Poland confirms 98-year-old Minnesota man was Nazi commander, seeks extradition - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/midwest/ct-minnesota-nazi-commander-20170313-story.html <comment><USER2> Whatever is the point in prosecuting a 98 year old? He won't even know what's happening.

<comment><USER3> A man who condoned the murders of 10 million innocent men, women, and children does not deserve mercy. Not in this life, and not in the next.

It would be an injustice to the victims to let a single known accomplice in this genocide get away. Age is irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> Nit-picking here, but I am not sure this person is accused of genocide. This person is not wanted in relation to the genocide of the Jews in WW2, but for his participation in the retaliation killing of Polish civilians. Today I learned that Germany killed about 5 million Polish, mostly civilians, during WW2 [1], which is mind-boggling. But I don't know if this was ever classified as genocide, as this was not done with the intent of exterminating the Polish population in part of whole (which is the definition of genocide [2]), while the Jews were killed with precisely that intent.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment#By_Germa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment#By_Germany)

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

<comment><USER5> And the polish killed their fare share of German civilians.. It's a reason that statute of limitations is considered a part of a civilized justice system. Sometimes letting the past be the past and move on is a good thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> "And the [P]olish killed their fare [sic] share of German civilians.."

You're not serious. What a despicable claim.

Also, there is no statute of limitations on murder, much less war crimes.

<comment><USER5> >You're not serious. What a despicable claim. A very strong argument based on facts ?

Between 500.000 -2.000.000 German civilians, from the eastern part of Germany parish in the period 1945-1950.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_%281944%E2%80%9350%29)

Previous Polish governments have triad to take actions against some of the perpetrators:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/1376...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/1376828/Polish- man-accused-of-war-crimes-against-the-Germans.html)

While I personally is against dragging old people in front of courts 70 years after the alleged crimes (polish or German), at list the Polish do not discriminate.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're being disingenuous. First of all, my objection was to your equating whatever instances of Polish (please capitalize) retaliation against Germans with German war crimes. THAT is despicable. You cannot draw a moral equivalency between systematic German extermination and instances of retaliation (whether expulsion, spontaneous and isolated retribution, Jewish revenge squads or actions orchestrated by the Russians). Sadly, there have been attempts by some (like Erika Steinbach) to relativize and manipulate history to make Nazi war crimes seem not unusual for the time period, presumably to soften the guilt. Your original comment was doing precisely that. Second, much of the history surrounding retribution is still not settled and controversial. Sadly, it is politicized. There have been attempts to use favorable narratives to, e.g., extract restitution from Poland (!!) for confiscated property or property abandoned even decades after the war. A number of exaggerated, fabricated or unsubstantiated claims about supposed Nazi collaboration have been published as well which were later discredited. Third, expulsion (which was ordered by Russia and not something alien to Germans) is not systematic extermination (see first point). Fourth, ideally, everyone, regardless of ethnicity, should face justice. It is not always possible, but it does not mean that it should not be done when possible. Sadly, of the thousands of members of the SS involved in extermination and massacres, relatively few have faced trial. Finally, it's worth noting that Michael Karkoc, the subject of the article, is not German but Ukrainian. Ukrainians have not yet come to terms with Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis.

<comment><USER5> My comment was to the absurdity of having a trail for a 98 year old man. As I get from your emotional involvement in this case, you come from the region? As you then probably know, in one country the SS (local) are among many considered heroes, in the neighbour country criminals. Elements of the local SS units was after the war taken over by the CIA(Gehlen Organization). And was waging guerilla war against the soviets. There successor units are presently fighting in the eastern Ukraine and are US allies (Right sector and others)..

[https://www.thenation.com/article/dark-side-ukraine- revolt/](https://www.thenation.com/article/dark-side-ukraine-revolt/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are you reading the article or straight to the comments? - <AUTHOR> i have to admit that I mostly (like 99%) of time go firdt to the comments before I even think about clicking to the article..<p>what about you? <comment><USER2> I check the top comments first because a lot of times they make me realize the article is not worth reading. Sometimes the top comment is a one-line tl;dr, or just explains clickbait.

This is even more important for any news regarding science: there's always a comment from someone who actually read the paper and then explains what the article got wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> Straight to the comments. I would only read something if it's less than a screen-long and still contains something I'm going to find really valuable or exciting. If it's longer than that I am to be convinced it's a text of exceptional value and quality before I decide to invest my attention.

</comment><comment><USER4> Often, I'm checking the comments first to see whether reading the whole thing might be worth my time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Comments first on HN. I use shutup.css to hide comments on every other website.

</comment><comment><USER6> Most of the time I just read the article.

When I do read comments, it's almost always after having read the article.

</comment><comment><USER7> Comments before all.

</comment><comment><USER8> comments first - for sites like this that link to the articles. gotta make sure it's worth it.

on the site itself i read the article first

</comment><comment><USER9> I skip to comments</comment>


Will.i.am's AI Startup hasn't paid staff in 7 weeks - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20932055/wink-smart-home-problems-iamplus-william-black-eyed-peas <comment><USER2> > will.i.am's AI startup raised a 100m round.

Nope, no bubble to see here. Definitely just a regular healthy market doing healthy market stuff.

<comment><USER3> Roger Mcnamee and Bill McGlashan did something similar to Bono, though Mcnamee at least got Bono his cash back. In Will's case, it looks to be some notorious Indian national with a checkered past that took him for a ride. (I can totally relate.) If these people had tried as hard as Bono and Will did but then failed, you can bet these artists would be the first to understand; but that's not what happened. Their product was always about sucking cash from some rich celebrity and using it to take risks that they themselves wouldn't have taken on their own, even if they had the means to do so. It's one of many reasons why many VCs these days simply use OPM (and all of the ensuing chaos that happens while trying to protect their funds LPs). have no fear, Bono and will.i.am are legit enough (again, weird to include them in same sentence) that they can pull millions out of thin air with nothing more than a MacBook and a set of, uh...headphones...make that RED headphones. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you work for a tech company and the contract you sign at the beginning says you're paid every two weeks. If seven weeks pass can you just stop working and not be fired?

I ask because I'm trying to understand why someone would keep working. My only guess is that they're afraid they'll get fired and never paid.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure, but I don't work for free. I stop being paid, I stop working. Why should i freely give up my time to make someone else money?

<comment><USER6> In most at-will-employment countries/states you can just stop showing up and the worst they can do is fire you. Sure, you'd loose your unused holidays and potential bonuses, but if the company is too broke to even pay your salary did you really expect to get those bonuses anyway?

<comment><USER5> Pretty much and the thing is, businesses that don't remember their employees are the ones there every day making them their money aren't worth working for. Even when/if things get better, the treatment won't change. There'll be something else. It's not like this company is some upstart, starry eyed and hopeful first time startup or anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like another example of company dribbling too many balls and end up making none of the shots.

Smart watch, smart home and a AI powered chatbot with AI retail experience? Sounds like a desperate company getting whoever that would be naive enough trust it's lies.

<comment><USER8> Whoever thought a no name tech company founded by the guy from the Black Eyed Peas was a good investment kind of had this coming.

