India orders 'panic button' for mobile phones in bid to protect women - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/04/26/india-orders-panic-button-for-mobile-phones-in-bid-to-protect-women/ <comment><USER4> For those who have never been to India, this is like yelling "FIRE!!!" in a crowd of 1 million people where the nearest fire truck is outside the crowd.

If you are in dire need of 9/11 equivalent services there, your done. Period. No one will reach you in time.

If people there really cared about women, they would pass a version of the second amendment and allow women to protect themselves from brutal savage attacks with deadly force.

Acid attacks. Rape. Gang rape. All of the above.

This "panic button" will do absolutely nothing. No one will monitor it, no one will respond, you will die.

Give women the ability to protect themselves!

<comment><USER5> Or educate men in society that these things are wrong.

<comment><USER6> You really think the problem is that men don't know the raping is wrong?

<comment><USER7> Yes, actually. In an interview from jail[0], one of the men who participated in the 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh blamed the victim for the attack[1]!

[0] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1144346...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/11443462/Delhi- bus-rapist-blames-his-victim-in-prison-interview.html)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident)

<comment><USER8> Are you familiar with criminals who take responsibility for their actions? I've never heard of such a thing, so your implied conclusion seems idealistic

<comment><USER9> > [Nikhil]: Or educate men in society that these things are wrong.

> [Winston]: You really think the problem is that men don't know the raping is > wrong?

> [ChongLi]: Yes, actually.

> [OldManJay]: Are you familiar with criminals who take responsibility for > their actions? I've never heard of such a thing, so your implied conclusion > seems idealistic

Nikhil and ChongLi are doing nothing but regurgitate the faulty feminist narrative that they have fondly taken on to be common sense.

Both American and Indian societies already teach its members that rape, murder, theft and other crimes are "wrong". This is called social conditioning, and is put into effect from childhood onwards. Social conditioning does not of course necessarily stop the criminals like Elliot Rodger (murder) and Mukesh Singh (rape) from conducting their crimes.

The narrative of "Teach men not to rape," that these people ignorantly spit out, is based on the faulty premise that the said men have not been taught not to rape (and kill, maim, and so forth).

> [ChongLi]: In an interview from jail[0], one of the men who participated in > the 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh blamed the victim for the > attack[1]! [0] > [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1144346...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1144346..). > [1] > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident)

With a little intelligence and sensitivity, it is not difficult to prober further into the underlying motivation of these criminals, and without understanding the underlying motivations you cannot effect change. Here's a clue: Mukesh Singh (one of the perpetrator of the Delhi gang rape event) had this to say in that interview: _" A decent girl won't roam around at nine o'clock at night … Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing indecent things, wearing indecent clothes."_.

<comment><USER10> Your comment presumes an equal education (that rape is equally "bad"), it presumes that both cultures are taught the same thing. They are not.

In fact, it is currently legal to rape your wife in India.

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/asia/marital-rape- india/](http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/asia/marital-rape-india/)

Think about that for a moment. What kind of effect do you think that would have on their rape statistics? In the U.S, Marital Rape accounts for half of all reported rapes. In India, those rapes aren't even being reported because they're not illegal.

<comment><USER9> Your comment does not address the key points in mine.

There is no doubt that marital/ spousal rape needs to be criminalized. Criminalization, of course, is not going to entirely eliminate it - <USER3> brings me to the point I'm trying to make: when both social-conditioning and law-and-order have failed, what's the solution?

Feminists, including Nikhil and ChongLi, advocate further explicit conditioning (which ain't gonna have much effect on the criminals who already care less about their own social conditioning). Without understanding the criminals' underlying motives, people wanting to effect change will only go around in circles. Where is the proof that the feminist approach works?

<comment><USER11> Social conditioning has not failed.

Right now it's telling men in several societies that "it's the right thing to rape your woman" since it's your property, and that "a woman needs to be protected by her owner-man in order not to get raped by other men" so raping her is not the rapist's fault, it's her owner's fault for not protecting her.

This conditioning lets men with rape fantasies to explain everything else away and act them out with no perception of wrongdoing.

<comment><USER9> Your comment does not address the key points in mine.

There is no doubt that marital/ spousal rape needs to be criminalized. Criminalization, of course, is not going to entirely eliminate it[1] - <USER3> brings me to the point I'm trying to make: when both social-conditioning and law-and-order have failed[2], what's the solution?

Moreover this is not a gender issue, as the likes of you ignorantly make it out to be (in an fervent attempt to distract via identity politics), as the reverse is equally applicable -- such as, to use your phraseology, letting women with divorce-rape fantasies to explain everything else away and act them out with no perception of wrongdoing[3] -- where the aforementioned question continues to hold.

\--

[1] The West has historically had the idea that by marriage a woman gives irrevocable consent for her husband to have sex with her any time he demands it ... and even though marital/ spousal rape has recently been criminalized (made a crime in all 50 states in the US by 1993, for example), it has not entirely eliminated it.

[2] The very fact that marital/ spousal rape continues to be prevalent even among countries where it has been criminalized suggests that both social- conditioning and law-and-order have failed, in regards to entirely eliminating it. Hence, my question: what's the solution?

[3] Some unscrupulous women in India are wont to extort money and harass their husband's entire extended family. [http://www.498a.org](http://www.498a.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> India is a country where government will do everything except implementing the existing laws.

Just Yesterday a Minister's (From souther state called AP) Son who tried to kidnap a woman in broad day light in his car was let go by courts due to lack of evidence After everything was Recorded in CC TV footage and was telecast in every local channel when incident happened.

So Apparently as long as you are politically connected You can rape, Kidnap Women in India. But if you are a legitimate business, you are in trouble.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like the interesting portion of this will be how the response to that panic button is organized.

Nothing is mentioned about that. it'd be really easy to send a geolocation to an endpoint somewhere.

It almost seems like a practical joke without going into the effort required to coordinate the response. Might as well require these on all keyboards.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00887KUPW/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bd...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00887KUPW/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is just a publicity stunt. The country is simply too large and public spending on law enforcement and emergency services too small for anything like this to be effective. They could start by increasing the penalties for sex crimes and spending more money on effective prosecutions.

</comment><comment><USER15> Coming to rape trials near you: "Your phone was beside you all night. Why didn't you press the panic button?"

We'll know when societies are actually serious about protecting women when they direct more of their efforts towards changing the men who rape them.

</comment><comment><USER16> India would be better off arming women with handguns. The threat of getting shot dead is a much more serious disincentive.

</comment><comment><USER17> ... for a very odd definition of 'protect'. 'Protect' in this case is a handgun.

[https://www.gunowners.org/wv26.htm](https://www.gunowners.org/wv26.htm)

"... raw data from the 1979-1985 installments of the Justice Department's annual National Crime Victim Survey show that when a woman resists a stranger rape with a gun, the probability of completion was 0.1 percent and of victim injury 0.0 percent, compared to 31 percent and 40 percent, respectively, for all stranger rapes (Kleck, Social Problems, 1990)."

<comment><USER18> Kleck is a ridiculously biased researcher. Some pearlers from his past include claiming that every survey-claimed DGU equalled a life saved[1], and that Australia would become a 'Wild West' in the wake of the '90s gun bans - Australia continues to be considerably safer than the US, twenty years down the track.[2]

[1] Apparently "I claim I brandished my gun and a robber left me alone" is now a life saved, not a wallet saved.

[2] The actual 'Wild West' in history was a much safer place than the movies would suggest, but I doubt Kleck was trying to evoke the historical image rather than the myth.

<comment><USER17> Vacri, that's not surprising - the level of anti-gun bias in academia suggests that there ought to be some pro-gun bias in there too.

But that doesn't change the results of those findings, which are: if you want women to be able to actually prevent stranger rape, allowing themselves to carry guns is by far and away the most effective solution.

Of course that doesn't address other social costs involved in having most of society carrying weapons. As Rand put it:

"Handguns are instruments for killing people — they are not carried for hunting animals — and you have no right to kill people. You do have the right to self-defense, however. I don't know how the issue is going to be resolved to protect you without giving you the privilege to kill people at whim.".

Just bear in mind that one of the social costs of _disarmament_ is that women are denied an effective tool for self defence. Panic buttons on cellphones really don't cut the mustard here.

<comment><USER18> > _Just bear in mind that one of the social costs of disarmament is that women > are denied an effective tool for self defence._

This is just sloganistic nonsense. If this were the case, then here in 'disarmed' Australia, rape would be rife. Whereas over in the US where self- defence is a frothy notion, there isn't much difference in rape rates, a four- times higher murder rate, and a six-times higher incarceration rate. Meanwhile, over in South Africa, where there are guns aplenty, rape has a runaway crime rate.

The idea that guns make you safe isn't born out when you do comparisons like this.

But regarding Kleck, he's pretty much the go-to guy for the pro-gun lobby. And the pro-gun lobby in the US is pretty aware that good studies will show the flaws in what they say - which is why they apply pressure on the government to refuse to study the problem. If the numbers really would show a consistent story for the pro-gun lobby, they'd be welcoming studies with open arms. But as it stands, when someone posts a study supporting the pro-gun side, there's a better than even chance that you'll find Kleck's name on it, I find.

