Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43554135 <comment><USER3> This was obviously never going to happen and is absolutely the right decision for Zuckerberg and Facebook. House of Commons select committees bagging a big scalp invariably turn into show trials, with MPs possessing a completely deluded sense of their own insight into a subject queuing up to play to the cameras. The spectacle of having Zuckerberg there would have been absolutely excruciating.

So, much as I'd like to see Facebook deleted from the internet, at least we'll be spared the embarrassment of the world witnessing the caliber of our elected representatives.

<comment><USER4> Everything you've said is utterly accurate and yet I _still_ think this is a terrible decision. We'll have to witness some hapless middle-manager undergo the same circus, but with every new person to speak we'll have a customary "I simply cannot believe Mr. Zuckerberg did not think it was important for him to be here in person!".

Having a fall guy give terrible answers looks worse than him giving terrible answers. At the very least send Sheryl Sandberg - the message they're sending out right now is that they aren't taking it seriously.

<comment><USER5> > We'll have to witness some hapless middle-manager undergo the same circus

According to The Guardian, Facebook said that "the company would be putting forward its chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, or its chief product officer, Chris Cox."

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/27/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/27/facebook- mark-zuckerberg-declines-to-appear-before-uk-fake-news-inquiry-mps)

<comment><USER4> Which is fair enough, but the point is it's not Mark or Sheryl.

They want a celebrity they can shake their fists at and give a right telling off to. Politicians don't build their careers giving tongue-lashings to non- public figures, and that's going to be a problem now.

As I type this, I've just read that Zuckerberg has agreed to testify before a congressional committee - this is going to piss off MPs in the UK all the more though because he snubbed them first (which in turns means whoever gets sent is going to get a lot more abuse and more of the "Where is he!?" feigned outrage).

I'm frankly surprised that Sheryl Sandberg isn't being sent to the UK if Zuckerberg is testifying in the US (although I don't see why he can't do both). The whole angle at the time of her hiring was that she would be "the grown up in the room". I realize that was a long time ago now, but if ever there was a time for the COO to step up this has to be it.

<comment><USER6> > I'm frankly surprised that Sheryl Sandberg isn't being sent to the UK if > Zuckerberg is testifying in the US (although I don't see why he can't do > both). The whole angle at the time of her hiring was that she would be "the > grown up in the room".

Arguably, that perception is exactly why he has to send a clear subordinate if he isn't going himself, and not someone perceived to be his babysitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Facebooks PR seems all over the place. It seems to go like this:

1) Blame users/say it wasn't as bad/not a breach

2) Controversy gets worse

3) Apologise, say we got it wrong, working on it

I think this is especially dumb as FB took out a personally-signed-by- Zuckerberg letter in 6 UK sunday papers last weekend. It looks very fake.

<comment><USER8> > _FB took out a personally-signed-by-Zuckerberg letter in 6 UK sunday papers > last weekend_

Were they identically worded?

<comment><USER7> Yes, but it wasn't signed by the CPO, the board, or anyone, they were all signed by Zuckerberg so I think it looks especially fake to take out those ads (which are especially targeted at the 'political class' IMO) and then refuse to come before MPs.

Source: [https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180325071038-01-faceb...](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180325071038-01-facebook- apology-note-exlarge-169.jpg)

<comment><USER9> That makes it sound like people are upset about an isolated incident, trying to play this off as an isolated incident is going to blow up very badly as people "discover" just how much of their data is everywhere, whether they gave permission or not this isn't about a single breach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york No representation without taxation.

Why should Facebook send Zuckerberg when Facebook paid a grand total of £2.6 million taxes to the UK in 2017.

If the British parliament wants Zuckerberg to attend, make the UK relevant to Facebook. Tax it.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/04/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/04/facebook- uk-corporation-tax-profit)

<comment><USER10> Did you read the linked article? Facebook deliberately structure their operations to try and avoid paying UK tax. So it seems odd to then cite that as a reason for him not attending.

<comment> noir-york Yes, of course I read the article. If there was political will, Facebook would pay taxes in the UK.

The article I linked to in my comment showed that FBK paid (slightly) more taxes in 2017 than in 2016 following a public outcry.

Political pressure and HMRC's best and brightest could surely find ways to make Facebook pay a just level of taxes.

<comment><USER10> But their current arrangements are partly a result of political lobbying. So if they're politically engaged enough to lower their taxes why aren't they politically engaged enough to answer to this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Come on Zuck, think about how this will make you look in the sequel of "The Social Network".

<comment><USER12> "The Antisocial Network"?

<comment><USER13> That title is a slap on the face for us Americans who confuse antisocial with asocial.

Perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It feels like Zuck is in panic and listening too much to his PR advisors who are likely telling him to stay out of the public until the storm settles. Not a smart move on this particular case

<comment><USER15> To be fair being called in front of MP's is like a ritualised grilling, nothing ever comes out of it other than total humiliation for the victim.

<comment><USER16> Yes is this a new thing? I don't remember in the past the committees being so publicly snide and unpleasant like they seem to be now. Maybe it wasn't televised so prominently before?

And the most strange part is how they now have celebrity appearances as well - comedians and actors?

<comment><USER17> They always let loose a little - you can go back and look at old transcripts and see much the same thing.

There's a certain element of it becoming slightly worse due to being televised. In an era where there is a huge gap between government rhetoric and practice, it can be a useful way to signal ones 'principles' even as one files obediently through the government lobby when it comes to voting on actual legislation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wrong time to chicken out. That will probably have serious consequences for FB in Europe and will help with convincing people to regulations like revenue- based taxation.

</comment><comment><USER19> As someone from the UK I am not at all surprised, there is no upside to him doing so. There is nothing he can say that will help, the committee will absolutely rip into him as their primary audience is the press and people of the UK, they don't really care about his answers to their questions. The problem is that the story isn't about FB making mistakes, or being hacked, or doing something they said they wouldn't. It's that people are working out what it is they've agreed to to use the service, and there is no spinning that.

<comment><USER20> >It's that people are working out what it is they've agreed to to use the service

If the vast majority of users are only working out what they have signed up for now, after using the service for years, then it would be hard to argue that Facebook's users have given informed consent to a contract, which is generally a legal requirement here for it to be said that you have agreed to something.

<comment><USER21> When I and a lot of people I know signed up, an active .edu email was required. It was like the unprofessional kids' version of LinkedIn. The implicit conditions of the agreement to sign up for an account - that only other students and academic faculty could use the service and engage with content - were completely abandoned _after_ they had cornered a part of their "social graph".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Saying this is a strategic mistake may be a bit too early to tell. It depends on whether this issue will slowly disappear in the media and minds of people (like most things). He has no legal obligation to appear if I understand correctly. The select committee mainly consists of MPs who objected Brexit. Of course they try to make their point that the vote was skewed or manipulated. If, on the other hand, the pressure stays on, it may very well be a strategic mistake not to appear.

<comment><USER23> What on earth does their stance on Brexit have to do with there position in the select committee?!

<comment><USER24> Brexit is relevant, because like the election of Trump, it appears nefarious actors (likely Russians in both cases) used Facebook to drive votes in a particular direction (pro-Trump, pro-Brexit).

<comment><USER25> Some people posted fake content on Facebook? And that is responsible for the election of Trump and Brexit? If you actually believe that there's some pop up internet ads I have ready for you...

<comment><USER26> Not so long ago, Zuckerberg said it was "crazy" to think that Facebook influenced the US election. I don't think he's quite so confident of that today.

<comment><USER25> Zuck could be "persuaded" of anything I'm sure to placate the scapegoating whiners of the western world. The thing is if you're vacuous enough to invest a lot of yourself on fb you are equally vacuous to join the pitchfork mobs at the prompting of mass media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I said it in a previous post but if the congress/senate were allowed to summon Tony Hayward, BP CEO, over the Deep Water Horizon disaster then the UK Parliament are well in their rights to summon, and expect attendance, of Zukerberg over this.

<comment><USER16> > the UK Parliament are well in their rights to summon, and expect attendance, > of Zukerberg over this

But they aren't within their rights to summon him. That's not a power they have. They can invite him, and they did, but he doesn't have to go and speak to a committee if he doesn't want to.

<comment><USER28> I believe they (select committees) can compel witnesses within the UK so visiting the UK might be a problem.

Its never been done recently - though god knows what old laws are still on the books that could be applied.

<comment><USER29> Can the Queen order his execution?

<comment><USER28> Well the UK abolished the death penalty for all crimes.

I think acts of attainder (ie your are declared guilty by parliament with out judicial process ) is not longer leagal

The act of attainder was considered so bad that was banned by the founders in the US constitution.

<comment><USER29> Isn't the Queen's authority extra-parliamentary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not a complete surprise, but I suspect this is a strategic mistake from Zuckerberg. It's going to send the wrong message, at a time when Facebook is already under pressure and regulators in the EU are about to be given the most powerful privacy tools (and the most heavy penalty regime) they've ever had to work with.

<comment><USER31> I wonder if regulators will just decide the split up facebook.

It would take a ton of leverage and political goodwill across both the EU and the US, but i have no doubt it could happen.

<comment><USER32> > I wonder if regulators will just decide the split up facebook.

