Scaling Instragram - <AUTHOR> http://speakerdeck.com/u/mikeyk/p/scaling-instagram <comment><USER2> I wish each and every single one of the open source developer who, every day, build amazing tools to make things like instagram possible would receive a tiny portion of that 1 billion dollars.

But that's not how the world works....

The real revolution of this century is not how many sheeps I can throw per day, but how huge a success the open source movement is, and what incredible companies we can build with it.

<comment><USER3> That'd actually be a really cool pledge to make as a company. Sorta like the 1% for the planet initiative, but something similar to pledge a slice of profits or revenue, or exit-event-cash to the OSS projects you depended on most.

<comment><USER4> A few companies _do_ actually, including DuckDuckGo and Tarsnap.

<http://fosstithe.org/>

[http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/help-me- start-a-...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/help-me-start-a-foss- tithing-movement.html)

<comment><USER5> I recall the story of Yahoo giving Larry Wall enough pre-IPO stock that they effectively paid his daughter's way through college.

Umm...

<http://www.salon.com/1998/10/13/feature_269/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slide 54 is insanely important. At my current place we've invested tons in instrumentation and metrics. Every IO operation is guarded with a semaphore and access is monitored and exposed. Every cache in the system logs everything from hit and miss rate to volume etc. Every async operation logs operation trails. We also ship a ton of tools for everything from bread and butter stuff like stack dumping, pinpointing long running threads etc. to more sophisticated stuff like being able to break in to a page rendering and profiling various element hierarchies, either over time or following specific users.

As I said, we've invested so much in getting the entire stack monitored very granularly, but every time our customers run in to issues it pays dividends.

For reference, we run on the JVM which is very pleasant. A ton of tools interop with it and basic things like MBeans being integrated in to JVM makes monitoring a lot easier.

<comment><USER7> How much overhead does this setup incur?

<comment><USER6> Run time or development time? Runtime is mostly negligible except for places with heavy congestion (caches + rendering) where you can turn the heaviest operations on and off as needed -- in our case the call to `System.getCurrentTimeMillis()` is usually too expensive to do unless we really need it.

In terms of development, it's not a lot of work continuously, but it took some while to write up, test and benchmark standard libraries for eg monitorable semaphores. In general though, what it does is raise the entry threshold for new developers a bit as you need to have a feel for when something requires monitoring and when it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This talk was given at AirBnB in SF. Talks there are fairly new and typically occur every other Wednesday. There is a talk tonight by Yehuda Katz and upcoming talks are posted here: <http://www.airbnb.com/tech_talks>

</comment><comment><USER9> Audio: <http://soundcloud.com/bob-poekert/tech-talk-mike-krieger-of>

</comment><comment><USER8> Submission for a TechCrunch writeup of the talk, which includes some quotes and also embeds the same slides (via scribd):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3831865>

</comment><comment><USER10> On slides 61-69, it seems to suggest that they were storing their photos directly in the database. Is this correct? It seems rather inefficient to do this, rather than storing the images in the filesystem.

<comment><USER11> No, photos are stored on S3. Only photo meta data is stored in the db.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wasn't this same article up on HN the same day they got acquired? Lot's of interesting stuff in here in general, especially when they get to talking about when their app actually uploads a photo.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Instragram is the modern fairy tale showing that any "2 product guys" "with no real backend experience" are able to rise from rags to riches.

<comment><USER13> And also that the bubble is back, big time.

<comment><USER14> I am starting to get a little bit tired of people screaming "bubble" whenever someone mentions Intragram. Could you make a good case for it?

If one particular person (Zuckerberg) values one particular company higher then most other people, I don't see that as a sign for a bubble.

<comment><USER15> It's a sign of... wait, strike that. It's a huge red flag the size of the moon when a company with no revenue ([http://www.npr.org/2012/04/10/150372288/instagram-sells- for-...](http://www.npr.org/2012/04/10/150372288/instagram-sells- for-1-billion-despite-no-revenue)) is sold for so much money.

I would argue that Facebook and Google are bubbles too since they do not provide value. Advertising is a joke of an industry - it produces nothing and is essentially the business of mass psychological manipulation. For proof that such bubbles burst, look towards to entertainment industry which also provides nothing of value yet charges through the nose for it.

<comment><USER16> > I would argue that Facebook and Google are bubbles too since they do not > provide value

But you'd be wrong. Facebook and Google create enormous amounts of value. Enough to support their high valuations? Only history will show.

> Advertising is a joke of an industry - it produces nothing

Please don't confuse your personal opinion of the advertising industry with 100+ years of empirical evidence.

> look towards to entertainment industry which also provides nothing of value > yet charges through the nose for it

"Entertainment" is doing fine. The current industry establishment is not. Not the same thing.

<comment><USER15> >Please don't confuse your personal opinion of the advertising industry with 100+ years of empirical evidence.

It really depends on what your definitions are. My personal take on it is that advertising is duct tape for a broken economic model. If we have an entire economic system where one of it's pillars is something so asinine (psychological manipulation with no opt-out for certain flavors like billboards), perhaps we should rethink the model.

So, from the perspective of a business which is trying to find clients/customers, sure, there's a tonne of value. From the perspective of trying to move humanity to bigger and better things, it has a huge negative value, again, IMO.

>"Entertainment" is doing fine. The current industry establishment is not. Not the same thing.

I actually wrote "entertainment industry" in my post :)

<comment><USER16> > So, from the perspective of a business which is trying to find > clients/customers, sure, there's a tonne of value.

Excellent. And I'm sure you'll agree that's something of a leap from "it produces nothing"? Also, there's a corollary to this: This enables competition by lowering barriers to entry, which massively benefits consumers.

<comment><USER15> >And I'm sure you'll agree that's something of a leap from "it produces nothing"?

A diamond is worth a great deal in a lot of peoples' eyes yet it produces nothing. Interestingly, the goal of advertising and marketing is to increase the value of actual things by tricking people into believing that a) there's not enough supply - buy it now! and b) that demand is too high - buy it now! What exactly has been produced here? Demand? That's not a thing, it's an idea. Intellectual "property" is an absurd term, therefore, nothing has been produced.

On the subject of why I think that it has no value - well, most businesses see no value in me scratching my hand because it has an itch. From my perspective, there is a great deal of value in it. Similarly, I see no value in what some businesses do, since, from my perspective, they are harming the people around them. There is no absolute value in anything. Therefore, the value of something is determined by the beholder, which in my case is me.

>This enables competition by lowering barriers to entry, which massively benefits consumers.

Assuming that a competitive economy is a good thing, ofcourse.

<comment><USER16> > Assuming that a competitive economy is a good thing, ofcourse.

Yes, indeed assuming that. Good day.

<comment><USER15> <http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/competit.htm>

[https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:yWqCGDpfGLwJ:...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:yWqCGDpfGLwJ:polis.unipmn.it/pubbl/RePEc/uca/ucapdv/ortona7.pdf+&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShinQYNrk5z1nLumzZ1dwyPeYRnFG- odfG5U-4MEWN6KRwjVWRvB6cADKfRwXZ6vg4E5Wy0wPi5Ib- GmthlzoaNw_dDztTwpqM_iknBjmdGinSFnUrBHL0KV_boaCmPRjrrkmHO&sig=AHIEtbSqpxJauCTyGNr7tSKPlqHhsXCF9w&pli=1)

Google for more if you care to question your assumptions.

<comment><USER16> The first is a paper by a psychologist and motivational speaker. Is that really what you want to lead with?

The second paper I can't really figure out, but it's dealing with individuals in a closed environment - not with matching supply to demand in an open economy.

Anyway, I'm plenty open to questioning my assumptions. That doesn't mean I'm willing to invest in lengthy discussions with random strangers in off-topic threads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there a video/audio for this talk?

</comment><comment><USER18> Won't somebody please think of the nit-pickers, and fix the typo in the title? At least it's only in the submission to HN.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I demonstrate value as an onshore developer? - J-dawg I work on a project team for a large organisation that increasingly uses offshore (or "nearshore") developers. I'm in the UK and I'm a junior front-end developer.
I was recently told something along the lines of:
"You have to really show you're adding value, because you cost 3 times more than a Romanian dev"
I find this pretty intimidating, but the reality is that it's a difficult statement to argue with.
What can I do to prove my value?
Furthermore, is it inevitable that junior dev jobs in high-cost-of-living countries will become scarce? My own employer seems to favour the model of having a handful of developers/team leads in the UK, with the majority of the team offshore. I'm beginning to wonder whether I need to either change careers or move to a cheaper country (the latter option being slightly more doubtful now thanks to Brexit). <comment><AUTHOR> Assuming you are compared to an equally skilled (but 3 times cheaper dev) i would say that being close to your lead gives you an advantage since you can 'bug' him any time of the day and ask for guidance and adjust the direction you are going (with your task) on the fly. It's no fun spending a week on the task (for dev and for lead) to find out in the end that you've not done it right and you (of the lead) has to rewrite everything. You can leverage that to move 3 times faster then an offshore dev :)

but this is just speculation ...</comment>


Notepad++ 7.8.1 Release "free-uyghur-edition" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/releases/tag/v7.8.1 <comment><USER3> 2018 - strongly opinionated text-editor means one thing. 2019 - <USER2> opinionated text-editor means something entirely different.

