Deep-seated attitudes to women have roots in ancient agriculture - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/18986073?

<comment><USER2> A claim about "all-powerful mother goddesses" before the end of the fifth millennium BC is inherently unhistorical. The submitted article notes, "For each group, the data included a description of its agricultural methods as far back in time as it was possible to go using historical evidence or, in the case of groups which did not have a written language, the first time they were observed by outsiders." That's much nearer in time than the transition to plowing the article refers to.

There was no writing anywhere during the earliest part of that transition, and if we saw statues of voluptuous female figures in some places (as we do) from that far back, it is at least as likely that the statues are porn as that they are representations of powerful goddesses. Archeology has historically systematically underestimated, perhaps for delicate readers, the amount of sheer erotic art that was produced by early human beings. The oldest surviving human art on at least two continents is crude drawings of vulvae, so the working hypothesis until additional evidence is found is that ancient human beings did not have a highly developed religion of "all-powerful mother goddesses" but rather incoherent local folk religions that didn't exclude teenage boys (the ancient artists of surviving ancient art were mostly teenage boys) from producing crudely drawn and crudely sculpted porn.

See The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie (published by the University of Chicago press)

[http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale- Guthrie/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale- Guthrie/dp/0226311260)

for much more about the evidence, as analyzed by an author who is a specialist in Pleistocene megafauna (including Homo sapiens) and himself a fine visual artist.

AFTER EDIT: It boggles my mind that I can link to a source in my comment and still have "readers" here ask what my source is for a factual statement in this comment. The source I linked is the source. (The book I link to is by a research scholar, and itself cites dozens of thorough sources about all aspects of human prehistory.) The book I link to is a lot better than any Wikipedia article. (I am a Wikipedian, painfully aware of how many good sources are missed when amateurs edit articles on Wikipedia.)

<comment><USER3> > it is at least as likely that the statues are porn as that they are > representations of powerful goddesses

I'm not so sure there is or needs to be a distinction between the two. Penis goes in, life comes out. You can't explain that. Well, paleolithic man couldn't. But they could draw/sculpt it and revere it for both its pleasure- and life-giving properties.

<comment><USER4> Reverence is the debatable aspect here. Statue of a goddess implies respect, pornography implies objectification and a very different power relationship. So if we draw conclusions about the role of women in that society, interpreting statues as porn versus pedestals makes a difference.

<comment><USER3> > pornography implies objectification

That's a very modern application of those words. The very act of creating a statue is (true) objectification, whether it was carried out due to respect or solely to titillate. I'm not convinced that both cannot be true of the same statue.

And the modern concept of pornography means very little when framed in a pre- Judeo-Christian world. I doubt any of our loin-clothed ancestors shared the shame-based perspective 21st century humans have on the human body. No doubt some statues/drawings of vulvae were made because vulvae were fun things to interact with, and some were made because they were meant to be revered; I'd argue that it's possible for some percentage of those works of art to be motivated by both respect and eroticism, and further that the two motivations need not be considered so inherently at odds.

<comment><USER5> I agree.

Making a statue in ancient times wasn't cheap or easy. Cheap in the aspect of always living on the edge of life, where a bad season could decimate a living group, and having time to do so. Easy in that tools weren't readily available to get it done quickly. I don't think anyone was just swinging in a hammock on a lazy Sunday - there were no lazy Sundays.

From that you can most likely assume that statues had purpose and significance. They weren't just put up for _titillation_ which is really all modern porn is today.

<comment><USER6> Hunter gatherers may have worked far fewer hours than agrarian societies, especially if they had just had a decent haul.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >The plough was heavier [...] it gave men an advantage over women. [...] Women descended from plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be elected to parliament or to run businesses

And this is why North European countries, which used the heaviest plows [1], are the most backward in their treatment of women. Oh wait...

In any case, as anyone who has had a serious conversation with a farmer can attest, the bulk of the work in agriculture is by far in harvesting and not in plowing. Pretty much all traditional societies "allow" women to do that.

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

<comment><USER8> Also interesting is their assertion that society first changes very quickly after the introduction of the plow, but then has very long lasting effects. Why did the first change quickly but the second have long lasting effects?

<comment><USER9> I don't understand your critique. Can you explain it more?

<comment><USER8> First they find support for the hypothesis that the place of women in society can change very quickly because their function in society changes.

Then they find support for the opposing hypothesis that such changes in society have long lasting effects, i.e., that the position of women in society does not change quickly.

Finally they place both opposing hypotheses in a single narrative.

To me, this is a major inconsistency, perhaps only due to the journalist rather than the scientists. Both hypotheses should be discarded since neither fits all the observations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In _Guns, Germs and Steel_ Jarred Diamond mentions that there were less than ten places were farming was invented, and that cultures descended from these centers usually retained their selection of crops. So with the link between the plow and some specific crops, it seems that the sample size could potentially be as low as less than ten ( instead of 1200 language groups).

</comment><comment><USER11> People seem to be a bit overly upset by the mention of the mother goddess, which I agree is certainly an outmoded hypothesis. But that's a throwaway line in the article, which fundamentally is about how different technology can create different social norms and institutions. It's like half the comments on the article bitching about a capitalization error.

If the authors of the original article dotted all their is and crossed their ts, that's really something extraordinary: peoples whose ancestors were plough users show a strong correlation with regressive views on gender. That's remarkable.

That original paper can be found here:

On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough [http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/qje.q...](http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/qje.qjt005.abstract)

Note also that the strong correlation here lends itself to a variety of causal claims. Maybe ploughs led to higher population densities and strong states, which enforce gender roles. Maybe it's the strength based argument offered by the Economist. Maybe they became manufacturable only once society had developed strong states, which would make the correlation purely a one of shared cause.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the explanation here is much simpler that it needs to be.

Pre-agriculture, everyone's job #1 was getting food on the table. Post- agriculture, you had a surplus of food, so people began to specialize. Economic and market forces started to become more sophisticated, as people were secure enough that daily survival wasn't an issue.

So economically speaking, before the advent of modern farm machinery, what did a farmer need to prosper? Answer: Labor.

Where did this labor come from? Answer: Children.

Farm families are historically speaking very large. Much larger than what a hunter/gatherer could possible support.

A woman might have 12-15 children, and since you have a food supply, many of them will survive to adulthood. So if you have 15 term pregnancies, starting at age 15, you're talking about being almost continuously pregnant until age 30.

In primitive surroundings, pregnancy is deadly. Today, the lifetime risk of maternal death in sub-Saharan Africa is 1/16. (vs. 1/2800 in the developed world).

<comment><USER13> It's definitely a case of specialisation, but your explanation doesn't address the correlation between the ancient methods of agriculture and current day labour force participation that the study does:

 _But in countries like Rwanda, Botswana, Madagascar or Kenya, whose people are predominantly descended from hoe-users, women are far more likely to be in the labour force than those in historically plough-using places like India, Syria or Egypt._

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Plows were usually drawn by animals, not people. If this hypothesis holds, horses and oxen should have even higher status than men.

This is all an exercise in intellectual wankery that reminds me of the bit in _Cryptonomicon_ where Randy's girlfriend publishes a paper correlating Unix beards with female oppression.

Oh, and by the way, 'twas Margaret Mead -- a woman and hardly an apologist for the patriarchy -- who put the lie to the myth that preagricultural human society was matriarchal. There have been matrilineal societies, but in these the property tended to pass from father to daughter's husband rather than father to son.

<comment><USER15> You must not remember the story of the golden calf. There are plenty examples of worshiping domesticated animals.

<comment><USER14> No, I've heard of it; in fact after typing that I thought "does that explain sacred cows in India?"

But worshiping domesticated animals isn't as universal or persistent as patriarchy supposedly is.

<comment><USER15> It's persistent in pre-traditional societies.

The orthodoxy is pre-traditional societies were about equal in likelyhood between matriarchy, patriarchy, and both. If you're looking at dominant deities for this definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author fails to present any serious evidence for their claim. I suspect that sexism began long before the invention of farming.

<comment><USER17> It's a slippery slope, but I don't think they're directly claiming the cause of sexism. Instead, the point they're claiming is: "Women descended from plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be elected to parliament or to run businesses than their counterparts in countries at similar levels of development who happen to be descended from hoe-users."

So the bulk of the argument stems from some initial qualitative assessment of the region's agricultural state (i.e. hoe or plow) and then comparing it to present day stats for the metrics he outlines.

