of this stuff, it likely will slowly escape, but I guess professionals using these will want to retire them fairly soon afterwards.

<comment><USER16> Does anyone guarantee anything about _any_ hard disk after 5 years? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why not a vacuum?

<comment><USER19> The heads in an HDD don't actually touch the surface, they ride on the layer of gas above the spinning platters.

<comment><USER16> At a flying height of <10nm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Drive would be 10 TB, 7200 RPM. WD is already selling similar drives for $700 with mean time between failure of about 3X than usual drives and 50% better rating for workload than non He-filled drives. Given the cost, I guess this won't matter much to consumers for now.

</comment><comment><USER21> Rated drive writes per day (.189) are now lower than SSDs (although drive capacity at this time is higher than most SSDs.)

<comment><USER22> I wonder if it is even possible to achieve 0.2 write a day given the size of the disk and the low speed of HDD.

<comment><USER23> 100MB/s * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours = 8,640,000MB (or 8.64TB) per day

That makes sense because I have performed 7-pass wipes on 1TB hard drives and it took just about 24 hours (not my decision to do 7 passes, but a customer requirement)

Of course it's going to vary based on the drive and how far away from the center of the drive the tracks are, and some high performance platter drives have benchmarked at 200MB/s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How soon until a Youtube user inhales the contents so we can all watch?

</comment><comment><USER25> Two years late. HGST has been shipping helium filled HDDs since 2014.</comment>


Covid-19 World Statistics – A Perspective with Less Panic - <AUTHOR> https://covid.observer <comment> chupa-chups I'd recommend this if you added the rate of growth per day in percent (between 30-40% worldwide additional cases per day, applying also to deaths per day).

E.g.:

2020-03-14: 0.0019%

2020-03-21: 0.02% ( = 0.0019% * (1,4 ^ 7))

2020-03-28: 0.21% ( = 0.21% * (1,4 ^ 7))

2020-04-03: 2.22% ( = 2.22% * (1,4 ^ 7))

2020-04-10: 23.43% ( = 23.43% * (1,4 ^ 7))

etc.

(Assuming a constant daily growth rate of 40%, which will probably decrease due to deaths of hosts).

<comment><USER2> [https://covid.observer/#speed](https://covid.observer/#speed)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you buy/sell encrypted dataset for machine learning? - <AUTHOR> Hi, would you buy or sell quality datasets to teach your AI on? The thing is that the data and model would be encrypted, so both would stay hiden from the other parties. What pros/cons do you see in such approach? Thanks, TB <comment><USER2> Encryption does not equal privacy. Some amount of metadata would be required to know if the data is the type of data we want to make a model for. How would data cleaning or feature selection work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for remark! I was thinking about this as a problem too. That needs to be addressed. I can imagine that some metadata would be public. Keeping it simple, basic stats of dataset, number of items in the category, names of categories. But the dataset would still not leak sensitive information about the exact data ( like the identities of people ) so they could not be misused or stolen.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Lyp – a package manager for lilypond - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/noteflakes/lyp <comment><USER2> Lilypond is a package for scoring music: [http://www.lilypond.org/](http://www.lilypond.org/)</comment>


Can you see the flag on the Moon with a telescope? - <AUTHOR> http://www.rocketroberts.com/astro/flag_on_moon.htm <comment><USER2> Interestingly, one thing we DID do that's observable from earth is to put an array of retroreflectors onto the moon, so that we can bounce a laser off of it.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lunar_Laser_R...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment)

My sample size of moon landing skeptics (1) didn't dispute that we've been to the moon, he just didn't believe that we did it in 1969, but if you do run into a skeptic this is pretty good evidence that we made it there eventually, or at least requires the conspiracy to be much more involved =).

<comment><USER3> But so few photons come back, sometimes I wonder if the measurements are within a margin of error or reflection off atmosphere.

Mythbusters did a good episode on the moon skeptics though.

<comment><USER4> If someone say honestly that they _receive_ the photons coming from the moon, then they _must_ get a number of photons that is bigger than the error margin, preferably a few times bigger than the error margin. If it is smaller they can't be sure that it is not some noise.

The data about these measures is hard to find. But after some googling the best data I could find are in <http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/highlights.html> . It it possible to make some estimations from the graphs.

There are three sets of three graphs. They are very similar, so let's see only the first one.

In the first graph there is a dark line in the center that shows that there are more photons coming at the expected time, than before or after that time. The signal is easy to see, but it is difficult to get any numerical values from this graph.

From the second graph it is possible to read some numerical values. Each bar shows the number of photons that arrive in a 100 ps interval. They have probably a Poisson distribution, but for simplicity let's approximate that by a Normal distribution.