<comment><USER3> i.am+ was founded by will.i.am, who is globally known to be the founder of The BEPs, which he started with no money.

this story about i.am+ going broke is likely planted by H1B workers that are turning on him and the somewhat notorious Indian CEO that has had his hand in will's pocket for far too long. if they had done their job right, or even done what they obviously promised to do, they might be in better shape over there, don't you think?

by the way, one of those people that you think has "this coming" is widely known to be Marc Benioff, the Founder of Salesforce, who is himself fighting hard to ensure that people treat you right (and let you keep trying to start a tech company) after you finally become homeless.

<comment><USER8> But there's a broader aspect to this. will.i.am is a pop musician. Obviously he's successful in the music industry but why would anyone think he can suddenly found and run a tech company?

<comment><USER9> Beats by Dre seems to be doing OK.

<comment><USER10> Is "Beats by Dre" a "tech" company? I would class it as a traditional manufacturing/sales company that sells audio equipment. And his role as a prolific rapper and producer makes that a good synergy.

<comment><USER11> Beats is a marketing company IMO

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > i.am+ co-founder and CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan

This is the same person from the CrunchPad / Joo Joo Linux tablet debacle.

Michael Arrington founder of TechCrunch worked with Rathakrishan's dev company to develop an affordable Linux tablet (Crunchpad). Disputes arose and the dev company proceeded to release the tablet under a different name (Joo Joo).

</comment><comment><USER13> sounds like he was chasing too many buzzwords and Masa wasn't interested in bailing him out

</comment><comment><USER14> When will i.am become i.was?

<comment><USER3> [https://youtu.be/gHN-EhL8x3g](https://youtu.be/gHN-EhL8x3g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> #FiyahFestival?

(No lessons learned.)

</comment><comment><USER16> The racism is in this thread is something else.</comment>


Using AI to Decipher the News About the U.S. Postal Service - <AUTHOR> https://blog.thefactual.com/deciphering-the-news-about-the-u.s.-postal-service <comment><USER2> Worried about mail-in ballot reliability this election? Read on for what's really going on at USPS as The Factual reviews 39 articles from 26 sources across the political spectrum. (disclosure: I'm one of the co-founders of The Factual).</comment>


Show HN: ugit – Learn Git Internals by Building Git in Python - <AUTHOR> https://www.leshenko.net/p/ugit/ <comment><USER2> Looks neat! This reminds me heavily of the excellent Building Git by James Coglan[1].

From a cursory glance though, it doesn't seem to support reading packfiles. This was the big thing that prevented me from using a fully custom Git implementation when I wrote my git churn calculator[2]. For larger repositories, it seems that almost all files are stored in packfiles, rather than the conceptually simpler "loose" format.

For me, the most valuable resource was reading the Git / libgit2 source and reference documentation.

[1] [https://shop.jcoglan.com/building- git/](https://shop.jcoglan.com/building-git/)

[2] [https://github.com/samdoiron/butter](https://github.com/samdoiron/butter)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Note that ugit isn't supposed to be a custom compatible Git implementation, but rather a simplified Git-like implementation for teaching Git concepts. So even if ugit supported packfiles, it still won't be able to read a real Git repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This strikes me as a cool and polished version of shit, the Git implementation Drew DeVault did in pure POSIX shell. [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/shit](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/shit)

<comment><USER4> Upvote for amusement. And from the link:

"How to Use: 1\. Don't"

LOL. Thanks! Both interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Polished presentation! I like to learn from first principles, so this is perfect.

There is also write you a git: [https://wyag.thb.lt/](https://wyag.thb.lt/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this tutorial interface (navigation, diffs, files/downloads at each step) custom made? It's pretty nice for this kind of format.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was custom made for the tutorial. I didn't release it yet because I mostly focused on polishing the tutorial itself and not the code for the interface. Do you think people would be interested in the interface by itself?

<comment><USER7> I would certainly take a look. It would be amusing if you released it using the interface itself.

<comment><USER8> Literal programming from Knuth's WEB adapted to modern web ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The real Git code is too complicated to be useful for learning basic > concepts with ease. ... It deals with a lot of edge cases that we don't care > about for learning.

Good choice, well explained. More than a toy problem space but stripped of factors that obscure the lesson. The author knows what they are doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> > stripped of factors that obscure the lesson

Yes! I'm going to adopt that wording. Originally I tried to do a screencast about guided Git source code exploration but it didn't work because of that reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For anybody interested I've built a python lib to read the latest commit from a git repo: [https://github.com/spapas/python-git- info/](https://github.com/spapas/python-git-info/)

This is a pure python implementation that started simple (just read a couple of files from the .git folder) but after a little I understood that for non trivial repos you'll need to deal with pack for files. Because I had already published the package I actually completed the pack parsing work but I have to confess that it's way too complex and I wouldn't have started the project if I knew better...

In any case the source is there if you want to take a look!

</comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of [https://codecrafters.io/challenges](https://codecrafters.io/challenges)

</comment><comment><USER8> I believe this is a wonderful way for someone to learn a piece of technology in depth.

But I have to wonder if you actually had anyone (else!) successfully _use_ this to further their understanding of git?

Generally, for me, it's either myself doing the exercise unguided, reading the documentation on internals, or reading the original source code. So I am certain it was a huge benefit for you, but it's more of a question on the approach being used with "students" and how successful would it be?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen people's Git skills improve after I taught them Git internals, but I taught them in a standard lecture format.

I didn't try teaching Git internals using code before, but I hypothesized it would be a good idea, and here is the result :) I'm curious about its effectiveness as well.

<comment><USER8> Then kudos on the effort for the experiment: not sure how I can best track the success of this initiative of yours, but best of luck regardless!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great, I appreciate the effort that has gone into it.

I have used git now for about 10 years, always via cli so I am pretty fluent with it and understand intuitively what is going on behind the scenes, but have only rarely needed to venture into the .git folders.

Working through the steps in this tutorial is helping to give a foundation to that intuition. I love the presentation format and would like to see more like this, and in other languages.

Is the tutorial itself available on github or elsewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy to hear that! You can clone the tutorial content using the link in the "Download" section. The interface isn't available yet on Github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Really cool Implementation if you don't mind can you share how did you build this

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome. I did the same while learning both Golang and git, and implemented parts of git in Golang. [0]

[0] [https://github.com/ssrathi/gogit](https://github.com/ssrathi/gogit)

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks great! I'm wondering if there are other tutorials like this but for Ruby?

<comment><USER16> The defacto version was in Ruby:

[https://shop.jcoglan.com/building-git/](https://shop.jcoglan.com/building- git/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I definitely agree that having a good understanding of git's internals is a must for using it to its full potential. I'm not sure you have to go as far as implementing it yourself, but it is a sure fire way to get there. For me it didn't all click into place until I understood the data model behind git[1]. A git project is just one big DAG of objects, and each object at its core is either a blob, a tree, or a commit. When you understand that, you can start to view every git command for what they actually are, a sequence of operations on this data structure.

[1] relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1597/](https://xkcd.com/1597/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe _this_ is what I need to like git.