Your suspicions are probably right, but I don't think the author would even disagree necessarily. I think this is just an interesting look into one of the factors that may have been responsible.

<comment><USER16> If anything the invention of farming may have lead to less violence and greater equality. This was a period of time when humanity transitioned from the Hunter to the Farmer.

Farming promoted development. It did not hold it back.

<comment><USER18> Isn't it pretty well established that farming led to an increase in violence?

Thinking in terms of "development" is generally a bad approach. History doesn't have levels. Using generic terms like that implicitly assumes all sorts of correlations that don't actually exist.

<comment><USER19> _Isn't it pretty well established that farming led to an increase in violence?_

Not that I'm aware of. My understanding is that agricultural societies were _less_ violent. As I understand it, when humans are in hunter-gathering societies, we are more territorial and less accepting of those outside of our tribe. (On the order of 50 people.) I'd like to know if that understanding is wrong.

What I _do_ know is that we have gotten much less violent over time. The 20th century, even with all of its wars, was still much less violent than all previous centuries.

<comment><USER20> I would suggest there are two related factors here.

Before significant agriculture some amount of warfare was simply a part of life as usual. This scenario suggests martial competence is fairly ubiquitous, and thus dominating enemies without paying a high cost in blood is difficult (e.g. you might need great political skills to stitch together a powerful local coalition).

However once significant cities were established, being skilled at warfare was potentially very _lucrative_. This means a soldier specialist may be a very rewarding career.

Is it really the plough itself, or that the larger cities the plough helped create were a big incentive for professional soldiers to become the ruling class?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The beauty of evolution is that it not only produces a wide variety of human offspring (via sexual reproduction and sexual selection) but also a _homo_ _sapien_ family unit in which each individual (male + female(s), usually) has different strengths.

This surplus of skills has allowed humans to survive under a wide variety of circumstances and environments. Evolution does not guarantee long term survival of the fittest--it guarantees long term survival of the most adaptable.

In some environments, the female may be more critical to the success of the family (or extended clan, or tribe, or what have you). In others, it's the man. Sometimes it's equal. But just because a particular skill set isn't the most valuable at any point in time doesn't mean that the individuals with those skills should be second class citizens. Eventually, years or decades or millennia from now, or thousands of miles away, their time will come again.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's worth noting that at the same time, with the rise of agriculture came the rise of _property_ and with it --- the rise of ownership of not just the here and now, but also the future... who will own the land in the _future_?

The focus on thr future ownership gave rise to the focus in single inheritance: a son. And tbe importance of knowing whose son was your's. To ensure lineage men suppressed women as an extension if their property.

Now both theories are complimentary because the reason sons (not daughters) became the targtarget for inheritance probably boiled down to these same issues of strength.

The key change thwt occured is we became more monogomous and suppressive of women even though it was not a _natural_ way to be, to preserve property after death.

Source: "Sex at Dawn", an interesting read on post-religiously framed anthropology

</comment><comment><USER23> history is perfect for data mining. just search for interesting correlations and then publish when you've found one. it's not like anybody can run a fresh experiment to see if it is spurious or not.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Their primary source of information was a detailed ethnographic description of over 1,200 language groups across the world."

This method could be extremely error-prone, due to borrowings, etc. between languages, e.g. see some of the criticisms against gluttochronology (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottochronology#Discussion>) which uses similar techniques to determine relation between languages.

</comment><comment><USER25> Idiocy of opinion piece journalists correlates inversely with penis size.

<comment><USER26> So.. Opinion pieces by women are all completely flawless?

<comment><USER27> They're completely irrelevant.</comment></comment></comment>


What Percentage of Startups Fail? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/business/12offline.html?ex=1336622400&en=a9d4ca6132503bb7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> I actually see a parallel between what's happening in web startups today and the telecom broom-and-bust that many of us older guys have experienced in 1999/2000. Back then we had Nortel acquiring Qtera, Xros and Coretek at about $3B each, thereby setting the venture business on fire and funded about 100 startups, all determined to be better.

Today we have MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and similarly numerous VC-backed startups that are trying to catch the wind. I suspect there will be disappointments as well and recently I wrote about my own experience in surviving startup failure which I entitled "What I learned from my Dad who taught me how to ride a bicycle". It is my sincere hope that this could be of value to someone.

<http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html>

\--Denny--

Denny K Miu

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what a 50% failure rate says about the level of success among the remaining companies. Traditional conventional wisdom was that only 10% of startups suceeded, but they succeeded spectacularly (more than 10x return on investment).

Does this imply that a lot of "successful" companies are generating very modest returns on investment?

</comment><comment><USER4> Arguably the most important part of that article was the bit discussing the caffeinated donut.

<comment> daniel-cussen Yea truly, I am beholden to its unadultered genius.

Will it replace ramen?

<comment><USER5> The genius is that it doesn't have to be donuts -- it could be any food!

<comment><USER6> That's depressing shows again that ideas are worth nothing, it's in the execution. I presented the same idea to a german cornflakes manufacturer years ago ( coffein enriched flakes and other breakfast food), they tried to do it but failed.

Blog Article but in german: [http://id-o.de/2007/04/24/koffein-koffein- koffein-nachtliche...](http://id-o.de/2007/04/24/koffein-koffein-koffein- nachtliche-ideen/)

<comment><USER5> Yeah... sometimes, more so than the execution, it's about having money or someone who wants to give you money. If you had 10 million dollars you could start making your own line of "Extreme" caffeinated breakfast cereals/health foods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The end of this article basically justifies the existence of YC.</comment>


Ask HN: Coming urban housing price crash? - <AUTHOR> With many tech companies realizing that their expensive urban tech offices are not really needed, what are the community's thoughts on the impact of the housing market in major tech hubs?
Thinking about the house I have right now, it's value is mostly from it's proximity to major tech employers (15 minute commute from 2 major companies), and I'm thinking over what to do now. Is selling now and wait to rebuy during a coming crash a winning move? Or will companies not migrate en-masse to permanent WFH?
Would even a 10% transition to WFH have a significant impact on housing prices? (FWIW I'm in the Seattle area where Amazon and Microsoft prop up much of the housing market.) <comment><USER2> Unfortunately I don't think anyone has a crystal ball on this. In the last housing crash, for example, while properties did devalue in some areas of the country, in my city they simply stayed flat for several years. So selling and attempting to buy cheap would not have been a winning move. My advice on buying property is to do it either because you want a home, or you want a rental property for supplemental income. Trying to time or out-smart the housing market is like playing roulette, you might win, but it's more chance than skill.</comment>


Cracking commercial quantum cryptography - <AUTHOR> http://www.iet.ntnu.no/groups/optics/qcr/hacking-commercial-quantum-cryptography-2010/

<comment><USER2> I always love talking to these guys at DefCon.</comment>


Uber spamming iOS app store with coupons and fake reviews - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/uber/id368677368?mt=8 <comment><USER2> How do you know it's from Uber? Don't they have a partnership program where you can collect some $ from convincing new users to join? Would be easy for anyone to sign up, get a bunch of a coupon codes, then post these reviews.</comment>


Are Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates Wrong About Illumina? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/29/are-jeff-bezos-and-bill-gates-wrong-about-illumina.aspx <comment><USER2> >To give you a perspective, the amount of DNA sequencing required to fully research Grail's test has been estimated as the equivalent of decoding the genomes of about 400,000 people.

I've been a customer of Illumina, and I've been to their HQ in San Diego - they do so much sequencing (much more than just building, testing and selling the machines) that I wouldn't be surprised if they already had a significant chunk of those 400,000 (edit: as a comparison, 23andMe has the data of about 1.2 million people, but it's not whole genome sequencing - I assume keep the samples and make that a reality, though). They have a few hundred sequencers up and running in the part of the building we went to, with total numbers not being disclosed.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is stupid. The author says nothing to back why he thinks Bezos and Gates are wrong...except just saying it is based on breakthrough research. Can breakthrough research be unprofitable?...uh, yes. But I would rather have some billionaires personally, invest it rather than a government agency who can have their funding cut by short sighted politician, or companies whose investors are looking for short term profits.

And WTH does cloud computing have to do with it. I highly doubt gates and Bezos are backing it because they will be utilizing their cloud capabilities...quite a stretch. They will make orders of magnitudes more directly from their cancer detection product, than the extra hours of compute time needed!