Before the peak, there are approximately 10 +/- 10 photons coming every 100 ps. (These values are estimated from the graph with a lot of zoom, I can't be very sure about them. The values seem to be scattered between 0 an 20, so I assume that the average is ~10 and the standard deviation is ~10.) These are the photons that come from others sources. So if no mirror is present in the moon, or the laser dos not have enough power, then this is the expected value during all the experiment.

At the peak, there are approximately 400 photons in the same time interval. The difference between this value and the average of the first values is like 40 times the standard deviation. So it is almost impossible that they get these peaks by a random chance. For example, the probability to get a value that is bigger than 5 standard deviation is less than 1E-6, for 10 standard deviation it is less than 1E-23, and for 40 standard deviation it is almost almost 0. And they get not only one, but 8 intervals with more than 100 photons.

After the peak, they get more photons than before the peak for technical problems. I see something like 20 +/- 20. Whit these numbers, the chance of a 400 photons peak is bigger, but still almost 0, but I think that the correct way to do the estimations is using the first values.

The third graph is an auxiliary measure with an earth based mirror to get the dispersion caused by the system.

The analysis in the web page is more elaborated. They estimate the shape of the mirror and use the data from the third graph to explain the shape of the peak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two things.

1\. The 3.5 mile figure is for resolving the _stripes_ on the flag, not for seeing the flag. If you just want to see the flag, an aperture diameter of around 400 m is required.

2\. The "Dawes Limit" is just presented with no explanation. It ultimately comes from the fact that the achievable angular resolution of an aperture of size D, using light with wavelength lambda is lambda/D. So if you were willing to work at 10 nm, then the aperture size goes down by a factor of 50 (of course working at 10 nm has it's own set of problems).

<comment><USER6> I was concerned by the lack of Wiki-fu about the Dawes Limit on this forum, but it turns out that the wikipedia page is very sparse. This is a more detailed page on the subject and explains where the Dawes Limit comes from. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes. If you are on the moon, you can see the flag with a telescope.

</comment><comment><USER8> But when you get closer…: [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/a...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html)

<comment><USER9> If any of you are _really_ interested, <http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/> has more than the NASA pages. We've also imaged Russian lunar rovers. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would guess things have changed a little with the newest technology?

The correct answer might now be "not with the naked human eye" (through an optical telescope).

It is only recently possible to correct atmospheric distortion by having a computer project a laser through the atmosphere and measure the change in realtime and adapt for it (adaptive optics).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laser_Towards_Milky_Ways_C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laser_Towards_Milky_Ways_Centre.jpg)

Also, the increase in CCD densities have become enormous in the past few years. So it might be possible to make a matrix that could resolve the flag in the near future.

The stereo telescope method they mention at the end has also been improved recently if I remember reading correctly and they have robotic telescopes that can pull this off.

ps. the James Webb Telescope that's going up in 2014 will have 6 times the collection area of the Hubble, so maybe that will be able to do it ! It looks like it's right out of Star Trek:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JWST_people.jpg>

<comment><USER10> it just isn't physically possible to resolve a flag on the surface of the moon with anything less than 3.5 mile diameter telescope. The technology used can't help much with physically impossible things!

<comment><USER11> It is perfectly possible to resolve a (6-foot) flag with a telescope.

The article states "the Earth's atmosphere is never steady enough to allow resolution below about _one arc second_ for most locations". But according to the European Southern Observatory one can do 1000x better:

"With AMBER on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), the astronomers were able to see details on the scale of _one milli-arcsecond_ , corresponding to being able to distinguish, from the Earth, the headlights of a car on the Moon." \-- <http://amber.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/spip.php?article154>

Therefore a 6-foot-wide flag ("headlights of a car") would be visible as 1 or 2 pixels with the VLTI, which is made of four 8.2 meter reflectors.

I presume the actual flag left by the astronomers was somewhat smaller, so one would need a tad better telescope, but certainly not something with a "3.5 mile diameter".

Upvote me. HN readers need to be educated :-)

<comment><USER10> yes, but the article explicitly defines "flag being visible" as stripes of the US flag being visible. for that you would need a tad better than 6-foot resolution.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough.

On a side node, the VLTI should be able to produce a 2x2 or 3x3 pixel image of one of the russian or american lunar landers (14-foot wide). It would be a cool thing to accomplish to demonstrate the resolution of the VLTI...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > What could Hubble see on Earth if it were to be aimed at the Earth? ... > it > can be shown that Hubble could just make out something that is 5.56 inches > wide on Earth.