I keep hearing this suggestion and it makes no sense. Split into what? It would be like asking to split Google into one company doing the search and another one doing the ads. You're talking about loss leader strategy here and you cannot have a company whose only product is a loss leader. Majority of users won't pay to have search or social network. They value their privacy much lower and would trade it to get the services without direct monetary compensation.

<comment><USER33> > I keep hearing this suggestion and it makes no sense. Split into what?

Instagram, WhatsApp, and multiple competing Facebook copies (say Facebook Red, Facebook Green, and Facebook Orange) with a _mandate to interoperate_ with each other and with other networks. Existing accounts are divided randomly and evenly between the copies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if this will affect their tax arrangements, as they have been treated rather nicely up till now.

In 2014, Facebook paid £4,327 in tax to the UK. The next year, they paid £4.16 million, which seems to be an improvement but then in the same year they were given an £11 million tax credit, so not so much.

</comment><comment><USER34> > "You have a wealthy company from a developed nation going into an economy or > democracy that's still struggling to get its feet on the ground - and taking > advantage of that to profit from that," he told MPs.

Christopher Wylie (ex-Facebook whistleblower) just gave the primary reason why Facebook is blocked in China.

<comment><USER33> >> "You have a wealthy company from a developed nation going into an economy or democracy that's still struggling to get its feet on the ground - <USER2> taking advantage of that to profit from that," he told MPs.

> Christopher Wylie (ex-Facebook whistleblower) just gave the primary reason > why Facebook is blocked in China.

No. China isn't a "democracy that's still struggling to get its feet on the ground," China is a country run by anti-democratic authoritarians who want to protect their power by controlling the information their people see. It's also rather protectionist, and does not want foreign companies to be major players on its internet. The way Facebook makes its money has _nothing_ to do with why it's blocked there.

<comment><USER34> So you think the Chinese government's motivation for protectionism is purely because they are undemocratic evil-doers hell-bent on preserving their power.

I disagree and believe they have other motivations behind protectionism, limiting democracy, and authoritarianism.

It seems you probably don't have background in Chinese history. There was a period pre-WWII where China was divvied up by colonial powers and humiliated in defeats for over a century (primarily due to a weak navy). The country was addicted at that time not to Facebook but to opium, which was imposed upon by foreign influence. Both nationalist and communist parties recognized this and vowed to unify and expel foreign power. The communists ended up essentially winning, but the legacy of weariness towards foreign influence persisted.

I can assure you the #1 and #2 things in China's mind when banning facebook and google are to #1 prevent a backdoor for the US into massive data collection and #2 nurture homegrown technology companies to prevent spilling wealth out. You might consider #2 to be unfair, but you'd also have to consider that the US was a fully developed economy, and China's developing economy would not be fairly competing against foreign tech companies. The decision has nothing to do with free speech as facebook would simply have to comply with local laws and would have gladly censored at the request of China—but that wasn't the issue.

That being said, protectionism isn't exclusive to China. It's adopted heavily in Japan too, as well as in the US. You can't really argue for or against it as it's a matter of sovereign policy as foreign citizens do not have a natural right to exploit a sovereign market.

Regarding democracy and authoritarianism, keep in mind the the country was super poor and uneducated. Ceding power democratically across the country would have probably resulted in massive corruption. The country is not a dictatorship though, but it is governed by a subset of the population who are communist party members. While they probably want to keep power to themselves, they'll also in theory be better governors than the general public.

Believe it or not the population of China overwhelmingly supports their government. The authority and legitimacy of a government does not come from democracy per se (nor from opinions of people half-way around the world), but from the people. Democracy is a great way to represent the power of the people, but as long as the population approves and delegates power to the government (by not rebelling), then it has legitimacy.

So no there's no democracy, but if they did have a vote right now the people would side with their government, and not the poorly informed foreign distant opinions from people like yourself. It just so happens their form of government does not delegate decisions of governance at the same granularity to the people as we do in America, but then again we don't have much granularity either through our representative form of government (we don't even pick the president!).

They pick their premier through rules of the communist party. We pick our president through a set of complex rules masking the fact that an electoral college actually selects the president (with things like super-delegates, which were enacted to reduce the power of the average voter since one election the democratically elected candidate didn't satisfy the DNC party expectations). In the end they have one party, we have only two real parties. There's not much difference except we directly elect a few more representatives than they do.

<comment><USER33> > Regarding democracy and authoritarianism, keep in mind the the country was > super poor and uneducated. Ceding power democratically across the country > would have probably resulted in massive corruption.

Are you claiming China's government isn't massively corrupt right now?

> The country is not a dictatorship though

Never claimed that it was (at this moment).