</comment><comment><USER4> I would not bet against illumina

</comment><comment><USER5> How many people misread that as illuminati? Be honest.

<comment><USER6> I thought it was a reference to a new phone, until reading the article.</comment></comment>


Indie developers cannot self-publish on Xbox One - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/22/4355306/indie-developers-cannot-self-publish-on-xbox-one <comment><USER2> It's ok, Sony seems to be willing to take them:

<http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/04/sony-indies/>

So far everything I've seen makes PS4 a clear choice over Xbox One as a console, although I'm still curious what Valve has in mind, but it doesn't look like they are in a hurry to announce anything so could be another year or two of waiting.

<comment><USER3> Funny. So far everything I've seen makes XO a clear choice for me over the PS4. To each their own. Not to say, I don't want Indie developers, but that is not really a factor I even consider when making a purchase.

<comment><USER4> Dude, a _lot_ of games are going to start being 'indie'.

The programmers are smart - I foresee a lot of good programmers going into either middleware or kickstarter.

The next gen consoles, with their power, are going to bring dynamic animation and procedural 3D environments and numerous innovative areas so that small teams can unshackle themselves from the legions of artists necessary today.

<comment><USER5> I agree. Lower operation costs, no need to pay all those worthless sack of shit suits and manager cunts.

90% of paid salaries will be to people who contribute to sound, code, graphics and other things that is shipped.

<comment><USER6> I'm starting to get tired of this 'we don't need no suits' talk on HN. You need a marketing strategy, regardless of how good your game is.

Publishers have the know how and capital to devise and implement such a strategy. Don't make the mistake to assume that they are just there to take a cut of your profits without putting any value on the table.

<comment><USER7> You don't need a marketing strategy, you need somebody who knows pr, since you can't afford to pay for ads anyway.that person shouldn't be in a suit.

<comment><USER8> Marketing is way more than just ads and PR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's funny that Microsoft feels XBox Live Indie Games was such a mistake and seems to think that indies did so much harm to them, given that indies generally feel like Microsoft has been intentionally harming them from the start.

They basically left that system to rot without supervision, and then it did. Where's the surprise in that? It's like they decided to greenlight it only so they could sabotage it and use it as proof that they don't have any reason to work with indies. It's incredibly stupid given that some of the best indie XBox Live Arcade exclusives (or former exclusives) were all built using XNA - Bastion, Fez, Dust - but they screwed those devs as hard as they could too, despite the fact that those games were _partially funded by deals with Microsoft_!

<comment><USER10> Of those 3, only Fez was "screwed" by Microsoft, and that was Fish's own fault --he released a buggy game without adequate QA...and a buggier patch with even worse QA...and wouldn't (but could afford to) pay for the follow-up patch that would supposedly have fixed the bugs he didn't fix twice before.

But yeah, it is an incredibly short-sighted decision for Microsoft to eliminate the Indie program. Some of the best new games/studios rose up through that--using C#, DirectX, and other parts of the MS toolchain--but it looks like the next generation of indies will be learning the PS4/OpenGL toolchain instead.

<comment><USER11> >>but it looks like the next generation of indies will be learning the PS4/OpenGL toolchain instead.

Thank God! I really do not want to spend any time learning Microsoft specific frameworks/APIs. I'm already familiar OpenGL and I rather spend my time working on the game itself rather then having to learn new APIs.

<comment><USER12> PS4 does not use OpenGL as it's graphics API, and doesn't even support PSGL (the higher level, OpenGL ES 1.1 like library that PS3 supported.) This is a rumor that's going to persist for the lifetime of the system.

That said most indies are moving to using Unity 3D, so as long as Unity support for PS4 is good and licensing costs aren't too high, the low level graphics API of PS4 won't matter.

<comment><USER13> Open source geeks like to spread the myth that Microsoft consoles are the only ones not supporting OpenGL.

Given that the games industry is very hostile to open source and very few geeks have access to console development kits, it is no wonder the myth persists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The whole design of the One seems mired in the past. No substantial changes to the developer relationship, no acknowledgement of the app market, a subscription service to go online, DRM and used game fees to protect the existing retail model, etc.

And in exchange... a cable box? Will people even have cable in five years?

It's like they set out to design the next Xbox without acknowledging that anything other than hardware has changed since 2005.

<comment><USER15> Worth mentioning, the "used game fees" thing is highly disputed right now. There are different people within Microsoft and within official channels who are saying different things.

<comment><USER16> Do you have any links to anyone clearly disputing it? Because I haven't seen any. The closest I've seen is a guy saying, effectively, "Of course we wouldn't do that! Unless it's a used game. We don't want to talk about that case yet."

<comment><USER15> I dug these up from Facebook:

<https://twitter.com/XboxSupport3/status/336924786410278912>

<https://twitter.com/MrJonty/status/336924553848684544>

Newer, Major Nelson has come and said that there is "no confirmation" on anything other than the ability to trade and resell games.

<http://majornelson.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-and-used-games/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This means that most of XBLA type/calibre is still going to happen (90% or 100% of XBLA had publishers)

This move is more for quality control (plus data on the lackluster downloads of Xbox Indie games) rather than hatred for indies. Its still short sighted but it would also make Xbox One deal with less cruft of games, thereby avoiding the signal-to-noise being bad (remember all games are not silo'ed anymore.) making the game library browsing experience just generally more appealing to the mainstream customer. I doubt these demographic will miss Xbox indie-type games, heck I don't think they even visited that tab.

But I do like the intense focus on games by the PS4 camp more. Just happy that Xbox One and PS4 are now going in totally divergent paths.

<comment><USER18> I agree, this is more about quality control which Sony has been enforcing since PS3 as well, which funny enough was also called indie unfriendly for not having a similar system like the XBLA/XBLIG!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm honestly quite surprised given how important independent games have been for iOS and Android.

I was honestly expecting both players to provide app stores where developers could submit applications, whether games or not, possibly giving them an advantage over the other platform by having more apps, better development tools, etc.

<comment><USER20> Problem is the difference in the budget to bring a great game to market. It's unlikely that a tiny team can bring a great console game to market, but that happens all the time on mobile.

But I agree - it seems to make sense to make it easier to develop games (aka simpler, cheaper, better-designed tooling that does more heavy lifting), and add an appstore.

This is Oya's approach, and the big problem with this approach is that it doesn't really invite developers with deep pockets : developers who can actually pay to 1)develop a quality product, 2) advertise their product across mainstream media - which will drive demand of your platform.

And the final problem is that it'll be way less profitable for Oya: console games are so overpriced that they subsidize the consoles themselves. But apps can't really subsidize the iPhone - they're a low-margin business.

I think the real solution is to give away both the consoles and the games, but charge a monthly subscription, and divvy it up based on engagement in games. It'll be the new cable tv: $25 for basic service (you only get access to 20% of hot games, but all regular games), and $45 for premium access to everything, with netflix and hulu plus thrown in for free.

<comment><USER21> I don't know if that's strictly true, there's a number of indie titles that have done well on console and are the work of small 1-3 man teams.

Super Meat Boy, Braid and Fez are the canonical examples but there are no doubt many others.

OTOH if you let any old shit onto your store then you do get a lemon market effect which seems to have happened with mobile gaming.

<comment><USER20> Those are rare successes, but if you look at the hits on the appstore, they're much more uniformly indie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a super confusing move from Microsoft.

First, don't they want indie game developers to jump to Windows phones and tablets? I'd presume Microsoft could (if not already) let developers to code once and publish everywhere that speaks Microsoft, no?

Second, Walking Dead game was crowned 2012 of the year by many publications, and my personal game of the year Journey, both are technically indie? Shouldn't that mattered?

Sigh, as usual, I'll just vote with my wallet.

<comment><USER23> Also, Walking Dead's episodic format was at risk by Microsoft's XBLA release policy, where publishers are given slots that they can have, and you don't get any more (think like airstrip use at an airport). So they had to end-run it by having each episode as DLC, rather than getting a new announcement and a stand-alone program.

Microsoft's old policies were workable but obnoxious. Instead of opening things up, they're making it worse. Nuts.

<comment><USER24> The reason we have this is that apple have proven you can get away with the walled garden. Now it's microsoft's turn to do it.

NB : they are both doing bad things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The thing that bothers me the most about this is that Microsoft pretty much confirmed yesterday that the XBox One is running some form of the Windows Runtime.