</comment><comment><USER19> I logged in just to upvote and comment how nice this is! Well done :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Such a well thought out interface, congrats!</comment>


How to Disagree Better [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/18/opinion/peter-boghossian-interview.html <comment><USER2> I don't buy the tacit premise that most political disagreements are primarily about issues of facts and knowledge. People obviously do bicker over facts, but in most cases I've seen the hard nut to crack is that people disagree about what _matters_. We have different priorities shaped by different experiences. Different individuals and groups hold very different _kinds of things_ as central to our various identities and senses of well-being and security. Something that is a mere disagreement to one person can be deeply threatening to another person (see e.g. the almost routine vandalism that occurs against atheist monuments or advertisements in some parts of the US). And especially when it comes to sociopolitical issues, our disagreements aren't just abstract philosophical disagreements; they're situated in power struggles that exploit, hurt, and kill people.

Beyond that, there are phenomena that suggest that some beliefs are held _because_ they're indefensible on the merits, as a kind of identity signaling. By proclaiming something to be true that wider society holds to be false, one signals their commitment to the group that identifies with the belief. The more difficult it is to defend the belief in the face of mainstream arguments and ridicule against it, the more value there is in continuing to proclaim it. It demonstrates a steadfast willingness to shoulder the burden of defending the group against outsiders.

So I guess this advice is all fine as far as it goes, but I don't believe that it's especially relevant to the most pressing disagreements in the world.

<comment><USER3>
       beliefs are held because they're
       indefensible on the merits

I wonder if this phenomenon has a name. If not, it should! (Maybe an analysis using terms of Shannon-style information theory is apt: the less probable an event, the more information it carries.)

It has been argued that the accused in Stalin's 1930s show trials were forced to confess to their 'crimes' before execution (e.g. Bukharin) precisely for this reason: this enabled other party members publicly to defend those absurd trials, hence signalling absolute obedience to the party. It has also been argued that verses like _" The Party, the party, the party is always right"_ of the East German communist party [1] had the same function.

There is an obvious similarity with a certain dogma in 2019 Silicon Valley culture, but I am afraid to spell it out. There also seems to be a similarity with the controversial handicap principle [2] in biology, and the absurdity of certain forms of conspicuous consumption [3].

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

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

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

<comment><USER4> I agree this signaling should have aN interesting name, but I'd also really like to know what this dogma is as well... or is the first rule of dogma that you never talk about dogma?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Three important lessons from Peter Boghossian ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Boghossian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Boghossian)) on managing deep disagreements:

1\. Measure your differences. Rather than devolve into Yes, it is/No, it isn't black and white argument create a scale and place your positions on it. To someone defending "US is a patriarchy", say "If Saudi Arabia is 9/10 on the patriarchy scale where do you think the US is?"

2\. Imagine a world where you are wrong. Ask them "What evidence would change your mind?" or "Under what condition may that belief be wrong?"

3\. Know what you know. People often confuse the ability to know something with actually knowing something, i.e. they overestimate their actual knowledge on most topic. Ask explanations and questions like "How do you know that?"

<comment><USER5> > To someone defending "US is a patriarchy", say "If Saudi Arabia is 9/10 on > the patriarchy scale where do you think the US is?"

That does not measure difference. That sounds like bad faith attempt to shift the topic. It is the sort of tactic that makes it impossible to discuss X as long as there are places and people who got it worst.

It is not managing disagreement, it is just rightfully annoying the other side, because they cant talk about original topic and definition of patriarchy and what not.

<comment><USER6> I'm a believer in those kind of questions, but I think you are right it's hard to be able to judge such things you easily fall in the binary trap. Your disagreemnet leads you to formulate your questions in a non-neutral way, so it feels like trolling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite idea about arguing positions is the "steel man" approach. From [0]:

 _A straw man is a misrepresentation of someone 's position or argument that is easy to defeat: a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument._

This idea is also given as the highest level of disagreement in the hierarchy given in [1], which builds upon pg's hierarchy given in [2].

[0] [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man)

[1] [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FhH8m5n8qGSSHsAgG/better- dis...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FhH8m5n8qGSSHsAgG/better-disagreement)

[2] [http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

<comment> Joe-Z I think the 'steel man' idea is more commonly known as the 'Principle of charity'?[0]

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

<comment><USER7> That seems to be taking the most charitable interpretation of someone's argument. The next step is to improve their argument for them.

<comment> Joe-Z Seems patronizing

<comment><USER8> Only if you treat discussion as competition of egos.

If you're interested in the actual point of the discussion instead, then everyone benefits from a steelman.

<comment> Joe-Z I'm not convinced. To me it seems more ego-centered to not even let the argument of the person you are arguing with stand on its own but make up your own version - which you deem better than theirs - and argue against that. Kind of like arguing with yourself then.

<comment><USER8> The prerequisite for steelmanning is that the argument presented to you does _not_ "stand on its own", that it has flaws that you'd normally use to reject it - but instead, you decide to patch up the flaws and see if the stronger version works better.

It's an obviously good thing to do once you stop viewing arguments as competitive endeavor, but cooperative problem solving. If your co-worker was proposing a way to solve a programming challenge and you saw some flaws in it, you wouldn't shoot them down with "oh but this is wrong here, here, and it's also offensive". You'd say, "yeah, that could work, but it would be better if we did Y instead of X, and maybe let's not do Z because of $reasons". Applied to discussions in general, that's steelmanning.

<comment> Joe-Z Okay, I see your point with the competition and you're right (the coworking example really drove that home). Still what you describe would fall under the principle of charity for me as well.

To build on your example: You'd patch up the flaws in your coworker's argument (p. o. c.) and by doing that you are then able to derive new insights on the issue (just the normal function of a discussion)

<comment><USER9> Here is the difference between charity and steelmanning. Most real world arguments are not fully specified like a philosophy book because people have limited time to fully lay out all their assumptions, to treat edge case, and explore all relevant consequences of their argument.

The principle of charity is that that whenever there are two possible interpretations of the other person's words (because of limited specificity as above), you assume the one that makes their argument stronger. Eg. I was arguing with someone about veganism and omnivorous diet, and at one point they said, "aha, because you didn't explicitly say that you are against eating brain-dead humans, you must be for it." That is them NOT giving the charitable interpretation of my words.

The principle of steelmanning goes far beyond charity. You actually play the devil's advocate and reconstruct the argument, so that flaws are removed and strengths introduced. Eg. someone is trying to convince you of the benefits of nuclear power, and they use stats from 2005. You go out there and find stats from 2018 that even more strongly support their viewpoint. So in your opposing argument, you criticize their argument as if they had quoted the 2018 stats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Discussion/Debate is an aspect the karma/voting system does not address well, and is something that could be improved upon.

This is a pet peeve of mine because karma/voting serves as a detracting feature of conversation by trying to "gamify" it, which then _promotes_ virtue signaling, personal attacks, and a lack of personal belief development for the sake of optimizing analytics ($$$ and user engagement).

In a nutshell, it's an easy way to either throw kindling on the fire or extinguish opinions that are different.

Think of how annoying it would be to try and have a real life conversation only for people to butt in and add "Lol what a retard", "yOuRe So sMaRt", or "Fuck ____" to get handed a few pretend points and boost their ego.