<comment><USER4> Not exactly new : [https://twitter.com/Notepad_plus/status/673818785674080256](https://twitter.com/Notepad_plus/status/673818785674080256)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link should be changed to point to the issues page, otherwise people won't understand why this was posted: [https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad- plus-plus/issue...](https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus- plus/issues)

</comment><comment> WD-42 Is this the most socially aware text editor? From the homepage:

> By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness, > Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using > less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, > resulting in a greener environment.

</comment><comment><USER6> Free Hong Kong, revolution of our times

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the Issues page is being filled with messages from supporters and detractors alike. [https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus- plus/issue...](https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues)

Edit: Pull Requests too: [https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus- plus/pulls](https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/pulls)

<comment><USER8> That's interesting, the special, official forums section to say "I don't like N++" [0] is has not been found as a target by bots and is quite silent these days. However, that's surprising such category exist at all.

[0]: [https://community.notepad-plus- plus.org/category/8/boycott-n...](https://community.notepad-plus- plus.org/category/8/boycott-notepad)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been trying to download the update, but it keeps timing out. Is China ddosing you? :)

<comment><USER5> Times out here too.

Even if the webpage seems to be under CloudFlare DDOS protection. I guess the binaries are not covered?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For anyone curious why it's notable, check out the Issues page.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does this version actually do anything for the Uyghur cause or is the blog article the extent of it? I read the article and there is an external link but I didn't see anything about how this version helps in any way other than raising awareness.</comment>


Five Failed Ideas and What I Learned - <AUTHOR> https://www.heyraviteja.com/post/6-months-of-free-time/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I had a few ideas after school and some time to try them out. They didn't really go far - but it's always fun to share.</comment>


Ask HN: What AI, ML algorithms do you use? - <AUTHOR> I wonder what is the most frequently used AI, ML algorithms? Anyone can share your knowledge? say algorithm for what purpose? <comment><USER2> I think you are asking about algorithms instead of the stack. There is another question about ML stack [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516311)

</comment><comment><USER3> \- Keras: Sequential/Dense (for classification,regression)

\- Sklearn: many (for classify,regress,dimensionality reduction)

sklearn can be used for data engineering around keras

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems everybody uses Python for ML.

<comment><USER3> ... for everything except front end development. And hopefully that changes.</comment></comment></comment>


Ammonia: Zero-carbon fertiliser, fuel and energy store - <AUTHOR> https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/green-ammonia/ <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I haven't heard much about ammonia being used as both a fuel and an energy store for renewable energy. The full report goes into much more detail: [https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green- ammon...](https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green- ammonia/green-ammonia-policy-briefing.pdf)

It's part of a series in the Royal Societies Low Carbon Energy Programme: [https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low- carbon-e...](https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon- energy-programme/)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you please be my mentor? - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN Community, My name is Joe Jean. I'm from Haiti. I'm a Junior studying Computer Science at NYU in Abu Dhabi. I would like to become a better programmer. I'm reaching out to see if any one would be willing to help me improve faster by being my mentor.
My technical background: I have coded mostly in Python, but I have also done a little bit of Java and C. I recently started coding in JavaScript. I would like to specialize in Python and JavaScript(for now). Please check out my Github: https://github.com/joejean.
What I expect from you as a mentor: - Two hours per month where you would review my code, I would ask you questions, we would talk about tech in general. This interaction can be through email, Skype, Google Hangout whatever is more convenient for you. - You have industry experience.
I promise not to waste your time, to be forever grateful and to pay it forward by helping other people. If you would like to be my mentor please either comment here with your contact information or just shoot me an email(joe[at]joejean.net). Thank you so much.
Any constructive feedback about this post itself are also welcome. Thanks HN. <comment><USER2> I don't think you will find a mentor that way. Instead, I'd suggest you to go to stackoverflow or various programmers forums with your questions. Stackoverflow is more for straight forward questions ("I have this code, it's suppose to do this, but instead it does that"), and you can find other forums to ask more "abstract" question ("is this code good?", "what is the most efficient way to do X?", etc.).

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> _you can find other forums to ask more "abstract" questions_

Could you name a few? I am often looking for places to ask unspecific questions of experienced programmers.

<comment><USER4> for code reviews you can use [http://codereview.stackexchange.com](http://codereview.stackexchange.com)

and for python code review and feedback, try [http://reddit.com/r/learnpython/](http://reddit.com/r/learnpython/) , it's a great subreddit with lots of helpful senior members.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be happy to. Email is in my profile. I have a strong JS background.</comment>


Postmates postmortem: eight hours as delivery drivers - <AUTHOR> https://www.stanforddaily.com/2018/03/16/postmates-postmortem-eight-hours-as-delivery-drivers/ <comment><USER2> 'consider leaving a decent tip' the way for profit businesses underpay their workers and society is expected to make up for that through tipping bothers me so much. The underpaying business owner is richer than 95% of customers who pay extra so the rich guy's worker makes a decent salary. The tipping culture is abused so much in USA. There are restaurants in Brooklyn that automatically add 18% gratuity charged and still leave space for tipping and the waiter gives you looks if you leave that space blank. All these gig economy companies are valued in billions and have made millions for their executives and investors but still won't pay a decent salary to their workers and I am supposed pick up that bill? No thanks

<comment><USER3> Tipping is also used to help the worker avoid paying taxes, since many service workers don't report 100% of their tip income as required.

And although companies would be able to deduct salary expense to reduce their own tax bill, they still benefit from the tipping scheme. If the worker receives, say, $10 in tips, the company would have to pay them $15-$20 to give them the same after-tax income, since a large portion of the wages would go towards income tax and social security. So, if the worker makes the same take- home pay through tipping rather than wages, the company and the customer both pay less! The real cost is borne by the taxpayer, who has to pay higher taxes elsewhere to make up for the loss.

<comment><USER4> > The real cost is borne by the taxpayer, who has to pay higher taxes > elsewhere to make up for the loss.

Even using your logic, your basically admitting its the business owner screwing the general population by creating an incentive structure that encourages tax evasion.

The externality this creates (taxpayers pay more, tax enforcement costs more) which means you are crewing the government out of enough money the customers stop benefiting from the "lower price" since they all have to pay it back in higher taxes to make up the shortfall + increased enforcement costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _If you order through a service like Postmates, be generous with your workers. We scraped together only about $9.00 per hr for our eight hours of work, even before accounting for the cost of gas and the time we saved by working as a group. If you're make a request, your worker might be operating well under minimum wage — be patient, and consider leaving a decent tip if you can._

Oooor you could get your legal system to make the company the minimum wage (after expenses).

<comment><USER6> Why does america fight so hard against providing workers with fair wages? Don't you think your neighbours are worth even the minimum that is required to have a dignified life? Serious question…

<comment><USER7> It's hard to run a profitable business. For some of these services the choice may be between exploiting workers or not brokering work. American culture seems to worship convenience at this time. With the current environment of low unemployment and rising wages, I would expect there to be pressure on these services to increse pay, but how much will the market bear and how much do we want these services?

<comment><USER8> If my business relies on buying wood, cutting it, and selling it, but my customers won't pay a high enough price to cover my costs, what happens?

I go out of business.

There's no reason society should subsidize business models that don't work for unnecessary products.

<comment><USER7> What is the nature of this subsidy?

<comment><USER9> Tips

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a personal anecdote, I had to sit down a friend who was driving Uber for a few months - to break down his costs and the money he made - turns out that in his case, after all expenses (car, personal - like child care etc) -- on most days, he was losing money, and he made a max of 3-4 dollars on a few days.

He was aghast, and now does not drive. Many people who do not have jobs get suckered in to the promise of 'working' but end up in a worse situation.

I believe that we in the tech community need to self-police ourselves about these predatory practices that we have engendered on the society and call out those who suck the very last blood drops from the general population, that does not have the skills to analyze their situation.

This is no different from the various regulations around pay-day loans, etc.

<comment><USER11> What was the biggest gap in his understanding of his own accounts?

Suppose I work a regular office job. If I make $X, but pay out $Y in child care and other expenses (commute/car), then it won't take me long to notice if $X =~ $Y.

Was the biggest gap unaccounted expenses for his car?

<comment><USER10> in his case, he never put together all of the numbers. For instance, it did not even strike him that if he stayed at home, he would not have to incur the childcare expense. That was the biggest change.

Also, he factored in the petrol, but not the vehicle depreciation cost.

Also, there was lost opportunity in studying and improving his skills, and we just did not put a price to it.

He had this nagging doubts, but the pressure of a male sitting at home and not earning - lead to family esteem issues, and so he went along.

<comment><USER11> Interesting, thanks for replying with the details.

What would happen if people fully quantified other activities. For example, the full cost of drinking, while watching your favorite sport, with friends.

You initially think, "so what, it's just 3 hours, plus $25 in beer and food."

Most don't account for the missed opportunity cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to do postmates on my bike in San Francisco. Just on the weekends as a way to get paid to work out, I never needed the money.

This was in 2015 but I was making $16-20 per hour. Doing it on my bike I had no expenses at all. I'd do maybe two deliveries per hour or three if I got easy ones (like the guy who had me deliver a Roam burger to a house 100ft away).

