Which is faster? while(1) {} or while(2) {} - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24848359/which-is-faster-while1-or-while2

<comment><USER2> Interesting question. Yes, as the answers state, there is almost no reason why the two programs should iterate at different speeds, especially when the compiler optimises the loop into an unconditional jump.

However, back in the day, with some CPU architectures, and with some fairly primitive compilers, it is conceivable for while(1) and while(something) to iterate at different rates. That is if the compiler outputs literal unoptimised code, and the something is a number large enough to require a larger instruction to initialise in a register than the number 1.

For example, the 68000 CPU instruction code has a quick immediate addressing mode, which can form the moveq instruction that will embed a constant between -128 and 127 into the instruction. It also has a slower immediate addressing mode that allows full 32-bit numbers to be sourced from an extra 32 bits tacked onto the end of the instruction. Therefore, while(1) {} could conceivably be compiled to:

      label:
      moveq #1,D1
      cmpi  #0,D1
      bne   label    (branch if not equal)

whereas while(200) {} would be compiled to:

      label:
      movei #200,D1
      cmpi  #0,D1
      bne   label

and this loop would run slower than the first.

<comment><USER3> I can't recall which, but I have seen at least one compiler generate code like this (if I had to guess, I'll bet it was either Dynamic C for Rabbit 2000 or an old Bytecraft compiler for an ancient Cypress architecture). Though I've worked with a lot of old, primitive compilers & it's possible it only did this with optimizations off.

At Mindtribe, our coding style suggests "for(;;)" instead of "while(1)". However, the reason isn't performance. Instead, it's that we've seen more than one compiler produce a warning about the testing of a constant in the case of "while(1)". And we have a policy of compiling without warnings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fact that there are more than 0 interviewers who ask questions like this is pretty damn sad.

<comment><USER5> The fact that there are more than 0 interviewers _who think there is a difference_ is sad, because I think this makes a great question to separate out those who understand C and those who don't - it's even easier than FizzBuzz for the first group, and much harder for the second.

<comment><USER6> Anecdote time: I once interviewed a new candidate for a Python job along with three other developers on my team. One of the people on our team who was _not_ a part of the interview handed us all a list of Python interview questions about 30 seconds before we headed down to talk to the candidate. He said these were the "best practice" questions he just found and thought they'd be good to ask. We figured "why not?". Well, turned out the questions were pretty obscure Python stuff, that in fact none of us could answer on the spot. We did figure these out later as a group, but it certainly made me feel very unprofessional.

Since then I've stopped asking questions like this. Trick questions and logic questions I think are a bad metric. A person can be great at sudoku but be a horrible developer in terms of writing maintainable code. Instead, I tend to just talk about the macro-level stuff. "What have you built? Can I see it? How long did you maintain it? What was the trickiest part? I imagine it had performance issues; did you spend time optimizing it?" I do ask some tech questions. For example, for web developers I ask "Describe how an XHR request happens in detail." But that is as deep as typically go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me, or is most everyone missing the point that neither of these terminate, and therefore both take "infinite time."

It seems we're all getting hung up on whether evaluating the truthiness of 1 or 2 is faster, but that's really immaterial.

<comment><USER8> Devil's advocate - if for some reason you're using "while(<constant evaluating to true>)" to do something other than wait for some kind of event, and if whatever you're doing is fast but repeated a huge number of times, it's possible that you'd see some speedup in the overall program by using a "faster" conditional evaluation (assuming that it's actually evaluated at runtime and not compiled away because it's a constant value).

I am having a really, really hard time contriving a reason for this, though. It may be my lack of imagination, but I feel like the only reason this would come up is if you deliberately designed a system specifically to make this an issue.

Honestly, you could take this question a bunch of ways. Maybe he's just trying to ask about whether the speed of a cast-to-bool depends on the value of the thing you're casting, maybe he's trying to get you to see that the compiled code won't even evaluate the conditional at runtime anyway or maybe he's trying to get you to realize that you'd almost certainly not care because even if it were evaluating the conditional, if you're using while(<true>), you're almost certainly waiting for some event, so the only thing it could possibly affect would be polling speed, negligibly.

<comment><USER9> while() doesn't cast to bool in C. It compares to integer 0 which will become an unconditional jump after optimization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While not _directly_ pertaining to the question, there are precedents for languages to special-case some inputs to loops for various reasons. Specifically, I'm thinking of Java here. Note the following code:

            int x;
            while (true) {
                x = 8;
                break;
            }
            System.out.println(x);

This code compiles and runs. Java is smart enough to statically prove that the loop condition is true, and so it guarantees that `x` will always be initialized.

Instead of `true`, you can also use things like `1==1` in the condition to the same effect. However, if you attempt the following:

            int x;
            boolean y = true;
            while (y) {
                x = 8;
                break;
            }
            System.out.println(x);

...the compiler will spit an error at you:

            While.java:9: error: variable x might not have been initialized
                    System.out.println(x);
                                       ^

From a language design perspective, it's interesting to note this sort of demand and support for infinite loops in the language specification. One alternative to special-casing `while (true)` as shown above is to have an entirely separate construct for "I want this loop to be infinite", such as the `loop` keyword in Rust, or the bare `for` in Go. Alternatively, see how style guides for C-like languages tend to prefer `for (;;)` over `while (1)` to denote deliberately-infinite loops, to make the intent as obvious as possible.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, this interview question is obviously to test how well you argue your point when you know you are right.

</comment><comment><USER12> This question was asked to me in a major MNC by a senior manager, after 4 technical round. He started off by asking how do I manage conflict in team and went on to say "for example, if you write while (2) { // some code } and someone in code review suggests that replace this with while (1) or vice- versa, then how do you handle the conflict and how do convince him". I said both are same speed. he interuppted and said "check your basics, while (1) is faster " and moved on to next set of questions. He was not testing my confidence. He actually bilived that while 1 is faster.

</comment><comment><USER13> So this is an interview question, apparently by a senior manager. The obvious reply should be: What do you mean by faster? Do u mean writing this code is faster? Reading this code is faster? Compilation is faster OR may be you mean execution is faster? In case you meant execution then could you please mention the kind of computer on which the execution will happen? By the way it seems that both the code will run forever and ever, you can't figure out who won a race until the race ends and here it seems the race is going on forever.

</comment><comment><USER14> A similar question, which is more apt for worthy discussion would be, is bool casting O(1), that is, constant time ?

And that might differ between JITs and compiled languages and different numerical types.

For any machine precision numerical types, if the code is compiled, it'll just become

TEST EAX, EAX ...set eax to 0 or 1 based on jmp...

So in most compiled languages, a bool cast on machine precision numerics, will be constant time.

<comment><USER15> Technically any sort of type casting would end up being O(1), wouldn't it?

<comment><USER16> What about something like casting a bignum to float? It's easy to imagine a simple implementation optimization where any number smaller than the machine's maximum integer size is stored as a native value, so e.g. float(100) would be constant time but float(2^64 + 1) might not.

<comment><USER17> What's it mean to cast in non-constant time? Instead of O(1) performance, it's O(N). But in that case, performance is linear with respect to what? With respect to how big of a number is being casted?

I think that might be possible in dynamic languages like Lisp that can compile to assembly. Maybe Franz or Allegro Lisp compilers do something like that. For the JVM or .NET, I'm not sure that can happen. For C or C++, every typecast is constant time.

<comment><USER18> I can see non-constant conversion times, especially with floats. Floats have lots of weird edge cases involved in them, especially when you get to the very big and the very small scales. If your number's too big, you have to see if you need to just throw back infinity and/or negative infinity. If your number's too small, positive and negative zero. Finally, if you're hanging out with tiny numbers near zero, a good floating point library will start to have to worry about denormal numbers, where you will start padding with zeroes, sacrificing precision to denote that the number isn't quite zero. So yeah, it would be N in respect to the size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sometimes the best interview questions are the ones an eight year old learning to program would ask.

</comment><comment><USER20> i hope the answer the interviewer was looking for was: "i'm unsure.. i usually check the byte code when i am optimising my work"; stead a flat "No" (the original poster claimed the interviewer said the run times were unequal)</comment>


Sex, lies and the Internet: The tale of Lena Chen - <AUTHOR> http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2013/12/9/lena-chen-onlineharassment.html <comment><USER2> I remember when I was an administrator on Wikipedia, many years ago, there was a website called Perverted-Justice (PeeJ, I think). There was some sort of dispute about it, I can't recall what it was about.

However, my online identity and a lot of other admins were accused of paedophillia. When I had pointed out that I had severely curtailed a number of people from the then "Boy Love" article (ew), they retracted it from my username.

It's very, very easy to destroy someone's reputation online. But if you get caught doing so, I hope you get everything you sow!