I found that quite odd. I've always heard that spy satellites could read the headline on a newspaper. Why would the Hubble be so much worse? That makes the math in the article a little suspect.

<comment><USER13> The claims about what spy satellites can see have been exaggerations at least since the 1960s. They are still exaggerations today. I hope everybody knows that the "satellite" view on Google Maps is from conventional aerial photos (taken from airplanes) as you zoom in.

<comment><USER14> To tell the truth, you don't know that they are still exaggerations.

It is a fact that the NRO has been working on optical interferometers, and deployable reflectors, and probably has launched at least one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Therefore it is _not even close_ to possible to see the Flag on the Moon > from Earth with telescopes available today.

How ... _convenient_.

/fusionparanoia

</comment><comment><USER10> _The only method that could be used to (in theory) see something as small as the Flag on the Moon would be to use two optical telescopes set (for example) 1000 miles apart. This would easily provide the required resolution, the huge problem however is combining the images from both telescopes in such a way to realize the resolution. As far as I know right now that technology is not available. Even if the technology was available, the unsteadiness of the Earth's atmosphere would likely render the method useless._

I've read about this method being used a lot in radioastronomy. But how does one proceed to use it in optical astronomy?

And surely if it is possible to algorithmize this it wouldn't be a problem to write a program that will take care of such "technology"?

<comment><USER16> The method you're referring to is called _optical interferometry_ [1] (well, interferometry in general but optical for visible light obviously). Great strides have been made in this department in recent years and I believe it's been used for exoplanet detection [2].

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_interferometry>

[2]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_optical_interferom...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_optical_interferometry)

<comment><USER10> mkey, but one will have to build 3.5+ mile wide optical interferometer...

largest being built right now is 400m wide: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalena_Ridge_Observatory_Int...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalena_Ridge_Observatory_Interferometer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A: No.

</comment><comment><USER18> Slightly off topic...

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist but in my opinion the demeanor of Armstrong and crew during the Apollo 11 press conference is indicative of deception.

Have a look: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RcKLAo62Ro>

<comment><USER19> _"I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist..."_

Do conspiracy theorists ever?

<comment><USER18> Fair enough. To clarify, I don't subscribe to really any of the doctrine or ideas presented by the conspiracy "mainstream." I do believe American astronauts have walked on the moon during six individual Apollo missions. I also believe in the instance I referenced previously, that those three men are lying about something.

<comment><USER20> I watched it, and see no deception, just nervousness mixed with formality.

Also a little regret knowing they will never go back.

<comment><USER21> "Also a little regret knowing they will never go back."

Wow, I had never thought of that aspect of the Apollo program. It's a little sad that of the 22 people to orbit the moon, land on the moon, or both, it appears just four of them ever made a subsequent space flight.

<comment><USER14> From Buzz Aldrin's bio on wiki:

"In March 1972, Aldrin retired from active duty after 21 years of service, and returned to the Air Force in a managerial role, but his career was blighted by personal problems. His autobiographies Return To Earth, published in 1973, and Magnificent Desolation, published in June 2009, both provide accounts of his struggles with clinical depression and alcoholism in the years following his NASA career."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Runiq, a little Lisp-inspired language that runs on JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/matthewtoast/runiq <comment><AUTHOR> Runiq is my attempt to tie together a few ideas from Lisp with some features of JavaScript inside an interpreted language. Syntax, flexibility, data-as- code DNA would come from Lisp, while a JS backing could give reach and a big module ecosystem.

Runiq more or less does this translation:

        source: (hack (the) (planet!))
        ast: ["hack", ["the"], ["planet!"]]
        reduce order: "the" "planet!" -> "hack"

Function tokens map to predefined CPS JavaScript functions:

        "hack": function(a,b,cb){...}, // add numbers
        "the": function(cb){...}, // return 1
        "planet!": function(cb){...}, // return 2

Outputs produce new trees that eventually reduce to a value.

        -> ["hack", ["the"], ["planet!"]]
        -> ["hack", 1, 2]
        -> [3]
        -> 3

Runiq is very much an experiment, and some design decisions I made have trade- offs (speed, for one). But Runiq could still find a niche somewhere between grown-up projects like Clojure(Script) and single-purpose languages like PuzzleScript, both of which I admire.

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool! Reminds me of [https://github.com/kanaka/miniMAL](https://github.com/kanaka/miniMAL)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool. It's amazing to me that the developer got it under 1KB.