(Source: [http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-runs-three- opera...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-runs-three-operating- systems/))

So if I want to make an app work across Windows RT, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and the XBox One, I have to submit three separate apps that are all coded the same way, to three different app stores.

Why couldn't Microsoft just bring the Windows 8 marketplace to XBox One and Windows Phone 8? That alone would fix the indie self-publishing problem and in turn make the XBox One more appealing.

<comment><USER26> Mouse vs. touch vs. controller is one thing. MS would probably also like to avoid buggy apps that have only been tested on one platform. WORA has never really worked, so if you want to release your app on four platforms you _need_ to test it four times. Compared to the testing, submitting to four app stores seems like a small cost.

<comment><USER25> "so if you want to release your app on four platforms you need to test it four times."

Wouldn't submitting 4 separate apps require the same amount of attention (if not more)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm actually fairly confused right now... hoping someone here can enlighten me.

"[..] Microsoft has confirmed that it will release no new versions of its XNA game development toolset, which all Xbox Live Indie Games are developed in."

The system is not backwards compatible, because it apparently is a rebuild from the very core. The old code that drove previous games will not run on the new system, and anything being written for it must be written or ported to whatever the new languages and requirements are.

If they don't publish an update to the toolkit that lets indie developers write for the system, doesn't that essentially mean there can't be any indie development for the system? It looks like they're basically saying we'll keep things just as locked down as they used to be, oh and also we won't be providing the necessary tool to even begin working on our system. (Unless they intend to release a new dev-kit and just didn't see any reason to note that?)

<comment><USER28> Rebuilt from the core isn't very specific; the architecture has switched from PowerPC to x86. There are some solutions (emulation, secondary chipset), but none that aren't difficult and expensive.

As XNA is .NET based, they would only need to port the runtime libraries to the new native APIs.

They dropped support for the only SDK they offered that produced forward- compatible games.

Unless they announce a new form of XBLIG, the only way for indies to release games for the One will be via a publisher, and even with a distribution-only deal, it means MS is effectively enforcing a tax on indies that's paid out to AAAs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> <http://www.ouya.tv/>

It's a dev kit itself as well and its android and yeah, they'll publish all indie stuff. :)

<comment><USER30> Several indie game makers I've talked to are really excited about this for all these reasons + the low barrier of entry ($99).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Ok, so this article from polygon links to an article on shacknews[1].

But the article on shacknews uses an interview from 2011[2] that's talking about xbox live on the 360, not on the xbox one.

We can say that if microsoft didn't say anything about this policy, it will stay - but at the same time, we don't know because nothing up-to-date was said.

Also, the article from shacklenews uses an article from gamesutra[3] to say "Xbox Live Indie Games are exempt from that policy, but that marketplace isn't necessary seen as viable."

But from the same article "[..] at least for mid and high-level performers, XBLIG is becoming a viable platform for hobbyists and single-man shops to make some cash and get their game seen"

[1] [http://www.shacknews.com/article/79309/xbox-one-wont- allow-i...](http://www.shacknews.com/article/79309/xbox-one-wont-allow-indies- to-self-publish-games)

[2] <http://www.psnstores.com/2011/10/interview-eufloria/>

[3] [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26932/InDepth_Xbox_Live_I...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26932/InDepth_Xbox_Live_Indie_Games_Sales_For_2009_Plus_Some_Perspective.php)

</comment><comment><USER32> Sony arent just making it easy to publish, according to this ([http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/03/21/unity-coming-to-sony- con...](http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/03/21/unity-coming-to-sony-consoles- this-year/)) they're actively making it easy to develop for their ecosystem, meanwhile MS are killing XNA. At least those C# game devs will have somewhere to go with their skills...

</comment><comment><USER33> This is truly strange considering what has happened on mobile appstores that believe in a free market. They have benefitted heavily from it. Lots of new great companies like Halfbrick, Firemint and Rovio might not have happened.

At the most basic level they will lose lots of hardware sales as the app/game development that surrounds mobile appstores sells lots and lots of hardware.

Ballmer's scream should be changed to (Approved) Developers, (Approved) Developers, (Approved) Developers since Microsoft knows better what is good and what isn't than an open gaming market. The top down ivory tower controlling nature of consoles still seems to exist in the Xbone.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is kinda strange. I know that the indie market on 360 wasn't all that great. But the way they are billing this thing as an overall living room system rather than just a game system makes me think that there could be great potential for more casual games as well as actual applications.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'd take all the supposed garbage in the indie dev section to get the gems that appear there from time to time, like Cthulhu's Revenge or Miner Dig Deep. I spent hours playing those games and they cost me a few bucks max. I do not understand this move.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think there's a bit of lazy thinking here in these comments. There are XBox branded indie games on Windows Phone and Windows 8.

Just because MS isn't publically saying anything doesn't justify jumping to this thread title's conclusion

</comment><comment><USER36> Even on the PS4 indies need to be invited to publish, though, right?

<comment><USER26> It sounds like if Sony invites you then at least you get to keep the money from your game. If MS invites you then a middleman publisher takes a slice of your revenue.

<comment><USER37> If you don't have an external publisher then Microsoft or Sony must agree to be the publisher on XBLA or PSN. I think on both consoles every title gets assigned a product manager, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> My favorite Xbox game for years has been Castle Crashers which I assume is an indie game. Will indie games previously purchased on Xbox Live run on Xbox One?

<comment><USER39> No.

[http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-not-backwards- com...](http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-not-backwards-compatible- with-360-discs-xbla-purchases/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well, that's stupid.

<comment><USER41> I can see that you are new around here and I just wanted to fill you in on why you are being downvoted. Comments like yours add nothing to the discussion and the level of discourse in this topic would be exactly the same if it was removed. No one is disagreeing with you, we just want some substance.</comment></comment>


Giant 3D Printer Builds Homes in 20 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/3D-Printer-Homes-housing-printing,16620.html

<comment><USER2> They need to hire a professional web designer. The web page looks like something that was resurrected from geocities.</comment>


The Woman Charged With Making Windows 8 Succeed - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508311/the-woman-charged-with-making-windows-8-succeed/ <comment><USER2> [http://minimsft.blogspot.de/2012/11/a-microsoft-without- sino...](http://minimsft.blogspot.de/2012/11/a-microsoft-without- sinofsky.html)

Internally she doesn't seem so popular.

<comment><USER3> What in that linked article is supposed to imply or prove that she's not popular internally?

<comment><USER2> The comments.

<comment><USER4> I've seen positive comments about her work on other blogs. You can't be a powerful woman without some jealous haters. Even Marissa Mayer was described as a clueless robot by some anonymous commenters who claimed to be Google employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "An expert in technical design, she also led the introduction of the novel, much copied "ribbon" interface for Microsoft Office..."

I'm not claiming it isn't true, but I can't say that I've seen it used outside of Microsoft-products either. Does anyone have any examples supporting the "much copied" statement?

<comment><USER6> I think the ribbon was an absolute disaster, i found it completely annoying and unintuitive, just my opinion though! In other words, I hated it!

<comment><USER7> My problem with the ribbon is that many options have just disappeared.

With menus, at least you could dig through the menus to find what you're looking for. With the ribbon, you're forced to rely on google to figure out how to use your application.

Ever try and figure out how to display the headers of an e-mail in Outlook?

<comment><USER8> > _Ever try and figure out how to display the headers of an e-mail in > Outlook?_

ld;o

1\. You just open the email,

2\. look for the area on the ribbon that says "Tags", which is under the message tab,

3, don't click on any of those large icons and look for the itsy-bitsy little box with an arrow at the bottom-right of the "Tags" area, click on that.

4\. Up pops a window, look for the subbox at the bottom that says "Internet Headers:"

5\. The headers are _always_ larger than that box, but you can click on the box and select-all (ctrl-A, very convenient)

6\. Copy and paste into another text tool, which can be a faux-new-email which you bring up by hitting ctrl-N.

[I just had to go through the exercise this morning, and it was such a brain- damaged thing that I couldn't resist documenting it.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why do I feel that the fonts and colours folks at MS won this round of "Welcome to Redmond, Let's Make a Change!". From a developer/admin viewpoint, my workflow is jacked in Windows 8.

<comment><USER10> Could you elaborate on how your workflow is jacked?

<comment><USER9> There's this big useless Window Phone interface on my desktop. (Yes, I have a Windows 7.5 phone and do like the interface... on a phone...)