<comment><USER3> I think that's why it is important to own the search results for your real name, and the domain names.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _A lawsuit was always an option. Websites aren 't liable for what their > users do, but it's possible to subpoena for the identity of your online > harasser and haul him or her into court on civil charges like defamation or > intentional infliction of emotional distress. But Chen and Hamm didn't want > to spend more time, money or energy on the problem. They just wanted it to > go away._

A lawsuit is precisely how you make it "go away". Yes, the police should have pursued the criminal complaint, but lacking official action private action should be taken.

<comment><USER5> The internet is relentless, and as soon as you hit foreign jurisdictions, you're bound to fail. Governments, the MAFIAA and dozens other organizations have tried and failed for over a decade to shut down TPB - do you really think a mere human stands the chance to ever stop the Internet from trolling her?!

<comment><USER6> This is not a well-funded industry with an engineering staff, it is a single lunatic. Subpoena a list of IP addresses from hosting companies, then subpoena the ISPs responsible for those addresses, then have the local police put the kibosh on the lunatics. Yes, it _is_ possible that the lunatic uses a cloaked Internet connection and has flawless op-sec, but the odds are that he is just another raving schizo who can barely remember to pay the electric bill.

<comment><USER7> Yes, thank you. The lunatics of whom you speak utterly rely on the shadows in which they hide. The article makes it seem as though minimal effort has been put into pursuing the attacker, which is maddening if true. Libel and defamation are very much actionable in the U.S., especially as civil matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So doing a Google search for the subject's former boyfriend (the one wrongly accused of rape, just by association with her), this Blogger post still lies as the third highest

[http://patrickhammscandal2.blogspot.com/2010/12/how- patrick-...](http://patrickhammscandal2.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-patrick-hamm- sexploited-his-student.html)

It strikes me as pretty obvious link-abuse, the kind that I thought Google's algorithm would squash, but apparently not. It's good practice to own your own name and domain...but in his case, the victim's own Harvard bio page is ranked lower than this one-use blog

<comment><USER9> "It's good practice to own your own name and domain"

Good luck with that. Subdomains make that basically impossible; even large, established corporations with big branding budgets have difficulty with this.

The real problem here is that people still think that if they see something written down, it must be true. People might as well be reading The Weekly World News, though the kind of harassment described here would be well below the standards of WWN.

<comment><USER8> You're absolutely spot on...the problem _is_ that we often don't have time or motivation to challenge what we see...which is why headline-writing can so easily color opinions of an entire article body. Even in this case, _even when I knew this blog post was part of a smear campaign_ , some reflex in me instinctively mused, "Hmm, maybe this guy _is_ bad...look at all the words devoted to him".

Now imagine any given employer or background-checker seeing this, without the context of the OP...what are the chances that they'll be skeptical of the smear campaign?

But because as humans, we have limited time/energy/patience...computers and sound algorithms really are one of our best allies in rooting this kind of thing out. I'm just surprised that Google's ranker hadn't already flagged this...It's a single-post blog with a circle-jerk of links to other single-use blogs, with the kind of keyword stuffing that was common in the AltaVista days...and I'm pretty sure the text is verbatim from other such smear sites. Isn't that enough penalty to take the site down from the top of the SERPs?

<comment><USER9> I would rather see a system based on digital signatures, with keys tied to identities. If you are checking someone's reputation you should be able to check the identity of people who are making claims about them -- are they former employers, jilted lovers, or did they choose to remain anonymous? I want to know what former employers and coworkers have to say; I do not want to know what an ex-boyfriend masquerading as a former coworker says. If we could establish a mentality of checking for a signature from a verifiable key _before_ assuming that a statement is true it would go a long way toward solving this problem.

Of course, this comes with problems as well. How do you verify public keys? Web of trust systems do not seem to work in practice; people do not have the time. A CA model would allow a central authority to silence people who say the wrong things by denying them verification. The system cannot be like SSH, because you need a way to verify keys from people you have not yet contacted.

I agree that search engines should be working toward a solution, but in this case that would not have been enough. This stalker went as far as sending messages to the victims' employers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article ties in with the recent Block change on Twitter. See all that vile material posted? Now imagine having that _tweeted_ to you on a daily basis from multiple fake accounts. This is why the change to Block mattered. Because of vile driven sociopaths of the type displayed in that article.

<comment><USER5> You as the _victim_ can't see the stuff any more. May help your psyche, but it doesn't stop other twitterers or Google indexing the stuff.

<comment><USER11> IIRC Google does not index Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As much as I can't stand a lot of the ultra-extremist feminists out there in the internet, this kind of behaviour (doxxing, cyberhunting) is beyond unacceptable, it's dangerous to society.

Anyone who ever has engaged in "slut shaming" or whatever the current term is for hunting down/doxxing activists, please go, take a 9mm and shoot yourself.

And to Google/FB: please, make it possible for victims of doxxing/cyberhunts to contact a _real human_ in your organization who has the authority and ability to track and remove such abusive content.

<comment><USER12> What _is_ an ultra-extreme feminist? Given that feminism is the advocation of social and political equality twixt genders, what is extreme feminism? What's the difference between social and political equality, and _extreme_ social and political equality? How can two things that are equal be even more equal?

<comment><USER13> > Given that feminism is the advocation of social and political equality twixt > genders, what is extreme feminism?

People who don't define it that way. Or people who (as in pretty much any controversity) feel compelled to see everyone who doesn't agree with them as an enemy to be taken down.

<comment><USER12> _People who don 't define it that way. _

Well, if we're going to just redefine words we can say anything. I hate those ultra-vegetarians insisting that static typing is the only way to go.

In the face of people redefining words to mean whatever they want, all I can do is suggest that without a clear definition, communication becomes meaningless anyway because I will just redefine "feminist" to mean "a kind of blancmange popular in the former Yugoslavia", so in the absence of anything better I'll use a series of dictionaries as my first stop. In this instance, they're pretty clear on the definition.

<comment><USER13> So who gets to make the official definition of what "feminism" means? And how do you enforce that nobody uses it any other way?

Good luck with that... [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > [...] self-medication with alcohol, recovery from an eating disorder and > crushing desire to be liked. All standard stuff for a college student.

Really? That's what passes for "standard" in a prestigious (and probably very expensive) Ivy League school?

<comment><USER15> This is standard in almost every American environment where people 15-25 hang out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> all I have to say is this is horrible.

Maybe this is a case were law enforcement hasn't caught up with technology.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lena Chen and Kathy Sierra shouldn't be mentioned in the same article.

Kathy Sierra was attacked _for being female_. She did nothing that would cause people to attack her, except for being a successful woman. It was disgusting, unprovoked, and utterly wrong.

Lena Chen didn't deserve what happened to her, but she courted the attention in a way that a mature and psychologically sound woman wouldn't. She ran a blog called _Sex and the Ivy_. I'm sorry, but if you write a blog whose title says, "I'm in the most privileged 2% of the population, I have lots of sex", you're putting a target on yourself. Maybe the world shouldn't be that way, but it is. There are reasons why adults keep their sex lives private (and non- adults, regardless of chronological age, shouldn't be having sex).

I don't think she deserves "slut-shaming" at this point, and the men involved in the revenge porn clearly belong in jail. Anyway, she's been in a long-term relationship (with Hamm) for years, and she's clearly trying to better herself and recover from the mess she made of her college years (and the additional mess others worked to make of her life). And the last thing a person with an obvious biological mental illness needs is for a bunch of cowardly, anonymous, asswipes on the Internet to make it worse by tearing her down.

Where the anger rightfully belongs is on a culture, not on specific people or a gender. The _Sex and the City_ fake feminism (it's actually one of the least feminist TV shows out there) is horrifying, but people like Chen should be left alone to work out their problems in as much peace as they can have.

This is a strange topic because I know exactly where that male anger comes from. The culture of casual sex (in high schools, colleges, and some professional circles) has broken down respect between the genders. It leads naturally to pre-monogamous, primitive, dysgenic, and in practice anti- feminist social patterns and has divided men between an "alpha" contingent who objectify and degrade women, and an "omega" contingent (cyberstalkers, doxxers) who hate them. It's a hideous culture based on social status and acquisitiveness ("Game") and it's left a large number of people (men and women both) unable to form mature relationships.

Most male misogynists are in what I would call the Misogyny Loop. (There's probably a Misandry Loop for heterosexual women.) Because they have negative and false beliefs about women (i.e. "all women are whores who fall for Game") they end up meeting and dating only damaged women, and the sampling confirms their incorrect (and, from our perspective, socially unacceptable) beliefs.

The real enemy, though, is a specific culture created by the worst of men and the worst of women. _Sex and the City_ feminism is based on lowering moral standards for women (i.e. women should be able to behave like the worst 5% of men without consequence) when the real goal should be to raise moral standards for men.