> Believe it or not the population of China overwhelmingly supports their > government. The authority and legitimacy of a government does not come from > democracy per se (nor from opinions of people half-way around the world), > but from the people. Democracy is a great way to represent the power of the > people, but as long as the population approves and delegates power to the > government (by not rebelling), then it has legitimacy.

I too have seen that state-published English-language book about the survey that "shows" the Chinese people want a "moral" government before a democratic one. It's right next to a similar title about "true history" of the Dalai Llama (or something like that) in the bookshop in the international terminal of the Beijing airport. On some level, I agree it's true.

But the question of, "do the Chinese people support their government" is a complicated one that I don't think is even answerable at a meaningful level right now. The Chinese information environment doesn't permit it, since it doesn't give the Chinese people the necessary ideological framework or information about alternatives to even form an _independent_ opinion. I'm sure some people do so anyway, but it's a much harder task. In the west people benefit from concepts like "you can love your country and hate your government;" relatively unbiased information; and more varied, competing, opinions.

> So you think the Chinese government's motivation for protectionism is purely > because they are undemocratic evil-doers hell-bent on preserving their > power.

> I disagree and believe they have other motivations behind protectionism, > limiting democracy, and authoritarianism.

And those motivations are? The historic national humiliation thing? To be honest that reads as more of a convenient "surface" justification akin to American evidence-laundering via "parallel construction" from evidence obtained by illegal surveillance. It's not supported by the history of Google in China, for instance. They had a large ~30% marketshare until they refused to play ball on censorship, they then they were blocked, _but not before_.

<comment><USER34> > Are you claiming China's government isn't massively corrupt right now?

The corruption happens at lower levels, and is usually a byproduct of too much power granted to someone who doesn't deserve it. Enabling democracy would have caused more corruption as it requires a well-informed public. China during the revolution was definitely not full of educated and well-informed people.

> But the question of, "do the Chinese people support their government" is a > complicated one that I don't think is even answerable at a meaningful level > right now. The Chinese information environment doesn't permit it, since it > doesn't give the Chinese people the necessary ideological framework or > information about alternatives to even form an independent opinion. I'm sure > some people do so anyway, but it's a much harder task. In the west people > benefit from concepts like "you can love your country and hate your > government;" relatively unbiased information; and more varied, competing, > opinions.

You're clearly not Chinese, and probably don't many people in China. But I am, and I know people who live in China (middle class, even poor people), and the sentiment is that the government is doing a good job.

> And those motivations are? The historic national humiliation thing? To be > honest that reads as more of a convenient "surface" justification akin to > American evidence-laundering via "parallel construction" from evidence > obtained by illegal surveillance. It's not supported by the history of > Google in China, for instance. They had a large ~30% marketshare until they > refused to play ball on censorship, they then they were blocked, but not > before.

Protectionism is preferred by countries in the same way as the "Buy USA" rhetoric in America that you may be able to relate to. The unique history China had with colonialism is just a bonus. It turns out that China was smart enough to recognize the national importance of the internet technology industry, and levied massive walls against them. You can't easily put an import _tax_ on Google, but you _can_ block them. I can guarantee you it had nothing to do with censorship. Google/Facebook are businesses and would never make a stand by jeopardizing their China business by not complying with local censorship laws. It was never about that. It was simply because they were not welcome, and that if they did flourish they'd have troves of data on Chinese citizens in the hands of a foreign entity.

<comment><USER33> > The corruption happens at lower levels, and is usually a byproduct of too > much power granted to someone who doesn't deserve it.

On what basis do you make that judgement? Isn't it too difficult to truly learn about the activities of high government officials?

> China during the revolution was definitely not full of educated and well- > informed people.

There has been quite a bit of time since the revolution. Do you think the Chinese people are well-informed enough for democracy (or at least more political liberalization) now? If not, why not?

> You're clearly not Chinese, and probably don't many people in China. But I > am, and I know people who live in China (middle class, even poor people), > and the sentiment is that the government is doing a good job.

I know many Chinese people very well. Are you yourself from China or do you similarly just know many people from there? I think the former is likely, but your phrasing is ambiguous.

> [Among] people who live in China (middle class, even poor people), [...] the > sentiment is that the government is doing a good job.

That doesn't contradict anything that I wrote, in fact I said that's probably true. My point, stated more bluntly, is that it doesn't mean much if their opinion is controlled. The necessary environment for informed opinion includes open information and freedom from coercion, neither of which exist in mainland China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can one of the mods explain the dramatic killing of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16687588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16687588) its a perfectly valid discussion with an article by a reasonable publication?

</comment><comment><USER36> Mark was _invited_ and he declined. What's really wrong with that?

His wisdom and personal belief (including legal and lawyer suggestions) tells him that coming over to the invitation would not do him (nor his company) any good.