</comment><comment><USER11> In my opinion, it's better not to have these discussions at all. The probability that they will be productive is very low. Unless you are an activist or a thought leader who is actively trying to change public opinion, your time is likely spent better elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not clear to me that someone who presents "grievance studies" as a legitimate labeling for fields that he isn't politically sympathetic to is well-positioned (either morally or practically) to tell me how to "disagree better."

</comment><comment><USER13> The main problem with modern discourse is coexistence is not enough. You either convert to the other persons position or you are sub-human and therefore not worthy of even existing.

I love how often those screeching the loudest about "tolerance" are often the least tolerant of anyone who happens to have an alternate opinion.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think one of the most forgotten "rules" is that it's okay to disagree. Usually once a group realizes that, it opens up a window of opportunity where you can transition from an argument into a conversation - in which the different positions are being explored with curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER15> Worldviews resist rational arguments very robustly. Even those that are supposedly scientific. The human brain has a belief system that by it's nature tries to stay fixed. It's a cognitive foundation.

The other part of it is that worldview are tied to group identity. In order to integrate into any sort of community or group, people generally have to accept that worldview.

These are a couple of reasons why the idea of opposing political groups having a rational discussion may be far-fetched.

</comment><comment> denton-scratch If you want to share some videos, there must be a more sensible place to do that than this resolutely old-school hacker site (I block a load of stuff, including 3rd-party just-about-anything).

</comment><comment><USER16> Should have (video) in the title. Doesn't auto-play but it's all the content.

</comment><comment><USER17> This comic does a great job describing the problem with arguing on the internet.

[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07](https://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/2013-04-07)

<comment><USER18> That process of one side's majority squashing the other side's crazy is a massive political lever used to take out the trash.

The public is used to enforce the basics and actual politicking goes on between politicians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The 2020 election is looming, and things are going to get heated. Having > civil disagreements may seem impossible. But it isn't.

My experience with the previous election (I'm in Europe, but it has us polarized as well) is that there are some disagreements not worth having.

For instance, I don't want to argue with a climate change denier, or a vaccine denier. If we reached such opposite conclusions, it means our ways of processing information are so hugely different that nothing constructive can emerge from a conversation on these topics.

<comment><USER15> People who believe different things don't process information differently. That's a sneaky way of suggesting there is something wrong with their brain.

I have a twin brother who I often find has exactly the same thinking as me when discussing a topic. He is very religious. I am an atheist.

The reason people believe different things is because they are part of different communities and/or are exposed to different streams of information.

I agree though that it's unlikely to have a constructive conversation on a topic where the two worldviews contradict each other.</comment></comment>


Clojure style multimethods in python - <AUTHOR> http://codeblog.dhananjaynene.com/2010/08/clojure-style-multi-methods-in-python/

<comment><USER2> This is very nice, but one additional aspect of Clojure's multimethods that is not mentioned is the role of ad-hoc hierarchies. That is, if we define a multimethod `say` as follows:

        (defmulti say :whatiz)

        (defmethod say ::feline [_] (println "MEOW"))

        (say {:whatiz ::feline})
        ; MEOW

We would expect that nothing would happen if we then call it with the following:

        (say {:whatiz ::lion})
        ; No method in multimethod 'say' for dispatch value: :user/lion

But we can define a hierarchy on the fly with the following:

        (derive ::lion ::feline)

And now we have a whimpy lion:

        (say {:whatiz ::lion})
        ; MEOW

This is good for simulating derived behaviors without the baggage of explicitly grouping those behaviors with the type. The multimethod dispatch __and __the hierarchical dispatch are completely open for extension. This is really cool.</comment>


Apple takes $0.5 billion in iPhone 4 pre-orders in 24 hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/06/apple-takes-half-a-billion-in-iphone-4-pre-orders.html

<comment><USER2> his assumption sounds too high...

"assuming that Apple will net at least 500 pounds per device (or roughly 740 dollars)"</comment>


[Video Course] Ruby on Rails 3 Beginner to Builder - <AUTHOR> http://ontwik.com/ruby/ruby-on-rails-3-beginner-to-builder-2011-week-1-2-3/

<comment><USER2> this is awesome. I'm new to RoR and this will help a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm also new to RoR and just started with it</comment></comment>


TakaraKeyframer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rokyed/takaraKeyframer <comment><USER2> Adding "Show HN: " to the front of the article title or resubmitting with it included would allow it to show up on that page.</comment>


Calculator Forensics (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rskey.org/~mwsebastian/miscprj/forensics.htm

<comment><USER2> I love how most of the HP calculators produce the same result, even between ones with different processors. This is because it uses an internal interpreted language, SystemRPL, to do most of its complex and trigonometric math functions. As long as the simple interpreter is correct, handling complex math functions is portable between models.

[http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/](http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a vintage calculator collector and I love to see this topic getting featured on HN! If anyone has any questions about vintage calculators just ask.</comment>


Tell Me More, Nginx (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/tell-me-more-nginx/ <comment><USER2> The company that I recently joined uses honeycomb.io, versus ELK at my previous job. Maybe I haven't played with it enough, or maybe we have it badly configured, but I find it a huge step backwards. As far as I know, there's no full text search and the types of reports and aggregation you can do are extremely primitive. The UI is also barely usable..huge horizontal scrolling, can't click on a specific value to apply that sub-filter. The list goes on and on. I wish devops team would focus on these fundamentals (proper centralized logging) before playing with all the "cool" and trendy toys.

As for logging, Our `log_format` directive looks like:

      log_format stats '$time_iso8601\t$host\t$request_method\t$request_uri\t$request_length\t$status\t$upstream_cache_status\t$bytes_sent\t$request_time\t$upstream_response_time\t$upstream_http_x_route\t$client_id';

This captures most of the generic data you'd associate with a request (time, host, method, uri, length) as well as the generic response data you'd care about (status, length, time to reply). Note that `$request_time` measures the full time to first byte until time to last byte that nginx spends serving the request, vs $upstream_response_time which is more specific to the upstream's response time.

If you're using nginx as a cache, $upstream_cache_status tells you the cache hit/miss status.

A list of all variables is available at [http://nginx.org/en/docs/varindex.html](http://nginx.org/en/docs/varindex.html)

All of our services can set an "x-route" header, which helps canonicalize URIs into something more meaningful. It's up the the service to decide what to do..but /v1/users/ID could be called "users:show". A more complex route might use a different name based on arguments. For example, depending on the parameters we expect some hits to /v1/reports to be very fast, and some to be very slow, so we'll set the name to "reports:list:fast" or "reports:list:slow" so that we can get more accurate statistics.

Finally, we use OpenRestry to do some initial global authentication (along with some other stuff). This is where $client_id comes from. All requests go through something like:

location / { set $client_id '' set $upstream '' access_by_lua_block { require('execute')() } proxy_pass [http://$upstream;](http://$upstream;) }

A piece of that execute code will possibly set $client_id to something which will then get logged.

<comment><USER3> > As far as I know, there's no full text search and the types of reports and > aggregation you can do are extremely primitive.

My understanding is that it's helpful to think of honeycomb.io as a replacement for Scuba -- which, to my understanding, is Facebook's tool for doing fast math and aggregations on metric data even if those metrics come from things that look like logs.