I want to make it clear that I have no sympathy whatsoever for the 1% of men who engage in cyberstalking and doxxing. I do feel slightly bad for the 39% who have been led astray into casual misogyny by a fucked-up and perverted culture. (But I feel much worse for non-participating, innocent women like Kathy Sierra.)

<comment><USER18> _It leads naturally to pre-monogamous, primitive, dysgenic, and in practice anti-feminist social patterns and has divided men between an "alpha" contingent who objectify and degrade women, and an "omega" contingent (cyberstalkers, doxxers) who hate them._

Lots of big words, but always the same adolescent logic: "the culture" somehow prevents male nerds from dating. So it's no surprise that they abuse women.

How is it that so many of us manage to actually grow up? Most of the male nerds I know today have families. It's because there is no such thing as an "alpha" or an "omega". Those are concepts are invented and reinvented in different contexts to let people off the hook for their own thoughts and actions. It's not about taking personal responsibility for... what, being on the same Internet as a person who wrote a sex blog? --- no, it's that they're _omegas_ victimized by a _culture_ that promotes _Game_.

Horseshit.

The problem as I see it is much simpler. Variance in human cognitive ability ensures that there will always be people damaged enough to harm others purely out of blind, undirected malice. The Internet (a) creates an affordance that makes harassing women the simplest way to do that and (b) amplifies them. You don't need a conspiracy theory about "Game" and "alphas" and "omegas" to understand what's happening; people that used to spend their lives living in their grandparents basement torturing animals for fun now spend that time doing something else online.

What I don't understand is the urge others have to rationalize their behavior.

<comment><USER19> I didn't read that the same way you did. I don't think GP was using "culture" as an excuse for anyone's behaviour; rather I read it as a suggestion that maybe _in addition to_ personal culpability, there are cultural problems in place which perpetuate/encourage/condone bad behaviour. Doesn't sound like horseshit to me, at least not in the obvious sense which you seem to suggest. (FWIW, I might also forego the "alpha/omega" labels, but that's a small nit to pick.)

The last part of your comment almost seems orthogonal to that; "whether or not there is a problematic culture in place, there are also crazy people alive, and the internet gives them a platform".

<comment><USER18> If there's a cultural problem, it's the one that suggests that having a hard time finding a date when you're 17 (or 24) is a problem that implicates all of society and can be expected to motivate a hatred of women.

The person we're talking about on this thread did nothing worse than write a blog about a topic that makes certain people feel uncomfortable. In return, she was the victim of a concerted and unrelenting campaign of harassment. And what the commenter we're replying to has to say about this is that he thinks she might be mentally ill, and, if nothing else, surely provoked the harassment by writing. That would be a contemptible sentiment if it wasn't instead alarming evidence of a real problem within the commenter.

<comment><USER19> I think you might be letting your opinions about 'michaelochurch unfairly affect the way you parsed his comment. You have to read pretty deeply between the lines (and his mentions of "alpha"/"omega"/"Game") to get to _any_ point about "having a hard time finding a date". What he does directly refer to is "a culture of casual sex" and although I'm far from a prude and ideologically believe that what happens in someone's bedroom is their own business, I don't think it's "horseshit" to suggest that a culture of casual sex (or even a culture which glorified that idea, without it necessarily being a reflection of the way things actually are) could negatively affect social norms with regard to male-female interactions.

I also take issue with the assumptions 'michaelochurch has made about the mental welfare of someone who is completely foreign to me (and presumably, him, and... you?) and if that was your only original issue, you should have said so. (Then again, it could be argued that you repeatedly make assumptions about _his_ mental welfare publicly, so I guess that would have been a strange comment for you to make.)

As an aside: if we really think someone on the internet is crazy, we can nicely suggest to them one time that they may want to speak to a professional (which I know you have already done in this case, and in an admirable fashion). After that, for a foreign commenter on a message board, the remaining options are to a) engage with the _content of their posts_ or b) ignore them. Replying to each of their comments in disagreement without actually coming up with a good reason is what I took issue with here (not that there weren't good reasons to disagree with GP, just that I didn't think you chose one) and, of course, making further commentary _about them_ frequently also seems problematic to me.

<comment><USER18> You're right about how I'm engaging with him. I'll stop. Thanks for the sanity check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the main problem here is not that people are harassing her. The main problem is the fact that it is possible for people to be harassed in this way. There are a number of things that the people around someone have to believe for that to be possible. Beliefs that I would say are simply _wrong_.

My main belief here is: if you care about preventing the personal misery of people like Lena Chen and Kathy Sierra, you should not try to prevent this type of harassment with judicial or technical means. You should try to change the beliefs of people so this kind of harassment is simply not possible, which automatically results in this kind of harassment not being perpetrated (because it is pointless).

Here are some of the beliefs that are necessary ingredients for this kind of harassment to be possible:

* people are not adapted to living in a small world, where your actions can become known to, and commented on by, a vast amount of people. Given you are living in such a world, you should internalize the fact that it shouldn't matter one bit what a few random internet commentators say or think about you.

You happen to have drawn some attention and as a result not only the one lunatic in your direct environment has noticed you, but another hundred of the thousands of lunatics out there have noticed you and are vocal about that. But they are just random unknown people. They think you are a slut? Why do you care? More importantly and much more relevant to solving this: why do your friends care?

* so a reasonable concern is of course: what is the actual impact of the beliefs and statements of these unknown people on your direct environment? How many of the people you should reasonably care about have noticed? How many of those people seriously wonder whether these random people are right?

If they have noticed: people adjusted to this world wouldn't believe anything J. Random person says. They would ignore it as one set of implausible datapoints in the overload of information available these days. If anyone believes it: good to know, those people are not fit to be friends or colleagues. Someone thinks you're a slut because some random people on the internet are saying so? What kind of gullible numskull is that person? A person maladjusted to this small world.

* suppose some facts are undeniable. These are pictures of you naked. Why is that a problem? Having seen someone naked or having been seen naked should not change the way you behave towards each other. That's allowing yourself to be victimized by the puritanical standards that have become a strong factor in Western civilization over the past fifteen hundred years. If someone cares about it being possible to see you naked on the internet, then that person is at fault, not you.

* suppose some facts are really scandalous. Let's say it's evidence of a crime, but it was too long ago to prosecute. It still shouldn't matter. You aren't a few photographs or letters and anyone who believes otherwise is, again, not worth the air in his lungs. I don't care if you murdered someone thirty years ago: if you've been a decent person ever since and I have no reason to suppose you would commit such a transgression again, then I should assume you will be a decent person now.

So, tl;dr: the reason it is possible for people to be harassed in this way is because too many people care too much about opinions of random others, care too much about what other people do and commit the fundamental attribution error. Solve that and the problem goes away.

<comment><USER21> Mr Confusion, please write here your real name, let somebody make all top Google results to your name link to always new brutal lies about you, then explain us all how you can not care too much about the opinions of random others.

For the start, I'd like to know what would happen if people start down-voting your posts here, would you delete some? Would you close the account? You see, it's easier, you haven't provided your real name.

<comment><USER20> Nobody would bother to make the top search result point to new brutal lies if my friends and potential employers wouldn't care about the top search result. Which they wouldn't if they would care less about what some random persons on the other side of the world believe. Which they should if they would properly internalize how the world works these days.

I practice what I preach. I'm constantly advocating being wary of information found on the internet. I advocate not caring about what random people think. However, this way of achieving change takes a lot of time. It doesn't prevent a new incident tomorrow or next year. But maybe in 10 years.</comment></comment></comment>


Fyifv: A Microsoft Urban Legend (2001) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20051228022236/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/16/13635/2730 <comment><USER2> My experience with engineers who made too much money in an IPO (not at MSFT) was the opposite - they mostly wanted to sit in the corner and play with whatever cool toys and have no clear job description. They didn't need to threaten leaving because they were furniture.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was at Microsoft from 1985-1991, and this agrees with my experience. FYIFV was mostly something people said that other people _could_ say. I never heard anyone express the sentiment directly and certainly never saw it on a button, pin or shirt.

However, it was possible to be "fully vested" in a practical sense. If you didn't review well, your initial option grants would dwarf your continuing grants. Even more so if you were an acqui-hire.

A more common expression, in my circle at least, was "I would shovel shit for what they're paying me now," in reference to the fact that the closer you get to your next six-month option vesting date, the more you're getting "paid" for each day of work. A reminder to balance your frustrations against the fact that you'll be collecting $50K, $100K, $200K a day to just shut up and keep your head down for a few more days.