The reason I quit was because they removed more and more information from the view you'd get before accepting the job. On a bike that's not ok. There are many things I can't carry and many hills I'd prefer not to bike.

It honestly can be pretty stressful. The app rings really loud (can't disable) and then all of a sudden the clock is ticking. You could be asked to get anything from anywhere and bring it to anywhere and it has to be done in one hour or less.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good on them! I wish more Stanford undergrads would experience the other side of the modern economy first-hand, even if only for a few hours. In any case, they should have been able to figure out that someone using their own car to deliver a $7 burrito from Chipotle is probably making next to nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> > In any case, they should have been able to figure out that someone using > their own car to deliver a $7 burrito from Chipotle is probably making next > to nothing.

I expect that they did, but if they committed from the start to spend a day (or however much time) on the project, then they had to complete it, for the sake of the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems to be common across the globe with this "business" model. Drivers get paid minimum wage and have to pay gas/repairs/etc themselves. Recent documentary [1] on Foodora in Berlin where a driver even had to go to court because they didn't pay his salary for the previous months.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnb-p7zVvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnb-p7zVvM)

</comment><comment><USER15> _In the current US marketplace_ , $9/hr for essentially a zero skill delivery driver isn't terrible, is it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I expect some people may take issue with "In the current US marketplace", including me, but I don't have enough info at hand to comment, so I won't!

But, I will note, according to [https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm](https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm), the current minimum wage in California is either $10.50 or $11.00 per hour, and so yes, that's pretty terrible.

Note to mention…

>We scraped together only about $9.00 per hr for our eight hours of work, even before accounting for the cost of gas and the time we saved by working as a group.

Note the "we" and the "even before accounting for the cost of gas". I think they meant $9 per hour for the group, which means that's less than $9 per hour per person. Also, that doesn't include the cost of fuel or wear and tear on the car.

<comment><USER16> they probably had more than one person in the car, which is probably against tos anyway. The first day they made $63 in 5 hours, about 12.50. but the second day was $12 in 3 hours.

basically postmates should have told them to logout the second day. and $16 for 2.5 hours for the laptop is really bad.

the first 2.5 hours they were making $19/hour. it seems like all of these platforms you can make an OK wage if you learn how to game bonuses/surge pay/demand, but its counter to the work whenever you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was talking with a guy a while back that did one of these delivery services but with bicycles (Ubereats maybe?) -- he would cheat and get his wife to drive him around so they could spend "quality" time together though.

IIRC we claimed he made $60-$100 hours a day (also IIRC he mostly only worked the weekends or maybe his wife only drove him around on the weekends) sticking to the busy areas, Downtown Phoenix and Oldtown Scottsdale.

Depends on what you make of it I suppose, he seemed happy to get out of the house.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is Instacart, Doordash Uber Lyft any different? Or for that matter any of the gig economy jobs?

Why pick on Postmates? Any ulterior motive by authors?

<comment><USER19> they had to start with one of them...</comment></comment>


Mckoi: highly scalable b-tree database - <AUTHOR> http://www.mckoi.com/Quick%20Start%20Guide.html

<comment><USER2> Looking at the API, it looks pretty young/raw.

API offers two types of primary data structures; Files and Tables.

A File is a binary object that can grow and shrink to any size, and data can be written to and read from any position. Table can store string values, supports indexes on columns.

No mention of real query language.</comment>


A web-focused Git workflow - <AUTHOR> http://joemaller.com/2008/11/25/a-web-focused-git-workflow/ <comment><USER2> If "git push" would work properly for non-bare destinations (as it is the case with e.g. Mercurial and also Darcs), the design could be simplified by merging "hub" and "prime".

<comment><USER3> You can actually add a git hook or two to make pushing work fine for non-bare destinations - but then you're trashing any local changes.

<comment><USER2> That's why I'm calling it a bug in Git. Other tools (Mercurial, Darcs) don't trash anything.

<comment><USER3> Its a few more lines to prevent trashing.

<comment><USER2> That's true, but unfortunately, trashing is the default.

Without any hooks, the next "git commit" on the remote system would add a patch that reverts the uploaded changes. This is very contra-intuitive and could be the source of big mistakes. It's a really nasty trap if you don't watch out!

I like more the approach of Marcurial and Darcs where "not trashing" is the default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> if i understand the post correctly, then i'm using github as the hub, with copies checked out locally and on the web server.

whoa--- how else do people deploy to live sites? i can't imagine not using version control. or am i missing some nuance of the situation?

<comment><USER5> "yum install". We write a .spec file for each service we deploy, and when we're ready to deploy we compile and package the current release branch. That way the OS package manager knows what's installed where, whether any dependencies also need to be installed or upgraded, and whether local edits should be preserved or renamed.

I've never understood how "git pull" is supposed to configure a production server correctly. What do people do, put /usr/bin and /usr/lib64 and /etc in git?

<comment><USER2> Although it is usually not done with /usr/*, it is quite common to put a server's /etc under version control. But that's for administrative control, and is usually completely separate from the web application.

However, it is quite common to use rsync for deployment of everything: system, application, etc. from test to production, without any version control needed. This works especially well when using vservers.</comment></comment></comment>


The organizational impact due to poor software quality - <AUTHOR> http://saasinterrupted.com/2010/02/01/the-organizational-impact-of-poor-software-quality/

<comment><USER2> Thoughtful... but I'm more inclined to believe that the company with said diagram has an organizational problem with regards to handling support requests.</comment>


Startup Exit Stories You Didn't Read About - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@robleathern/startup-exit-stories-you-didnt-read-about-eb78c12b37d3#.nzoegqtvp <comment><USER2> From other experiences, what is it that sinks these deals at the last minute? Is there anything that can be done to by the founders to limit this risk?</comment>


Efficient data transfer through zero copy in Java - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/j-zerocopy/

<comment><USER2> You might want to read this interesting (albeit slightly outdated) post about leveraging `sendfile` in Node.JS by Peter Griess:

<http://blog.std.in/2010/09/09/using-sendfile-with-nodejs/>

<comment><USER3> Is this still best practice? What's the more "up to date" method?

<comment><USER4> splice and tee are the newer kernel interfaces, sendfile is now implemented using them.

<comment><USER5> Apparently these primitives haven't found their way to the Node.js land yet... and sendfile is still undocumented.

<comment><USER4> Not really surprising given the cross platform focus in Node now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a nice idea, but I wonder about the use cases. How often would a Java webserver serve a file from disk without modifying it along the way? If performance is an issue then you'd serve the really static files with nginx (or a similar alternative), and every other file (jsp templates etc.) would be read in memory before being sent on.

(Note that I'm not questioning the technique, I just don't entirely agree on the way the article portrays the benefit of this method in webservers.)

<comment><USER7> Often you're serving big chunks of static content with a little bit of dynamic content sprinkled in.

You can effectively concatenate stuff by just writing both to the same channel - which means you can get the zero-copy performance benefits for the static parts of your data if you know exactly how much static data there is before you need to write out something dynamic.

<comment><USER8> But how could we use this in a servlet container environment? Perhaps we'd wrap the response with a special wrapper to take advantage of this? I'm not sure.

I can see the use if one would recreate a server from the ground up. But that would be a rather large task.

<comment><USER9> Tomcat has supported zero-copy file transfers for years -- since before this article was written, in fact.

[http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/aio.html#Asynchronou...](http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/aio.html#Asynchronous_writes)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twist – the communication app for teams (by Todoist) - <AUTHOR> https://www.twistapp.com/ <comment> yoz-y Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14602674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14602674)

<comment><USER3> And [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14586390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14586390) even earlier

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I watched the video - which is quite rare for me, it must be said - in which it started out by telling me how broken email and Slack were, and then proceeded to explain how Twist was much better, by apparently letting me do things in my own time and organising stuff into channels. I came away totally unconvinced as to how this was really any different from Slack, where people post crap, I look at it when I feel like it, and things are organised into channels.

It seems there's some nuance where channels can have a sub-category inside them, but I'm sure if you throw humans at it they'll still just post irrelevant crap and animated GIFs all over the place.

Skimming through their Twist vs Slack document ([https://twist.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/115003654569](https://twist.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/115003654569)), it does seem like there are some mildly compelling reasons why this might be an improvement over Slack - but this is a very busy space and it's hard to imagine why someone would try this over Slack when it has so much mindshare right now. I don't wish to sound overly negative - <USER2> looks like an attractive and thoughtful product.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have actually thought about this idea before and really like what they are trying to do.

But I do not like the idea of installing one more app and adopting one more platform. Why not just use existing infrastructure of emails and integrate with that nicely?

The channels on Twist could be folders on gmails (with google integration at first) and users could reply to threads from their favorite email client. If they want to use a dedicated app they could easily install the app.

I think this would help them with growth a lot more since it would use the existing infrastructure of emails. Of course, it doesn't solve the notifications problem that they are trying to solve but that's what the app is for.

<comment><USER6> Easy. Because the people not using Twist would have a spam problem. And if they are required to use Twist, then their email is not an actual email any more. Your inbox would be a mess of Twist messages. Good luck finding the emails you are waiting for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like we have gone full circle now. Twist looks like email with prettier UI

</comment><comment><USER8> Can someone tell me how something with just 3 points appears on the front page? I feel there must be some way to game the HN sysem but I don't know what it is.