And, given with all the information he has supposedly with people, he may already have some knowledge of the personality of the MPs who are going to grill him that he may think otherwise that appearing before them would tantamount into a gong show.

<comment><USER30> Legally speaking, there might not be anything wrong with it.

Practically speaking, he just snubbed an influential, cross-party group of MPs, and the House of Commons where those MPs and their colleagues sit has the closest thing to absolute power that exists within our legal system.

These are people who could pass emergency legislation imposing a windfall tax on Facebook amounting to 100% of everything it does or owns in UK territory and authorising HMRC to immediately seize assets accordingly. They could pass laws requiring all UK-based ISPs to filter Facebook traffic any way they want. They could pass laws imposing an extremely privacy-focussed data protection regime, even more so than the GDPR that is already due to come into effect in a couple of months.

Now, obviously such extreme reactions are unlikely in response to this snub, even given the history here. But there is a whole scale of possible responses to Facebook's current situation, and large fines and/or some of the people involved actually going to prison are not out of the question. Tempting fate may not be the smartest business move Facebook could make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is the ultimate act of Silicon Valley arrogance, at it will backfire hard.

Not just on Facebook, and not just in the UK. This crosses a line all democratic nations in which SV companies have significant interests and even more significant influence will take note of.

SV and apparently large parts of HN are completely delusional if they think this won't have serious consequences.

</comment><comment><USER38> Aside from everything, I find it remarkable that the media are gunning for facebook right now (referencing all those shady algorithms / shady partnerships etc etc) to the extent that facebook is a 'dirty word' and yet the newspapers are evidently quite happy to accept payment for full page ads in their publications from ... facebook.

</comment><comment><USER39> What happens if someone decided to commit a crime using SaaS platform, then requests data to be deleted. Police then go to SaaS provider and such provider can't give any data. Is SaaS provider going to be blamed?

</comment><comment><USER40> Has Zuckerberg done any thing like this before (e.g. Microsoft vs. United States style things)

</comment><comment><USER41> Keep digging, Mark.

</comment><comment><USER42> Coward of cowards.

</comment><comment><USER43> Reading comments lately on HN feels like an expression of Two Minutes Hate.

<comment><USER44> HN is highly critical of everything, especially closed-gardens and data manipulation. Of course there's a distaste for FB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I hope this hate on FB ends already, I'm tired of seeing the home page of HN polluted by it.

We all knew what was going on on FB, so acting surprised is silly. And we all know this won't change nothing because most people don't care and will happily keep using FB. And we also know even if people stop using FB they will keep using WA/IG. So what's the point? Is this only a problem now that Trump took advantage of it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Who is acting surprised?

Why do you think it is inevitable that people would use WhatsApp or Instagram if they decide to leave Facebook? Is that really as obvious as you are making it out to be? Is there any evidence of that?

The point is that finally, FINALLY the mainstream is paying attention to the potential ramifications of having a consolidated identity on social media, and how they potentially could have their perception of reality distorted by using such services. Now is the time to embrace changes if they come, not to get complacent at the news cycle based on ones own personal cognitive biases.

<comment><USER46> The problem is not only Facebook that distorts the reality, it's most of the media. Look at mainstream media like CNN or RT which favour one side and totally ignore the arguments of the other.

All of that will continue to happen no matter what until people start to think critically and question all the information they get, be it from their parents, school teachers, news outlets or social media.

In my circle of friends in fact a lot of people are using IG and WA and ditched Facebook long ago. I use all of the three solely because my business generates a lot of sales through these channels. So I think yes, people will continue to use it in the foreseeable future. But this opinion is based solely on my bubble that I live in.

<comment><USER47> RT is not "mainstream media" in any sensible way, it's Russian state propaganda TV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Coward.

</comment><comment><USER49> No matter how much of a mistake Facebook make with their PR, they're gonna get away with it.

Primarily because a majority of the public can't sustain their interest in the subject beyond their day-to-day concerns in life.

I mean the whole argument here is that stolen user data from Facebook led a marketing agency to enable a political party with a certain agenda to deceive the public and win a democratic vote. Gathering so much power is a big victory in the first place, that is not so easy to ignore / forget / undo very easily, especially when most people continue to use Facebook products the way they did because the news slowly becomes old and people forget and move on.

This subject is bigger than Facebook, it reveals shortcomings of a democratic vote and how power in the capitalist system can render a democracy to be an illusion. Facebook's victory is to have accumulated so much power in the first place. Power aka most personal user data any institute has ever gathered. Never mind they used shady sly tactics to take permissions in the first place.</comment>


The Official Curriculum for Your Degree in Startups - <AUTHOR> http://dontrepreneur.com/2009/07/19/the-official-curriculum-for-your-degree-in-startups/

<comment><USER2> Helpful collection of info. Thanks</comment>


Show HN: BetAnnoyer, you owe me bro (app I created) - <AUTHOR> http://betannoyer.com

<comment><USER2> I'll bet $20 bucks you get shut down by your host for spam complaints.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a few spelling and grammatical issues.