</comment><comment><USER4> God, I miss kuro5hin

</comment><comment><USER5> I substantially based the Wikipedia article on this. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FYIFV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FYIFV)</comment>


Books on programming languages - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nishankt/books-on-programming-languages-8ce1c4ce01 <comment><AUTHOR> Extending this post to ask, what are some of your favorite programming books and why? I still remember Peter Van Der Linden's expert C programming for it's humorous approach and Friedman & Matthias' The little schemer for it's gradual build up.</comment>


The CIA-backed startup that's taking over Palo Alto - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/12/the-cia-backed-start-up-thats-taking-over-palo-alto.html <comment><USER2> Surprised no-one's mentioned wikileaks and the document leak [1] that exposed Palantir tendering to attack Assange's org on behalf of some bank.

      Combating this threat requires advanced subject matter
      expertise in cybersecurity, insider threats, counter
      cyber-fraud, targeting analysis, social media
      exploitation

      Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico
      Technologies represent deep domain knowledge in each
      of these areas

...

      Feed the fuel between the feuding groups.

      Disinformation. Create messages around actions to
      sabotage or discredit the opposing organization.
      Submit fake documents and then call out the error.

      Create concern over the security of the
      infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the
      process is believed to not be secure they are done.

      Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data
      on document submitters. This would kill the project.
      Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting
      a team together to get access is more straightforward.

      Media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature
      of wikileaks activities. Sustained pressure. Does
      nothing for the fanatics, but creates concern and doubt
      amongst moderates.

      Search for leaks. Use social media to profile and
      identify risky behavior of employees.

This seems to show Palantir expertise extending beyond data filtering, and was a big enough deal at the time for Palantir to publicly apologise and iirc lose a member of staff.

1: [https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/WikiLeaks_Response_v6.pdf](https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/WikiLeaks_Response_v6.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Only the individuals working for Palantir can know how authoritarian, autocratic, or facist their actions are.

Based on what we know about the company, I have deep concerns regarding why they are paid so much by the US government, and the possibility that they are an ultimate harm to Liberty in the world.

I hope the technocrats in the machine can follow the example of Edward Snowden, if necessary, and have the courage to speak up if they are asked to perform unconstitutional acts as part of their employment activities.

</comment><comment><USER4> Palantir is doing some of the coolest most innovative big data parsing that there is... unfortunately it's directly for the CIA and NSA and the technologies that they have made public are creeeeeeepy, so who knows what crazy stuff they're not telling the public about. I've looked into working for them but reports from the front line are that they have zero work-life balance and run employees into the ground with overwork.

<comment><USER5> If you find it "creeeeeeepy" what they do, why would you look into working there?

<comment><USER6> Good people working for bad companies have some small ability to change culture.

"Is this legal?", "Do I need a warrant to do this intercept?", "Is this compatible with our rules?", "What would our regulators say if they knew we did this?", "How will the oversight and scrutiny committee respond to this action?"

It's not much, but it's about as good as me from the outside writing a letter to my MP which is about all I can do.

EDIT: to expand on this a bit. Imagine you're a mathematician and that you have a neuro-diversity. In the past you may have struggled to get a job because employers sometimes discriminate against neuro-atypicality. GCHQ definitely does not do so - they mention in press releases they recognise the advantages of neuro-diversity. So one option would be something like the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research. As an employer Google gives you 20% time. Heilbronn gives you 50% time, 50% of the time you're doing work directed by GCHQ/CESG, the rest of the time you do what you like. That is potentially interesting maths with interesting people. The money at GCHQ isn't great compared to the SV bubble, but for the UK it's okay, and there other benefits.

[http://www.bristol.ac.uk/maths/research/heilbronn/](http://www.bristol.ac.uk/maths/research/heilbronn/)

[http://web.maths.bris.ac.uk/research/heilbronn_institute/](http://web.maths.bris.ac.uk/research/heilbronn_institute/)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11111584/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11111584/GCHQ- employs-more-than-100-dyslexic-and-dyspraxic-spies.html)

<comment><USER7> A professor in college suggested to me that if good people don't work for defense companies, then only bad people will be working in defense companies.

<comment><USER8> At that point, why should there even _be_ private defense companies? Why do we accept that weapons manufacturing is outside of democratic control and civilian restraint?

<comment><USER7> Interesting question. I have no idea one way or the other, I've never studied economics beyond 101. An exploration of that question might include why the US relied on private industry for WWII military needs, rather than building its own factories or taking over existing ones.

<comment><USER9> The US effectively commandeered private industry in WWII. They were compensated, but that was nothing like the current military weapons procurements system.

<comment><USER7> But they were still private. Under orders, just like individual citizens were under orders, with the draft and rationing. It was arguably an existential threat.

But the commandeered private industry was what the current MIC grew from. It wouldn't have happened without WWII.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Irrespective of their work it's really not cool that they are taking over the downtown real estate instead of moving to a campus.. changes the character of the area that has traditionally felt like an incubator. They've broken with local tradition.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I find this particularly odd given Palantir's founders... You'd think they would care more about maintaining the current pathos of Palo Alto. Then again, I found out recently that Thiel is a financial supporter of Ted Cruz, so there are always surprises in store.

<comment><USER12> pa·thos - noun, a quality that evokes pity or sadness.

<comment><USER11> Very true, I meant it in the sense of ethos/logos/pathos -- an appeal to emotion. You're right though, there are more accurate words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After all what we learned about how the CIA operates: How can you as an engineer/any other staff, work or want to work there?

This is a genuine question - I really would like to learn more about why someone is OK working at a company with such an investor.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.iqt.org/portfolio/](https://www.iqt.org/portfolio/) (CIA's investment arm)

Also whats wrong with the CIA?

<comment><USER14> A lot of people are probably okay with the US having an organization that murders and tortures people, sabotages other sovereign nations' interests, and helps US corporations compete globally through espionage; but not one that does so much of it as the CIA. An organization like that needs to be neither seen nor heard, and it ought to be used infrequently enough that our country can ostensibly say that we only do those kinds when we have to.

To turn your question on its head, what's not wrong with them? It's not controversial at all that there are many people who don't wish to work in the defense side of aerospace, or on other weapons tech, why would it be controversial that someone wouldn't want to work in intelligence. Some people take professional codes of ethics (or their own personal ethics) more seriously than others.

<comment><USER13> Yeah but this is like 3rd degree the CIA also has invested in Facebook. The DOD is the largest provider of grants in the academia. And at the end various arms (quite often defense related) of the US public sectors are quite often one of the biggest investors and drivers behind new technologies. The valley could not exist without the USG and specifically without DOD money.

While I completely understand people that say would not like to work on the next generation of guided missiles, one would be hard pressed to find job in the tech sector that is not partially funded by the more militant parts of the US government, and if they completed STEM studies in the US more likely than not that some of their grants and scholarships were funded by the DOD directly.

<comment><USER12> I was always amused by the imprimatur of the Office of Naval Research on the Lambda the Ultimate papers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hold on a second

> 10 to 15 percent of the commercial inventory

That doesn't exactly qualify as "taking over". A little uncool and red-statey perhaps, but hardly a crisis.

<comment><USER16> That is office space scattered around downtown Palo Alto that once hosted a large variety of small startups. Now those little startups are moving to Redwood City or San Mateo, replaced by opaque gray locked doors without signage.

It has gotten so bad that Palo Alto enacted an ordinance to ban the conversion of downtown retail space into office space. It is nicknamed the "Palantir Ordinance."

[http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/477...](http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/47704)

<comment><USER15> You're conflating two separate issues. Most people would agree downtown Palo Alto needs to keep retail space to retain its character. And they should fix that with proper zoning.

But that's between Palo Alto and the landlords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its not a startup if it is this big

<comment><USER18> Yup, I'm pretty sure we are all aware. Started 9 years ago, 1800 employees and $1.5B in revenue and occupies about 10% - 15% of available real estate in the area. What universe of skewed reality is this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The noisy video playing banner thing which sticks to the top of your screen in that article is really off-putting/distracting

<comment><USER20> I can't believe that the companies still haven't figured out that autoplaying things is just plain wrong.

<comment><USER21> The collection rate for these sort of ads is much higher than something like a banner ad, for instance. So they might know it negatively effects the experience, but they must consider the payoff worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bloody clickbait headlines!

</comment><comment><USER23> I have one of those "Save the Shire" t-shirts, but I don't live in Palo Alto. :P

<comment><USER24> There's quite a mixed message there: the original palantir was under Sauron's control, and the shire was to be saved _from_ the wielder of the panopticon..

<comment><USER25> The palantíri were created by Elves and only much later captured by Sauron and used for evil.

Possibly quite an appropriate name then... :-|

<comment><USER26> I can appreciate how self-aware their name is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> almost certain the Palantir is funding the Clinton SuperPAC..</comment>


The world's stinkiest snack food - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190506-taipeis-oddly-tasty-house-of-stink <comment><USER2> The two worst smelling foods in my opinion are:

Durian fruit: taste's great but smells like a hot dumpster. Banned on public transport in a number of places across Asia Pacific.