<comment><USER17> I'm Australian too, you know. But my politics often lead to me being mistaken for an American Libertarian. Flattering, I guess :)

You're conflating several issues here though. Kleck was simply looking at one scenario: attempted rape by a stranger, when the victim had a firearm and used it. The stats on that are very, very firmly supportive of the idea that handguns are a good defence.

I'm actually agreeing with you on the other social costs of an armed society, mind you. I don't think you read my post very clearly, and attributed to me a bunch of common positions (for Americans) that I don't actually hold.

<comment><USER18> > _and used it_

You couldn't get more biased than this kind of selection for that sort of study. It's like saying that the chance of spending time in a holding cell is very high, if you only look at subjects who have just been arrested that day. And it's symptomatic of how Kleck is used - he does a study that is heavily specific to the conditions, and then it's quoted free of context from day 1 and generalised to things it shouldn't be generalised to.

Similarly, 'carrying a gun' is very different to 'carrying a gun _and using it_ ' \- you have to be able to access and use the gun at the right time, and you don't always have the drop on your attacker. I once did a bouncer certificate course, and the instructor said that in a study in Sydney, the most use of a gun in an encounter with an armed security guard was the guard's own gun used against them - people were getting the drop on security guards and turning their guns on them. And one place where women tend to meet their rapists - bars and clubs - is a place where guns are usually restricted even in US states where gun freedom is common. Texas, for example, has a 51% law, meaning if a business makes 51%+ of it's income from alcohol, you can't carry a gun there. Women in these higher-risk places can't legally carry this supposed magical defense item. Specifying "and using it" ignores all the issues around actually getting the gun into play at the right time, which aren't trivial.

Ultimately, "carry guns" is a bad argument to make for personal safety, because it's treating the symptom, not the cure, and short-circuits discussion to actually cut social problems off at the source, I find.

Re: the nationality thing - I never suggested you were American, but that's the place in the modern Western world that is doing the "guns as defence for normal citizens" thing (and it's where Kleck does his stuff). That's why it's a US-centric counter-argument. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Need to buy a gun that does not require a license [http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4001](http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4001)

Ministry of Home Affairs limits right to self-defense to only VIPs [http://www.gunowners.in/](http://www.gunowners.in/)

Arms license [http://mha.nic.in/armslicence](http://mha.nic.in/armslicence)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'll skip over discussing whether this will be effective and go straight to the implementation required:

> a panic button configured to the number key 5 or 9 and all smartphones to > have a feature that will engage when the on-off button is pressed three > times.

I find it interesting that a government department has demanded so specific an implementation. Do they think that prescribing that level of detail makes them look more authoritative? It would be better to leave the details to the phone makers.

I don't think Apple or Google will respond with much enthusiasm to that level of micromanagement.

<comment><USER21> You need something simple and standard for emergencies, in the same way you have a three digit emergency number in the US and UK (and, I assume, other places). If every phone is different nobody will bother learning the sequence, or they'll remember the sequence they had on their last mobile.

Most people stop thinking when they panic. I used to manage a group of computer operators. One day one of my employees collapsed. I directed her coworker to call the emergency number while I was checking for breath and a heartbeat.

Since it was a military base with an obsolete phone system, the emergency number wasn't 911, and even though there was a huge red sticker on the phone (which she'd used for years) with the emergency number, the coworker kept punching in 911 over and over, getting more and more panicked when it didn't connect. She froze up so badly even when I told her what to do she couldn't do it - I had to take the phone from her and dial myself.

She would have been fine if 911 actually worked, though, because that's the emergency number that had been drilled into her since childhood.

That job (because of that incident and another when the fire suppression system went off) taught me all those stupid-seeming standardized emergency systems really can save your life. Even if you're the sort of person who can keep your head in an emergency, you may need help from someone who can't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would have to involve pressing two buttons. Putting 9-1-1 on a single button over here has resulted in a lot of false calls, sometimes from simply sitting on a coat containing a phone.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It would be interesting to see how companies like Apple will comply with this request. AFAIK, the feature would be embedded in hardware by pressing power button 3 times it would trigger the GPS and connect to law enforcement. If India can convince all OEMs to implement this feature and implements infrastructure around it nationwide then I agree it has the possibility to reduce rape incidents tremendously.

<comment><USER23> I don't know where you get your stats from, but I have a Indian city full of panic buttons and nothing happens when you press them. The possibility of it reducing rape, nobody knows for sure. India's emergency response isn't great and won't be in the near future. Have you even considered the number of false positives you would get with the population we have in our country

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here's additional information on the issue of rape in India:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_India](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_India)

<comment><USER25> The data on the wikipedia page raises a question. It shows that the number of rapes per 100 000 is about 1/4th that of the US.

Now I assume a lot of that is due to unreporting, but is rape really that much more common in India? Anecdotal evidence suggest it is.

It reminds me of crime in Canada vs. the US. The US has almost 10x the population, so if you think about something like school shootings (of which there have been quite a few in Canada), you'd expect 10x of them in the US.

<comment><USER26> I am quite sure a much larger number of rapes in India go unreported. Women are discouraged from reporting such cases, specially in rural areas. Most of India is rural. The few which do get reported are probably the ones affecting mid-to-upper class people in cities, or the few brave women who dared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://wh.gov/ioctA](https://wh.gov/ioctA) (guns) are better

</comment><comment><USER27> Not just that. All smartphones will also be required to include GPS.

</comment><comment><USER19> Guns per 100 people

India = 4.2;

China = 4.9;

and Pakistan = 11.6;</comment>


2012 Wine bug "Drawing in Photoshop CS5 is almost impossible" now fixed - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29871 <comment><USER2> I'm pretty happy with the way CS6 works with PlayOnLinux(Ubuntu 16.04, Wine 1.7.24-CS-0.9.1-DXHR). It's not perfect, but I have no problem getting the work done (mostly design). I wouldn't use it for drawing/painting though.

If you're interested in doing digital art on linux - I _highly_ recommend checking out Krita. I've discovered it a year ago and was blown away, if you're an artist - it does everything you may need, and works extremely well.

\----

Slightly off topic - I'm also quite happy with using linux for the rest of my digital art needs:

\- Kdenlive is an excellent video editor. Works extremely well, and is pure joy to use.

\- Nuke and Houdini have native linux versions that work perfectly. I think Maya should work fine too, but I haven't tested that.

\- Silo 2.5(most recent version) works flawlessly under wine, and is perfect for any 3d modeling.

\- I don't develop games, but both Unreal and Unity work very well.

The point is, several years ago you couldn't realistically use linux for professional 2D/3D work, now you totally can.

<comment><USER3> Maya definitely works, but I've always needed to create symbolic links and other tweaks for it to work on non-fedora distrust. Can also confirm that Nuke works great on Linux, if you can afford the price tag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Consider this an "outside opinion" from an external developer, but my first impression upon reading the thread is that I think the whole design of "key state caching" is wrong and a symptom of a bigger problem.

Apps are polling GetAsyncKeyState() for good reason --- because they want that low-latency responsiveness which is important in situations like drawing with the mouse. Adding a cache defeats that, hence leading to bugs like this one. If your API implementation is slow, then profile and figure out how to make it faster because it obviously works fine in Windows.

As the saying goes, "Never add another layer of complexity when your problem can be solved by removing and/or optimising the existing ones."

<comment><USER5> I thought the saying goes, "Every problem can be solved by adding another abstraction, except the problem of too many layers of abstraction." ;)

<comment><USER6> That's not funny - I work in an enterprise Java shop :'(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Post like that brings me back to earth every time I dream of running Linux only. I commend the work of everyone involved, people working for free on their spare time for the common benefit is great. But celebrating _CS5_ compatibility in late 2017… it's sobering.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, this is not for CS5 compatibility specifically (that was one of the more visible impacted apps), but multi-threaded applications that continuously poll for mouse state against a non-thread safe state-cache introduced in an earlier version.

Also wine is not linux, and photoshop is not a linux program. If you want to run Linux only, then alternatives like krita, gimp etc.. exist that work natively. While I admit they often don't line up with adobe's tools yet, Krita's come a long way from what I've been told, and for a good portion of basic photoshop tasks (rgb only for the most part) you can use gimp quite effectively.

As a non-graphic designer I use linux daily and love it. I only keep windows around for the few windows-only games I still play

<comment><USER9> > alternatives

Don't know about Krita, but Gimp still (?) has no good CMYK support, so buh bai printing industry. Not an alternative.

<comment><USER8> Krita + Gimp can cover nearly all use cases from my understanding. Yes, as I mentioned GIMP doesn't really have CMYK support so that's limited to RGB editing (web, digital etc..), however Krita has it and has come a long ways.

So I'll double down on my statement that a good 20-30% of photoshop use cases can be covered by GIMP, with the exception of non-RBG requirements like printing that could possibly move to Krita or other tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This really does go to show that cache invalidation is a Hard Problem. And that GetAsyncKeyState() is a bit of a pain even for Windows developers.

</comment><comment><USER11> Slightly off topic: Does anyone here have CS6 running on the macOS >= Sierra? I was only able to find information that this is not possible because the launcher requires Java and Apple removed the JRE from macOS.

<comment><USER12> It's pretty easy to install Java on Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So Photoshop CS5 being usable is a bug?

<comment><USER14> I read it that way too. I think they fixed a bug that made Photoshop _un_ usable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >drawing in photoshop cs5 is almost impossible

usable?