<comment><USER11> I'm consistently surprised how little I knew everyone's workflow revolved around the appearance of the start menu (which has now become full-screen instead of a vertical popup, a drastic change to be sure). Here I thought most people interacted with the applications and the task bar most of the time. How did anyone get any work done for months after the start menu grew from one column to two in Windows Vista/7?

<comment><USER12> There were three things I liked about the start menu:

1\. The ability to pin my frequently-used items manually.

2\. Showing the recently-used apps that I haven't gotten around to pinning.

3\. The way it arranged hundreds of app icons in a halfway-memorable heirarchy. (Yes, I know that makes me a small minority "power user", but Windows had always catered to us PUs.)

I never, ever, used search and don't like having to use it in Win8. The background search service had such a bad habit (at least through Vista) of churning my disk drive at the worst possible moment that I disabled it wherever possible.

<comment><USER13> Here: <http://windows8startbutton.com/>

It's a little customizable bundle of joy, and it'll optionally boot you directly to the desktop.

And just out of curiosity in response to a comment below, I typed "powershell" into this menu's search and it instantly found powershell.exe and powershell_ise.exe

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _As a program manager in Development Tools and Languages, she was instrumental in several releases of Visual C++ for 32-bit operating systems and led the development of Microsoft's first customizable integrated development environment for Windows._

This impressed most about her resume and makes me hopeful about the future of Windows. Visual Studio is one of the few products were Microsoft was truly innovative and she was a key factor. I just hope Ballmer will stay out of her way.

<comment><USER9> Did she really accomplish those goals or just take credit for them? It's hard to tell with all the stories I hear from my MS buddies...

<comment><USER15> She was 31 when she came to Microsoft. She started at Aldus, and pretty low on the totem pole - in Tech Support. Like Tammy Reller, she worked her way up the industry from a true entry level position.

Their careers contrast markedly with that of Sinofsky who went from straight from grad school to Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "As the head of Windows product development at Microsoft, Julie Larson-Green is responsible for a piece of software used by some 1.3 billion people worldwide", and hastily dropping.

Luckily for her, she will have a much easier number of users to worry about shortly, and her efforts are helping greatly in reducing this number further. Bravo!

<comment><USER17> What a useless and trite heap of snark. This isn't Slashdot.

<comment><USER16> Slashdot or not, she has a lot to prove. She was one of the driving forces behind Metro - and as current sales stats show, W8 is not succeeding in the market, with most users citing the Metro interface as the reason for the dislike. My comment was snarky for the sake of humour: the facts/opinions in the snarkiness are sound.

Here is an interview with her from 2009. Make your own judgements.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been pretty happy with Windows 8... with a few changes. 1) I boot directly to the desktop 2) I abandoned the start screen entirely 3) I added a start button for faster program access. It becomes a slightly evolved Win7 at that point.

It feels incredibly solid and fast at the core. I use Win8 as my work machine now and the only thing that would make me happier is if they'd stop shoving the apps approach down my throat.

<comment><USER18> >3) I added a start button for faster program access

I'm interested in why you think having a start button provides faster access than the start screen.

With the start screen, you can press the windows key to bring up the start screen, start typing the name of a program you want to start, and press enter to launch it. It seems like a more efficient way to start programs than the start menu.

<comment><USER13> A few things

1) The start button menu has a built in search function that makes the search typing function in the start screen pointless - if I want to use the search approach. It responds in real time just like the start screen search does as well. And importantly: no need to switch visual interfaces to get to the program search. Windows key > type, all inside the desktop visual mode.

2) I use a two-pronged approach to pinning programs. First, I pin everything I use for work to the taskbar, so that's one click and no typing or start screen visual switching (which is obnoxious to work flow). Then some slightly less frequently used programs I pin to the first layer of the start button menu, so that's two clicks (to launch) and no typing to access another ten or so programs (20 programs, in one or two clicks, no switching screens and no typing; covers 99% of what I use daily). And if I want to, I can obviously use a key approach to opening the start button menu as well. Windows key > start typing, initiates a search, or an arrow key tap upward rolls me into the program list or into my pinned group. All from the same interface, without a visual switch.

3) With the start button menu I get a very fast alphabetical listing of practically everything on my system. Tiles take up considerably more space and require a left / right roll to see everything. It's cute for a few items, it's obnoxious and messy for 50.

4) The start button menu has a settings section that I can roll over to a control panel sub list or network settings sub list etc etc. The control panel item, for example, spawns an alphabetical list of 50 items on my system that relate to system management. This is similar to the small icons view under Control Panel, but I can get to the list with one 'click' and it's nicely hidden away in a compact multi-use start button menu.

5) This is just purely convenience: the start button menu has direct access to power / reboot (switch user etc). With the new Win8 approach I can swipe the right side of the screen (annoying), then access "Settings" and then access power control (more steps, less options under one item, much slower). And obviously ctrl-alt-delete still gets you quick access to these options as well, but that's just another reason the swipe screens and start screen are pointless for me on the desktop.

6) I can customize the start button menu more than I can the start screen.

7) I work in the desktop mode, everything I use is in the desktop mode, it's ridiculous to boot me into the start screen to begin my experience.

The start screen doesn't even come close to how compact and fast the start button menu is. Not to mention the visual switching the start screen requires is a nasty work flow breaker because I have to dive into and out of a different interface, when I shouldn't have to do that just to access simple programs.

<comment><USER18> > The start button menu has a built in search function that makes the search > typing function in the start screen pointless - if I want to use the search > approach. It responds in real time just like the start screen search does as > well. And importantly: no need to switch visual interfaces to get to the > program search. Windows key > type, all inside the desktop visual mode.

Cool, I didn't realize you could do windows key > type with the start menu (it's been a while since I've used Windows beyond just trying out the new stuff).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rich Hickey on 'last' (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/clojure/apkNXk08Xes/CGCQqLMhlHwJ <comment><AUTHOR> Great read to get a taste of how difficult language design decisions can be once you dig a little bit deeper.</comment>


Li-Fi Probably Won't Be the New Wi-Fi for Most People - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/29/li-fi-probably-wont-be-the-new-wi-fi-for-most-people/ <comment><USER2> Li-Fi might not need line of sight, some experiments were thrown around showing a 70 Mbps transmission rate with light reflected off walls and other surfaces.

Which, obviously, is a large step back from the 224 Gbps claims for direct line of sight communications, but could still be interesting to e.g. replace ZigBee in IoT devices.</comment>


Strstr in libc was broken for some inputs (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12092

<comment><USER2> If you're not a C programmer, this is pretty close to "abcdef".index("cd") not returing 2 in Python or Ruby (strstr is a heavily optimized function, which is how this happened).

<comment><USER3> More interestingly (to me) is the quadratic performance they are reporting for the SSE optimized variants - ISTR when they were introduced there was some performance figures quoted. Looks like they didn't measure very well.</comment></comment>


Ruby Next: A Transpiler for Ruby - <AUTHOR> https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/ruby-next-make-all-rubies-quack-alike <comment><USER3> This is interesting. I've maintained a dozen or so production ruby apps and have found language updates are generally painless and quick. In most cases my test suite will issue a few deprecation warnings after an upgrade, but those have always been easy to fix and are also safe to ignore for a little while.

I do see the author's point with regards to writing gems, though. Just because it's easy to upgrade to 2.7 doesn't mean I rush to do it. Usually the new language features added are nice, but not mind-blowing. It's a mature language.

One thing that has been great is steady performance improvement every year. We usually see a few percent reduction in compute after a ruby bump, which is good for a smile. I've heard and am hoping that the 3.0 bump will be a little bigger.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have mixed feelings about this as I do JavaScript transpilers.

I'm totally in favour of using transpilers to support older platforms.

What has happened though in JS land is developers started using them in reverse - writing to future standards that are not supported by the current underlying interpreter.

Hoping here the same thing does not happen in Ruby

<comment><USER5> I think I see what you're saying, and I agree about supporting older platforms.

But wow, when the ES6 features hit, and I could use them NOW, in spite of having to support IE? That was huge, and made the code so much nicer in so many ways.

I was _really_ glad that I could, as the snaky folks say, "import from future".