Vietnamese fish soup: smelled like rotting death, tasted awesome.</comment>


Windows 10 upgrades will cost $119 after July 29, Win 10 on 300M devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/05/05/windows-10-upgrades-will-cost-119-after-july-29/ <comment><USER2> You can lock-in your upgrade eligibility w/o actually installing Windows 10.

The WinToUSB tool ([http://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/](http://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/)) can create a bootable Windows 10 USB thumb-drive (or hard disk drive, which is much faster). You boot from this drive to lock-in your entitlement w/o actually having to upgrade to Windows 10. (You must use the Windows 10 "1511" update to do this. The earlier Windows 10 version won't activate w/ a Windows 7/8/8.1 product key.)

Create and boot from a Windows 10 thumb-drive and use the "Activate Windows" functionality with your existing Windows 7/8.1 key. This will lock-in that PC's Windows 10 entitlement w/ Microsoft's servers. No changes are made to your existing hard disk drive.

If you're paranoid like me, you can even disconnect your hard disk drive while you perform this procedure to ensure no changes are made.

I validated the "digital entitlement" to install Windows 10 after performing this procedure on a PC. I put a clean hard disk drive in it, installed Windows 10 from scratch, skipped entering the product key during install, and found that the machine was "Activated with a digital entitlement" after installation completed.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I want to upgrade to Win 10 eventually, but don't really have time to do it before the deadline, your post could really help me !

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm still so undecided whether to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10. On the one hand a free upgrade to the latest OS is so very tempting, but then I read about how there is no privacy, people calling the installation malware, and the ugly flat UI look. Not to mention does it push that basic tiles screen from Windows 8 in your face? The one that is meant for a tablet/phone, and has no place on a desktop?

I wonder if I'm going to miss out on new games that are DirectX 12 only, which is Windows 10 only. I see on Steam [1] that 43% of people use Windows 10 now. Could this be a problem soon?

So many pros and cons to upgrading, I can't believe I even have to think about this stuff. Very unhappy with Microsoft about it all in all, who usually I don't have a problem with.

[1] [http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey)

<comment><USER5> I think you may have a few mis-conceptions about windows 10...

1) no privacy... not really. Windows (like several other OS' and applications) will, by default, send data to the cloud for processing and collect telemetry data about the user. I really wish they had made it easier to opt out of (and indeed not made the privacy invasive stuff the default) but I wouldn't say that equates to "no privacy". Also with a bit of effort you can turn that stuff off.

2) People calling it malware... well that's a subjective description, not sure I see the basis for it.

3) Ugly flat UI.. Again that's a matter of taste I guess. Personally I quite like Windows 10's new look

4) Nope the windows 8 full start screen is gone in 10 in desktop mode.

<comment><USER6> >no privacy... not really.

> really wish they had made it easier to opt out of (and indeed not made the > privacy invasive stuff the default)

Which is it?

<comment><USER5> well some not great privacy settings is not the same as "no privacy" therefore I would suggest those statements are not contradictory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reasons I would rather be on Windows 7:

\- search stopped working after upgrading \- twice it has changed my local account to a Microsoft account without my approval (and failed to sync a password change from online) \- after upgrading my computer my copy now requires activation and support says I have to buy a copy since my product key was a 7 one before upgrading

<comment><USER8> I have the opposite problem. WIndows 10 at home and windows 7 at the office. I hate using the Win 7 at work.

I love the new search on win 10. I feel that the windows key is smarter now.

If it did that to me with the product key I'd be pissed. If customer support doesn't fix that I'd consider that a reason to move to linux too. It hasn't happened to me but if it had I'd move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So will they stop force upgrading systems now or will we come home to find a ransom note for $119 now and an unusable system? That part, by far the most important, is not even addressed.

<comment><USER10> As in pay for Win10 or stare at this upgrade modal?

I can't tell if your serious or sarcastic.

<comment><USER9> Yes, exactly. I'm totally serious. Considering Microsoft's actions up to this point vis a vis Windows 10, it's hardly a stretch of the imagination that they'd do that. It's amazing how many issues in technology come down to trust --or lack of it--when you boil things down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A while back Microsoft said that Windows 10 will continue to be free for customers who will benefit from it's assistive technologies. I don't know how they plan to implement this. Many assistive technologies are sometimes helpful to individuals that would not typically be described as 'disabled'.

It seems like such a wide open backdoor to continued free upgrades that it almost looks intentional...

</comment><comment><USER12>
        To the last, I grapple with thee;
        From Hell's heart, I stab at thee;
        For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

I will either continue using Windows 8, or replace my current system with Linux entirely. If I didn't need to use VS and some Adobe software, I would already have gotten rid of Windows.

But, even though I would probably like a lot of what Windows 10 has to offer, I will never, _ever_ voluntarily upgrade to 10. I'll buy a new laptop with 10 installed, but not upgrade, _just because_ I object to Microsoft's aggressive tactics so much, that I want to make a futile gesture of holding on to my current Windows OS out of sheer irrational spite.

<comment><USER13> And because upgraded versions of Windows suffer from extreme bloat, instability, and weird random issues that you can typically not fix without a clean reinstall anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If Microsoft did this from the start, Win 10 install numbers would be disappointing.

<comment><USER15> Which has been the status quo for Windows. Microsoft admitted very early on that in general consumers only "upgrade" Windows when they pick up a new machine with the new Windows version installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any way to get the Windows 10 upgrade key without upgrading?

</comment><comment><USER17> I find it a bit ironic that after their very aggressive forced update practices [1][2], they're now gonna charge people for it.

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-pays-woman-10000-over- for...](http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-pays-woman-10000-over-forced- windows-10-install/)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_in_the_central_african_bush_we_pay_for/)

<comment><USER18> They were always going to charge for it. The first time it was announced they stated it was going to be free to upgrade for the first year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When will the last Skylake OEM machines be sold with Windows 7 downgrade rights?</comment>


Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas? - <AUTHOR> Most of the times I read something with "Show HN", I see lots of hate and negative energy in the comments. These people are hungry for appreciation as they spent months building their product/tool/startup. Why don't we give them a helpful criticism while support them? <comment><USER3> There are plenty of online communities one can approach for general encouragement and moral support.

People choose to Show HN specifically because they know appreciation isn't automatic here. They don't just want a pat on the head, they want to know if they're doing it right.

Often, learning that your idea simply isn't valuable to others (or even worth their time) is very helpful and motivating towards future development.

I do think there's room to ask that people's so-called negative comments at least be detailed, but this goes for positive/supportive comments too, in my opinion. I don't want to just be told to keep trying, I want help thinking about what exactly to try next.

</comment><comment><USER4> Firstly, I have a gripe against the word "hate". No one is hating anything, it is critiquing. The question becomes is how do you take it?

And frankly for me the new trends seems to be asking the question - "Why does HN hate X?" with X being blockchain, Tesla, etc take your pick. This kind of negative questioning leads to two conclusions:

 _If_ HN does actually hate X, then it turns into a public shaming. And no one on the internet admits they are doing anything wrong. So, good luck trying to talk sense.

 _If_ HN doesn't hate a topic, then you are implying that even simple comments are hateful. And slowly things will turn _against_ your topic of choice.

</comment><comment><USER5> My perception is the opposite. Someone would honestly have to do an analysis of Show HNs to figure out whose perception is correct. My suspicion is that it doesn't skew strongly one way or the other.

</comment><comment><USER6> It would help to give some specific examples of threads or comments you think are hateful.

The more active HN users, with the support of the moderators, are quite vigilant about downvoting or flagging nasty comments.

Can you give any examples of nasty or mean comments that appear high up in the comment thread and/or without being faded or flagged?

The whole idea of Show HN is to encourage people to build interesting things and get feedback to help them improve their project and/or skills. So, constructive criticism should be welcomed whereas meanness should be weeded out any time it appears.

If you're seeing mean comments in Show HN posts, you should flag and downvote those comments and consider reporting them to the moderators at email@example.com.

<comment><USER7> Based on the first page of [https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew](https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew) (30 postings, 29 are "Show HN", 12 have comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17548331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17548331) \- both comments by the show-er.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547703) \- one non-author comment, author responded along the lines "good point" but "edge case".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17546384](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17546384) \- one comment, possibly negative (a complaint about the use of the word 'certificated').