</comment><comment><USER16> Too bad I don't have the time to read the long comment thread on there right now. Hopefully I will remember to do so after work. :) Instances like this are really interesting to me, as it seems early on in the thread the commit the broke Photoshop was identified, yet it took them 5 years to finally commit a fix. From the outside it's easy to say the wine devs are lazy/stupid for not having fixed it right away, but I suspect there is a story buried in there that tells why it wasn't that simple.

<comment><USER10> I skimmed it and saw at least two attempts that were backed out for various reasons.

<comment><USER8> From a rudimentary reading.

They introduced a state cache to fix conditions where applications poll continuously for certain states (mouse button press for example). This wasn't thread safe however, and multi-threaded applications could get a previous/incorrect state back from the cache and stop functioning as intended. This was highly visible for photoshop tools where you click and hold, as the separate mouse poller thread would get a state of 'button not clicked" and stop, or in some cases start/stop repeatedly giving a series of dots instead of a line.

The patches submitted early were to disable the global cache, which while it fixed the multi-threaded use cases didn't fix the high-polling rate issue that the global cache was attempting to fix.

The fix, years later, was to look at the global cache when changing state and invalidate it at the time of state change so any immediate calls to retrieve that state from the cache will not get the previous cached state.

There was also another issue that came up in the middle of that thread that was unrelated it seems.

<comment><USER17> > Regressions tend to be high priority for the devs though so this will be > fixed eventually.

"eventually" is right...

This seems to be a failure on the part of the devs to prioritize. AFAIK code that causes a regression should be reverted and fixed properly, not left affecting the product for FIVE YEARS before finding a fix. The burden can not be on every use case to work around a bug that was introduced, the core "fix" is clearly a half-fix and should have been reverted on identification.

<comment><USER8> I mostly agree, but if we want to be pedantic, this didn't regress something so much as fix horrible performance for 90% of apps and introduced a previous non-existent bug into certain applications due to a non-thread safe bug.

The solution itself turned out to be simple enough, and the time it took to fix is definitely not excusable considering the effort vs impact IMO.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC:  Anyone using *BSD for hosting instead of Linux? - <AUTHOR>

Advantages?  Disadvantages?  Love to hear your stories. <comment><USER2> The ports system is markedly inferior IMO to Debian / Ubuntu's package collection: no real stable tree, build from source, tweaking options at build time is encouraged. This is a moot point for things you were going to build from source anyway.

Niche pieces of software are absent; valgrind for FreeBSD is a fork that doesn't support amd64 last time I checked.

There are less people out there running the exact same application binary + underlying OS as you, which means you're less likely to find people who've had (and solved) the same issue as you.

Using it for your desktop is a bit masochistic. Widespread virtualisation means this isn't really an issue anymore - you can have a VM that mirrors your production setup.

We're still using FreeBSD and aren't likely to change anytime soon. I agree with everything aristus said.

<comment><USER3> I disagree strongly on the ports collection. I find it more flexible, up-to- date and easy to use than Debian's packages.

<comment><USER2> The up-to-date bit is my main issue. AFAIK the FreeBSD ports tree is never forked into a release branch which receives security updates and nothing else. And you'll find randomly broken stuff from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> BSD is great, with some caveats.

Pros Stability & performance are noticeably better. BSD's virtual memory system doesn't leave tons of pages in the Inactive bucket. The TCP stack is the best of class, and the UFS2 filesystem rocks the house. Jails have been in BSD more than a decade and don't waste so much $#$@ memory compared to virtual systems. Performance under heavy load is much much better.

Cons: SMP and 64-bit support. :( Linux is the Golden Child for new hardware, so BSD lags behind. I remember panicking my 5.1 kernel with a USB drive, as late as 2004.

<comment><USER5> 64 bit support on FreeBSD is pretty good; the only real issue is being able to compile for 32 bit targets on a 64 bit host out of the box. The ULE scheduler improves SMP support considerably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the non-Linux front, Joyent's accelerators (on-demand scaling via virtualization) use OpenSolaris, with the virtualization being provided by grid containers (virtualized userspace on a shared kernel).

Joyent have a good reputation but I'm not a fan of Solaris ancient userspace tools - something as simple as checking the size of a disk is made complex by Solaris not bothering to include an 'h' option - so you have to count your terabytes of disk in kilobytes.

The Solaris filesystem layout is non-FHS and a rather odd mess, with binaries in var and etc, and variable files in usr.

</comment><comment><USER7> We're running FreeBSD on this server. We've never had a problem with the OS.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've deployed FreeBSD and OpenBSD as both front facing and back end systems. My only complaint has been lack of SMP support (to be fixed with FreeBSD7.0 at least, I'm not sure about OpenBSD).

People often complain about Ports but you soon get used to it and I've found the port maintainers to be helpful on the odd occasion when there has been a problem.

Although hardware support can be said to be weak, when choosing servers there aren't a lot of chip sets out there so things are mostly covered. Certainly when deploying to HP or Dell boxes I have had no problems. It only takes a few minutes to check h/w compatibility lists. Chosing the correct servers for any job requires careful research anyway.

The most annoying thing is explaining to people that although it's open, it's not Linux and yes it is production ready.

<comment><USER5> What is the problem you have with SMP support in FreeBSD?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> FreeBSD was my first choice, until I realized that the text-to-speech s/w only ran on linux. There is a linux compatibility mode for BSD, but I'd rather avoid an extra layer of complexity. So our server is running Ubuntu right now.

<comment><USER10> You should still test BSD...we've actually had Linux software run FASTER in linux compat mode on BSD than on native Linux. It really depends on the software in question...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We're moving from CentOS/Ubuntu to FreeBSD for all our *nix boxes. The decision was motivated by hatred acquired for CentOS over time and the fact our systems administrator is most familiar with FreeBSD.

<comment><USER12> What are your hate points about CentOS?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Great info, and reaffirms my suspicions. I've been leaning towards BSD as a server.

Anyone have any thoughts on Linux v BSD security?

</comment><comment><USER13> We are using FreeBSD for ours. We've run both Linux and FreeBSD and have a preference for the latter for stability and speed

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone using an Apple XServe?</comment>


Rubinius Compute: Programming for the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://compute.rubinius.com/ <comment><USER2> I am frankly a little confused about what Rubinius is these days. Seems like a bit of an identity crisis lately.

I signed up for their mailing list long ago when they seemed to be about Rubinius the Ruby VM. In the last several weeks I've got several bizarre emails from them about the random seemingly non-differentiated product offerings. No offense but I'm just not sure what's going on there.</comment>


Amazon in Running to Acquire Landmark Movie Chain - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/amazon-is-said-to-be-in-running-to-acquire-landmark-movie-chain <comment><USER2> Why is Amazon expanding into brick and mortar with Whole Foods and now Landmark? Have they really saturated and squeezed all they can out of digital?

I like Apple's strategy better of sitting on piles of cash until they know what to do with it.

<comment><USER3> > I like Apple's strategy better of sitting on piles of cash until they know > what to do with it.

This is exactly the wrong strategy. Money is nothing compared to investing in business'.

<comment><USER2> I'm sure they have it invested in bonds or some minimal appreciating investment to fight inflation.

Many businesses have headed south by expanding into less profitable or unfamiliar business segments.

<comment><USER4> They own their own asset management company, which last year managed $268bn: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital)

Investopedia says the largest hedge fund in the world last year had $122bn under management: [https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-are-biggest-hedge- fun...](https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-are-biggest-hedge-funds-world/)

I'm guessing they exclude Apple because it's private and outside investors can't invest in it, but Apple's is twice as big as the biggest public one.

<comment><USER5> Apple's wealth is staggering, but I take solace in the fact that the wealth is spread out quite a bit with the largest individual shareholder only having around a million shared.

The largest institutional shareholders are Berkshire Hathaway and vanguard, which are also owned by lots of investors and have minority stakes.

I worry a bit more about large companies with individuals who have outsized control (like Amazon or Facebook).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Man, it really seems like amazon is just going to be everything at some point. In, say, 20 years will some meaningful percentage of all the money I spend somehow funnel through amazon? Kind of seems that way.

<comment><USER7> You wake up in the morning. "Alexa, make me a coffee." As you settle into your Amazon Auto - self-driving, of course - with a warm cup of Prime Espresso, your car's HUD lights up with a reminder. "Don't forget, your monthly electricity bill is due in 3 days! Thank you for being a customer! Echo Energy". Agh, more bills to pay. Luckily, you've been able to refinance your loans through your local BoA (Bank of Amazon) branch so you have more than enough to cover your living costs.

To be honest though, I personally wouldn't mind Amazon controlling more aspects of my life for now at least, however threatening to various liberties that might be. My overall experiences with their customer service have been stellar, which is much more than I can say for some of the other monopolistic companies I have to deal with.

<comment><USER8> You're lucky - Amazon actually give a shit about the US.

They launched in Australia (the newspapers were predicting the end of retail). They have what, 30% of products available here? Then they launched Prime - except they obviously haven't hired anyone who has used Australia Post before. You can't expect a Prime 2 day delivery if you use standard Post.

All this, and they thought restricting access to the US version was a good idea.

Amazon Australia: death by 1000 paper cuts.

When eBay looks like a better option, you've really screwed up.

<comment><USER9> >You can't expect a Prime 2 day delivery if you use standard Post.