[http://imgur.com/a/VeLRo](http://imgur.com/a/VeLRo)

<comment><USER9> Perhaps something like dp/dt? #points/(time of last point - time of first point)

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure how it works these days, but I imagine it still has some relation to the arc sources

[https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc#L26...](https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc#L264)

It is essentially what you suggested, but raising the bottom line to a power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like there is a wave of anti-slack/notification rhetoric right now.

Between this and the basecamp article.

</comment><comment><USER12> again? cut with the spam already</comment>


The Illustrated Guide to Product Development (Part 3: Engineering) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bolt.io/the-illustrated-guide-to-product-development-part-3-engineering-440b94de997a <comment><USER2> "One of the best indications of a well-engineered product is the rigor of the engineering specification document."

We have come full circle.</comment>


Warner Brothers reports own site as illegal - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37275603 <comment><USER2> I don't see the problem here. If they so desperately want the content removed, then Google should happily kill all of those links right away!

<comment><USER3> Complying and taking down the legitimate links should force WB to properly review their requests.

This case is kind of funny, but something similar started happening when banks started automating foreclosures. People who were up to date on their mortgages were getting evicted from exactly the same kind of negligence WB is exhibiting here.

<comment><USER4> How does one get evicted due to a computer error? Wouldn't a rather simple court case be able to determine that X amount was being paid to be bank every month?

<comment><USER3> Banks were signing off on the erroneous foreclosures without properly reviewing them. And, if Matt Taibbi is to believed, the courts weren't of much help to the victims of fraudulent forclosures. [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi- courts...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-courts- helping-banks-screw-over-homeowners-20101110)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I were Google I would ban the whole domain, clearly a lot of piracy here! That way they might be more careful in the future.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just goes to show that no thought enters their flagging.

<comment><USER7> They were taken down for copyright, not gross public indecency!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope that Google complied with the law and demanded to have legal proof that they weren't violating the DMCA before they reindexed the material.

Then it would be nice to sue them to kingdom come.

</comment><comment><USER8> They should probably add a whitelist to their bot

<comment><USER9> > _The request was submitted on behalf of Warner Brothers by Vobile, a company > that files hundreds of thousands of takedown requests every month._</comment></comment>


Introducing lxcfs - <AUTHOR> https://s3hh.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/introducing-lxcfs/

<comment><AUTHOR> "Canonical Comes Up With Its Own FUSE Filesystem For Linux Containers"

[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LXCFS- FUS...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LXCFS-FUSE-Linux- Containers)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "What's LXCFS?"

[https://linuxcontainers.org/lxcfs/introduction/](https://linuxcontainers.org/lxcfs/introduction/)</comment>


Password Generator - <AUTHOR> https://www.beta.browxy.com/user/david/PasswordGenerator <comment><USER2> This generates the password on a server you don't control.

I recommend not using it.

Using 'tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 < /dev/urandom | head -c $length' is more secure and available on your linux or osx machine even more easily than waiting a second for a server to run some java off in a magic black box.

<comment><USER3> You can also try indexing into /usr/share/dict/words for a correcthorsebatterystaple-style password. I'm sure there's a cute on-liner, I did it in Python because that took a lot less time than all the man page searching how to do it with Unix text processing tools would have taken.

Yes, it would be better to remember random characters of the same length. But most people don't. I personally have one password I use to sign into 1password and a small other set of critical services, and longer random passwords for everything else. I personally don't worry about nation state adversaries so I can make myself less vulnerable to mass automated attacks and targeted attacks by non-experts. It's important to remember not to let perfect be the enemy of the good, and important not to discount the cost of DOSing yourself. I reduced my security after I lost access to something of value.

<comment><USER4> shuf -n 4 /usr/share/dict/words | tr '\n' ' ' && echo

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I'm trying to learn bash, and it's going slow (right now still trying to fully understand set -euxo pipefail). I would not have guessed that a command existed to make random permutations, I was expecting an awk incantation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a fan of the apg linux command because it generates somewhat phonetically prounceable passwords and of course runs locally. [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/StrongPasswords#APG](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/StrongPasswords#APG)

</comment><comment><USER6> I created something similar ~2 decades ago in perl. It would spit out a long list of passwords in text format so you could chose one without the server knowing what you chose.

Today, keepass does the job just fine.

<comment><USER7> Instead of a search space of 1 you augmented it to N which is likely <= 2^10. Still a pretty terrible idea to trust a password like that.

<comment><USER6> I agree, however, it ran on our own server so it was OK-ish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A better version of this might be [https://piper.gq/](https://piper.gq/) that I made last month.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the nice comments that are intended with good karma. What other feature can I add to this password generator that is useful? I agree that using linux is more secure but for passwords that are not as important I think this tool works fine, also you don't need to remember a big line of code and you can execute it on your mobile phone

<comment><USER9> It seems surprisingly complicated. Why is there a "start" and "stop" button? Why does it take so long for it to generate a random string? Why is there a "console" that just seems to show the page template?

<comment><AUTHOR> You right! Console and stop button are not necessary. The UI is generated with a UI creation tool that match program arguments with UI widgets (see: [https://ibb.co/phQQFxr](https://ibb.co/phQQFxr)). In this case there is an option missing to don't show the stop button and the console (These are shown due that you can create interactive programs with browxy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use

</dev/urandom tr -dc 23456789~*@#$%_+-=qwertQWERTasdfgASDFGzxcvbZXCVB | head -c13; echo ""</comment>


Best npm package ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/sosafe <comment><USER2> I agree completely that people should be more aware of what they're depending on, but honestly if they don't think its a problem to have a dependency tree that includes 9 copies of the same library, this is hardly likely to phase them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> please always try to read source code when you are using 3rd party libraries on your projects.</comment>


Follow & Tweet Widget - Another jQuery Plugin - <AUTHOR> http://www.moretechtips.net/2010/06/follow-tweet-widget-another-jquery.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This plugin display avatars of people who have recently followed your twitter account and tweeted your link. It would be useful when you have a new project launch and you need to encourage people to follow & tweet it by showing their Twitter avatars!</comment>


Appfelstrudel – An App Store Search That Doesn't Suck - <AUTHOR> http://appfelstrudel.com

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, but I'm not sure you have a bunch of iOS users complaining about the store. OTOH, if you did this for Windows Phone, you'd probably find some desperate people.</comment>


Show HN: Pipe File – Document Collection Secured with PGP - <AUTHOR> https://pipefile.com <comment><USER2> I really like the idea of this service, although I don't personally have a _need_ for receiving encrypted files, at least, not at this time.

Curiously, the title of the site is Pipe File, and it's spelled that way in the FAQ too, but all through the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, it's spelled Pipefile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Chris, thanks for taking a look. While the service is likely more useful to a business that is frequently collecting sensitive docs (financial, legal, etc), I'm working to make the product more useful for consumers who only have the occasional need (tax time is coming up soon). The idea is you'll be able to register pipefile.com/chris and "pipe" uploads directly to your dropbox or other cloud provider. That way you can set it up and just share the static link with your accountant, lawyer, etc.

Re: Pipe File vs Pipefile, all my legal docs are Pipefile but branding is a bit inconsistent. I like the look of Pipe File but will likely change it for consistency sake.

<comment><USER2> > The idea is you'll be able to register pipefile.com/chris and "pipe" uploads > directly to your dropbox or other cloud provider.

That sounds like a great idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two thumbs up</comment>


Welcome to the Post-Work Economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056483/welcome-to-the-post-work-economy <comment><USER2> The article is a chain of economic fallacies.

> Modern economies are increasingly based around information. Information > "wants to be free"—as the saying goes—but free things are bad for > capitalism, because capitalism is about competition and making profits.

Tons of companies are based on providing information. Even if the information is public, sorting it and providing it efficiently has real value (such as google). Others do their own private research and re-sell it. Capitalists use and contribute to open source software. This statement is absurd.

> In time, technology is likely to drive many things to "zero marginal cost." > Energy, for example, won't be subject to market forces. We'll just have a > solar panel on the roof and each kilowatt hour will essentially be free.

In this "energy is free" economy, who will be building and providing me with my free solar panels, and then installing and maintaining the electrical system in my home or business? What happens when it's cloudy?

This whole article is like a undergraduate philosophy student who thinks he or she has the silver bullet for humanity, _if only people would listen!_

<comment><USER3> It's also using the word free in two different senses. Basically in the phrase "wants to be free" that's "free as in freedom, not as in beer." The meaning is that it's difficult to restrict the flow of information and you cannot reverse it. But then the author is claiming that information is free as in it doesn't cost anything. Then he's using the word information in two different ways, confusing "information economy" with data and then invoking some sort of magical osmosis by which an information economy doesn't involve money. Unpacking the chain of reasoning involved just in that single sentence, I see the following assumptions and arguments:

we have an "information economy"

information wants to be free

it doesn't cost anything to produce information

an information economy is one that doesn't cost any money to run

money is important to capitalism

without money capitalism doesn't work

since our economy doesn't require money to run, capitalism isn't working

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is terrible. Not only is it full of false comparisons, but every example cited as a supposed failure of capitalism or free markets is actually the _direct_ result of government intervention. A friend challenged me when I mentioned this, so I wrote a full take-down: [https://gist.github.com/nateabele/cffa0c54ab0385bbba37](https://gist.github.com/nateabele/cffa0c54ab0385bbba37)

<comment><USER5> I watched the video you linked under the text "kids' version", concerning fractional reserve banking: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8)

I believe that video contains a significant error. Around 13:00-16:00, it claims that a fractional reserve ratio of 9:1 with an initial capitalization of $1111.12 can lead to overall debt of almost $100,000 being issued. I believe this is incorrect and misunderstands how fractional reserve banking works.