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17545446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17545446) \- one non-author comment, seems like a valid critique

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544832) \- only one author comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544332) \- only one author comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17544330) \- only one author comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541458) \- only one author comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541114) \- I felt the one comment was negative. I have added a more positive followup.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540687) \- the one comment starts "Genius"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540393) \- a meta Show HN doing sentiment analysis on Show HN. Many comments. Mixed. Seems overall positive.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540210) \- only one author comment

From this I conclude that 1) Most Show HNs go uncommented, even when the author tries to encourage feedback by adding a comment, and 2) it is not the case that "the HN community is always hating on new ideas."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's due to the fact that many HN people prefer to give honest analysis/opinion, even if the truth hurts. In the long run, it's probably more useful that way to whomever posted, to get "real-life" feedback at least from a technical perspective.

The question did make me think, whether there's a small part that supports the stereotype(?) of "smart" people, or those working in IT/tech, having less empathy and emotional consideration. Kindness can be seen as unnecessary or even harmful sugar-coating..

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't read Show HN much, but I wonder how much of that hate and negativity is just plain objective criticism that it merely perceived negatively by some. On the internet, if you don't use smileys or polite language, you sometimes seem negative even if you just make normal observations or ask logical questions. That's just how anonymous online communication is, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER10> My theory is that communities like HN and StackOverflow are a magnet for very smart people with a very direct style of communication. Yes, they sound sassy or snarky but most have no intention to be mean. They just lack most of the brain circuitry to refrain from comment or beat around the bush.

<comment><USER11> In person, voice tone, facial expression etc help convey warmth and kindness. On the internet, all you have is words (unless you go out of your way to include emoticons, gifs, etc, which are not the norm on HN). This often sounds far harsher than was intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hitting the "show" link in the top nav and reading by date, the thing that struck me the most was not the "negative energy" but the lack of comments. A lot of people showing but apparently not so many paying attention. Some seem pretty nifty...

</comment><comment><USER13> Some cultures (and subcultures) value honest, sharp critique and in others it is perceived as direct, personal attack. See the culture - <USER2> connection [1]

[1] [http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb06/connection.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb06/connection.aspx)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/17/learning-to-embrace- confli...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/17/learning-to-embrace-conflict-as- a-part-of-startup-culture/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not going to lie if something is badly presented or mediocre. I don't think that helps the team that made it or the quality of HN.

I don't want people to be sad or hurt either.

Sometimes it looks like something is opportunistic or scammy. In that case you flag it. If something seems clueless and doesn't seem to have a lot of work or thought behind it I hope people want to help when they level harsh criticism. In these cases people need direction and it's a case where guidance or mentorship might help. It's so important to do this with care.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's not hate, it's armchair criticism most of the time. People assume their engineering skills transfer over any walk of life, so they feel entitled to voice an opinion just by taking a glance at an idea/code/site/etc. You know, devs have strong opinions about lots of stuff.

It takes a somewhat special individual to be able to give helpful criticism, even if he/she thinks it's nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think a lot of the negative energy comes from that startup-frustration that many in Silicon Valley feel. Every idea sucks unless they came up with it, because nobody wants to be left out of the next Facebook, Uber, etc. That attitude permeates everything.

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't see this. From my experience there's a lot of respect for people getting stuff to the point that they are willing to Show HN. Sometimes there's some honest critique that's really helpful if you are willing to listen.

</comment><comment><USER18> The implication that people who complain about "negative energy" are making is that negative energy has no value or negative value; it doesn't. I'd be willing to say that skepticism has far more value than pats on the back. Children need pats on the back, not adults.

<comment><USER7> I do not like your last sentence. The implication is that that those who do not like negative criticism are immature.

There are many times when adults have an emotional need for a pat on the back. I know I have that feeling sometimes.

Here's one I came across just the other day - [https://youtu.be/UPS4nxI0b9g?t=826](https://youtu.be/UPS4nxI0b9g?t=826) . "But there's no one here to pat me on the back. It sucks."

I also think there are times when negative energy has negative value.

The same person, in the video at [https://youtu.be/4nqJiBRNQuw?t=855](https://youtu.be/4nqJiBRNQuw?t=855) , after many frustrating attempts at trying to make a Kit-Kat from scratch, says "I want you to know that I can accept zero criticism right now." I respect her for recognizing that need and expressing it, and for her co-workers to acknowledge that need and support her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it is the case unless a product is free / open source ?

</comment><comment><USER20> I've seen several (recently too) new idea's or projects floated here that got heaps of very positive feedback.

I think your premise is flawed.

</comment><comment><USER21> resistances to change.

</comment><comment><USER22> The negativity became dominant post-PG. Unfortunately and disappointingly.

[added] To elaborate: his regular essays were thought-provoking and challenging, in a way that generally drove HN commenters to think and contribute. Nowadays there is a discouraging excess of emoting and belittling, even though the moderators have stepped up their nudges and interventions.

<comment><USER23> That isn't true, the most famous example of HN negativity is Show HN: Dropbox which has been reposted quite a few times on HN since dropbox became dropbox.

Example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306)

<comment><USER24> Uhm... how exactly is this thread a display of "negativity"? Most of the comments are pretty supportive and the critique was mostly placed on project's communication and not yet well-defined business model, which actually made a lot of sense.

Even the famous _" you can already build such a system yourself (...) by FTP, curlftpfs, SVN, CVS"_ comment, which was often cited later as ridiculous, actually ends with a supportive reply and overall makes sense in the context of the whole thread. Heck, even comments like "seen it before in Coda" are in fact supportive and thankful. It's all very sensible, positive and IMO only worth any particular note here if you are (quite paradoxically) blinded with hindsight ;P

<comment><USER7> I agree with you. Zed Shaw wrote an essay a few months ago on this topic, at [https://zedshaw.com/2018/03/25/the-billionaires-vs- brandonm/](https://zedshaw.com/2018/03/25/the-billionaires-vs-brandonm/) .

> In 2007 what ... wrote is actually valid given the environment. It was a > total long shot that Dropbox would go anywhere, and hell it took a whole 11 > fucking years for them to IPO. Box did it in 2014 and competes rather well > compared to Dropbox. But let's break down his comments from a 2007 > perspective:

I agree with Shaw's analysis as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Life lesson: People have hated on new ideas in every community since the dawn of time. Hacker news is not special in that regard. Just learn to deal with it by finding conviction in your ideas.

<comment><USER22> "Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Byzantine fault tolerance and zero knowledge proofs, so cool! Oh it's being done by people using it for distributed ledgers? Boooo now we hate it

I've realized I have to broaden my news intake as even this community has it's collective blind spots

<comment><USER26> Check out the top post on EthTrader, it's about Sir Isaac Newton losing money in a scam. HN is not the only ones with this opinion

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/8zamjw/sir_isaac...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/8zamjw/sir_isaac_newton_got_the_fomo_despite_being_one/)</comment></comment>


SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life  - <AUTHOR> https://setistars.org/donations <comment><AUTHOR> If you haven't yet seen the _wonderful_ "Sagan Series" on youtube, start with this one:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHuve33yOVY>

or this one:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxsJeND_D-k&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxsJeND_D-k&feature=related)

Honestly, watching this chokes me up a little bit. Watching the last shuttle flight, then seeing SETI have to realistically think about parking all of their listening equipment is just...sad.

Too many people get caught up in the "why" of this stuff. You're looking at it wrong. Look at space travel as an expression of humanity, and a really important one. Ancient people built Pyramids, or Stonehenge, or the Colosseum. I wonder how many Romans thought building the Colosseum was a waste of money.

The shuttle, or SETI are our Pyramids. It's disgusting that we can spend as many billions of dollars a year as we do on blowing each other up, but things like "Let's see what's on the other side of that proverbial mountain" get defunded because they're "pointless".

<comment><USER2> I think we've built/done plenty of cool things as a society and I don't think ending the space program negates that (or what was achieved with the space program in the first place).

I would really be more comfortable with a space program being funded directly by people like yourself in the form of donations to a gov-independent organization, because I for one don't really care all that much about continued space exploration and don't think the government should pay for it. Not that they don't spend tons of money on other stupid stuff, but hey, one step at a time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Has SETI actually found anything scientifically useful?

(This is an honest question.)

<comment><USER4> > Has SETI actually found anything scientifically useful?

Would you also reject a research grant for a potential cancer cure based on the fact that the researcher hasn't cured cancer?

<comment><USER5> No, but if the hypothesis were "lemons cured cancer", and decades of evidence had failed to show any evidence of lemons curing cancer, and the researchers are still saying "Hmmm, maybe we need to cut the lemons up in a different way" then I'd be disinclined to continue funding it.

<comment><USER6> What if your researches had been looking at only 100 cells of the billions/trillions of cells in the lungs (for example), and they said they'd like to expand to 200 of the maybe 100,000,000,000 cells available.

Do you still want to discontinue the search? It seems a bit premature at this point.

<comment><USER5> No, but I'd want to see a better methodology than the one that can only check 1e-9 of the available search space every few decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Okay now only $1,933 after my donation. :) The Sooner we can get of this planet the better.