<comment><USER6> Likewise. We have a big important codebase that was started a little before all the ES6 features hit. Had it been written in ES5 at the time it would be a pain to work in. However it's still a pleasure because it is ES6 with snippets from ES7. We no longer use the transpiler, and were disciplined about only using features that were definitely coming. I'm glad we did.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, there's no way to convince people to write ES5 once they've seen ES6+. :-) But the problem was that the JS ecosystem never totally got a consistent story about how to stop transpiling. They were transpiling in Node, which makes no damn sense. They were shipping transpiled bundles without the code needed to turn the transpilation off in the future. It was and is a big mess where now that ES6 is supported everywhere, you can't actually use it because even though everything is written in ES6, it's shipped as ES5 and you're saddled with this polyfilled crap even if you don't want it.

It's not the worst problem for an ecosystem to have, but as someone who wants to ship smaller JS bundles, I find it annoying.

<comment><USER8> > even though everything is written in ES6, it's shipped as ES5 and you're > saddled with this polyfilled crap

This is somewhat mitigated by the use of babel-preset-env and browserslist.

[https://github.com/browserslist/browserslist](https://github.com/browserslist/browserslist)

Where I work, our build tool uses a list that's (very slowly) getting reduced to evergreen browsers. On some projects, a simpler list can be used for little to no polyfills.

> transpiling in Node, which makes no damn sense

A legitimate use case would be for server-rendered apps, where it's advantageous to share code with client-side, namely transpiling module import/export (rather than CommonJS) and JSX. I do enjoy how recent versions of Node.js are embracing modern language features, even pipeline operator. Still, there are situations where transpiling server-side code makes sense.

Another maybe more relevant reason is using TypeScript, which arguably provides a leap in developer experience and code quality, beyond what browsers (or the V8 engine) would implement in the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love it a great way for encouraging more syntax experimentation in the wild. A less functional and more conceptional library is the pragma gem [1] - <USER2> lets you turn on the future today or add your own ideas for easy (re)use for everyone - let's evolve the ruby language together by experimenting in the wild in a pragma(tic) way.

[1]: [https://github.com/s6ruby/pragmas](https://github.com/s6ruby/pragmas)

<comment><USER10> Yes. It is hard to actually know whether the new Syntax is good or not by just "looking" at it. It will needs to be put in the wild and see how it works out. But you also dont want to support a syntax indefinitely for compatibility reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great project!

A bit shocking to see how much ancient Ruby is in use. It is not like they massively change the language with every release like e.g. Swift. Probably breaking changes in Rails are a bigger blocker for updating to a new Ruby than Ruby itself?

<comment><USER12> New rails major and minor versions commonly lock the ruby version to a mature recent release, though this is not always intuitive.

I can see a number of companies sticking on Ruby 2.2 because you can happily upgrade Rails from 3.2 to 5.2 while only changing to a minor bugfix release of 2.2.10.

Rails 6 locks in at 2.5.0 which was over a year old at the time of the Rails 6 release.

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9087116/which-ruby-on- ra...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9087116/which-ruby-on-rails-is- compatible-with-which-ruby-version)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> you know, it just occurred to me that transpilers are basically lisp like macros for programming languages that don't support it. i.e. Rewriting your preferred syntax into a syntax that is supported by the programming language.

<comment><USER14> "We can write a compiler as a set of macros." \-- Peter Norvig

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've had to deal with Ruby for the last 2 years, and one of the main problem is the gem ecosystem. The language and standard libraries are pretty narrow, unless you add Rails (which adds a new variety of breaking upgrade headaches).

Thus, there's always the desire to use third-party gems to achieve pretty basic stuff (localization, decent networking/REST, database drivers, etc). These then tend to go out of date. It's pretty common to find well-used gems that haven't been updated in 5, even 10 years. This puts the developer in a tough spot - reinvent the gem/wheel? Or be forced to stay on an EOL version of Ruby?

<comment><USER16> This is because the next generation of hot coders is working on JS or something more exotic like Rust. This is why I think that even though Rails is still a good platform for building a certain class of webapps the writing is on the wall and I'm planning to transition away from it over the next few years.

<comment><USER17> I'm in the same spot. I still use & love Rails, but having adopted TypeScript & VS Code (w/ React) for the front-end, I find myself missing those luxuries when I switch back to Ruby/Rails/Vim.

I'm leaning towards a full TypeScript stack for my next project. The idea of sharing types & code between client & server is incredibly seductive. But there's no Rails for TS/Node, so I know it's going to be a shit show assembling all of my chosen libraries into a cohesive whole.

Although looking at your previous comment, perhaps I should give Kotlin / Ktor a try?

<comment><USER18> FYI I think Redwood is trying hard to be Rails for TS/Node...

([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22537944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22537944))

<comment><USER16> Redwood looks really interesting. I'd like to try it on a small project. The emphasis on serverless seems like a bit of a different direction than Rails though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Love seeing this. This let's people avoid the pains of forced migrations or forking when a new version of a library has critical changes but drops older Ruby support.

Also, I found this statement hilarious:

> Unlike front-end developers, we, Rubyists, usually do not need to "build" > code (unless you're using mruby, Opal, etc.).

It wasn't that long ago that front-end developers used to say the reverse.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wish this had existed a decade ago. I would have saved myself a lot of trouble by using it instead of trying to invent it!

[https://github.com/raganwald- deprecated/rewrite_rails](https://github.com/raganwald- deprecated/rewrite_rails)

<comment><USER21> That was a lot of interesting work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this similar to Python's 2to3 [0] tool?

[0] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/2to3.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/2to3.html)

<comment><USER23> looks more like bable form javascript (takes new code and re-writes it to work on an older interpreter version)</comment></comment>


Peter Thiel Says FBI, CIA Should Probe Google - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/peter-thiel-says-fbi-cia-should-probe-google-9846a042-e689-49bc-bdc7-595988ce5d8c.html <comment><USER2> holy shit read the quotes

"so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military"

"I would like them to be asked in a not excessively gentle manner."

<comment><USER3> >[Google's] decision to work with the Chinese military

Huh, this is the first time I'm hearing of this claim. Apparently they're only indirectly supporting the Chinese military so it's a nuanced issue.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/google-snubbed-the- pentagonbut...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/google-snubbed-the-pentagonbut- not-the-chinese-military)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an aside, it must be really nice to get major press coverage of you expressing an opinion. It's like a superpower.

<comment><USER5> It's also nice to be a billionaire with close ties to the president, being on Facebooks BoD, founding a domestic surveillance company with a number of defense and law enforcement contracts.

It's also nice to be invited to a conference in DC as a speaker and say the government should interrogate your competitors.

Given those circumstances, it seems like getting press coverage for this is predictable and unsurprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm but Facebook is A-ok. Wonder why?

<comment><USER7> Why is Facebook A-ok?

<comment><USER8> He is on the board

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure that being on the board of a company means that you are okay with everything the company does.

<comment><USER9> But it's still dubious when a board member is calling out a competitor for a problem that they also share. It looks a lot less like a sincere desire for protection and more like calling the cops on somebody you don't like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _shrug_. Counterintelligence is already one of the FBI's high priority missions. Why should they probe beyond whatever they're already doing?

> how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan > Project for AI?

The FBI doesn't need a special directive to try and find this out. And it's in Google's interest to cooperate.

> I would like them to be asked in a not excessively gentle manner.

Love or hate the GOOG, they are a US power company that delivers a lot of good things to the people of the US, California, and the world. Maybe it should be `s/probe/protect/`.

> seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with > the US military...

Is this true? This seems like an exaggeration of [1].

> "The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese > military," Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of > Staff, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china- google/googles-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china- google/googles-work-in-china-benefiting-chinas-military-u-s-general- idUSKCN1QV296)

<comment><USER11> Disagree that it is the FBIs job to "protect" domestic companies from possible foreign corporate and/or govt espionage. Should be up to the company to protect itself. If and when it believes a _crime_ has been committed, fine call in the FBI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So a guy who sits on the FB board and runs his own US defense contracting company says the US Government should investigate the direct competitor of his companies, after donating large sums of money to the campaign of the current US President.

A person who has so much faith in the US government that he has purchased citizenship in New Zeland.

A person who has questioned the US 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Why should we listen to him?

<comment><USER13> Are they a direct competitor in this space? From the quotes he seems to be asking why they have chosen not to be a competitor.

<comment><USER12> Google is a direct competitor to Facebook in the Ad space.

Google is a direct competitor to Palantir in the Defense space.

I'm sure he is worried about the latter, as they can test the infra with the Chinese, then sell it to the Americans, in some not too far off future.