You can't even get Express Post items in 2 days about half the time, even tho they "Guarantee next business day delivery"

<comment><USER10> Not sure if this applies to this scenario, but tricky wording related to 1 day delivery landed amzn in hot water in the UK. In this case, they meant one day after dispatch, not one day from order placement.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/business-45183887](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/business-45183887)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope they can collaborate with Netflix on this, much like they're collaborating with Microsoft on a bridge between Siri and Cortana. I'd like to see Black Mirror on the big screen.

<comment><USER12> Netflix is an Amazon Prime video competitor.

<comment><USER13> I think that was their point, as they mentioned a collaboration between Siri and Cortana, two largely competing products.

<comment><USER11> Yep. It's an example of collaboration in the face of fierce competition. BTW I meant Alexa and Cortana. Oops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazon is buying urban, high end locations. First Whole Foods, now Landmark. Clearly shows which customers they see as high value.

<comment><USER15> Not to mention if they own the real estate that has value both as an asset in addition to being a foothold into meat space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1) This would be a solid purchase. Hell, I've often thought about buying Landmark myself. (But alas, slightly short on funds @ present)

2) This would address a problem that Netflix had/has w/awards (your 'film' isn't because it didn't premiere (exclusively) in theatres and _contract negotiations_ , e.g. 'Crazy Rich Asians'.[1]

While I am no longer gung-ho on Amazon due to some personal customer experiences, I can't say that this isn't a smart move; it is.

[1] [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/crazy-rich- asians...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/crazy-rich-asians-story- behind-rom-com-1130965)

</comment><comment><USER17> Some of my favorite theaters are landmark and I would be very disappointed if they get bought out by a FAANG type.

I think we need a Paramount decree for studios/streaming.

<comment><USER18> Why do you prefer Landmark to continue to be owned by Mark Cuban instead of Jeff Bezos?

It's not like it's a mom & pop operation... I'm sure MBA types are running it either way, so what's the difference?

<comment><USER19> Landmark has made good choices so far, and play some of the best films you can't find anywhere else. I'm also worried that Amazon will decide that it's more profitable to just have em switch to playing comic book movies nonstop like every other theater.

<comment><USER18> I don't think there's any reason to worry... indie films are Landmark's entire (seemingly successful) business model, their theaters are located exactly where people who want to watch those movies live, and Amazon is producing award-winning independent films like Manchester by the Sea.

Turning Landmark into an AMC clone would make about as much sense as converting Whole Foods into Walmart-type stores. Which is to say, basically zero business sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In five years, people will be able to watch amazon content on large screens whenever they wish and manybe amazon will air new episodes on a large screen after you verify that you are a prime subscriber or something. I see poeple living in thessse theatres.

Brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this contingent on the Paramount decree being overturned, or would it simply require some special approval?

</comment><comment><USER22> Ha! If this happens, they'll probably end up doing MoviePass better than MoviePass.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how this might affect MoviePass' long term plan of strong arming theaters

<comment><USER24> I think MoviePass is already probably more worried about short-term survival than their long-term movie ticket world domination aspirations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Presumably not under the Trump administration, but you would have thought that each of these steps that Amazon takes into connected areas is a step closer to an anti-trust investigation?

<comment><USER26> By definition any kind of merger or aquisition is gonna get you closer to an anti-trust investigation.

That said: anti-trust is all about monopoly and abuse of monopoly power. Expanding into connected markets is desirable, abusing monopoly to hamper competition while doing so is illegal. Amazon is not a monopoly [[https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-stock-price-not-a- mon...](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-stock-price-not-a- monopoly-2017-8?r=US&IR=T&IR=T)], and isn't expanding anywhere they'd become one easily.

That said, again: even if there is a marginal monopoly in their sprawling Empire, and they abuse it, and an investigation is carried out, and prosecution is recommended... Amazon has more money than god. Expect a half- decade long trial with multiple appeals and unsatisfying judments that are easily covered out of their cash-on-hand. Remember the DOJ v Microsoft? I can't even see us getting halfway to that kind of action (as lame as that judgment was... MS should have been split in three).

<comment><USER25> >Amazon is not a monopoly

That article just describes Amazon as not a monopoly in retail as a whole in the U.S.

The issues here are that Amazon's film business includes them being studio, streamer, retailer and now maybe cinema owner. They also manufacture player hardware which you may need to access their service.

I wanted to watch an Amazon series, but their app wasn't available on my streaming box (and I doubt any technical justfication for this), so I had to buy an Amazon Fire stick, but that was OK because I could use it to watch YouTube as well. Except once Amazon had me, they removed the Google devices from Amazon, and Google retaliated by removing YouTube from fire. This starts to feel a lot like anti-competive behaviour. It reminds me of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Compa...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company) In certain sectors of retail Amazon certainly do have much higher market share than the cited article suggests, like computer equipment for instance, although I don't have figures to hand.

My biggest concern is around the Amazon marketplace. By controlling the marketplace and being a seller into the marketplace Amazon can monitor an independents sales on a per-product basis. And once they see you doing well selling widget x, they can get widget x built in China and sell it directly and for less, thereby squeezing you out of the market. For lots of smaller distributers Amazon is their biggest channel.

So when you say Amazon is not a Monopoly, that is an opinion and one I disagree with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is not going to happen. Film producers are not allowed to own distribution. This goes back to the early decades of Hollywood.

<comment><USER28> "Not allowed" by whom? Industry practice? At this point with the modern distracted, over-stimulated consumer, I would assume that these sorts of gentlemen's agreements are headed out the window

Also there are multiple examples of production companies owning their distributors which predate Netflix - think Disney and Buena Vista

<comment><USER27> Not allowed by the Supreme Court. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_system)

<comment><USER29> That's an incorrect conclusion you're drawing. That ruling doesn't apply an inherent legal barrier to Amazon's situation with Landmark at all. It does not ban movie production companies from owning distribution. An anti-trust review for a given context would be required to determine whether a combination is in violation of anti-trust laws. The Supreme Court in the Paramount case found that particular scheme was in violation, that is all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The newspaper made some sense in a newsvertising sort of way, the grocery store chain was a stretch, but a movie chain is just hubris. "I'm good at computer stuff, so I'm good at everything!" Things haven't been going so well at the grocery either, have they?

[https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-employees- reveal...](https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-employees-reveal-why- stores-are-facing-a-crisis-of-food-shortages-2018-1)

I only expect things to get worse. Oddly enough, this story really is beginning to sound a lot like manna,

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

<comment><USER31> The newspaper, like Blue Origin, is a private investment of Bezo's and not part of Amazon.</comment></comment>


Best all around free IDE for mac - <AUTHOR>

What would be a good free ide for jquery, javascript, and php? <comment><USER2> You're opening up a whole can of words with this question! Everyone has their favorite IDE when it comes to PHP. An example of this is an excellent forum discussion about your different options: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/116292/what-is-the- best-i...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/116292/what-is-the-best-ide-for- php)

If you're interested in free software, you're pretty much limited to something that is eclipse-based. I've tried most of the major ones, including Komodo, Zend Studio (not free), Aptana Studio, etc. There's also NetBeans (not eclipse-based), if you have experience working with NetBeans for Java development.

Learning any IDE is a big investment in time and you'll get a zillion different responses because a choosing a good IDE for you depends on your goals. If you're just learning PHP for the first time, and goal is to have an integrated debugger (helps you find mistakes in your code), then I really suggest the Zend Studio IDE along with Zend Server to host your applications. Zend Server is similar to XAMPP. Working with those two together will allow you to more easily trace code, debug, etc. Zend Studio isn't free, but you could find a version out there somewhere or get an unused copy from a friend. Negative: not a lot of tutorials or info out there about setting it up, but a while ago I managed to do it without many problems.

Otherwise I would suggest Aptana: <http://www.aptana.com/> It's free and there is considerable support if you search Google for answers to your challenges/questions.

Good Luck! Maby let us know if you're just getting started learning PHP, or if you have experience with another language/IDE - that would help everyone figure out what the best option for you might be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks bro, u guys are tight. Let's see, I am a coldfusion developer and use dreamweaver at work but on PC. I've also done some flex apps using flashbuilder which is eclipse. I guess I could use dreamweaver or eclipse for mac.... I googled mac ide reviews, but i'm still on the fence. I'm sure i could find an unused copy of zend studio. I was just wondering what does industry use, if I wanted to switch over to be a php developer. I was hoping to get a majority vote on an IDE but ur right, it is opening a can of worms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I suggest <http://emacsformacosx.com/> .

<comment><USER4> I <3 emacs, but there's not really a reasonable PHP mode for it that handles interspersed HTML well.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried nXhtml? If so, what do you consider unreasonable about it? It works well for me.

<comment><USER4> I used it for a while. Indentation would always break in really awkward ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love Espresso and Coda, in that order.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool I haven't heard of Espresso. I'll research more on that</comment></comment>


How to kill your community  - <AUTHOR> http://ma.tt/2009/08/kill-your-community/

<comment><USER3> "Design Like NASCAR. The more buttons, widgets, stickers, and visual clutter the better. I want to see every possible login system including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, Google Friend Connect, and that Myspace thing. Because of their respective crappy terms of service, use the giant buttons they insist on. Also include a megabyte of "share this" icons for every obscure service in every language. People love options! Complexity is for closers." - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER4> The 'bonus' section is a rant against the popularization of systems like IntenseDebate or Disqus.