The video's scenario is that a bank has a $1111.12 capitalization, no depositors, and issues a $10,000 loan to a customer who immediately writes a check for the $10,000 amount (which then gets deposited at another bank). The video seems to think that this bank can continue operating by fulfilling the check with $8888.88 of "debt money" that it just made up.

I'm pretty sure that the bank (call it A) has become insolvent and the check will not be able to be deposited at bank B. Bank B has no reason to accept Bank A's IOUs -- they aren't real money. If bank A doesn't have enough hard cash to satisfy the checks written by _both_ its depositors and its loan customers, the bank has become insolvent and has to close its doors. So in reality, the 9:1 ratio means that $1111.12 of real money can only become $10,000 in "debt money", total, not $100,000.

<comment><USER6> There are no such ratios, money multipliers are a myth. Money is created from nothing when banks lend.

[http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte...](http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Your link is describing the UK, which has no reserve requirement. So naturally, a ratio would not apply there.

> Money is created from nothing when banks lend.

In one sense you are right. If you add up everyone's net worth, it is greater than the amount of money issued by the central bank. But there is a natural limit on this process, because banks have to be able to fulfill checks cashed at other banks with real, central bank issued money.

<comment><USER6> The central bank in my country have issued similar reports describing the relationship between reserves and possible loans as indirect, even in the presence of the reserve requirement here. This requirement, as I understand it, a legal restriction, not an economic one, and it is rather soft. Imposing such a requirement does not fundamentally change the nature of how money is created.

> Banks have to be able to fulfill checks cashed at other banks with real, > central bank issued money.

Increasingly less so. Especially since nobody buys a house with cash, and that's what most loans are for.

<comment><USER5> > Imposing such a requirement does not fundamentally change the nature of how > money is created.

I never said that it did. I said that it imposed a limit on _how much_ money can be created in this way.

> Increasingly less so. Especially since nobody buys a house with cash, and > that's what most loans are for.

This is not a matter of nuance. If I sell my house for $500k, the buyer wires me $500k that shows up in my bank account. To complete this wire, the seller's bank has to move $500k of cold hard central bank cash to my bank. This isn't fuzzy or flexible. If the seller's bank can't do this, the seller's bank is insolvent and has to close its doors or take some other measure to get more central bank money.

It is true that I might then go buy a new house for $600k, using my $500k as a downpayment on a new loan. And if the seller of my new house uses the same bank as the buyer of my old house, only $100k of central bank money actually moved anywhere.

But if I don't do that, the banks are on the hook to actually move money comprising the full amount of the sale. The video I linked to upthread fundamentally misrepresents this fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If all human jobs are eliminated, that means you never have to hire a human to get something accomplished.

"But what about those who can't afford the super expensive robots?" you say?

If they are too expensive, you'll just have to trade with your fellow humans who also can't afford them, just like you do now. Millions of people all over the world do jobs that are already automated. The Amish even do it right here in the US, if you need a blatant example.

Of course, robots will become cheap just like every technology eventually gets cheap. They are only expensive in fantasies where only one variable is allowed to change and all logical consequences are ignored.

The reality is that building houses and growing food and transportation and medical care and many other things are all going to get much cheaper.

And so will writing code, prototyping new inventions, market assessment, manufacturing and distribution. Anybody that wants to dream up new apps or physical inventions all day will be able to sell to a global market. A global market of bots who filter the millions of new things for the exact needs and desires of their human masters.

<comment><USER8> Well, they'll be cheap as long as energy is cheap. And solar cells are not yet made without fossil fuels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In terms of GDP per capita, I live in one of the lowest income counties in a state that is well below the national average. I'm not sure if many of the points made in this article would be felt so viscerally by someone living in SF making $100k+/yr, but I found it very interesting.

It's worth noting that I have received exactly $0.00 in government subsidization (student loans, disability, unemployment, etc) - I've never applied for or received a penny of it. Perhaps the most interesting thing about rural communities like mine is that the people here who actually make money - farmers - are among the largest recipients of government subsidization in human history due to a subsidy program which was conceived when industrialized agriculture was still a nascent technology.

I feel there is a sort of cognitive dissonance when it comes to things like this in that many successful people are where they are in large part due to the governmental aid they've received,but these same people tend to be the most intense detractors of any legislation that would help everyone else.

I don't have any good answers and I sensed a bit of naivety in the article, but I feel it made some good points and asked a lot of very important questions.

<comment><USER10> You got $0 in government subsidisation? You don't use public roads? The police don't service you? You didn't get a free public education?

<comment><USER11> Do we have to hash this out in every HN thread that touches on economics? These arguments are very weak.

Plenty of people don't believe in police. Plenty of people homeschool and / or don't like what government schools have done.

The "who will build the roads" trope is so tired that - and I'm not kidding here - one of the ice cream vendors at the Porcupine Festival has a best- selling flavor, "Who will build the rocky roads?"

<comment><USER12> Maybe we wouldn't have to hash this out in every thread if you'd explain how some people don't benefit from police or public roads (whether you "believe in them" or not).

<comment><USER11> I don't mean to be undiplomatic, but there's no way I'm going to encapsulate this is an HN comment. Books! You must read books!

If you want something really easy to start with (albeit a surface scratcher), try _The Revolution: A Manifesto_ by Ron Paul.

I don't even understand why anybody thinks that the default position is that everyone benefits from police. The burden is on you to prove that one.

<comment><USER5> > The burden is on you to prove that one.

If every modern society has chosen to have police, I think the burden is on you to prove that every modern society is wrong.

<comment><USER13> _The truths of which the masses now approve are the very truths that the fighters at the outposts held to in the days of our grandfathers. We fighters at the outposts nowadays no longer approve of them; and I do not believe there is any other well-ascertained truth except this, that no community can live a healthy life if it is nourished only on such old marrowless truths._

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well I'm 30 and have been unemployed all my life. I'm safe at home, trying to make a game. Jobs aren't necessary anymore. That's what the industry and automation are for. In a way, you can say capitalism allows the development of industries, which in the end seems to reduce the necessity of having capitalism in the first place.

I didn't read the article, but I always sense there is this weird belief that "people must work and belong to something so that society can function". I can't really express it. What bothers me is that somehow, even after the new deal and social programs, not having a salary or income is seen as some sort of a bad thing, and often, it will be a bad thing for your mental health (isolation, lack of personal goals).

I guess that is what people don't like about capitalism, is that it builds an inability for anyone to share and live in communities normally, because the political argument of altruism seems to lead to communism and soviet evils. It's really hard to make a link between capitalism and the lack of fulfillment, despite the increase in wealth, but at some point I'm sure people would prefer an economy which isn't so focused on growth, but rather on long term development.

<comment><USER15> "Jobs aren't necessary anymore."

What a statement. It rings of naivete. How would you pay for your living expenses? Are you living with someone who pays your living expenses? Do they work? Or are you on social welfare?

Who maintains the automation? Who designs these systems? Until robots and AI can do everything (which is a long way away), there's always going to be something that no one wants to do. Getting paid is an incentive to do it. We are also a long way from becoming a non growth focused economy. Until such a time as strong AI and a non growth focused economy become a reality (if ever), jobs are necessary, and always will be.

People also like to be useful, to feel like they matter, or be part of something greater than themselves. Jobs are one avenue for this fulfilment. Someone who is intentionally unemployed is not being useful. If you are on welfare, or your supported by family, then you are a burden. Others are required to work, but you choose not to at their expense. Why are you entitled to do what you want, when others can't? That is seen as unfair, so you cop resentment.

"I always sense there is this weird belief that "people must work and belong to something so that society can function"."

I suspect you believe this to justify your lack of motivation for employment. There is a big epidemic of this type of attitude in Japan (neet's) [1], where young people refuse to work and just live off their families income. It might be different if you had decided to quit your job and make your dream game. You were never employed and don't want to be.

I think we are in a weird point in western society, where we are generally more well off than any other time. The basic costs of living are relatively low for a single person, particularly if they live with their parents. A lot of the basic things have become much easier than before. So, its much easier to be unemployed (particularly in welfare based societies), and people will find all sorts of ways to justify their apparent lack of motivation.

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

<comment><USER14> I live in france, and am on welfare. Unemployment has been at 10% for a long time now.

What I mean is that we should not encourage people to do any job, and let them pursue things they like instead. So many people live on minimum wage, and don't go back to school.

I think it's a great thing to live with your parents. And if there are a lot of NEETs in japan, maybe there are reasons behind it which go beyond "naivete". Calling this an epidemic without trying to understand the reasons behind it is easy.