Remember, we have always been at war with Eurasia. Or was it Eastasia?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> His questions are really missing the mark.

Number one should be: What information have you collected on members of all governments and militaries in the world using your insanely broad surveillance network across Google Search, Adsense, and Android, specifically GLS?

</comment><comment><USER15> They should probe Peter Thiel, honestly.

<comment><USER7> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is kind of a weird snippet - where / when did Peter Thiel say this?

It seems like a fair statement, but without context, it almost seems made up and / or missing some pieces of information.

<comment><USER17> Apparently at this conference:

[https://nationalconservatism.org](https://nationalconservatism.org)

If wanting the FBI to beat up Google execs for leaking AI research is 'a fair statement', what does an unfair one look like?

<comment><USER18> Ah the classic conservative stance of small government, limited regulation and... (checks notes)... siccing the government's bloated alphabet agencies on your competition.

<comment><USER19> Great guy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: By foot to Y Combinator - <AUTHOR>

Hi
I am from Ukraine and it seems to me I have a chance of interview in YC.
So, what type of visa should I get for this (and so possibly be a founder of a company from YC in USA) ?
Thanks for advices. <comment><USER2> B1/B2 visas will get you in for 3-6 months initially but you can't work for your company under this type of visas. Depending on your situation you might be able to apply to a EB visa (but the requirements are strict).

You don't need any type of visa to start a company (you can even do it online).

The USCIS site is really helpful when you're trying to determine what kind of visa you need: <http://www.uscis.gov/>

</comment><comment><USER3> @alezozov: many congratulations on the interview opportunity. I would suggest the B1/B2 visa used for leisure-tourism and/or business. Ideally, if you can get a multiple entry visa valid for a few years, it would enable your visit for the interview, as well as a stay for three-odd months during the Winter session as well. That said, USCIS tends to be dodgy and unpredictable about these matters, so fingers crossed on that one. All the best!

</comment><comment><USER4> You should be able to get a B1/B2 for the interview and YC program but it could get incredibly difficult to stay in the US beyond YC. It's definitely best to talk to an immigration lawyer about your options. It can often depend on a number of factors including your company revenue, capital raised, personal extraordinary accomplishments, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought interview invites were to be given out on october the 31st. Am I wrong?

</comment><comment><USER6> For the interview or for YC itself ?

<comment><AUTHOR> First for interview and then to YC itself, but better (if posible) one visa for that two purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well done and good luck!</comment>


Safari to Include DuckDuckGo as a Built-In Search Option - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/06/02/duckduckgo <comment><USER2> I thought something might be up when I saw Gabriel's unassuming tweet.

[https://twitter.com/yegg/status/473545653667102721](https://twitter.com/yegg/status/473545653667102721)

Personally I'm hoping DDG will at some point pick up the slack from Google dropping the Discussions tab (forum search). Evidently it wasn't so popular, but I found it hugely useful for researching product decisions and haven't found a good alternative. Seems like it could be a good niche to cover.

<comment><USER3> Agreed on this. I think the quality of Google searches has gone down dramatically for this type of search, because forum posts are often where people have questions answered. It's not just product research; programming, homework questions, general subject matter, all are often answered best in forum posts.

<comment><USER2> Could be. I'm not really sure if the quality of search went down, it seems to be a lot better imo after Panda+Penguin purged a lot of ridiculously spammy pages; but I still want a way to just search discussions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice, but they should open up everything more and let people install any search engine. Apple did open up quite a bit today (in terms of letting others access their platform in places where Apple previously was the sole decider), so it's not unlikely to eventually happen.

<comment><USER5> You can set the search provider on current Safari, so I'm guessing there'll be a way to install a system-wide search provider.

That would be very handy and I can see Spotlight being a lot more powerful if that's possible (integrating with specialized fact DBs, SaaS, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome. I've been using a router hack* to accomplish this on iOS, but it'll be nice to have DuckDuckGo when I'm not on my home network.

* [http://chrisltd.com/blog/2013/04/duck-duck-go-iphone-ipad/](http://chrisltd.com/blog/2013/04/duck-duck-go-iphone-ipad/)

<comment><USER7> Wait, iOS won't let you customize your search engine beyond the 3 presets?!? Just... wow.

<comment><USER8> Android doesn't either, it gives you the same three presets.

<comment><USER9> Of course on Android you can always just install any app you want, such as firefox, and rock and roll.

Fuck Apple deciding what I can and can not run on my phone.

<comment><USER10> FWIW you can install alternative browsers with alternative search engines in iOS as well. I regularly use a Tor browser, for instance. The only thing that's fixed is the Webkit engine, but that's immaterial to this discussion.

<comment><USER7> It's not quite immaterial. You can only use an alternate search engine on iOS if you install a _slower_ browser due to Apple withholding the JIT capabilities of Mobile Safari from 3rd parties, thus artificially propping up Mobile Safari as the fastest iOS browser. Although Chrome on Android limits you to only the 3 bundled search engines, alternative browsers expose additional choices without being artificially limited by Google.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, this will be history starting with iOS8: [http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/03/ios-8-webkit-changes- finally-a...](http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/03/ios-8-webkit-changes-finally- allow-all-apps-to-have-the-same-performance-as-safari/)

Now the web view runs in a separate process with a separate sandbox, so it can run the same JIT of Safari without security concerns (mainly, writable memory with execution permissions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Be interesting to see whether it has any effect on the numbers:

[https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html)

<comment><USER12> Wow! Look at the surge in the traffic after "Surveillance revelations". Future look very optimistic for DDG.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This makes perfect sense in light of the growing relationship status of Apple and Google as major competitors in devices space (Android and iOS), and as such, it's a brilliant strategic move on Apple's part. DDG have made the first real inroads in search in over a decade, and they've done so quietly.

I can think of a number of widely touted alternatives which utterly failed to do so: Cuil, Bing, Blekko, A9, Teoma, and more (a DDG search shows a bunch of skeletons: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22new+search+engine%22+challenge+...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22new+search+engine%22+challenge+google)). None has had the traction DDG seems to have garnered.

I see a confluence of a number of things:

• Snowden. People are now privacy conscious, and aware of the tremendous amount of information disclosed in Web searches. DDG's huge traffic spike following the Snowden disclosures is testimony to this: [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html)

• Google is the one to beat. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Rackspace, and others see Google as their primary competition. This creates an alignment of interests among them.

• Google has shown vulnerabilities. Failures to execute on a string of social efforts, most recently G+, as well as an increasing sense of distraction, as well as possible signs of weakness in its core search business, suggest a vulnerable underside to Google. DDG isn't big enough to cause real damage yet, but it can certainly get Google's attention.

• Democratization of search. Was a time when massive datacenter investments were necessary for search. That's both no longer the case, _and_ DC infrastructure's getting cheaper, both of which cut away at Google's core competency and advantage.

• Google's lost its favored status among the technorati. While it's not clear who's won that crown, there's an increasing strong sense among many that Google have failed at their "don't be evil" pledge, have disappointed users, and simply don't have the chops they once demonstrated.

• Specialized search is making inroads. OpenStreetMap is taking on geosearch, Wolfram+Alpha and Knoema specialized data search, Wikipedia is a basic more- or-less-trusted repository of actual _information_ (as opposed to random Web sites), Amazon is a product and bibliographic research library. There are places to go for information which, if you've got a _specific_ interest, are better than Google, and they're carving off bits of the search market.

So, yes, for the first time in 15 years, search looks like it may be ripe for a bit of disruption.

Don't get me wrong: Google does some things amazingly well. Date-bounded Web searches still draw me back (I did some here to turn up a few of the more obscure search contenders from the early 2000s), the Google Books Ngram viewer is fucking awesome, Google Trends isn't bad, and a few other elements. _Reliability_ of Google services is amazing. But there are chinks in the armor.

<comment><USER14> You mean that DDG offers the _illusion_ of privacy, right? It's more than a little naive to think that the NSA won't be able to pull data without needing the cooperation of DDG (and they're obviously not dissuaded from doing so by any laws). We also don't know about any secret court orders that may or may not have been issued to DDG compelling them to turn over data. And how are we supposed to know that DDG haven't done a deal with Microsoft to pass on data under threat of being closed down, or even that they follow their stated privacy policy?