"in a fun, and harmless way": comma isn't needed. "There # Number: You probably want "their" (ditto for 'There Email') and "# Number" is redundant. Use either the pound sign or the word. You also probably mean "phone number."

How are you making sure your service won't be abused?

<comment><USER4> i think you can only remind someone once over a period of time

<comment><USER5> The menu goes up to 5 messages in 24 hours. It stops after 24 hours.

<comment><USER6> What's to stop me from a) Submitting multiple requests b) Using a bot to submit a LOT of requests to bug the heck out of someone c) Using a bot to submit a LOT of requests and DOS betannoyer.com ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Out of curiosity: What bet did someone lose to you, and not pay, for you to take the effort to make the site?

</comment><comment><USER8> Let's think about the what's going to make ppl pay up more. How about some public humiliation?

eg. If Twitter user A owes money, tweet at all A's followers telling them about it ... "@AFollower Did you know @A owes @B $20?"

[http://www.spanishvida.com/2010/02/22/in-spain-debt- collecto...](http://www.spanishvida.com/2010/02/22/in-spain-debt-collectors- use-public-shaming-to-extract-payment/) is the story I heard that sparked this idea BTW.

Not that I'm saying this is a good idea and you should do it, I think you'll be shut down so quickly, I'm just pointing out ...

</comment><comment><USER9> Haha nice! I built something similar for Twilio + FreshBooks called "Wheres My Money Man?" using clips from Family Guy: <http://www.songcupid.com/wheresmymoney/>

It barely works but whatever.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool app. You could integrate with the WePay API so that the person owed money could actually collect easily online.

<https://stage.wepay.com/developer>

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how the variety of collections and consumer protection laws apply here (I know there's technically no "consumer", but I'll bet that harassment to pay up falls in there somehow…)

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks fun. You don't need 3 forms. Keep it simple and quick.

</comment><comment><USER13> Aside from bets, it might be a good way to get clients to pay up faster :D

</comment><comment><USER14> Whose twitter username is "Twitter username" in the third choice?

<comment><USER15> I also wondered the same thing. I think that could be made a bit more clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You're probably going to get sued or shut own for harassment.

<comment><USER4> i know right!, enjoy your notoriety while it lasts

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Haha,this is kinda hilarious!</comment>


Coronavirus: Far-right spreads Covid-19 'infodemic' on Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52490430 <comment><AUTHOR> 'The 34 websites together received more than 80 million interactions.

These included:

almost 150,000 interactions for HumansAreFree.com which made claims that the "plandemic" had been prepared years before the outbreak

about 1.7 million interactions for RealFarmacy.com which falsely claims that personal ultraviolet lamps are a safe remedy for coronavirus'

'Chloe Colliver led the study: "We started doing this research because we were interested to look at the intersection of extremism and disinformation online," she explained.

'"We wanted to know how the coronavirus crisis was affecting those trends."'

'Researchers identified five communities, united by the topic of discussion:

Immigration Islam Judaism LGBT Elites

'The numbers, probably indicative rather than giving the full picture, show that for the first four of these, the scale of activity hadn't increased in volume since the lockdown.

'But while there weren't more posts about immigration, for example, discussions about the topic had increasingly linked it to Covid-19.'

'"Anti-elite conversations have escalated dramatically, especially driving home the idea the lockdown is a tool of social control."'

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23060083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23060083)

Sounds similar to some things I read this weekend

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're right. Check out this other campaign I found about MeWe.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23068470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23068470)</comment></comment></comment>


Thousands of AI researchers are boycotting the new Nature journal - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2018/may/29/why-thousands-of-ai-researchers-are-boycotting-the-new-nature-journal <comment><USER2> Some heavy hitters on the signatory list: Jeff Dean, Yoshua Bengio, Volodymyr Mnih, Ilya Sutskever, Geoffrey Hinton, Chelsea Finn, Sergey Levine.

Would like to see Demis Hassabis and David Silver join the effort.

If Deepmind, OpenAI and Berkeley (well represented here) all boycott, that's a huge chunk of key AI researchers.

<comment><USER3> Deepmind puts everything on ArXiv already.

<comment><USER2> they are not mutually exclusive. nature allows for preprints on arxiv according to wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Admittedly I work outside academia (though my wife is a tenured professor) and thus have some unavoidable naïveté about how the culture and community work, but I'm always confused about why universities aren't just sponsoring the organizational costs of coordinating the review process, and establishing community-driven open journals to replace the rent-seeking corporate journals. What am I missing about the benefits of the status quo keep it so entrenched?