> Jobs are one avenue for this fulfillment.

What about working at fast food, mopping floors, bullshit jobs, etc? Fulfillment happens when you are educated enough to work in a domain you can be fulfilled with. Nobody gets a raise in those jobs.

> Others are required to work, but you choose not to at their expense.

Nobody is required to work, they decided to, it's consented, not slavery, and get both the advantages and the downsides. That's exactly what I'm talking about here. People can do what they want, yet if they work, most of the time it will be minimum wage, because everyone wants to work, so of course employers will always drive wages down. So of course it makes sense to stay unemployed.

> and people will find all sorts of ways to justify their apparent lack of > motivation.

Why should people have any motivation? Is it some kind of a moral duty? Don't you read that people can be angry, desperate and resentful about their economic situation?

> then you are a burden

That's the worse thing you can call an unemployed person. Not only am I not interacting with anybody, but now I should feel guilty for my situation? How do you want me to improve my situation if you accuse me? I don't really like to continue this kind of conversation, because it only deal with social constructs, which aren't really good standards.

<comment><USER15> If you are unemployed because you are genuinely unable to find work, then that's an entirely different matter (and I apologise, and wish you all the best for finding work). I got the impression that you were unemployed by choice, especially given your various statements (and the rest of this post is partially prefaced on that assumption). Therein lies the problem. While your personal situation may work for you, it will not work for a vast majority of people. So my response was in regard to the various broad unqualified statements you made. I personally don't have anything against your choice. I can understand where you are coming from. However, your statements seem to reveal a certain level of naivete.

There are many people that must work in order to pay their families living expenses as they are married and have children. Even with welfare they might not have enough money to live above the poverty line. So they must work. While they could choose not to work, its hardly much of a choice.

I'm guessing your living with your parents (based on your statements). What if your parents decided to stop working? While in your circumstance they might have saved up enough money to live comfortably for many years, they had to work to get it in the first place. There are many people that cannot live with their parents for various reasons.

> Jobs are one avenue for this fulfillment.

I didn't say jobs are the only avenue for fulfilment, merely one avenue to it. People in undesirable jobs generally aren't there by choice. This breaks down your assertion that jobs aren't necessary.

> I think it's a great thing to live with your parents. And if there are a lot > of NEETs in japan, maybe there are reasons behind it which go beyond > "naivete". Calling this an epidemic without trying to understand the reasons > behind it is easy.

Its an epidemic regardless of the reason behind it. I'm fully aware of the tough working conditions many face there, and that it will drive some to avoid employment due to the unbearable pressure. I suspect there are many that are simply just unmotivated to work, and have the means to do so.

>> and people will find all sorts of ways to justify their apparent lack of motivation.

> Why should people have any motivation? Is it some kind of a moral duty? > Don't you read that people can be angry, desperate and resentful about their > economic situation?

This is where I see the issue. You have formed opinions which justify your lack of motivation and project it onto others. Your situation might work for you, but it does not work for everybody. Yet you do not understand this:

"I always sense there is this weird belief that "people must work and belong to something so that society can function". I can't really express it. What bothers me is that somehow, even after the new deal and social programs, not having a salary or income is seen as some sort of a bad thing, and often, it will be a bad thing for your mental health (isolation, lack of personal goals)."

These social programs only function because others work. Their taxes pay for your expenses. These welfare systems are designed for people who are unable to find work, despite trying to find it. While there are some places trialling basic income, until most of the western world moves to it (unlikely any time soon), you are a burden to society. Now maybe in a few years, you will finish making your game (i hope it goes well), and it will sell well, justifying your unemployment. Until then many people will not understand your choice, and even dislike you for it. As I said previously, it would be a different matter if you quit your job to make your dream game. People can see you have a goal and are motivated - that you don't intend to remain a burden.

>> then you are a burden

> That's the worse thing you can call an unemployed person. Not only am I not > interacting with anybody, but now I should feel guilty for my situation? How > do you want me to improve my situation if you accuse me? I don't really like > to continue this kind of conversation, because it only deal with social > constructs, which aren't really good standards.

If you are seeking work and unable to find it, then I agree, its not a good thing to say to an unemployed person. However, I'm assuming you are unemployed by choice. If you are isolated, you need to work on a social life. It is your choice to be isolated. If you are actively trying to seek employment, then you should absolutely not feel guilty.

<comment><USER14> > and have the means to do so.

So what? Work is consented, not forced. If nobody wants to pay them better, they won't work. If they have the means to work, but don't want to work, what's the point of calling this a lack of motivation? It's basic supply and demand at work. Maybe society has to find a better way to employ those people. I think unemployment is sustainable. If you decide to work, you have more money, but an unemployed person will still have enough to live.

> Their taxes pay for your expenses.

Money is just an indicator, but it doesn't explain structural phenomenons. If you make abstraction of money, work is overrated. Automation removes a lot of necessary work. Haven't you seen how less people are need to grow food? Haven't you seen how many workers machines replace?

I'm now in a place of "discouraged unemployment". Meaning I had many interviews and did not get hired. The more unemployment you have, the more candidates will get discouraged to find a job. That's my situation currently. I think labor and the socioeconomic model need to change. You can't tell people to fit in a mold they don't like. Will a bank loan me money to work on my game ?

Other details you might not know: France is currently in a roar because the left government want to pass a law which is more liberal towards labor. France is pretty conservative in term of economic policy (despite the fact that welfare is generous). The fact is that in france, you literally CANNOT fire someone if you want to, or it's VERY difficult to do so. That might be the main reason people like me are in long term unemployment, and are refusing to make new concessions. I already gave my resume to the city company who deals with trash, and I got no answer. So in short, don't pretend you can advice everybody to work in fast food. That will only get votes for candidates like Sanders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The UK used to have an unofficial version of UBI in the 70's and 80's when it was feasible, if somewhat difficult, to mooch off the benefits system, including getting reasonable low end accommodation. This had a kind of freakonomics effect on the wider economy that we can see today.

It's how nearly all musicians, artists, designers, actors etc were surviving during those decades and why they didn't end up abandoning their dreams to office jobs.

That 'Withnail & I' existence certainly wasn't one that many others would choose due to the low income and otherwise tawdry lifestyle, but it was actually the engine for the big success story behind UK culture - which has turned out to be one of its biggest exports and biggest draws.

The reason London is now seen at the world's coolest city where everybody wants to come to study, live, invest, and set up shop is its cultural capital and that can be traced back to the fact that all of the people running clubs, fashion designers, and musicians etc were enabled off that benefits system.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like the idea of basic income but I don't like the idea of raising income tax. I think capital gains tax should be raised and there should be a special tax on passive income.

All Passive income sources are essentially small monopolies - If you own an asset from which you derive passive income without having to work at all; the dynamics of this are not so different from a corporation having a monopoly over an industry. At the root, why should some people get paid for doing nothing at all while others get nothing. Doing nothing should have the same market value no matter who you are.

<comment><USER18> Your idea is basically discouraging (and punishing) saving. You are completely missing the fact that those "savings" are reinvested into the economy via loans, credit, capital, etc.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, but so are near zero (or effectively negative) percent interest rates we've had for quite some time now, which coincidentally tends to benefit rent seekers in the economy. Raising taxes on some forms of "passive" income seems not that unreasonable under the current circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Paul Mason is a very good television journalist although he has moved away from the BBC to Channel 4. Good that he may be, I don't feel the urge to read any of his books on how the post-Capitalist world is supposed to work out.

Recently in an old book shop I found a shelf full of ideas from around the dot com era of how our post-whatever society was going to be. I feel that Paul Mason's books are doomed to go to this same shelf of 'forgotten dreams'.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like it really wants to differentiate itself from the "old kind of socialism", which has a heritage of thought which already contains a lot of the things mentioned here.

And, as with most socialist thought, tends to kick up a lot of cries and moans from the self-professed economists in the room.

<comment><USER21> >Sounds like it really wants to differentiate itself from the "old kind of socialism"...

Technically he's right that UBI is not socialism; it's basically yet another solution for rescuing capitalism from its inherent contradictions.

>And, as with most socialist thought, tends to kick up a lot of cries and moans from the self-professed economists in the room.

I'm enjoying it mightily. You know you're getting close to the truth when people with aspirations of domination try to attack your ideas.</comment></comment>


A comment on Hacker News led to 4½ new Unicode characters (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://unicodepowersymbol.com/we-did-it-how-a-comment-on-hackernews-lead-to-4-%c2%bd-new-unicode-characters/ <comment><USER2> I posted a message on the Unicode mailing list, which eventually lead to an proposal to accept a large number of new characters that encodes symbols used in the old 8 and 16-bit micros.

My original question was specifically about the C64 character set, but we managed to get several others covered as well, including several symbols from the Atari ST character set.

The proposal was accepted, and the work continues to create a new proposal covering the character sets of even more old computers.

[https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19025-terminals- prop.pdf](https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19025-terminals-prop.pdf)

I'm quite happy that my modest question led to some real progress.

<comment><USER3> I'm disappointed to find that the Atari ST character set doesn't contain a bomb symbol. Obviously two entirely different things have been confused by my childhood mind.