This is the first I've heard of that project, but based on a quick skim, I can point out a few differences between it and Runiq - although the two are certainly similar in that they execute over a very simple plain-array-based AST. (Clearly miniMAL and Runiq were created with different ultimate aims in mind, so any fair comparison ends there. :) )

\- Runiq is fully designed around async. (At first glance I'm unsure how you would express, say, an HTTP request or file I/O in miniMAL - i.e., anything which in JS would require a callback.) In Runiq it would look something like this:

        ; assuming 'print' and 'read-file' are defined in the DSL... ;
        (print (read-file "foo.txt"))

\- Runiq execution happens in parallel (taking a cue from functional languages) and the tree can be reduced stepwise; Runiq has a built-in mechanism for pause and resume. It looks like miniMAL executes wholesale, but I may be mistaken.

\- Runiq has no (built-in) JavaScript interop, although it would be trivial to add that feature via Runiq's DSL-building API. I specifically avoided adding any type of sytnax to talk to JS _directly_ because I wanted Runiq to be a safe sandbox by default, with the option to add "dangerous" functions easily if need be.

But, that's super cool and I wish I'd come across that earlier!</comment></comment>


Demand Nothing Less Than a Visionary Future - <AUTHOR> https://thebioregionalist.com/things-i-find-interesting/demand-nothing-less-than-a-visionary-future/ <comment><USER2> The HN title piqued my interest, but this article seems like a vague and impulsive take:

> Each time we face a systems level event is a time for rethinking and > envisioning something new, and a better way.

Why does it have to be a fundamental re-envisioning? Why not just incremental patching or modifications? Is there even a major problem right now? All things said, we're weathering this pandemic pretty well and I don't see any strong evidence or need for major change.

<comment><USER3> The best way to think about this is the classic Buckminster Fuller quote "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Spend some time watching Tainter's speech on complexity and collapse: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI) . Particularly the adult conversations we need to have at the end of the talk.

Also try Kate Raworth's explanation of the 'three horizons' framework: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5KfRQJqpPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5KfRQJqpPU)

<comment><USER4> An excellent example of walking the walk not necessarily following talking the talk. It's very uplifting to talk of grand revolutions but just like Fuller's philosophical musings it's much more significant on paper than it is in the real world. Geodesics didn't amount to much besides survival shelters and exhibition halls, essentially glorified statuary. The grand result of the tensegrity revolution is one bridge in Australia and a couple of sports stadiums. Fuller's persistent belief in technological deus ex machina served and still serves largely as an argument to not face difficult global problems that will require planning and hard work to solve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is an extreme right-wing president in power, and the best America will do is elect a corporate-friendly right-center president.

Thankfully the economics of solar and wind are taking care of coal and hopefully soon they will pass natural gas for at least new powerplant decisions, batteries/grid storage are rising, electric vehicles are rising.

Existing battery tech in transportation should be directed towards 100 mile plug in hybrids for bang-for-the-buck reduction of ICE emissions for the available lithium/cobalt/etc supply.

We need a 5,000$ tax surcharge on all non-hybrid non-commercial vehicles that are not 100 mile (EPA rated) plugin hybrids. We need to double down on both grid solar/wind and home solar incentives.

We need a $10,000 tax credit for EVs that decreases $1,000 per year (so it phases out in 10 years) regardless of EV volume produced.</comment>


"Flash Is Great." — Anonymous Flash Developer - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/flasher-on-the-loose/

<comment><USER2> "What you already knew about latest-controversial-topic" -- TechCrunch

Come on, now. People are going to defend what they use. You can find just as many iPhone fanbois as you can Android fanbois. You can find just as many Flash fanbois as you can HTML5 fanbois. (Well, almost. But then Flash has been around much longer and is pretty thoroughly cross-platform. HTML5, at least with websockets, is only supported on half the browsers at this point and much less if you count old browser versions. Using HTML5 web sockets can do some pretty spiffy things but at this point you're cutting off a big percentage of possible users to take the leap into it)

I don't see any TechCrunch fanbois though. Hmmm. Yeah a lot of times they are the first to break a story. I'm not saying TechCrunch is valueless, by any stretch. But lately the percentage of articles that linkbait the latest controversy without providing much if any added value/information seems to be increasing. That's disappointing.</comment>


Fans of L.E.D.'s Say This Bulb's Time Has Come - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/technology/28led.html?em&ex=1217390400&en=a18283e581178fd7&ei=5070 <comment><USER2> We've been hearing about LED bulbs for too long to believe that now, finally, they're just around the corner.