There are some "visualize" things you can do in the Kibana UI which really stretch ELK's capabilities (graphing p99 latency per handler for every one- second bucket of a sample minute in a high-throughput service that writes all its hits to log files, for example). Where Kibana and its backends start to stutter, or when certain kinds of graphs are just impossible, you might begin to be well-served by Scuba-style tools.

Not having worked at Facebook, I have only heard about this secondhand. After a certain scale -- when you have many many requests per second and when handling a request involves a forest of other services doing some work in series or parallel -- you start to feel like you can no longer rely on raw logs and start to lean on tools who do things like distributed tracing or aggregations; if your tool work well, eventually you may even feel a disdain for those raw logs and feel like you're _better_ off using the more advanced tools.

I feel a bit left behind sometimes because I live pragmatically in both worlds (I'm excited to get results rapidly from newer visibility stacks, but honestly am also still happy to log into a system and read its logs -- just in case we ever need to do that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tacking a custom header to the response is a nice trick!

Could be particularly useful for GraphQL apps where every response is a big opaque answer from `/api/graphql`: Add the GraphQL operation name to the response header.

This will also help with Chrome Devtools where you can add custom headers to the Network tab, otherwise you just see tons of POST reqs to `/api/graphql`: [https://umaar.com/dev-tips/115-manage-network-response- heade...](https://umaar.com/dev-tips/115-manage-network-response-headers/)

</comment><comment><USER5> As the last piece of most architectures to see every write request (caches will see every request, including reads), web servers are the logical place to capture system wide data. (Caches, if configurable, may be a slightly better option.) I haven't done a lot of nginx config, but appreciated the pointers in this post. On the other hand, it was a bit short and no pointer to the next installment.

By the way, if you haven't read the blog of Honeycomb founder, it's full of interesting provocative opinions:

[https://charity.wtf/](https://charity.wtf/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Ok but if privacy sensitive data enters your logs, you better have a way to clean them.

</comment><comment><USER7> FWIW, past a certain scale, it makes a lot more sense to export dedicated telemetry out of your app into a TSDB.

The reason is, it's thousands of times cheaper to +1 a counter/record a gauge and flush it every once in a while, than to serialize per-request metrics into HTTP headers, log them, and re-parse them for analytics later.

<comment><USER8> Totally, if all you care about is just that counter/gauge -- but more and more often, you need that counter/gauge captured for a particular segment of your traffic (e.g. some app-level identifier), and TSDBs tend to struggle[0] as the number of possible segments explodes.

If all you care about is overall latency, awesome! Use a TSDB. Once you care about latency per endpoint/user agent/customer ID/client platform (or combination thereof), you need the flexibility associated with structured log data, stored in something meant for fast analytical querying.

0: [https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/the-problem-with-pre- aggregate...](https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/the-problem-with-pre-aggregated- metrics-part-2-the-aggregated/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nginx is an amazing workhorse and can help out with logging/monitoring/metrics.

Some tools I like to use to improve the experience:

* Fluentular [1] - A tool for matching Fluentd log parsing to your customized nginx log format

* Nginx-lua-prometheus [2] - Library for exposing request data to prometheus

[1] [https://fluentular.herokuapp.com/](https://fluentular.herokuapp.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/knyar/nginx-lua- prometheus](https://github.com/knyar/nginx-lua-prometheus)

</comment><comment><USER10> Related, Apache has %D to put request times in logs, and mod_log_config if you want to log header values. Logging header values has some security/privacy implications though.

<comment><USER11> I'm surprised more people don't use the logs in web servers. Out of the box they are already on and running with little overhead. They usually tell me everything I want to know about usage.

But I don't do things like custom headers:

> a header value generalizing the shape of the endpoint path > (e.g. > /products/foobarbaz → /products/:prod)

Instead I analyze the logs with Bash (grep, cut, awk, sort, uniq). In fact I think Apache's logs are one of the main places where I learned these tools.

<comment><USER12> Sorry for the nitpick, but it's a pet peeve of mine that people think the entire suite of Unix command line tools is part of "bash".

<comment><USER11> Thank you, I will try to avoid it. In fact I started calling them all "bash" only recently, seeking a short name instead of "Unix command-line tools." But you're right, it's inaccurate.

<comment><USER13> The tools you listed can be referred to as coreutils: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Core_Utilities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Core_Utilities)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> envoy proxy knocks this out of the park. one can even emit detailed log data as proto over grpc.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is useful to know. I wish I'd known it five years sooner.

<comment><USER16> I am curious to know, why?

<comment><USER15> It would have been useful in some monitoring efforts I was part of back then.</comment></comment></comment>


Houseguest from heaven | Brad Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://ideas.4brad.com/houseguest-heaven <comment><USER2> I'm interested to know, under what circumstances would a barter system like this benefit its participants, given that they can already exchange these services using cash?

The primary advantage of barter seems to be sidestepping taxes, and judging from the scarcity of successful online barter systems, that advantage is either legally unsustainable or too small to make a difference.</comment>


2012 Olympics: Police to enter private homes to remove posters - <AUTHOR> http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100303/tts-uk-olympics-london-ca02f96.html

<comment><USER3> Quote: "Moves to safeguard company trademarks and stamp out ambush marketing, to preserve the monopoly of official advertisers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) logo, are raising concerns among civil liberty groups.

Police will have powers to enter private homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events."

Wow. That's ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how far _non-sponsor items_ goes. If I bring a Pepsi to the games and Coca Cola is an official sponsor, are they going to make me throw it away? What about clothing?

<comment><USER5> If the Vancouver olympics are any indication (and I suspect they are), then you won't be allowed to bring competing products (e.g. pepsi vs. coke), though they can't/shouldn't do anything about clothes (turning you away because you're wearing the wrong shirt seems excessive).

We were once told that we couldn't bring in the chocolate bars we had stashed in my girlfriend's purse because they weren't sponsor products, even though there's no official chocolate sponsor of the 2010 Olympics (I suspect it was just a general 'no outside food or drink' rule). The Minute Maid cranberry juice I had, was ok, since it was a coke product. Her Dr. Pepper was not.

That said, the security guy was just doing his job, and was human - after a half-hearted plea ('Seriously? Come on man, we'll be done it all in like two minutes.') he let us through regardless.

I guess what it comes down to is what kind of people they hire: helpful, courteous people, or power-hungry rule jockeys.

<comment><USER6> > _I guess what it comes down to is what kind of people they hire: helpful, > courteous people, or power-hungry rule jockeys._

The problem is that reality suggests a distribution of the two, not a dichotomy of one or the other.

<comment><USER7> And it goes both ways. The rules may be stupid, but asking the security people to let you slide puts them at risk.

If you want to be a helpful, courteous person, please don't cajole them into doing something that might get them fired just so you can eat a snack.

It sucks all around, but put yourself in their shoes.

<comment><USER7> Down voted for suggesting empathy?

Amazing.

<comment><USER6> I think that people are interpreting that as you encouraging them to 'concede to the man.' When you're just trying to get people to realize that the security guard they are talking to isn't 'the man' and people should realize that in their interactions with them.

I really don't get how people see that as a concession though. Sneaking 'unapproved' products into the Olympics isn't taking any sort of stand against their ridiculous policies. Why? Because it's under the radar. You can't encourage change by secretly resisting the policies you hate in the dark where no one can see you. The purpose of change would be better served by boycotting the Olympics altogether, or loudly and visibly protesting their policies.