<comment><USER2> The Atari ST did display bombs when an application crashed. But it was never part of the character set. It's a graphic that is displayed by the trap handler in the operating system. The number of bombs indicate the trap type, so three bombs means trap handler 3 (address error).

The symbols that do exist, but was not included in the proposal was the Atari logo and the J.R. Dobbs picture. Both of which are copyrighted, which is why they are included.

<comment><USER4> These type of comments are why I come to Hacker News and waste so much time here. Thank you.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the appreciation. The Atari ST was a very important computer for me when I was growing up, and I love talking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great story.

Next up: I'd love to see the sub/super proposal get some more attention and effort.

[https://github.com/stevengj/subsuper- proposal](https://github.com/stevengj/subsuper-proposal)

<comment><USER6> Having the combining character version of that would be fantastic. Eventually, It would be amazing if all the details of math rendering could make it into unicode.

<comment><USER7> > Eventually, It would be amazing if all the details of math rendering could > make it into Unicode.

I'm not sure if I agree with you or not... Generally I'd say I do, but we're going to have a hard time "finding the line". Meaning what counts as "math"? Surely 1 + 1 is, as is ∇×𝐇, and we can start to do things like x⁰. However, what about a graph with nodes and edges (just as an example)? Is that "math"?

One things strikes me about _strings_ of _characters_... you can select and copy/paste them (at least in my native alphabet of Latin) very reliably. This property is not present with Unicode in general.

<comment><USER8> It's not easy to select characters in Arabic and many Vedic languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I give this achievement 4½ stars.

[http://www.righto.com/2016/10/inspired-by-hn-comment-four- ha...](http://www.righto.com/2016/10/inspired-by-hn-comment-four-half- star.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I love how this was apparently accepted into the standard in 2016, and yet Chrome still displays an empty square instead. Unicode is such an unbelivable mess when it comes to support it's crazy. Windows displays it correctly for me in Word, but when pasted into Teams it comes out as a semicolon instead. Brilliant.

<comment><USER11> But it's not a mess, there is a clear chain of responsibility: * consortium -> font developers -> app developers. If anything is broken, bitch to the first level (typically app devs) and wait for your grievance to percolate upwards as necessary; if it doesn't happen, you know who to blame.

* most modern operating systems have hopefully sorted out their issues a long time ago.

<comment><USER12> If you have to complain, it's broken. As a consumer I don't care what the issue is and who the responsible party is.

Unicode is a clusterfuck exactly because the chain is too long and the implementation errors are too easy to make and the world is rife with incomplete implementations.

<comment><USER13> Is it really so surprising that updating a universal standard takes time?

IMO, these processes _should_ happen slowly.

<comment><USER12> It has nothing to do with the update speed and everything to do with the standard itself. Even if you were freezing Unicode now, you wouldn't encounter complete, correct implementations in the wild more than 50% of the time in the next 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It has been 3 years, and Android & iOS still don't fully support Unicode 9. Any ideas who I should bug about that?

Google's Noto font hasn't released anything for 2 years. No idea if Apple's default font is open source.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love how iOS doesn't understand this URL, and still doesn't have these characters. Too busy removing the Taiwanese flag, and implementing "Animojis".

<comment><USER15> I still think unicode should not have added emojis. The big guys are adding animated emojis now, and that's clearly out of scope for character sets. If they continue down that path unicode will eventually become SVG with animation. IMHO they should have stopped short of emojis.

<comment><USER16> IMO Unicode shouldn't have ever added characters with color. Let color be the property of the markup. The original emoji were all monochrome, and mainly displayed on monochromatic flip-phone screens. The fact that there now exist emoji that are otherwise identical but have different color is absolutely idiotic.

<comment><USER17> In Unicode, they're represented by a combination of emoji character + colour character, not by new characters: [http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Diversity](http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Diversity)

Seems a decent solution to me. Monochrome screens can just ignore the colour character.

<comment><USER18> There are at least 7 variations of the heart symbol  differing only in color 🧡, not including the heart (playing card) which also has multiple variations.

Edit: apparently HN limits the number of emoji per post, I originally included several.

[https://emojipedia.org/white-heart/](https://emojipedia.org/white-heart/)

<comment><USER19> There are 27 variations of the capital letter A in Unicode (see the confusable list [https://unicode.org/cldr/utility/confusables.jsp?a=A&r=None](https://unicode.org/cldr/utility/confusables.jsp?a=A&r=None)).

Redundancy has never been a problem with Unicode. After the decision was made to add the symbols of the original encoding to the list of Unicode characters, they had to add all heart variation, otherwise it wouldn't have been able to be backward compatible.

Or alternatively add a color modifier? I'm not sure that would have been a better solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Power up stars for the first person to successfully argue for _removal_ of a UNICODE character.

<comment><USER7> Scanning quickly through I found this one: ℻ ([https://unicode- table.com/en/213B/](https://unicode-table.com/en/213B/)).

Apparently it's semantically fac·sim·i·le. Which means (according to Google) "an exact copy, especially of written or printed material."

My argument is something like, why not just write FAX. Or is the counter that some fonts will specialize this character to something closer to the native language? That seems unlikely, and instead people will probably learn that FAX means "to make alike", from Latin. Or is it that we need to make it just a little bit above the baseline to indicate that it's special. Surely "FAX" isn't the only thing that should be allowed to be special, right? But then that's a whole can of worms. Anyway, I'm rambling...

This was the best I could do in the limited time I had (I really should be asleep by now).

<comment><USER21> On business cards, in letters, etc you write your phone numbers.

Usually as

TEL 0123 45 67 89

FAX 0123 45 67 89-0

the "TEL" and "FAX" part should be superscript small capitals though. That's there these special symbols come in.

Some fonts also replace those with icons for phone/fax.

They're actually still in use in Germany today.

<comment><USER22> Well, fax machines are still in use here (most notably in mdeical offices, it seams), but superscript abbreviations? Never seen them in the last 40 years. I mean, yes, I have seen the letters FAX or TEL in front of the number, but never really explicitely as a new character (AFAI can tell).

This would also fit best with the experience that people crafting cards or letterheads never really know all the intricacies of Word, or Unicode, or whatever they use, and just "make it look good" \- use tabstops instead of tables, simply type FAX and mark it as superscript, etc...

<comment><USER21> > This would also fit best with the experience that people crafting cards or > letterheads never really know all the intricacies of Word, or Unicode, or > whatever they use, and just "make it look good" \- use tabstops instead of > tables, simply type FAX and mark it as superscript, etc...

I mean, that's widely known anyway. Look at most letterhead templates online, pretty much all of them are broken and quite painful in the way they're built. Broken tables, tabstops, all combined painfully.

Often enough proper tables would simplify a lot, if combined with columns one can create amazing things. If one even adds automated hide/unhide elements (e.g. page count, automated Internetmarke or hiding it if unused, etc) one can create stuff that'd save hours of work every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > There was some discussion around ⏾ as several "moon" characters already > existed. None of them [...] convey the semantic meaning of "Sleep" – so ⏾ > was accepted.

I'm not convinced ⏾ conveys that meaning either, unless it's explicitly used alongside the other new symbols. And if it is used alongside those symbols, a couple of the existing moons could also work just fine.

(⏾ is appearing as tofu on HN for me, but I'm just going to roll with it.)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's disappointing that OS-included font support for these has apparently lagged. iOS 13.2 supports emoji from Unicode 12[1], but doesn't ship with a font that includes these symbols. Anyone know if any OSes do support them?

[1] [https://emojipedia.org/apple/ios-13.2/new/](https://emojipedia.org/apple/ios-13.2/new/)

<comment><USER24> iOS 13.3[1] support these symbols.

[1] The 13.3 Beta I'm currently running on my 6S Plus renders them fine.

<comment><USER23> By the way, if you're viewing them on the unicodepowersymbol.com website, they show up because of a web font included on the page. So here they are on a site without the font: ⏻⏼⭘⏽⏾

Also here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol#Unicode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol#Unicode)

<comment><USER24> Ah, that makes sense. I retract my statement – those symbols are still MIA on 13.3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know how to add these to Ubuntu 19.10? When I search for Power in Characters, it has the 'Power On' character but you can't see the symbol [1]

1\. [https://imgur.com/a/4qMgPkv](https://imgur.com/a/4qMgPkv)

<comment><USER26> [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/23fd/fontsuppor...](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/23fd/fontsupport.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Now if only we could get Hacker News to support emojis

Edit: This comment ended in man-shrugging, but Hacker News stripped the emoji.

<comment><USER28> They used to be supported until they were abused.

<comment><USER29> Maybe only allow them if you have a certain reputation/points like downvoting and flagging has? Then if it's abused, remove that privilege for that person (IIUC, flag rights can be revoked)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > What other useful and/or important symbols are missing from Unicode?

Seems like a good time to ask this question again. Any new answers?

<comment><USER31> The USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth symbols.

A spray can to represent spray paint, insect spray, or spray lubricant.

There's a power plug but no power socket.

There's no staples or stapler.

There are no appliances—no oven, microwave, toaster, mixer, washer, or vacuum cleaner.

There's no traffic cone.

<comment><USER32> > The USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth symbols.