Is really WP so afraid of these?

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with intense debate, considering Automattic(the company behind WordPress owns IntenseDebate). However, disqus would probably be a prime target.

I think the issue is that if the services like Disqus goes away, you don't have the comments anymore either(I believe). With things like IntenseDebate and Backtype you still own the comments, as they are saved in your database with appropriate plugins. Also some talk about appropriate SEO, etc. but I haven't researched that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 7\. Use blog software like WordPress, which will get hacked in a second if anyone cares enough to attack your site.

<comment><USER7> What about all the large, successful, serious content and community sites running Wordpress?

And what's the realistic alternative? Many of those sites used to run custom CMS software coded from scratch years ago by some random development agency who farmed the work out to a freelancer who has long since disappeared. Seems doubtful that that's better in any respect.

Edit: Removed my sarcastic tone :)

<comment><USER6> I'd honestly say that Drupal is better than Wordpress. Seriously, the extreme number of automated attacks and security holes in wordpress have made it a very dangerous game to play. They do fix problems quickly (a couple of days), but that's still enough time to get hacked.

<comment><USER8> Running an online system is a responsibility, one which includes keeping up with vendor updates.

Is it possible to run WordPress securely? Absolutely, we do it for 8 million blogs, including some of the most high-target blogs in the world like CNN's.

In the case of WP we consciously take a perception hit versus some of our competitors by not batching security updates every few months but putting fixes out there immediately, even when there's no public disclosure.

I think this worth it though it can be painful in cases like this comment where people have permanently internalized their negative perception of the platform.

<comment><USER9> Hey, Matt,

re: your point about requiring a login to comment. Isn't that good for community building? If MetaFilter let just anyone leave a comment, that would kill it off pretty quickly. Having some barrier to entry can add value, you just need to find the appropriate one for your community.

<comment><USER8> It depends on the context people are interacting with the site.

A blog is "owned" by the author, and comments are from guests who aren't invested enough in the site to register, but who still make up the core of the community.

On a forum, or Metafilter, or Hacker News, the content is produced and owned by every participant who will likely interact over and over and in the process build up their localized reputation and profile on the site as part of their ownership. I think that any of these could be done effectively without registration, but it's not as common.

(I think partly because there are business reasons for registration -- it makes it easier to opt-in people. Even people without the business reasons follow the convention.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I can't afford it is a choice - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisbrogan.com/i-cant-afford-it/

<comment><USER2> Buying lottery tickets is completely rational.

Buying a lottery ticket gives you licence to dream. If you don't buy one then you're stuck in your respective rut (family, work, financial, geographical, etc). But if you do buy one then you can dream about "what I would do if I won!"

It doesn't matter if the chances are one in a trillion, because winning is only a small part of the "value."

There are two distinct types of lottery tickets, each with different kinds of value: instant gratification (e.g. scratch offs) where the exciting aspect is higher but the time to dwell is lower, or the delayed gratification (e.g. weekly draws) where excitement is lower/delayed but the dwelling time is higher.

But in general every time I read someone bash lottery ticket buyers because "don't they know the odds!!!" I just have to roll my eyes. Because these people couldn't have missed the point more.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes I fantasize about winning the lottery but never get around to buying the ticket. It's the perfect scam.

<comment><USER2> That's basically thought-theft. You're stealing from the lottery without even realising it.

Go hand yourself in to the nearest police station right now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Movie at the theater: $12 (average)_

> _Popcorn and a drink: $13_

> _Or, Netflix/Amazon Prime, RedBox and spend $3 or $4 on the experience, plus > whatever's in the fridge._

Sure, if you have a room that is functionally a movie theater. And if the movie you want is on one of those services.

> _People tell me all the time that they can't afford something. But then I'll > watch their Twitter feed, or Facebook, or Instagram, and I'll see the reason > why not._

What they're saying is that they can't afford both thing A and thing B at the same time, and that they would rather have thing A.

Maybe they would rather have Starbucks in the morning than whatever thing they were discussing with you.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always thought that the more important and interesting choice to ruminate about in this vein is "I don't have time."

You _do_ have time, it's just that you're filling it with something else you find more important. Every time I tell someone "I don't have time" I try to envision myself telling them "I have more important things to do with my time" instead. It's usually an unnecessarily harsh thing to say out loud, which is why I typically don't vocalize it, but it's an interesting thought exercise that can help to keep you honest about your priorities and visualize the perspectives of other people that come asking for your time.

Also, just like there are people that really _can't_ afford certain things, there are some justifications that I think most people would consider perfectly reasonable for really, actually not having time. But in many cases, both time and money are choices.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wealth is not revenue, it is income that comes about in abundance. To increase income either increase revenue or decrease expenses. It turns out that decreasing expenses is nearly risk free and is easier. Hence the Millionaires Next Door are good at that strategy. Not sure why this book is having a resurgence, but the other big point it made was the value of owning your own business versus working for someone else.

A close corrollary of the expense thing is to evaluate debt as an investment with a guaranteed return equal to the interest you're paying. Once you see it like that, it's very hard to argue against paying off all of your debt as quickly as possible. Those returns are hard to come by on the revenue side.

</comment><comment><USER7> OP doesn't seem to understand the ideas he's trying to communicate. Speaking as someone who loves advice, there are few things that annoy me more than _bad_ advice.

Your spending is a choice, yes. But since the benefit of a purchase (the profit) isn't included in the cost numbers, advice like OP's must always be wrong.

Imagine someone who drinks 20 lattes from starbucks a month alone while reading (spending $1200/year), and would be happier reading spending his time and money reading in the park and getting a $100 massage once a month. For him changing what he's spending on would make him happier.

Now imagine someone who has avoided spending money on an office, and so holds business meetings at starbucks around 20 times a month. Is this a bad purchase? What about someone who drives late at night to save time by avoiding traffic, and who sometimes keeps himself awake by buying coffee from starbucks. I think these cases are much harder to call "wrong".

OP should focus on what's true: if you analyze how you're spending your resources (time, money, attention, and energy), you can often find awesome ways to improve your life. Instead we have an article about how going to the movies and buying starbucks is a waste of money... which is to say we have an article that is a waste of time to read.

Not to mention this gem:

 _> I have this thing about lottery tickets. Why do people invest in a gamble? (You might try and reply that everything is a gamble, and to that, I'd be polite and say nothing.)_

There is a big difference between negative EV betting (lotteries), and positive EV betting. Let's take as an example hiring someone who might not work out, but probably will. If you don't think that hiring is a gamble, you haven't played the hiring game long enough. People's partners get accepted to their dream job across the country, and the strain of the separation causes them to move as well. Their college friends found a company and poach them. Even the most vetted candidates don't always work out.

Which is to say that everything is a gamble. If someone tells you otherwise, they haven't been in business long enough.

</rant>

<comment><USER8> > Now imagine someone who...holds business meetings at starbucks...[or] drives > late at night...and...keeps himself awake by buying coffee from starbucks

These examples are _unusual_. The _typical_ case imagined by the OP is that the value of movies and Starbucks is smaller than the price paid for them, and for a consumer in that typical case, it's possible to arbitrage by reallocating budget away from them.

From the article:

> I try to hold off or not buy at all, when it's just a "want" without any > real obvious value beyond the purchase.

It's pretty clear that he's saying to avoid purchases where cost >> long_term_value (where ">>" means "much greater than"). He _is_ taking the benefits into account, but largely restricting his attention to cases where the benefit is minimal -- at least from a long-term view.

> There is a big difference between negative EV betting (lotteries), and > positive EV betting.

You're definitely right to criticize the author on that aspect -- his stated reason for avoiding lottery tickets doesn't give a favorable impression of his understanding of probability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I started tracking my finances much better about 3/4 months ago, it was fairly eye opening, I found I was spending: £40 a month on a cup of coffee each morning, £48 buying lunch rather than taking it in, £25ish on magazines to read on the train, and a whole host of random little buys that I never needed adding up to £300 a month. I decided I couldn't afford it anymore, dropped them, don't miss them.

I've also gone down the route of Netflix & Spotify, we have no TV subscription (cut-the-cord of that particular beast). It makes life much easier, and my house has never been less cluttered.

(I do like a lottery ticket though, I've won some trivial amount off them ~£30-40, mostly because it's £2 a week and it's a bit of fun)

<comment><USER10> Damn man, where do you get lunch for £2.40 a day? Even our subsidised canteen hits £4 no bother (admittedly I'm getting a hot meal)

Edit: and the penny drops. That's the difference between buying and bringing from home, still got to factor in the supplies

<comment><USER11> The cheapest and easiest way I've found for the lunch problem is making it in the office. Buy a loaf of bread, some cup-a-soup, ham, cheese, pickle, whatever you fancy and then make fresh sandwiches every lunch. Takes five minutes and saves a fair bit of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Didn't really understand the title, should it be:

"I can't afford it" is a choice

</comment><comment><USER13> The rational thing to do is to spend money in a way that maximizes happiness. My favorite paper on the topic (actionable and based on science): [http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WIL...](http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WILSON%20\(2011\).pdf)

<comment><USER14> Happiness is a complicated variable to optimize. You could be maximizing happiness in the current moment (a Starbucks coffee right now) at the expense of happiness in the long term (financial independence at age 50).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pardon my french, but the linked blog post is just a pile of santimonious bullplop. There are many, many people in the U.S. and outside of it for whom "I can't afford it" is _not_ a choice.