<comment><USER3> It depends on the application you're looking at. Flashlights are improving magnificently with the introduction of LED bulbs. Heat, battery drain, and illumination are all improved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apostrophe-s is rarely a plural! I wish I had a downvote.</comment>


Internal Emails Show Twitter Struggled to Interpret Its Rules Unverifying Trolls - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/internal-emails-show-twitter-struggled-to-interpret-its-own <comment><USER2> The core problem is that verification comes with perks. If veryifing someone just meant "Yep, it's that person alright" I don't think there would be all these issues with twitter saying "Yep, this is really the spokesperson of the KKK" or something similar. But because there are perks it comes off more as Twitter endorsing the person as someone who has interesting things to say.

<comment><USER3> I don't twitter. What are the perks?

<comment><USER4> In the article it lists a few, such as better SEO, spam white listing etc

<comment><USER5> Why wouldn't they just have a blue check for "identity verified" and a green check for "Valued Community Member". Give your racists, weirdos, trolls, etc the blue check and no perks if you can identify them, and reporters, politicians, whatever the green check and the perks.

I really hate how big companies get paralyzed over problems like this. A small group would have solved this the same day the realized it was an issue.

<comment><USER6> > Why wouldn't they just have a blue check for "identity verified" and a green > check for "Valued Community Member".

Because then we will be having this same conversation about Twitter mismanagement of green checks. Identity is not the problem. What bigots, racist, nazis and political actors are demanding is status, not recognition. Milo followers know he is who he say he is.

<comment><USER7> But that's exactly the problem. Twitter started the blue check as verification and then it slowly transitioned to mean "valuable member", through, I imagine, employees taking small steps at a time ("hey, we only blue check famous people, so we might as well report that on the shareholder meetings").

Thus, the blue check slowly became something different than intended, and realizing this and having a second check for that ("blue is only for verification!") would have solved the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Twitter could have avoided so many problems by sticking to verification as they advertised it - that the blue check mark just meant you were who you said you were and nothing more. It should have provided no benefits other than followers know they're following the right person.

Using it as a stamp of approval is an absolute minefield for a public company. So far the competition is, well, incompetent, but eventually somebody's going to come along and take advantage of these kinds of mistakes.

<comment><USER9> They could just have a second badge like LinkedIn does for "influencer" or something of the like, that would convey the current benefits of the verification badge.

<comment><USER10> Good point, seems like a failure to decouple independent concepts. Bad design, bad implementation.

<comment><USER11> Seems par for the course for the company that's always mixed data and metadata.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They may have agonized about removing Milo's check but they've been handing them out willy nilly for a few years now. There are tons of business people and friends of Twitter employees with the blue check. People who would not be known outside of their social circle yet they get "verified" as if they were under any risk of impersonation whatsoever.

My personal observation is that these random blue check people skew very heavy to the left of the political spectrum, but I have no data to back that up. Certainly the people I've seen are much less notable than Milo though.

<comment><USER13> You can click on any Trump tweet and see a myriad of bad jokes from blue- checked journalists who live in New York

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not everyone is eligible for verification.

That naturally puts them in the position of having to prioritized verification, but based on what?

If it's only meant to prove identity then they should follow the lead of Keybase and verify yourself by proving control over other accounts.

</comment><comment><USER15> I feel like these quotes simply show a reasonable, deliberative process. Of course there was confusion regarding the meaning of verification–they admitted as much. These emails are exactly what I would have expected.

They also do not contradict Twitter's public statements. Quote: "verification was meant to authenticate identity & voice, but it is interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance."

Is that not exactly what happened?

</comment><comment><USER16> the verification check is completely useless for me. it has forever been. is that just me?

everything twitter management does is just complete selfish bullshit. they should be a 50 people operation and do one thing: publish 140 char messages and show ads. problems solved.

</comment><comment><USER17> Maybe because it was created by trolls, voyeurs, like facebook. Unlike Google.

</comment><comment><USER18> One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just a query, forgive me, why not use the word "ban" instead of perma-suspend. A suspension means a kind of state between other states. Permanent suspension doesn't make sense to me with this context. perhaps it's an American English thing?

<comment><USER19> "perhaps it's an American English thing"

It's an American mental gymnastics thing. When we're not inventing euphemisms to obscure our purpose we use straightforward words like "ban".

<comment><USER20> To be fair that's hardly American... it's human. Remember the "Prosperity Sphere" for one notable example?

<comment><USER21> The Americans are notorious for it though, especially anything to do with invading a country or justifying killing a bunch of innocent people.

<comment><USER22> Orwell seems to indicate that some of the British were notorious for it at one point, too. From "Politics and the English Language"[1]:

"Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, 'I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so'. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

'While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.'

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink."

[1] [http://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit](http://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>