<comment><USER8> This does virtually nothing to get us off the planet. Yes, I can construct a lengthy chain of events whereby a discovery that wouldn't have happened without this donation encourages us to further our space program, but just mailing money to Burt Rutan is more likely to have a direct result.

<comment><USER7> I am in awe of you ability to construct a lengthy chain of events whereby this is possible. You must know computers and stuff,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Behold! The power of hacker news!

</comment><comment><USER10> Funding successful!

<comment><USER11> That didn't take too long :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> how much longer will they operate after this fundraising drive? for eg. are they just going to have to ask for donations every year from now?

</comment><comment><USER9> Do they accept bitcoin?

<comment><USER13> Can you buy anything with bitcoins other than drugs right now?

edit: I know someone will roll their eyes at this comment and proceed to defend bitcoin, but seriously - what can SETI buy with bitcoins that's useful to them? And "anything people are willing to sell, man, it's just a currency!" is a trivial answer.

<comment><USER7> Yes you can buy really bad porn

<comment><USER5> Shit, man, I'll give you that for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I suggest that SETI attempt to pitch the research grant divison of Hadden Industries. It is my understanding that S. R. Hadden is interested in this type of thing.</comment>


Homeless Questions - <AUTHOR> https://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/homeless-questions/ <comment><USER2> 71\. What are the primary causes of homelessness?

The answers given are just what triggered the transition from bad to worse.

My anecdotal explanation (besides substance abuse and mental illness) is that people who "failed to launch" in the sense that they were not cut out for professional careers (or who couldn't afford to go to college) ended up living on the cheap with their parents. When their parents passed away they weren't even in a position to work at a fast-food job.

That's a scenario I imagine, but perhaps it doesn't correspond to reality...</comment>


Apple's iOS Loyalty Rate Is Lower Than Google's Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/03/10/apples-ios-loyalty-rate-is-lower-than-googles-android-but-apple-may-steal-more-users-each-year <comment><USER2> > CIRP has surveyed 500 U.S. smartphone users

That seems awfully low, and not at all representative.</comment>


Is Consciousness Computable? - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0126 <comment><USER2> I believe there's an argument to be made that consciousness is computation itself.

I have a particular thought experiment about consciousness. Take a book, say, Lord of the Rings. Is Frodo conscious? Probably not. But lets say the book was extraordinarily detailed. Lets say the book was actually a mathematical model that described the workings of Middle Earth down to every elementary particle. Each page, a very long page, would describe one 'tick' of the Middle Earth universe.

So you've simulated consciousness on paper. Not in a machine, mind you, but on paper. But it isn't really a simulation as much as a description. It isn't computation, but information. And that information doesn't make Frodo conscious.

Now what if this book were put into a computer? And what if the world were modeled just as accurately and explicitly as the book? Would Frodo then be conscious, simply because a computer calculated the sequence of atomic movements within Frodo's brain?

If so, is it the actual movements of those atoms that creates Frodo's experience of reality, or is it the computation that calculates that movement itself? Whatever process it is that allows reality to compute itself -- to obey the laws of physics -- whatever process that is . . I'd say that act of computation has more to say about consciousness that the actual result itself.

<comment><USER3> > Is Frodo conscious? Probably not.

How do you know?

> I'd say that act of computation has more to say about consciousness that the > actual result itself.

And what is the act of computation? Is it not just a progression of relationships in the physical world? Surely consciousness doesn't require an observer to look at the atoms bouncing around in the computer to decide that they are simulation of Frodo. Surely it's just the evolving relationship between the atoms that's all that matters. If we could interpret any physical system as evolving in a way that's isomorphic to a brain, shouldn't that also produce consciousness? Maybe at the end of the day consciousness is just the "existence" (whatever that means) of a certain Turing machine or number.

And if all of your understanding of this world is based on the state of your brain now, then isn't it a simpler explanation that now and your impression of consciousness, in this moment, is all that really exists?

A philosopher is someone bright enough to pose such questions and dim enough to pursue their answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So I wrote a longer piece, and then realized that their whole premise is simply incorrect. Our brain lies to us and fills in the gaps all the time. We do not have perfect memory and continually deal with lossy information integration. The idea that consciousness is lossless is basically a straw man. I think it is fair to say that the brain enforces consistency of representations of the universe and in that way provides something that appears to be unitary, but it does so by discarding lots of information. Furthermore it is pretty clear that we do not have lossless memory. Any cursory look at the literature on eyewitness testimony will show this.

TL;DR The brain lies to us all the time. Just consider the blind spot. Our unitary perception of the universe is an illusion and there is enormous information loss on the way from the sensory environment to motor output.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the intention but obviously it's impossible to compute consciousness because "computing consciousness" doesn't mean anything. We don't know what consciousness is.

I don't think many intelligent people realize how much of our understanding of the mind is like the wild west; we have very little-to-no understanding of how the mind works. Looking at pretty data visualizations from a brain scan doesn't tell you _anything_ about the mind. Some very smart people still contend that consciousness may not even exist[1]. It's hard to tell because it's impossible to measure it objectively.

I think to talk about the mind, we need to use different language entirely. We're still talking about it as if it's a science.

"Chalmers contends that such reductive explanations are available in principle for all other natural phenomena, but not for consciousness. This is the hard problem."

[http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/](http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/)

<comment><USER6> It's so clear that you didn't read a single word of the paper. Even if you want to argue that consciousness is somehow unknowable and not worth discussing scientifically because humanity is still too dumb (lol, wat), the authors provide a perfectly reasonable working definition of consciousness.

 _The theory proposes that consciousness is an information processing phenomenon and can thus be quantified in terms of a systems' organizational structure, specifically its capacity to integrate information... What we mean when we say that the human brain produces consciousness is that it integrates information, thus producing behaviour which reflects the actions of a unified, singular system._

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying anyone is dumb; I'm saying we as a society haven't made understanding the mind _a priority_.

Also, I did read it. That "workable" definition is so presumptuous about the nature of consciousness. What I'm saying, and many others are as well, as that we still need to have a discussion about what we're even talking about. The mind may not even be able to be understood or measured in the "realm of science". That is, we may have to use alternative language to explain something like the mind.

We as a society haven't answered fundamental questions such as what is the mind, why does it exist, where does come from, is it a physical/nonphysical phenomenon, etc.

We can't really solve(especially "compute it") the mind problem if we don't fully understand the problem domain.

<comment><USER7> > why does it exist, where does come from, is it a nonphysical property of the > body or vice versa

Are any of these actual debated questions? Outside of religious arguments I don't think anyone can question that (in order) the answers are

It doesn't need a why/It was the best tool our ancestors evolved for their niche

It comes from electrochemical reactions in your brain

Of course it isn't you die when you are killed, getting head injuries can change your personality/memories.

Since your brain exists in physical reality the question "can we run a perfect simulation of physics" is also exactly "can we compute conciousness". Since it's looking pretty good that we can run a simulation of reality at the level we work at it's also looking pretty good for that whole "mind" in a computer thing.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like you subscribe to Materialism [1].

In fact, these are widely debated questions. Materialism is only one of many philosophies that seek to answer these questions (e.g. dualism). Be careful about accepting answers like that if you haven't examined at least the major alternatives.

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

<comment><USER9> Widely debated by whom? These other philosophies are useless for trying to figure out how consciousness (or _anything_ , for that matter) actually works, as nothing they explain is falsifiable in any way.

I may as well argue about how many angels fit on the head of pin—some will find the topic fascinating, but at the end of the day it doesn't actually reveal anything useful about the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is going to sound pretty absurd, but I have this unscientific hypothesis about what consciousness really is.

I believe there is a chance that consciousness is a requirement for a universe to exist. Without consciousness the universe exists as random information, contained within some infinite outside universe, where there is no time or space.

So imagine this infinite outside universe full of all possible information, it exists in some metaphysical location, it has always existed and it will always exist. All this data makes zero sense and has zero purpose. Within this information exist patterns of every kind, everything real and not real is there. However for this data to become expressed, a conscious entity is required to exist inside of this data for the overall universe to place it in some sort of order.

Therefore consciousness acts as a binder of random information, for this very conscious entity to exist some of this infinite information must be placed in a coherent order. So in this view, the start of the universe does not occur with the big bang, but with the first conscious entity. After this point, for consciousness to continue to exist, it must have a narrative based on fundamental laws which explain how it came into existence. All of history is created after the first conscious entity appears, the formation of the planets, evolution, etc.

To better understand this, imagine a roll of film. You take each frame of this film and make it a separate slide. If you shuffle all these separate film slides and ask someone to view them in no given order, it would make very little sense of what the storyline is. However if you let them sort this information, they might be able to arrange this film in a continuous and coherent storyline. Similarly each planck time of our universe is a separate slide of information which exists in infinity. If a conscious entity exists in that frame the universe must provide a coherent storyline for that entity. Therefore additional frames are pulled out from infinity to allow consciousness to glide through infinity and essentially exist.