There are plenty of people who cannot afford to live in a safe, or even reasonably safe neighborhood. There are people who cannot afford life-saving medicine or medical care. There are people who cannot afford to send their children to college, or even before that to buy them the iDevices and computers that would give them an edge in their education. There are plenty of families who have not bought new clothes in years because they simply can't afford it after the necessities have been paid for.

This is happening _in the U.S._ : in the East Bay, just a few miles from SV; in south-central LA, in most of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, in Detroit, in Cleveland, in south-west Chicago, in New York, in New Orleans...

Blog posts like this just reinforce the common perception outside of SV that Silicon Valley is now populated by a bunch of wealthy, out-of-touch individuals who have no understanding of how hard life is for people who didn't hit the jackpot in terms of family, upbringing, or education.

<comment><USER16> You are absolutely right, but that's really not the point of this post. While real poverty is an issue worth talking about, that's not what this guy is trying to address.

The point seems to be that many people who have disposable income treat that money as disposable and then wonder why they don't have more money. There are many people who could afford more of what they really care about (be it time, travel, things, etc) if they didn't nickel and dime themselves on things that might not really be that important to them.</comment></comment>


10 web start-ups (all mine) ... and why they failed - <AUTHOR> http://coding.pressbin.com/50/10-web-start-ups-all-mine--and-why-they-failed/

<comment><USER2> I really liked Truyoo and I think it could be a success.

But I agree that you can't have the user pay right away.

Can't they just give you their credit card details and get themselves verified for free the first 1 or 2 times?

After that, to prevent abuse, you can charge them the $2.

I can see this being very useful.

In fact, Heroku does something similar, with many features of their free account not activated until you give them a credit card to prove your identity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to be able to do something like that -- grabbing their credit card details and only charging them if they run afoul of the rules -- but I haven't found a credit card processing service that would give me that flexibility.

The only problem, I guess, is what if you have someone who has a dozen credit cards. Or, more problematic, what if their credit card company offers "throwaway" credit card numbers (as mine does) that you can use for one-of purchases? That would give them unlimited attempts to game the system.

<comment><USER2> It would still be useful, even if 100% free.

Its the hurdle or having to keep setting up accounts with different credit cards. And the very strong psychological aspect of having to fork over some real, identifying information to a website in order to comment.

I think this would really make people behave much better.

Its a good idea. I'd encourage you to look into it more.

<comment><USER3> Agree that you should pursue this one harder...

You have a nice "inside track" by already being in the industry... and it's quite likely that you're very passionate about this topic, which will come through once you...

...Consolidate your pitch to more tightly communicate the opportunity, the problem in solving the opportunity, and how your product fixes that problem. (Preferably in a way that works better than existing solutions/semi-solutions. ;)

Remember, you've got to put your salesman hat on when making your case for a product like this. What was the principle objection your potential customers raised when declining your proposed solution? ie: _Why_ didn't they like the fact that the end-user has to pay?

Is there a way to shift that cost elsewhere while maintaining the integrity of the system?

Have you listed all of your assumptions with that solution and thought of ways to test and prove/disprove each one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's another common theme that would have killed every one of these sites: marketing. I don't see it mentioned anywhere in any of his site ideas. They all seemed to be "build a cool thing and put it on the internet" type of execution.

I went through a whole pile of little startups just like this guy, with similar success, before I started to figure out the marketing side of running a business. Once I started paying more attention to "how are people going to find this" than "how is this going to handle [obscure corner case]", that's when my stuff started getting popular and making money.

Take any one of those sites, and try actually promoting it to the world. You might be surprised at the results.

<comment><USER5> Any advice on where to get started in figuring out marketing? There are the well known places to start like SEO, but I was wondering if you had anything else in mind?

<comment><USER4> Look to the Patrick. All knowledge is contained therein:

<http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Without wanting to sound like a know-it-all, I think the underlying theme between all of them is not really understanding the value proposition for the customer. You think it's weird that a vacation house owner wouldn't switch to a free service - I would think it weird if they did. They're probably making twice as much money as they used to, and consider it good value for money. They probably aren't terribly motivated to save a few bucks when the existing site is working for them, and has high traffic.

You constructed an elaborate payments scheme for rungjump, but in fact people rarely respond to this type of cash incentive, and introducing payments 'dirties' the whole process. People would probably prefer just to post for the kudos or ego boost. There is probably a lot more money in this model for targeting recruiting ads; if someone is looking at job x and how to get it, recruiters/trainers/educators are going to pay to put an ad in front of them, and you're going to get good clickthrough.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make some good points!

See ... this is why I said I would have benefited from a co-founder with more of a business mindset. I get so gung-ho about an idea that I don't always think about it from that angle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is what spoke volumes to me.

 _In my mind, ParishNetwork.org was intended to be a place where you could meet other people who attended your parish. But a lot of the users expressed a desire to be able to interact with users from other parishes. I resisted accommodating that request because I really wanted ParishNetwork to be parish- centric, rather than one big meeting place for Catholics across the country._

You need to learn to pivot. Unless you are on a mission, listen to your customers and make something people want.

edit: I was going for Blues Brothers but I realized it sounded a little yucky.

</comment><comment><USER8> Truyoo reminds me of this idea I had for making a document signing service.

Anyone else ever get pissed of that the only reason you need a printer and a fax machine and/or scanner REALLY is because twice a year you have to sign a document?

I wanted to have a similar idea where a minimal transaction on a credit card was used to authenticate - ie. as a digital signature. So each time you digitally sign a document you get charged 1 cent or something and it verifies the name you're putting on the document is the same as on the card you're using.

With the others on this list, though, would you really call all of these "startups"? Throwing something together and putting it on the web doesn't qualify it as a "startup" surely ... if so I have several "startups" that no- one has ever looked at or used (smsmyride.com whatwhere.com.au smscard.com.au 8centsms.com)

I think if you're going to call something a "web startup" you need a little more than a domain name registration and a couple of stock photographs.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd be curious if some of these would have had more success given slightly different operating models. For example, RungJump seemed interesting, but maybe the described commercial model and the long questionnaire killed the community before having a chance to develop into a place focused on great jobs and what makes them so.

I liked the idea and saw the domain expired, so I've put a wiki at <http://www.rungjump.com> focusing more on what makes a job great as opposed to charging money for ideal job profiles. I'd be curious if it gets some interest in this modified form.

(PS: let me know if you want to claim the domain back)

</comment><comment><USER10> I liked your sidebar comment: "One thing that's pretty obvious from the screenshots: I kept re-using the same $3 stock photo I purchased for one of my earlier ventures. Hey, it's generic enough that it works in pretty much any context."

However, I think you should ditch that stock photo. It's too "corporate," and when I visited the sites that were using it, I felt like I was on a godaddy squatter page.

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/09/if-it-looks- corpora...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/09/if-it-looks-corporate- change-it.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Some of these services seem like they failed just for happening at the wrong time.

Constant Ads sounds just like the advertising system used by reddit which is very successful as far as I can tell.

ioFeed sounds like it could have been the replacement for Facebook that Diaspora wants to be.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think CivicAssociation.net would have actually been a really viable start up during the housing boom for neighborhood and civic associations if it had been marketed as a dead simple CMS/billing system.</comment>


Freeman Dyson's Life, Through His Letters - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/books/review/freeman-dyson-maker-of-patterns.html <comment><USER2> The cross-country ride referred here where Dyson got his inspiration is I think the return from his road-trip with Feynman, where the "peeing in the sink" incident happens :-)

Dyson reminisces about that trip thus: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_QF0-C5oLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_QF0-C5oLc)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think I can be as humble as he is at that age.</comment>


MDMA - <AUTHOR> https://www.profgalloway.com/mdma <comment><USER2> N=9? For that second chart, remove the best performer as an outlier and it falls apart. This reads more as "Softbank is poor at making good choices" than anything concrete.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I the only one so utterly confused by this article? I have no idea what the author is on about. It seems very interesting though (am I stupid? Or is it just the writing style? Is there some context I'm missing?).

<comment><USER4> It's just the writing style :)

Terse with a bit of snark and ecstasy jokes. Lots of references to startups.

It's definitely entertaining!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just an after effect of decoupling money from anything tangible.

[https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/](https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/)

<comment><USER6> I would humbly suggest that it's more likely to be the dropping of capital controls, which followed the collapse of Bretton Woods.</comment></comment>


Locks, Mutexes, and Semaphores: Types of Synchronization Objects (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.justsoftwaresolutions.co.uk/threading/locks-mutexes-semaphores.html <comment><USER3> (2014)

This article is a bit dated. It's all about locks that aren't directly connected to the data they lock. With the advent of Rust, people are finally getting that "what locks what" is something the language should address. C/C++ locking is a legacy of the "that's an operating system problem" era of locking.

It's not just a safety issue. If you need to fence something, it helps if the compiler knows what to fence.