I believe those are all trademarked. Unicode tries to avoid those.

> A spray can to represent spray paint, insect spray, or spray lubricant.

Interesting idea! I wonder if there'd be any interest in getting wider coverage of other bitmap paint tools: rectangular selection, lasso, paint bucket...

> There's a power plug but no power socket.

That's problematic from a localization perspective, as electrical sockets vary widely from country to country, and some of them may be difficult to recognize as a socket at a small size. For example, some European countries use a socket which is made of three circular pins in a straight line -- it'd just look like an ellipsis.

Besides, there isn't a lot of symbolic meaning that's conveyed by a socket that couldn't be expressed just as well with a plug.

> There's no staples or stapler.

Maybe. There isn't a lot of symbolic meaning to these either, though.

> There are no appliances—no oven, microwave, toaster, mixer, washer, or > vacuum cleaner.

A lot of those will just look like white boxes at text size, and -- again -- they don't have a lot of symbolic meaning.

You might be able to make a case for an upright vacuum cleaner, though, since that's visually distinctive and is associated with cleaning.

> There's no traffic cone.

Oh, I like that idea. It's got some symbolic meanings, too, like "warning" and "under construction". There is already a construction sign (U+1F6A7), though.

<comment><USER33> To be fair, a lot of existing unicode points don't really have a semantic meaning either. Eggplant only got a semantic meaning after becoming a part of unicode.

<comment><USER34> It means aubergine, doesn't it? At least originally. It's distinctive.

For cleaning, a broom is probably better than a vacuum cleaner.

A broom already exists 🧹

<comment><USER35> "Aubergine" and "eggplant" refer to the same vegetable. The "semantic meaning" is probably the NSFW one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958682)

</comment><comment><USER37> Input into a decision like this might be one of the best approximations of achieving immortality.

</comment><comment><USER38> That post inspired me to submit some Unicode characters as well! I found 11 Hakka & Taiwanese characters when trying to scrape & parse the Bible as plain- text, and wrote a blog post about my experience of the submission process.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17968110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17968110)

</comment><comment><USER39> Great work, but we are still missing a "tinfoil hat" symbol in Unicode (or as Emoji). This is a major letdown! :D

</comment><comment><USER40> Even the existing repurposed one doesn't work on my up-to-date Linux Mint installation.

[http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2B58/browsertes...](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2B58/browsertest.htm)

</comment><comment><USER41> The "advisor" to the effort is doing interesting work on nano-grids, timely because of the PG&E shutoffs.

> We had the very generous help of Bruce Nordman, who was involved in the > original IEEE 1621 standard.

[http://nordman.lbl.gov/](http://nordman.lbl.gov/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958682)

</comment><comment><USER43> Is there a practical upper limit of Unicode set capacity? Kind of IPv4 limits with all reservations and local/multicast quirks.

<comment><USER44> Unicode has 17 planes. Each plane has 65,536 code points, so the total capacity is 1,114,112 code points. In practice it's a bit less, thanks to surrogates, private areas, and a bunch of "non-character" code points. That still leaves close to a million code points.

Last time I checked, just over 13% of the available public space was allocated. Most of the planes remain unused.

<comment><USER29> Why _17_ and not a round number like 16? That would give a nice "round" one mebicodepoints

<comment><USER44> BMP + 16 planes.

You can blame UTF-16 for this mess. Unicode was originally meant to be able to encode two billions (2^31) characters. It bent over backwards to accommodate the limits of the bastard child that is UTF-16.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(Unicode)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_\(Unicode\))

<comment><USER29> Maybe they did it because Windows was backwards and used UCS-2, and later, UTF-16? If somehow, Windows managed to switch to UTF-8, I'm sure they (Microsoft) would mess it up and keep the 4 byte limit (imposed by Unicode) there even if it's later removed (for backwards compatibility). What Microsoft really needs to do, IMO, is rewrite the Windows API to use UTF-8 or UTF-32. Make a `wwchar` type or something...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I really like the smiling poop and everything but [personally] I've only ever needed a feed icon⸮

</comment><comment><USER46> I have some good ideas for emojis, but I'm guessing that's even harder to get through...

<comment><USER15> Poop is in there, and the love hotel.

<comment><USER47> Those have a compatibility story though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Very cool. Never really considered how new characters were added. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER49> Any idea why 4/5 don't display until I enable javascript?

</comment><comment><USER50> Wonderful :) Now can we please have this:?

[https://www.xefer.com/2008/03/interrocolon](https://www.xefer.com/2008/03/interrocolon)

<comment><USER29> We already have the interrobang, no? So why not this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> _> > ⏻ To The People!_

That line at the end made me smile.

</comment><comment><USER52> led, not lead.

<comment><USER36> Fixed. Thanks! Those are surprisingly hard to spot sometimes.

<comment><USER53> Moderation software idea: globally replace lede/lead with led in any discussion about lede vs lead. Would bury the led once and for all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Is there a reason this is being posted now, or does this need a (2016) in the title?

<comment><USER55> It indeed was covered here at the time...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958682)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952765)

... so yes, as per convention it should have a (2016). The best way to get the message to the mods is via email (using the Contact link at the bottom of the page).

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What is a half character?

<comment><USER57> a character is a character. You can't say its only a half

<comment><USER58> The symbol was already present, but it was given new documented semantic content ("meaning"). Previously it was just a circle, now it's also the symbol for "power off".

<comment><USER57> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I know a guy, who was fighting hard with unicode consortium for adding two characters with meaning "begining of blob, end of blob". Imagine how simpler the coding would be without the need to escape anything. Unfortunately he didnt succeed. They were more busy adding smileys.

<comment><USER60> You'd have to escape those new symbols if they occur within the blob.

<comment><USER7> Just add a `\\` /s

<comment><USER61> That's too lazy, we need unicode symbols for escaped start-blob and escaped end-blob /s

<comment><USER35> Not sure why /s. Also, you only need escaped-end-blob. start-blob can safely be used inside a blob. So it's only 3 new codepoints, which is genuinely an interesting proposal.

<comment><USER62> Because that doesn't round trip. You need to be able to distinguish whether the blob originally had "end-blob" or "escaped-end-blob". So now you need another character for double-escaping, and so on, and so on.

To avoid that issue you're back to either adding a backslash, or doubling up the character inside the blob... but if you're doing that you could have just used " all along. No need for new characters!

If you really don't want to change the contents of the blob, and can't length- prefix, then you could also use a new UUID as your delimiter each time you embed a blob.

<comment><USER59> No. It depends only on developers. If they would start embeding it into format, they would break the rules. If not, it would work.

<comment><USER62> If you're telling developers not to embed that character anywhere then you only need _one_ end of blob character. So not 'no', I'm still right in saying that having two end characters is a non-solution.

And you still didn't explain why the existing ASCII control codes don't solve your problem. The suitable ones are also not supposed to appear inside text.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some minimal and no-frills discussion sites like HN and Reddit? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> An oldie but a goodie is [https://slashdot.org/](https://slashdot.org/) .</comment>


Toyota and Tesla Partnering to Make Electric Cars  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559004575257041321957772.html

<comment><USER2> As perhaps the only HN member who lives in Downey, CA, I have to say that I often suspected Musk was up to something but his actions were almost totally convincing otherwise. He had plant layouts done as recently as a couple of weeks ago. Well-played.

The city also did well to try to close the deal, but business is business -- a tough and frequent lesson in economic development. Tesla just kept working the deal and reeled in a big fish. It is sad the way the city got strung along, though.

On the other hand, as an original Saturn owner I had always hoped NUMMI would work out and was sad to see it shuttered. So I at least appreciate that. But oh man, what a Charlie Brown football moment for us here in Downey.

<comment><USER3> He has been accused of dealing in bad faith. But consider he didn't know which deal would pan out; he was working them all. It is just business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome for Tesla and the people laid off in Fremont at Nummi. Good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a Fremont resident, I cannot be happier!</comment>


What did Steve Jobs mean when saying, "Good artists copy, Great artists steal" - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/steve-jobs-referenced-good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal/

<comment> alan-crowe I've seen the quote "Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal." attributed to Igor Stravinsky, and I understand like this:

Artist A creates a good work that acquires a certain degree of fame. Whistle the tune and people think of A. Later artist B creates a derived work, perhaps B orchestrates it or adds words. For example Gounod's Ave Maria based on the Prelude I from Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. It gets more interested if B moves things along in a big way.

For a while the new version eclipses the old. But has B borrowed A's work, or stolen it? Time passes. Time's cruel erosion of reputation wears down both A and B. Eventually only one is widely remembered. If it is A that is remembered, the cognoscente think that B was the lesser artist who metaphorically borrowed A's work. If it is B that is remembered, the cognoscente think that B was the great artist, who metaphorically stole A's work.

Borrow/Steal is the verdict of history, choosing to remember a single artist. It is not a comment on the morality of the conduct of artist B.

</comment><comment><USER2> Blah blah, let's spin this so Jobs doesn't look like the hypocrite he is.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you become a solutions architect? - <AUTHOR> A solutions architect in IT is a consultant that has knowledge of a wide range of programs and concepts. Using this knowledge, they craft solutions based on the customer's problem in their domain. <comment><USER2> What are you now?</comment>