I hope that made sense, if I have failed to explain it I apologize.

<comment><USER11> That's not absurd, it's a perfectly plausible philosophical hypothesis. The only thing that's wrong with it, besides the fact that the "first conscious entity" sounds awfully similar to a god, is that I have no idea how to test your hypothesis scientifically. But that shouldn't be a problem if you don't intend your hypothesis to be a matter of science in the first place.

By the way, "consciousness is a requirement for a universe to exist. Without consciousness the universe exists as random information..." is self- contradictory, since existing as random information still counts as existing. I don't think this is what you intended, so I would suggest that you change it to something like "consciousness is a requirement for there to be order in the universe" or something along those lines. (Caution: if you say "consciousness is a requirement for the universe to be intelligible", that becomes sort of tautological.)

Anyway, happy philosophizing!

<comment><USER10> Thanks, excellent points. Maybe one day I will sit down and write everything down properly, and re-edit not to make semantic errors.

I don't mean to imply the first conscious entity is a god, it's possible there is no first but simply a time frame where conscious entities arise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't that contradict [http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5831](http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5831) which claims that the laws of physics are computable? To be honest, I'm just a layman so I might be misunderstanding something.

<comment><USER13> Your presumption is that consciousness falls within the domain of physics, which is not by any means a good assumption.

<comment><USER14> Really? I can provide plenty of evidence that consciousness falls within the domain of physics. Can you provide any that it's not?

<comment><USER15> This present experience falls outside the domain of physics. Physics is just models. This present experience is real. Ideas and models about reality are not reality, but rather contained within it.

<comment><USER16> _> This present experience falls outside the domain of physics. [...] This present experience is real._

So does/is the "material world" (assuming it is a thing of its own).

A model of the universe that doesn't take consciousness into account is incomplete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Slightly off-topic, but here's what Wikipedia says (in part):

"""

Consciousness — The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of equating consciousness with self-consciousness—to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.[19]

Philosophers and non-philosophers differ in their intuitions about what consciousness is.[20] While most people have a strong intuition for the existence of what they refer to as consciousness,[21] skeptics argue that this intuition is false, either because the concept of consciousness is intrinsically incoherent, or because our intuitions about it are based in illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. [...] More generally, many philosophers and scientists have been unhappy about the difficulty of producing a definition that does not involve circularity or fuzziness.[19]

"""

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

Suppose that consciousness didn't actually exist, but within this theory you grant that people really do have perceptions and experiences. Is that really so bad? What does it miss?

</comment><comment><USER18> Michael Graziano's theory that consciousness is computed awareness of attention suggests a far more interesting and perhaps computable solution.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223025/pdf/nihm...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223025/pdf/nihms328502.pdf)

[http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Social-Brain-Michael- Gra...](http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Social-Brain-Michael- Graziano/dp/0199928649)

</comment><comment><USER19> I always liked the idea in the old Cyberpunk tabletop RPG, that an artificial intelligence arose out of the 'internet' with its vast amounts of interconnected computing power, but because it was so loosely coupled and distributed we could not observe it nor be aware of it (apart from a few 'netrunners').

</comment><comment><USER20> If the human brain is conscious then obviously consciousness is in fact computable. I don't see how the authors can reconcile their findings with this.

<comment><USER21> From the abstract: _" Since lossy integration would necessitate continuous damage to existing memories, we propose it is more natural to frame consciousness as a lossless integrative process and provide a formalization of this idea using algorithmic information theory. We prove that complete lossless integration requires noncomputable functions. This result implies that if unitary consciousness exists, it cannot be modelled computationally."_

Seems to be setting up a straw man only to knock it down. Does anyone believe the brain losslessly integrates information? If not, the conclusion doesn't seem to apply.

<comment><USER22> They do, for even stranger reasons: " In particular, memory functions must be vastly non-lossy, otherwise retrieving them repeatedly would cause them to gradually decay".

To paraphrase babbage, "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement."

Being lossy does not imply reading is lossy, it could be that writing destroys old information.

<comment><USER23> How funny, retrieving memory in human brains _do_ expose them to potential decay or alteration.

[http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/20/when- memo...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/20/when-memories-are- remembered-they-can-be-rewritten/)

> Every time we bring back an old memory, we run the risk of changing it. It's > more like opening a document on a computer – the old information enters a > surprisingly vulnerable state when it can be edited, overwritten, or even > deleted. It takes a while for the memory to become strengthened anew, > through a process called reconsolidation. Memories aren't just written once, > but every time we remember them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For a similarly super-geeky exploration of consciousness, I recommend this talk - "Consciousness and The Interface Theory of Perception" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI)

It provides a computable model of consciousness and reality that requires no objective reality, only conscious agents interacting with each other.

</comment><comment><USER24> Algorithmic Information Theory is really amazing to me. I am still learning about it but I feel like I can see the connection to nature.

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

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what experts and those doing peer-review would say? Is this good or bad quality work? How do we make sense of a social science article with no context and specialist language?

Is there anything good here?

</comment><comment><USER26> Consciousness is very probably a computing process directly reliant on quantum effects. As such it wouldn't be directly computable any more than any quantum system is.

<comment><USER27> Turing machines can simulate quantum computers. They just take longer to compute the same function.

<comment><USER26> The question, "is consciousness computable?" appears to me to be asking something different than "can computation done by consciousness be simulated?" The former seems to be asking if you can compute the state of consciousness given some starting conditions.

As an entangled quantum state is impossible to compute, it would seem that trying to compute the state of consciousness would be similarly impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think any sane or even insane person knows the human brain is nowhere close to a lossless integrative device.</comment>


Ask: As a solo developer, how can I keep focused on solving business problems? - <AUTHOR> Most times, when I'm trying to write functionality into a system, I get distracted by details of implementation which don't really matter to the end user.<p>I know it's a bit vague, but what are some ways to stay focused on coding valuable features to the end user. Specifically when you're working solo. <comment><USER2> One think that I could understand to the time - there are no "hacks" in such kind of situations. There is no special routine that can keep you focused just by doing this routine. One thing we can do is constantly remind ourselves what we are doing and why. Every time you gonna start implementing new feature, make requirements and a plan. "I need my users to be able to log into the system. I'm gonna create login form, add empty-field checks and make request to the api". Follow the plan, make it just work, deliver. Improve if needed. And don't forget to always remind all of this to yourself, this is the only key - always working to be better. It's hard, but there is no other way :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Have a customer to tell you want he wants and then make it happen and give it to him. If he is happy you're done and find someone else to sell it too and if he isn't happy you fix it. Repeat until bill gates pats you on the back. But you better hurry because he is like almost 70 years old now.</comment>


Ask HN: Google Voice and Google Fi Good Experiences? - <AUTHOR> I used Google Voice quite a long time ago and had intermittent calls.
I tried both forwarding calls through Google Voice and using Google Hangouts over wifi.  Haven't used Google Fi but haven't exactly heard good things from friends.
Has anyone had recent good experiences lately? <comment><USER2> I use both—GVoice through a GApps account and Project Fi via a Gmail account. I've had Google Voice since it was called GrandCentral.

My primary number is a Google Voice number, so almost all calls for me are done via data. I don't use it very frequently away from WiFi but when I do the service is fine, and my bill is always pretty low (my usage varies wildly between $30 and $60). I'm a happy customer, though other carrier's unlimited plans have been enticing lately. I'm holding out hope that Project Fi drops their prices the future to be competitive with unlimited plans.

Also, their Project Fi support is great. They replaced my Nexus 5X (bootloop issue) without any hassle (just a 3 minute chat session) and then they replaced it's replacement (charging port was smoking and melted within the last week—yikes) outside of warranty with little hassle (just a longer chat session). Both times, I had the replacement less than 36 hours later.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used Google Fi for 1.7 years. Call quality on my end is fine, but sometimes the other end (1/5 calls) says I'm breaking up. Usually plugging phone in fixes issues. Since I'm tethered to wifi for most of my day, avg bill ~25$/mo.</comment>


Hackers Hid Backdoor in CCleaner Security App with 2B Downloads – 2.3M Infected - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/09/18/ccleaner-cybersecurity-app-infected-with-backdoor/#6ef6791b316a <comment><USER2> The discussion is substantial, and over here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15274339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15274339)</comment>


Grep orientated programming - <AUTHOR> http://john.freml.in/grep-orientated-programming

<comment><USER2> As a grep user I recognize that not every project will cater to my needs as they may be using IDE A or Text Editor B. Therefore I have no reason to complain.</comment>