<comment><USER5> Universities could be in conflict of interest - organizing review of competing (or worse its own) research

<comment><USER6> Isn't the peer review process blind, anyway? University affiliation would presumably be one the scrubbed fields, no?

<comment><USER7> The process is blind, but it's fairly easy to know who the author is just due to the topic at hand. At least for specific subfields.

<comment><USER8> It is not blind for most science fields (I was not aware of any that were blind before reading this. PhD in Earth Science). What fields do you know of where journals send out papers for review with the author and his/her affiliation removed?

<comment><USER9> I've seen it exactly once (in a numerical analysis journal). Authors were blacked out. This was undermined almost immediately when the authors wrote in the introduction "... following previous work of the present authors [1]...".

Even if all these clues could be effectively removed, the nature of the research work, tools used, writing style, all unambiguously indicate authorship to someone in the field. I think for this reason double-blind review is not popular.

Which is not to say that it would be great if it were possible...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everytime something like this comes up I feel compelled to remind everyone that in most cases I know of (NSF and NIH funded research) US taxpayer funded research must be made freely available. See [https://publicaccess.nih.gov/](https://publicaccess.nih.gov/) and [https://www.research.gov/research- portal/appmanager/base/des...](https://www.research.gov/research- portal/appmanager/base/desktop?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=research_node_display&_nodePath=/researchGov/Service/Desktop/AboutPublicAccess.html) .

Don't get me wrong, I think the current publishing model is archiac, exploitative, and needs to change, but this whole "taxpayer funded research should be freely available argument" seems to me to oversimplify the issue and ignore the facts.

<comment><USER11> Are you claiming that most research is already freely available and yet everyone is, for some unspecified reason, still paying publishers for an extraneous service?

The NIH site links right to PubMed Central from which it seems like it'd be 'easy' to find a paper for which I know the title. None of the pages on the NSF site ever seemed to be intended for someone that's not _contributing_ to the 'public access repository'.

Would you demonstrate your claim and provide a link, for an article published in Nature, to the same freely available version that "must be made"?

It seems pretty fantastic that libraries would spend taxpayer money for access to journals containing papers that are already freely available. I'm very confused why that would be.

<comment><USER12> Can you give an example of a publicly-funded paper that you _couldn 't_ find on PubMed or another server, but a Nature or another closed journal offers for sale?

<comment><USER13> Sure, go to Nature Medicine: [https://www.nature.com/nm/](https://www.nature.com/nm/)

Click the first research article they show. It has various public funding sources:

 _" The collection of the ELC and genetic data for the American samples was supported by direct funding from the Intramural Research Program of the NIMH to the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch (D.R.W., PI, protocol 95-M-0150, NCT00001486, annual report number: ZIA MH002942-05), with supplemental analytic support from the Clinical and Translational Neuroscience Branch (K.F.B., PI). G.U. received partial support from P50MH094268."_ [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y)

Check that other site: [https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placen...](https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placenta%20biology%20and%20genetic%20risk%20for%20schizophrenia%22)

<comment><USER13> And here is the pubmed link (only abstract available): [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29808008](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29808008)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Legality aside, has there ever been an instance of a researcher getting a DMCA notice for posting a paper they wrote on their own website?

Even if you got a DMCA, couldn't you just direct link to a scihub search result that contains your paper?

Edit: I love it when I find my work on scihub. It means it was good enough to 'steal'.

<comment><USER15> The American Psychological Association tried and they quickly backtracked after blowback: [https://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49670...](https://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49670/title/Authors-Peeved-by-APA-s- Article-Takedown-Pilot/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Former scientist here, too. People tend to forget what value a Nature article carries for the successful career in academia. The technical "hosting" of Nature and Arxiv might be the same, but the first will buy a lot of fame and potentially a good position at an research institute.

<comment><USER17> No one forgets that. Everyone just thinks we should solve the chicken-and-egg problem and move that prestige to a set of journals that don't gouge everyone for research that was mostly paid for by public money already and was peer- reviewed by public employees volunteering.

<comment><USER16> Well, then you have to come up with a good idea how to change the nature of humans. We thrive on fame as social status currency

Not just in science. The equivalent in startups might be a famous VC or whatever. It's about attaching yourself to a brand.

<comment><USER18> this has nothing to do with some mystical 'nature of humans', we're just stuck in a bad nash equilibrium.

Journals thrive on reputation and nobody can individually dissent because they lose out. This is the same mechanism that keeps overpriced tuition fees at ivy league colleges afloat.