<comment><USER4> Tieing locks to data is not a new concept. Java provides an intrinsic lock on every object (along with special syntax around acquiring/releasing this lock)

<comment><USER3> It's not new at all. It goes back to Brinch Hansen and Hoare in the early 1970s.[1] Modula and Ada had it. But the C/C++ crowd tends not to know about it, because Unix and C did not originally have threads and concurrency was a retrofit.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_(synchronization)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_\(synchronization\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I almost always use mutexes and condition variables. Almost never semaphores. I wholeheartedly agree with the post about recursive mutexes being bad. I find it always a indication of bad design and/or "lets make this code multi-thread safe by slapping a giant big mutex around all entry points"

</comment><comment><USER6> Allen B. Downey's "The Little Book of Semaphores" is a great resource if you want to go a bit further on understanding how to use these things and design solutions to synchronization problems. It's available for free: [https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/](https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/)

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12674](https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12674) now once upon a time this semaphore issue almost drove me crazy. beware of the semaphore! (at least on older linux systems; they fixed this one in 2015 - <USER2> it takes time for glibc changes to make it into a distro)

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks! This is an excellent explanation.

I am already familiar with much of this, but I haven't seen it explained quite as concisely, or generically.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm starting to like async as in libuv and JS. I don't know what people think of JS but I've done condition variables (Java) and semaphores through shared memory and I actually think async is going to rule long term. Yeah, JS is not procedural. But if you don't fight it it's actually quite elegant. And I'm an old. If I can learn a new way of thinking you can too. And by "don't fight it" I mean no Promises or async / await. Those are just window dressing (and worthless IMO). Just use callbacks. Attach them to an object if you want a single object to pass around like you might with a Promise (that's all a Promise is anyway). You will need to use an arrow function to set "this" though.

<comment><USER10> That's great for concurrency... but what about parallelism?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to think mutex is a special case of the semaphore, like square and rectangle, now I learned their difference.</comment>


Libcamera – A complex camera support library for Linux, Android, and ChromeOS - <AUTHOR> http://libcamera.org/ <comment><USER2> >...collaboration with the industry to develop a camera stack... protecting vendor core IP.

Can't say I have any interest in protecting "vendor IP" in their crappy camera drivers. Let vendors open their blobs! Closed source camera drivers will just reduce quality and increase bugginess.

<comment><USER3> What's the point of this all or nothing attitude?

This looks like a move to getting better support. The alternative is getting nothing.

<comment><USER4> Because all or nothing forces someone to compromise. By default almost all vendors would pick to keep things proprietary. If going open source is the only possible option then some vendors will release the source and if they don't then hobbyists will write their own drivers since the work is very useful.

Wikipedia faced a similar issue when considering using https everywhere. Some countries were blocking certain pages on Wikipedia and https would break that so it was uncertain if they would just block the whole of Wikipedia now. As it turns out they mostly did not block the whole website and those selected pages became unblocked because the alternative was given by the all or nothing approach was too far.

<comment><USER5> > Because all or nothing forces someone to compromise

When exactly did that work? In which project? All this attitude did was to make Linux unusable for many people, making it marginal and thus a smaller power at pushing companies to support and opensource drivers.

Things started changing AFTER more people were able to adopt it due to less black and white attitude of some distributions.

<comment><USER6> The Linux kernel is the best example of the success of such a strategy. The kernel's driver interfaces are unstable by design:

[https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/stable- api-...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/stable-api- nonsense.rst)

[https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gcc_vs_kernel_stability.html](https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gcc_vs_kernel_stability.html)

[https://youtu.be/iiED1K98lnw](https://youtu.be/iiED1K98lnw)

There are technical reasons for this but it also serves another purpose: maintaining leverage over companies that would take advantage. The Linux kernel receives tens of patches every hour. If companies refuse to upstream their drivers, they are left behind and must pay the maintenance costs or drop support. Their products are worse for it.

I wish every free software project had this power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is no simple thing to do.

The biggest issue is that "raw" Linux is not an RTOS.

When the photographer presses the shutter, you have a few milliseconds to capture the image. You can't have the OS decide to prioritize receiving a tweet before getting to the shutter release.

It's even more intense with video, and most still cameras are quickly morphing into high-quality video cameras.

Also, image processing is REAL intense; especially with Computational Photography. It can suck down your battery in seconds.

There's a few ways to deal with it. You could use something like Xenomai or RTLinux, or establish some kind of SoC for the realtime-sensitive processing (what most phone manufacturers probably do -Apple sure does).

It's a non-trivial task.

<comment><USER8> Curious, how does V4L handle these things?

<comment><USER9> It gets a bit messy.

In order to capture an image, most image sensors are triggered. Some sensors will operate in "free-run" mode, but in reality something is sending a capture signal to the camera. In sensors where you have very low level control over things, usually what that does is clear the pixels (dump the accumulated charge) and start exposing. Then, when the exposure is complete, the camera makes the data available for read-out (for a phone sensor analogue-digital conversion is likely done in circuitry on the sensor, not in the phone).

That trigger is the important bit. Using triggering you can synchronise multiple cameras (e.g. the sensors in multi-camera phones are almost certainly co-triggered to avoid ghosting), illumination units, etc. In fact many camera chips can also be set to output flash signals when they're exposing, this eliminates latency in sending separate "capture" and "flash" signals. When I've deployed machine vision systems, often we would use an external system to trigger everything (e.g. a microcontroller). Interfacing hardware and software triggering is a nightmare.

Then you've got whatever low level interface is actually communicating to the camera. On a phone, that's probably MIPI/CSI-2. Modern SoCs have dedicated (hardware) camera interfaces (the ISP) that are designed specifically to load images from camera sensors and do some minimal processing. You need kernel- level drivers for whatever your SoC is. These drivers will (in theory) let you set up arbitrary image sensors with whatever resolution/timing they require. But the key is you need two drivers: one to control the ISP and another to send commands to the camera sensor. A lot of the time (cough Broadcom) you only get a blob for the ISP and you almost never get full datasheets for image sensors without being a big customer.

Rockchip have an open source driver for their ISP: [http://opensource.rock- chips.com/wiki_Rockchip-isp1](http://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Rockchip- isp1)

See Rockchip again for an open-source example of an actual sensor driver.

[https://github.com/rockchip- linux/kernel/blob/release-4.4/dr...](https://github.com/rockchip- linux/kernel/blob/release-4.4/drivers/media/i2c/imx219.c)

Want to make an educated guess why libcamera supports the [Rockchip] RK3399? They make it comparatively easy.

In the end V4L acts as a mediator between this low level interface and other things which want to talk to the camera. Rockchip have provided what amounts to a plugin for V4L. Then on top of V4L you have libraries like OpenCV which give you nice interfaces like `imread` to capture images and do stuff with them. To answer your question you probably need to be more specific. The performance of what V4L does for a specific ISP/sensor combination very much depends on those underlying drivers.

If you can afford it, a safe strategy is to leave the sensor in free-running mode in a separate thread that's dedicated to capturing images. Then in your application you pick off the most recent frame and do stuff with it in parallel. For a 30fps camera you therefore have 30ms or so to do your stuff before the next frame comes in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If linux phones are going to be a thing (pinephone, librem) they'll need great cameras and excellent image processing software t be even somewhat competitive with Google Pixels and iPhones and Samsungs.

Given how hard other manufacturers try and fail to make equally good cameras, it's going to be a steep climb for the open source community too.

So far I am not seeing much work being done in that space. Maybe this is a start?

I want an open non-spying phone but it's going to be hard to let go of the amazing camera in my pocket now (Pixel 3a).

<comment><USER11> > _" If linux phones are going to be a thing (pinephone, librem) they'll need > great cameras and excellent image processing software t be even somewhat > competitive with Google Pixels and iPhones and Samsungs."_

Couldn't they just find another niche? I think relatively few consumers know anything about photography. Even a proper professional DSLR would be useless to me because I know next to nothing about photography and tools don't make the artist. No picture I've ever taken has any artistic merit or technical merit.

Of course, good camera software is a good thing and for the segment of society that's enthused about photography it's going to be essential. I'm just not convinced it's the secret sauce to mass appeal.

Edit for response:

> _Well, okay, what problem would you rather see them tackle?_

I don't have such a preference. I expect volunteer developers will work on matters they find personally compelling. Those that find photography software compelling should pursue their passion.

<comment><USER12> > _Of course, good camera software is a good thing and for the segment of > society that 's enthused about photography it's going to be essential. I'm > just not convinced it's the secret sauce to mass appeal._

We already have the hard data: almost without exception, people who use phones want their phones to take nice pictures.

For reasoning about camera software, it is entirely reasonable to assume that "the segment of society that is enthused about photography" is basically the exact same segment as "people who have phones".

If you don't believe me, show me a popular smartphone that doesn't have a camera. :)

<comment><USER11> I can show you a lot of people who rarely if ever use their smartphones to take pictures, and more still who primarily take pictures for utilitarian purposes (such as preserving the information on a whiteboard before erasing it, remembering where they parked their car, etc.) So I definitely don't agree that _" owns a phone"_ and _" enthused about photography"_ are basically the same groups of people. The former is much larger than the later.

> If you don't believe me, show me a popular smartphone that doesn't have a > camera. :)

I can show you plenty that lack _good_ cameras... I don't think that's a compelling argument anyway. iphones have barometers but that doesn't mean everybody who owns one cares about their altitude or predicting the weather.

<comment><USER13> I really don't know how you could come to this opinion. Instagram/Snapchat are literally entire social networks built around photos.

You don't need to be enthused about photography to care about preserving memories either.