I'm not suggesting that any of these scenarios have necessarily taken place, but we'd have no way of knowing if they have. Also, the more popular DDG becomes, the more tempting a target it becomes to the NSA et al.

So by all means use DDG if you like its other features, but try to be realistic about privacy.

<comment><USER15> Pretty much their entire pitch is that they don't _store_ the data[1]. I don't really see how they can be forced to give up data they don't have.

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/privacy#s3](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy#s3)

<comment><USER16> I don't see how you can be certain that they don't store the data if government can easily force them to and make them shut up about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For months i have been in transition to DuckDuckGo. The only missing bit was native search in safari for iOS and OSX. This definitely seal the deal. And is good for all the industry that a viable second choice exist to bring balance to the force , and bring humility to google monopoly in search.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Just set it as my default on iOS and searched for osx 10.10 Top part of the screen shows a Wikipedia result and the remainder shows an ad. Switching back to google.

If they can make that mobile UI much better I'll make it my default but I've essentially done a search and saw no results without having to scroll.

<comment><USER18> I presume you're on iOS8 beta? Presumably when iOS8 goes gold in the fall, the DDG landing page for mobile users will be greatly improved.

This is a great partnership, as both companies, unlike Google, seem to see privacy as a major feature.

<comment> k-mcgrady I don't see why their mobile page should be different when iOS 8 is reelased. It's the same problem I have with their desktop site actually. The quick answer box at the top of search results that thinks it knows what I want takes up way too much space.

<comment><USER18> Because a) they want to take the time to do it right and b) the floodgates for new iOS users (the majority non-betas) will open then.

Don't expect a beta experience to be awesome when DDG has months to get it right for the real release date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One reason I still not use DDG is no support for language specific search (settings not work). It mixed many similar language in the search result, for example, english and spanish.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really really want to like ddg, but I can't seem to get away from a need to !g. Further, though its obviously a loss in privacy, the quality in search results returning from a "context aware" google is just leaps better. Its a trade-off I guess. I know HN is very much in support of the primacy of privacy ... but there is no doubt search and ad relevancy goes down in anonymity.

<comment><USER21> I've been using DDG for quite a while now, and I've noticed in the last few weeks or months that their search results have gotten much better. Before I'd have to use !g on most of my queries, but now it's much more of a rarity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How is duckduckgo's search quality nowadays?

<comment><USER23> I've switched over to it for 90% of requests. The only thing I find really fails are very precise technical questions.

Edit: Let me rephrase, it's my default search engine. If the result isn't great, I may rerun it with !g which will then forward my request on to google. Makes it really easy to migrated while still being able to fall back when needed.

<comment><USER13> For technical questions, my first go-to is generally StackExchange (!so) or a site-specific search (w3.org is great for specific CSS spec queries which I seem to have been doing a lot lately) via DDG bang syntax. Google's my third choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the article: "Private Browsing mode — which doesn't save your browsing history"

I wonder whether iCloud tabs still work in private browsing mode. In other words, do Apple and others still get to see all your supposedly "private" URLs?

<comment><USER25> No, they don't. This feature already exists, and private tabs don't go to iCloud.

<comment><USER24> Good to know, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is fantastic news for DuckDuckGo and for Apple. A nice solid search engine coupled with a nice new redesign. If I were Google I would be a little bit worried DuckDuckGo are steadily stealing users. They converted me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, at least I like one thing Apple's doing.

</comment><comment><USER28> The enemy of your enemy is your friend, indeed!

</comment><comment><USER29> Is Google still the default?

<comment><USER30> Yes, via a new install to an iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So, yandex basically.

</comment><comment><USER24> Search engine placement is big business - doesn't Firefox make millions each year with Google referrals?

Apple did not add ddg in the past few years despite people asking them to, which might indicate that Apple, too, asks for money for these referrals.

So this begs the question - how how much did ddg have to pay?

<comment><USER32> > doesn't Firefox make millions each year with Google referrals?

Mozilla grossed 311M for FY2012, almost all of which came from their deal with google: [https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en- US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...](https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en- US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Financials_2012.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Meanwhile, 10.10 will track more keystrokes and gather more personal data than ever. Doesn't have anything to do with privacy. More to do with being at war with Google.

<comment><USER18> Can you give me more specifics as to what's being captured?

<comment><USER34> Typing in the search field on iOS 8 will fetch web results as well, which means some web server is being hit with what you're typing. Spotlight on Yosemite is getting a similar feature as well.

<comment><USER35> I'd suspect that at least on Yosemite you'll be able to disable the web search. You can already choose to chop out huge sections of Spotlight's optional functionality on Mavericks, so I don't see why that'd change come Yosemite.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Much Worse the Coronavirus Could Get, in Charts - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coronavirus-trump-response.html <comment><AUTHOR> Interactive modeling. I didn't realize the expected total US infections are 100 million to 200 million.</comment>


Handbook of Computational Social Choice (free PDF Available) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/computer-science/artificial-intelligence-and-natural-language-processing/handbook-computational-social-choice <comment><AUTHOR> Link to open-access PDF version: [http://www.cambridge.org/download_file/898428](http://www.cambridge.org/download_file/898428)

<comment><USER2> Password protected for me.

Is it supposed to be?

Where would one find the password?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, the password is cam1CSC</comment></comment></comment>


The PNG Gamma Dilemma - <AUTHOR> http://morris-photographics.com/photoshop/articles/png-gamma.html <comment><USER2> While it doesn't state a date, internal evidence suggests it was written in 2007. (It mentioned Safari 2.0, and 3.0 came out in that year.) Also, the download file for "PNG Gamma" says 'Last-Modified: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:34:56 GMT'.

Thus, it's very hard to draw any conclusions from this article as things may have changed over the last 8 years and because it doesn't include Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree completely. I tried to find a date, but I was unsuccessful. (I'd be happy if a mod can modify the title and add (2007?).)

Anyway, a few months ago I was building a small website with a background that was provided by a designer.

It was not a good background to make a tile, so I tried to stretch it automatically, but the result changed from browser to browser. One browser left a big empty space at the bottom. I couldn't match the color with an RGB #xxyyzz, the only solution was to make a 1x1 pixel file with the same format, gamma, ... and fill the background with it.</comment></comment>


HTTPS with a Custom Domain on GitHub Pages - <AUTHOR> https://lukeb.co.uk/2018/01/02/HTTPS-With-A-Custom-Domain-On-GitHub-Pages/ <comment><USER2> I've been using CloudFlare to provide SSL on my documentation sites hosted on GH Pages for around 12 months with excellent reliability. The only caveat I've found so far is that a number of browsers and especially corporate proxies do not support the certificates and SSL protocols used by CloudFlare, resulting in failed connections. This is a problem across all CloudFlare sites though, so something to look out for if you need access from behind such a setup.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The only caveat I've found so far is that a number of browsers and especially corporate proxies do not support the certificates and SSL protocols used by CloudFlare_

Which browsers and which proxies?

<comment><USER2> Wow, hello! So far it seems like the McAfee corporate products are the most common failures. I deal with about 20 calls a day within my company and from what I've heard this isn't a unique experience. The versions our security team use are probably about 3 years out of date but the new cloud product they're migrating to has shown similar symptoms where the connection fails and the client shows a standard 'Server Failed to Connect's. The team managing the existing proxy had provided some connection logs, I'll try and dig them out.

<comment><USER2> Found them. The comments from the security team suggest the (admittedly out of date) proxy appliance can't handle the combination of modern TLS ciphers, H/2 and multiple hosts on a SAN cert, and in this scenario, results in a connection failure that from the end user perspective looks like a site issue. In the case of the new cloud service, the problem is specifically related to the new TLS versions and long lived connections, but which I haven't been able to recreate from the corporate Akamai setup with the same site behind it. Small sample size though...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Mind emailing me details? jgc @ cloudflare . com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use GitHub Pages with a custom domain to publish a static blog. I post about once a month and my audience is small. Would someone please explain why I should worry about HTTP vs. HTTPS?

<comment><USER2> Chrome will shortly be flagging all sites without HTTPS as insecure, so at the very least the benefit is cosmetic. From an overall health of the internet perspective, modern SSL ensures no tampering or other misbehaviour on the line. Google covered some other benefits of SSL in a post from September - [https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/security/encr...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/security/encrypt- in-transit/why-https)

<comment><USER3> Makes sense to me. Apparently GitHub doesn't agree, because they don't still support HTTPS for custom domains.</comment></comment></comment>