<comment><USER7> Yes, this is exactly right.

I get that some people might feel that when people take a job, they willingly buy into what they are asked to do, and should be held accountable for it. I don't completely disagree, but I wish that life so clear and simple.

I spent many years working in the security field. Typically, it attracts low- skill workers, often recent immigrants. You can end up spending a lot of time on your feet, often in shit weather. But it pays the bills and feeds your family. I imagine some guy who had steady work watching a warehouse or a train yard, putting in his time, keeping to himself, and planning to make a better life for himself. Then one day he's told they need people over at the Olympics, time and a half OT, let's get going.

What's he supposed to do? Raise a fuss? Quit? Get fired?

Have a heart.

As you say, if you want to fight this, keep your money away from the event and its sponsors. Choose your battles and pick your targets.

And get a clue: Making a stink over a confiscated Snickers bar is not speaking truth to power. If you're so concerned over the stupid rules, what the fuck are you dong there? Go demand a refund and leave. Don't leave it to the other guy to make the hard choices.

<comment><USER8> Ironically in Vancouver it wasn't They couldn't hire enough minimum wage security guys so a lot of city+provincial workers got seconded.

Because they couldn't release people actually doing any day-day work they had to use managers - including my boss and his boss. So a lot of the security guards, helpers and people on the street have $100K salaries.

<comment><USER7> "So a lot of the security guards, helpers and people on the street have $100K salaries."

Wow. If they didn't have an appreciation for what sort of work that is, I hope they do now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is IP being allowed to take precedence over civil liberties and cultural inheritance these days? WTF?

<comment><USER10> Because nobody makes any money with civil liberties...

"Police will have powers to enter private homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events." The second part is just as scary in my opinion

<comment><USER11> Yea but how many policeman are actually going to do that? They already refused changes to enable them to possess guns due to the problems it would cause them. I wonder if they'd refuse to do this or not, or just "pretend" to do it and not actually bother.

<comment><USER12> I doubt anyone will be seizing your Pepsi if the games were sponsored by Coke, but they might have a case for not letting you set up your Pepsi-points gear under the coke sign.

<comment><USER13> This might happen and some sort of the does happen in Cricket. During the Cricket world cup the TV channel showing the event isn't allowed to show competitor's ads. Also, the players are not allowed to be part of any kind of competitor ad for the entire duration of the tournament. And yes, the English are used to this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The same type of legislation was discussed for the 2010 Olympics here in Vancouver.

\-- <http://www.leg.bc.ca/39th1st/1st_read/gov13-1.htm> \--

"specified municipality" means any of the following: (a) the City of Richmond; (b) the City of Vancouver; (c) the Resort Municipality of Whistler.

32 (1) Subject to this section and section 34, an officer or employee of a specified municipality or a person authorized by the council of a specified municipality has the authority to enter on property, and to enter into property, without the consent of the owner or occupier for the purpose of enforcing, in accordance with subsection (4), the specified municipality's bylaws in relation to signs.

(1) Subject to subsection (2), the Council may make by-laws for the purposes of enforcing its by-laws, including establishing one or more of the following penalties to which a person convicted of an offence in a prosecution under the Offence Act is liable:

(a) a minimum fine; (b) a maximum fine of up to $10 000; (c) in the case of a continuing offence, for each day that the offence continues either or both of (i) a minimum fine under paragraph (a), or (ii) a maximum fine under paragraph (b); (d) imprisonment for not more than 6 months.

\---

This conversation occurred despite the The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Fundamental Freedoms section 2b: "Everyone has the freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication."

My understanding is that said conditions were removed in the revision of the bill.

<comment><USER15> Section 32(1) is blatantly unconstitutional, not under Section 2 of the Charter that you quote, But Section 8: "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure."

The conversation occurred until a lawyer looked at it and said, "Folks this is going to cost a crapload of money".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would assume that the posters in question would be non-sponsor advertising posters facing sites associated with the games, although the original article doesn't elaborate.

Nonetheless, the tendency of governments to violate civil liberties to prevent "ambush marketing" at big sporting events is quite disturbing.

<comment><USER17> While I have immense respect for the United Kingdom, in the United States, you could almost certainly put up a poster saying "The government says it has the right to prohibit me from saying 'Go Nike'. The Constitution says I have the right to say 'go suck eggs'."

(Even the most ardent defender of the Supreme Court's commercial speech jurisprudence -- which is in my mind largely mistaken -- would have a hard, hard time finding against a private citizen for political commentary of that nature.)

<comment><USER18> > Even the most ardent defender of the Supreme Court's commercial speech > jurisprudence -- which is in my mind largely mistaken -- would have a hard, > hard time finding against a private citizen for political commentary of that > nature.

Huh?

The commercial speech argument is that folks who gather together for commercial activity have the same free speech rights as other folks in other circumstances. That argument doesn't imply anything about stopping other people from saying things.

Here's the difference. The commercial speech argument says that any company can say "nike sucks", that the govt can not impose anti-disparagment rules. It doesn't say that Nike can insist that other folks not say "nike sucks".

I'd like to say that I don't understand how anyone can confuse the two, but we do have lots of folks who think that their free speech rights are being violated when someone else criticizes them. (If you're one of those folks, you're wrong. Your right to speak does not restrict my right to speak.)

<comment><USER17> You misunderstand what I'm saying. This is a description of fact: the United States Supreme Court has a well-established body of law which holds that the Constitutional protections afforded to speech of a commercial nature are less extensive than the Constitutional protections afforded to speech of a non- commercial nature. Therefore, there is at least theoretically a risk of the government being allowed to do something analogous to this in spite of the First Amendment against speech restrictions, on the theory that the prohibited speech was commercial in nature.

However, it is unlikely that that action would be in the mainstream of constitutional interpretation in the US, and it is _vanishingly_ unlikely it would be upheld if the commercial speech was also political, such as if the speech self-referentially criticized the government.

This is a statement of opinion: non-withstanding the well-established body of case law, I believe that the Supreme Court is wrong and that commercial speech has and deserves full protection under the First Amendment.

<comment><USER18> > You misunderstand what I'm saying.

I did misstate your position, but I still don't see how that position was in what you wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Upvoted for thoughtful discussion of Ruby.

Edit: sorry, clicked wrong story.

<comment><USER20> I actually found this comment hilarious without the edit.

<comment><USER19> I didn't _really_ click the wrong story. But on reflection, I think you're right-- the edit was a little heavy-handed.

<comment><USER21> I also don't get the joke. Care to explain?

<comment><USER19> Sure. I skimmed the article about the British police and the Olympics in 2012. It did not mention anything that seemed to me like hacker news: not programming, not computers, not electronics, but also not anything clever, like new kind of bicycle or solar panel.

However, it was near the top of the HN front page, and the ~10 comments on the article all discussed the the article as if it was interesting (which I presume it was for the commenters). This made me feel sad, because I don't know of another place that I can find thoughtful discussion of news that appeals to people like me. I generally find it sort of irritating when people post comments saying "This is not hacker news," because it's just a complaint.