From personal experience camera quality is far more important than any other spec (except maybe the display) for the vast majority of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised to see such big emphasis on support for Android. Most camera modules come with their own drivers that already provide Android support. One benefit could be the licensing, but after a quick inspection it is unclear to me what license this library is under -- there is a licenses folder with 4 different licenses in addition to a developer agreement.

The design seems to be heavily inspired by the Android camera API: per-frame configuration, 3A, multiple stream support, device enumeration, etc.

> The HAL will implement internally features required by Android and missing > from libcamera, such as JPEG encoding support.

That is interesting, since most camera modules will have a hardware accelerated path to encode frames directly to JPEG. If it's done internally, it will be much slower than all other implementations I'm aware of.

</comment><comment><USER15> _> the Linux media community has very recently started collaboration with the industry to develop a camera stack that will be open-source-friendly while still protecting vendor core IP_

What does that mean? Open source should be open source.

Is it going to work on top of v4l or it's independent?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video4Linux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video4Linux)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this aimed for smartphones or for real cameras? I mean, the Sony Alpha series do run Linux, even with an (ancient) Android runtime...

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't get who is going to be using this library.

Most android developers would prefer to use native Java APIs instead of a C++ library ( with a JNI wrapper around it?) since it's easier. Linux phones barely have any market share so this library would be used mainly on computers where most of the cameras are USB anyway.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was not been able to find list of supported cameras. Could anybody please point to it?

<comment><USER19> Found in a recent presentation by Jacopo Mondi of the libcamera team (PDF): [https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/osseu19/21/libcamera.p...](https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/osseu19/21/libcamera.pdf)

      - Intel IPU3
      - Rockchip RK3399

In progress:

      - RaspberryPi 3 and 4
      - UVC cameras
      - VIMC test driver

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. Does it work with Raspberry Pis and the CSI cameras? What about my Logitech USB camera? Would it support receiving a picture from eg a flatbed scanner over a parallel port?

<comment><USER14> > Does it work with Raspberry Pis and the CSI cameras? What about my Logitech > USB camera?

I don't know details about the Raspberry Pi cameras, but if it's a UVC camera (quite likely) then it should be supported by this library according to the documentation. A USB Logitech camera should also be supported. The gotcha is that unless those cameras expose advanced functionality (3A, multiple stream support, etc) then you don't get any benefit over using the standard V4L drivers.

> Would it support receiving a picture from eg a flatbed scanner over a > parallel port?

I don't think scanners identify themselves as camera devices, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER21> For flatbed scanners you would use something like SANE or Vuescan. Most devices have a different driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is very interesting. How does this compare with CameraX for which Google has built an entire building with hundreds of cameras as a testlab ?

[https://www.extremetech.com/computing/301298-camerax- googles...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/301298-camerax-googles-new- weapon-in-the-photography-wars)

[https://developer.android.com/training/camerax](https://developer.android.com/training/camerax)

<comment><USER23> This sits much lower in the stack than CameraX. This is more of a HAL for cameras standardized across multiple OSes.

[http://libcamera.org/docs.html#android-camera- hal-v3-compati...](http://libcamera.org/docs.html#android-camera- hal-v3-compatibility)</comment></comment>


A remote lake in the same chemical state as 7,500 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/scientists-uncover-remote-lake-untouched-pollution-7-500-190246166.html

<comment><USER2> "Barr said something as small as sunscreen samples from tourists could alter the lake's chemistry."

I thought the point was it is constantly replacing all its water?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is actually very close to Brisbane, one of Australia's largest cities.

Area info @ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Stradbroke_Island>

Google satellite @ <http://goo.gl/maps/k9imm></comment>


A Link Tax Won't Bring Back Journalists; It Will Do Even More Harm to Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180828/10184740528/link-tax-wont-bring-back-journalists-it-will-do-even-more-harm-to-them.shtml <comment><USER2> It looks to me like we need to avoid looking at officially-stated reasons. They so seldom line up with the stated problem, nor do they solve that problem well, or without side-effects. I'd say to keep an eye on the obvious side effects: they may, in fact, be the reason for the solution-that- doesn't-really-work. I also believe that classical market economics under- appreciates the desire of managers/directors/etc for control. A link tax would allow those in charge of corporations to control the information they report, and to control the people that want to use that information.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you make money as a Computer Science student? - <AUTHOR> A bit of background on my situation so you might give me more personalised advice: I graduated in 2017 with a Bachelor in CS and already had a job by that time. What seemed like a decent opportunity to kick-start my career quickly turned into what I believe would've been a dead end job which I would've dreaded every day of my life, so I decided to quit last summer and enroll into a Masters in Data Science. Being used to a monthly salary and not having to ask my parents for money I feared this moment as I knew I would have had to deal back on my QoL quite a bit, but on top of that me and my family have had a string of misfortunes and now money is quite thight (nothing like going bankrupt, but still requires careful management of our finances). All this combined, I find myself starting a new study cycle which will last at minimum two years and almost no money; hence I'm wondering: how does a student in CompSci make money while studying? Apart from the obvious part time jobs (retail, fast foods etc.) - which I would like to avoid as I fear they would sap my time and strength without letting me grow as a computer scientist - I've looked into freelance gigs, consulting work and remote companies; unluckily for me, most if not all the opportunities I've come across require a full-time commitment, something I don't have the luxury of giving unless I decide to take way more than 2 years to graduate, and freelancing in particular seems to focus on webdev/mobile, areas which are not my strong suit and I don't even like that much.
What would you recommend in this situation? Swallow the pill and learn stacks that sell through freelancing? Find something completely unrelated to CompSci that allows me to work part-time? Start emailing every company offering CS jobs in the area and asking if they're willing to take on a part-timer?
Thanks in advance for your advice! <comment><USER2> There's no one answer that works for everyone. Taking a programming job or internship will pay so much more money than a job at mcdonalds, that you could save time off. These days an internship pays 50 to 100k per year, prorated for the times you work (i.e., paid at 50k rate, work 3 months, you get 3/12 * 50k pay). Compare that to minimum wage at Mackers, 10 or whatever an hour, 50k annually is 25/hour (50k / (50 weeks + 40 hours)). 50k is also kind of a low rate for interns these days, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> On the contrary, taking an obvious part time job (retail, fast foods etc.) will stop you getting intellectually/creatively burnt out.</comment>


Ask HN: I love a girl and i cant help it - <AUTHOR>

There is a girl sitting next to me. i am actually in love with her. i feel so helpless. what to do ...i wish for a lot of things. i know she has a boyfriend but i love her like anything. <comment><USER2> Love is caring for someone else without requiring anything else in return. It's OK to signal your affection as long as you are willing to do without reciprocity - put your feelings on the table and let events proceed at their own pace.

<comment><AUTHOR> i am so shy...its really difficult for me to even look into her eyes.....i sincerely like her...i m being so restless.

<comment><USER3> Seriously. [http://www.amazon.com/Game-Penetrating-Secret-Society- Artist...](http://www.amazon.com/Game-Penetrating-Secret-Society- Artists/dp/184767237X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You don't know what "love" is - you are infatuated with her, it's your hormones calling upon you to man up!

How come she is sitting next to you? Is this work? class? If she has a choice and chooses to sit next to you, then maybe she fancies you too. Just talk to her about something in common, anything - break the ice. Take it from there. Don't try to rush first base, if it's meant to be you'll waltz together.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't read "The Game". Also, you don't love her.

As someone who's batted above and below his league, trust me when I say that being yourself is the only way to lasting commitment/happiness.

On the other hand, if you want to get laid, play the game.

I've tried both paths. The key has always been to be seem genuine.

</comment><comment><USER6> whats the difference between infatuation and love? is it timeline? do you ask yourself what will you be doing with this person when you're both 75yo? do you want to make a family(of whatever kind;maybe with kids?) with this person? would you still 'love' this person if it looked like the person 2 seats away to the right? and a minor thing..do you have the budget and time to go through the 'dating' thing?

</comment><comment><USER7> You don't really know what love is. Posting on HN isn't going to fix this.

<comment><AUTHOR> i rather have a geek's image....who could better understand me than you all

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You are going good as of now. Try that Ice cream plate technique once again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read "The Game"</comment>


How the Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) made its first vertical documentary film - <AUTHOR> https://nrkbeta.no/2015/12/27/how-the-norwegian-broadcasting-nrk-made-its-first-vertical-documentary-film/ <comment><USER2> I was skeptical, but the format works really well. It scales up to the desktop version well enough but also works much better on mobile. The page is actually a great read (since I'm learning Norwegian, at least).

Man kan lese det hit: [http://www.nrk.no/bygda-som-sa- nei-1.12703629](http://www.nrk.no/bygda-som-sa-nei-1.12703629)

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh please no. If this gets the norm, George Lucas will re-release Star Wars ... THE SKINNY EDITION.

<comment><USER4> Don't be too down on it. We might get vertical display space back! Hopefully we get square displays so you can show 16:9 and 9:16 videos with full resolution. (I want more lines of text on my display.)

<comment><USER5> Square displays will be inefficient because for both horizontal and vertical videos corners are always black. Instead we will see various "L"-, "T"-, "Г"\- and "+"\- shaped displays.

<comment><USER4> Ha. Why didn't the cynic in me come up with that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Option 4: use mirrors.</comment>