Instead, I thought that pretending to praise the story for its valuable content (I chose to pretend it mentioned Ruby, a popular programming language) would be a funny way to lament the situation while also amusing the other folks who were reading the comments and thinking, "What the hell is going on here? Is mainstream media coverage of future British law enforcement policies interesting for some reason that I don't see?"

But, I wanted it still to seem like a plausible comment to the readers who were having a great time discussing the 2012 Olympics, Britain, and media projections of the state of their civil liberties (particularly in regard to posters) in the future. For this reason, I added the "edit."

<comment><USER22> "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog: you understand it better, but the frog dies in the process."

—Mark Twain

Biggest. Dissection. Ever. (as a ratio to the size of the original joke, including the edit and at least 2 comments). You win ;)

<comment><USER19> Well, the edit was technically part of the joke. I may have to wait for 2012 to get my medal, but thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This power was also given to police during the Vancouver 2010 games. It isn't about personal posters, more about large banners hung over buildings which are promoting competitors or anti-olympic protests. The 'enter private homes' makes one think they mean 'remove from the interior of private homes', but in Vancouver it meant 'remove from private buildings'. The wording is of course vague enough to be used for purposes other than the intention, but I never actually heard of somebody having a problem in Whistler or Vancouver.

At the same time, it is a HUGE civil liberties issue, and I with there was another way to handle this. Nobody should really have the right to take down a massive pepsi flag if I feel compelled to cover my building with it.

As far as 'non-sponsored items', I don't recall that being a discussion at Vancouver or Sydney, but you couldn't bring food or drinks into a venue, so that pretty much took care of that 90% of the time. If Omega is the timing sponsor, and I'm wearing a Timex, I can't imagine security is going to take my watch.

<comment><USER24> Shouldn't they? If your building isn't supposed to have advertising on it in the first place, why wouldn't the municipality have the right to remove the advertising? This is not merely a question related to Olympic powers, but if your Pepsi banner is an illegal advertisement, it should come down. (Frankly, not enough of this is done here in Toronto.)

Where I'd have a problem with this is if you had a LEGAL advertisement space in the Olympic area and they prohibited you from showing whatever advertisement would be permitted in your space regardless. If Pepsi were willing to pay your normal rate for a billboard that you legally have on your building, the city should not be able to remove it under any circumstances.

It's worth noting that cities DO occasionally enforce outdoor advertising regulations and that some folks (e.g., <http://illegalsigns.ca/>) think it's a good thing. I happen to agree.

EDIT: Added link to the Illegal Signs blog.

<comment><USER25> > If your building isn't supposed to have advertising on it in the first > place, why wouldn't the municipality have the right to remove the > advertising?

That's a dangerous argument for any political party in the UK to make, given that they run huge campaigns before every election to get supporters to put up posters advertising their party in home windows or on boards outside supporters' private property. Hypocrisy, much?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hmmm - sounds like a real-life backdrop for V for Vendetta.

<comment><USER27>
        Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
        The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
        I see no reason
        Why the Gunpowder Treason
        Should ever be forgot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You know what I think is hillarious? Let's say Nike is an official sponsor for whatever event. Let's say I go there with a different brand of sneakers, underwear, pants...everything!

What are they going to do? Strip down! You are wearing a non-Nike pair of undies! REMOVE THEM AT ONCE! Your shoes are staying with us! They are NOT NIKE!

And then comes the other hilllarious part. The mobile phone. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Apple, Motorola and such are probably always sponsors everywhere. What if I get some obscure brand of mobile phone - Alcatel and Sagem are two easy examples, but think REALLY obscure:

BenQ, Sharp, NEC, Sendo, Pantech, Innostream, VK Mobile, Xcute, Haier, Bird, Eten, Qtek, iMate, WND or Mitac...

Actually, I think people will make a purpose out of going there with the wrong items. Saying loud and clear that people are supposed to "preserve the monopoly" and "stop people carrying non-sponsor items" will really top people's bull!@#$ meters. They might organize groups of such people.

After all, no matter how private it is and how much money sponsors put into it, the audience paid for the ticket. That means they have the same rights before the check-in gate and after it.

This is probably long past the old purpose of the Olympics. It's probably about luring people into forceful submission to corporate fascism. I might be wrong, though. I mean maybe the police won't "police" people into obedience toward corporate interests. I wouldn't know.

</comment><comment><USER29> It seems that the regulations have not been properly set and will be set by the Secretary of State: [http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060012_en_2#pb4...](http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060012_en_2#pb4-l1g19)

I'm hoping that this is just there in case the powers are needed to shut down criminal activity related to the Olympics. Having a law is one thing, how it is enacted is another.

<comment><USER30> Good find on the link.

If it were criminal activity, though, whats to stop the police getting a warrant?

<comment><USER29> Some of these articles are alarmist. It remains to be seen how the police or the government will enact any of these powers.

It's not clear what the criminal activity would be, the law is often made to allow the police to act quickly. Say the Olympic brand were used in some sort of con, the police would have powers to disassociate that activity from the Olympics.

To assume this is to be used to create a monopoly _could_ be cynical at this point.

<comment><USER30> Getting a warrant can be fast under existing laws; there doesn't appear to be any need for them to remove that requirement as far as I can see.

<comment><USER29> Would it be lawful to remove Olympic-related material under a warrant?

<comment><USER30> If it breaks a law.

Otherwise they should go to court the proper way

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The comments about Vancouver 2010 are all valid. I had to laugh during the closing ceremonies when I noticed that one of the bands had been forced to cover the logos on their Marshall amps with black tape. Marshall obviously did not pay any money to have their brand seen by 3 billion viewers.

</comment><comment><USER32> What do they mean by "posters?" The article doesn't really expound.

<comment><USER33> Exactly what I was wondering.

My guesses are

\- people posting agitating messages online

\- unlicensed posters on people's walls

\- posters or banners hung out of people's windows

Whatever it is, I'm sure one would not want the police to enter the house and perform a removal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> In Vancouver, people "associated" with the olympics and such could not bring Pepsi products to the office, only the officially sponsored drinks. They had to put tape on gear to hide logos from nonsponsoring companies -- including laptops from HP, IBM, or Dell.

Because much of the funding comes from the tax payers, hundreds of millions of dollars as it turns out, the people are subsidizing the erosion of their freedoms.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Talk about burying the lead - I can't understand how this part of the story doesn't merit it's own article.

</comment><comment><USER35> As written, one thinks of a poster on a person's wall; but it might be about a person with a stock of bootleg posters for sale. Such rules tend to be specific, but we can't know without seeing them. _EDIT_ or they could even be non-sponsor posters, the commercial concern being an organized attempt to cash in on the free publicity of the games.

BTW: Non-police search for IP infringement has long been allowed, as an Anton Piller order. I am guessing that the test may also have been lowered - <USER2> this is cause for concern. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Piller_order>

</comment><comment><USER30> Dear god. Whoever came up with that idea and thought it _good_ :(

</comment><comment><USER36> <http://no2010.com/>

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm starting to wonder if it would be prudent to pursue a law degree in the interest of defending my own civil liberties.

</comment><comment><USER38> And the news website reports this abuse as if it was an acceptable and respectable decision! Is there any doubt that mass media's role is just social control?

<comment><USER39> "The atmosphere at the Olympics is gonna be great, a big party, just like Vancouver. Oh, did we mention the police will be enforcing Corporate Fascism? And there will be a really neat stadium, too!"

<comment><USER5> Well in a sense the security at events in Vancouver were supposed to enforce that. They did, with a thankfully human touch (you could persuade them to let you bring in things like chocolate bars, etc., but nothing overt like a bottle of Dr. Pepper).

At most (non-sporting) events in Vancouver, you didn't even get a pat down. Dump your change in a bin, go through a metal detector, get your stuff and leave. Anything non-ferrous in your pockets went unnoticed.

I somehow doubt the UK will be similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love a good freedom of speech rant as much as anyone else, but I think the reaction here is completely overblown. The idea is not, of course, to remove posters from inside walls of people's homes. It is to remove advertising on the outside of those homes, and presumably the only reason the police would go inside is to effect the removal of that advertising upon the owner's refusal or absence.

Advertising on houses and buildings is not a matter of free speech; it is a matter of neighbourhood amenity and dominated by local by-laws. I am not allowed to put huge advertising posters on my balcony right now, of course. To do so would enrich me while depriving my neighbours, be an eyesore, push down property values, etc. I can't play super loud music at 3am, either, which doesn't really seem like a breach of my right to free speech either.

My guess is that the planning committee in London thinks that during the Olympics certain people might consider the fines they get for illegal advertising insufficient to deter the act, so they're temporarily allowing the cops to tear them down, and if that requires property access, fine. Probably accompanied by a temporary regulation adjusting the aforementioned advertising controls.

Free speech? Give me a break. Either you consider all anti-eyesore visual appearance regulations to be "against free speech", or you are probably able to concede that a temporary upgrade of enforcement is pretty reasonable considering the stakes.

<comment><USER25> Given that to many locals, the entire Olympics is causing vast amounts of disruption, inconvenience, eyesores and so on, I have absolutely no sympathy if the organisers of the Olympics don't like people putting up whatever the hell they want on their own property for the duration of the games. If you don't like it, go hold your Games somewhere where the people do not have such freedoms, and see how much advertising revenue you can bring in there.

<comment><USER40> Bah. I'm sure if you held a fair vote over the whole affected population, a clear majority would favour the games going ahead. There will always be some who are inconvenienced but that's just a fact of life. It's a numbers game - the greatest good for the greatest number.

And the simple fact is that the appearance of your home, especially regarding commercial advertising, is and always has been regulated by local government. Why would anyone think the rules have suddenly changed, just when the media of the world is focussed on the area?

There's legitimate criticism and then there's just whining. For me, the attitude you're describing falls pretty squarely into the second column. The Powers That Be have decided that the Olympics will be great for London, a decision with which I tend to agree, so stiff upper lip, eh?

<comment><USER25> > I'm sure if you held a fair vote over the whole affected population, a clear > majority would favour the games going ahead.

Why are you sure of that? It seems like every time another country wins an Olympic bid, the vocal local voices are those who don't want it at all, not those who are welcoming it with open arms for the benefits it will bring. Maybe that's because those who live in the typically downtrodden regions chosen for Olympic "regeneration" are frequently displaced afterwards, as more wealthy folk move into the newly updated area post-Olympics.

> It's a numbers game - the greatest good for the greatest number.

Sure, and in surveys, nearly everyone wants a reduction to 20mph speed limits by the parks their kids play in, yet when observed, the majority will happily drive at well over that speed through residential neighbourhoods other than their own.

> And the simple fact is that the appearance of your home, especially > regarding commercial advertising, is and always has been regulated by local > government.

You're playing games. There is no law, under normal circumstances, that prevents me from putting a poster in my window advertising a product or making a political statement.

> Why would anyone think the rules have suddenly changed, just when the media > of the world is focussed on the area?

Because the rules _have_ suddenly changed. Indeed, IIRC it is now a condition of winning an Olympic bid, imposed by the IOC, that the appropriate government take steps to prevent ambush marketing, including legislation if necessary. Yes, you read that right: an external, commercial organisation is dictating to an elected government what laws it must pass.

> The Powers That Be have decided that the Olympics will be great for London, > a decision with which I tend to agree, so stiff upper lip, eh?

Our Powers That Be don't exactly have a great track record of doing things that will be great for London, or anywhere else, just lately -- unless you count bailing out those who pursued failing business models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Flagging this for altered title, both in words and spirit. IT says police will have that power, not that they will do it, and that's not even remotely what the article is about.

<comment><USER42> You are of the opinion that the granting of a police power does not necessarily mean it will be used? I would like to suggest you familiarize yourself with the history of how police powers generally work.

As to your second point... If this article instead contained a brief mention of how a tech company had shared personal information of anti-Olympic protesters with the London police, would you still flag it because that was not the main point of the article?

<comment><USER41> This is a straw man. I wasn't commenting on whether the power is right or wrong or will or will not be used. I was commenting on the editorialized and misleading title. It says "Police to..." as if they have announced plans to or something. More appropriate would be "Police granted right to..." One's accurate, one is linkbait (or here, commentbait).

I'd flag anything that has a title that I feel is baiting.</comment></comment></comment>


TomTom countersues Microsoft in patent dispute - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10200526-75.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 <comment><USER2> Very nice. It looks like TomTom has the upper hand here, since they don't have to license their patents to Microsoft. It will be easy for TomTom to use a different filesystem, but difficult for Microsoft to use a different navigational algorithm.

Of course, software patents are one of the worst ideas ever, and they need to go away soon. Hopefully silliness like this case will bring us closer to that.</comment>


Iota and Jot: the simplest languages? - <AUTHOR> http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Iota/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of W. V. Quine's commentary on Moses Schönfinkel's landmark 1924 paper "Building Blocks of Logic". Schönfinkel pioneered the reduction to K and S, with parentheses, and further suggested that he could reduce the combinators to just one called J, where S = (J J) and K = (J S).

Then Quine observed that one could use a preponent binary operator "o" to dispense with parentheses, at which point ~"" All Schönfinkel's sentences build of "J" and parentheses go over unambiguously into strings of "J" and "o".""

Therefore all valid forms can be represented as binary numerals as well, though the converse is not true: not all binary numerals represent valid forms -- unlike Iota's bijective mapping.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also: One combinator basis for stack based language <http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.concatenative/1915>

Two combinator basis for Joy: <http://tunes.org/~iepos/joy.html></comment>


Microsoft reinvents the wheel with Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-reinvents-the-wheel-with-windows-8-2012-06-01

<comment><USER2> "The real problem is that it is both unusable and annoying."

</comment><comment><USER3> I definitely understand his point that is a radical departure from existing Windows design and that business, who are loathe to try anything new, might not be interested.

But that fact is, businesses already aren't interested in upgrading to new Windows releases. XP was plenty good for the vast majority of businesses and many of them are still running it because it works just fine.

I had the chance to play with a Windows 8 tablet and I have to say that was pretty impressive. The Metro interface works great in that environment.

My guess is that Microsoft will support Windows 7 for businesses for another decade. In the mean time, they are hoping to win the hearts and minds of people in the fast growing tablet and smartphone market.

I doubt they'll succeed, but they have to give it a shot. I applaud them for making the effort.</comment>