The answer is to collectively get out by legislating the practice or offering a free public alternative that everybody can immediately jump too. Given that the efforts become more and more organised, (German wholesale boycott of Elsevier) this might be happening sooner than later.

<comment><USER19> But Arxiv has been around for years and the Journals haven't died yet.

<comment><USER18> Just offering a superior platform is not enough, as said in the last post, you also must create a way to collectively move everybody over and break the feedback loop of prestige journals.

The same happens with social networks. You could offer the freest, most privacy respecting network of all, as long as individuals get punished for leaving the old one individually it'll never take over a significant amount of market share, even _if everyone on the old network agrees that the newer one is better_.

<comment><USER16> Everybody would agree on this - in theory. But you don't say _how_ this should happen, and this is where it breaks down. The only thing that comes to mind is "magic"...

<comment><USER20> ... which is exactly our problem. Everyone (bar the publishers) hates the status quo, but nobody knows how to break it. My personal hope is that sci-hub will gradually erode the profitability of scientific publishing down to nothing, but breaking the stranglehold of publishers will almost certainly be a long and painful process.

[http://honisoit.com/2015/11/the-dictatorship-with-no- dictato...](http://honisoit.com/2015/11/the-dictatorship-with-no-dictator/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One thing I really wonder is wheather those costs are actually necessary for simple online publications:

\- Peer review is basically "free", meaning it's done by volunteers without compensation.

\- Hosting cost is magnitudes lower than publication/reading fees. A few dollars per paper should be enough by far.

\- Organisation of peer reviewing, editing and so on imposes some costs, but a lot of it could be automated and the remaining cost per published paper should still be quite low.

So, would it be technically possible to create such journals? Of course, prestige might be a hurdle, but given some high-profile researchers would join as editors initially, that could work out.

<comment><USER22> Prestige is a made up concept to keep the big players at the top. If the paper is good then it shouldn't matter where it's published.

<comment><USER23> You've got it backwards though.

A paper isn't good because it's in Nature - it's in Nature because it's good.

<comment><USER22> I'm actually more concerned about the negative (your statement is mostly true), i.e. "if it's in a second-tier journal, it doesn't exist". Sure, some just look for an outlet for their crappy research, but the publication outlet shouldn't be used as a shortcut to evaluating quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Journal reviewing is oversold in my opinion. Just like Wikipedia became a better encyclopedia than traditional encyclopedias, I don't see why open- access approaches can't be at least as efficient at truth-seeking and consesus-building than traditional journals.

<comment><USER25> The whole idea behind journals is peer-review. That's very nearly a wikipedia- style open access system anyway. There's just not a great reason to keep chargind exhorbitant publishing fees when it's published online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A bit off topic but have research journals become a whipping boy for the anti- science crowd? The general public is being spoon fed either very poor quality click-bait "break through/cure cancer" articles or worse. Recently the peer- reviewed != reproducible issue was highlighted. I feel there is a common thread but it could my commonality bias of an HN reader. Is attacking science journals a new trend?

<comment><USER27> Supporting reproduction, complaining about public presentation of science, and disliking the rent-seeking behaviors of journals are all pro-science positions held more often by scientists than any other group.

<comment><USER26> Thank-you! I haven't talked to a research scientist in quite awhile. Its one of the reasons I like HN's discussion about these types of issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> May be these journals should move away from publishing and rather be in the business of curation from a source such as arxiv; Arxiv has a wealth of content, may be journals could sift through them and produce periodic curated lists of work that is the most significant.

<comment><USER29> Those journals do not really have an incentive to do that, do they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)

"setting it to download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT"

INFORMATION IS FREE:

"Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release."

</comment><comment><USER31> It's really strange to me that in 2018, with open web and were we are publishing massive codebases on github that folks are still going through a paid/closed publisher to get published.

<comment><USER23> While many eyes may make all bugs shallow; getting those eyes isn't free.

That is, the primary value-add of the traditional paper publishing model is trust in the editorial staff and peer-reviewers. Anybody can throw up a repo on github - not everyone can get that repo published in Nature. Journals provide a curated list of exciting, valuable, and reliable research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I found some blockchain project teams trying to solve the problems in scholarship communication. Pluto([https://pluto.network](https://pluto.network)) is non-profit organization and trying to make standard academic data for free. Check out this video with English subtitle. ([https://youtu.be/IKqUhJZN6Zg](https://youtu.be/IKqUhJZN6Zg)). And also there is scienceroot project([https://www.scienceroot.com](https://www.scienceroot.com)) and Orvium. If you wnat to see the details, check this post. ([https://hackernoon.com/mapping-the-blockchain-for-science- la...](https://hackernoon.com/mapping-the-blockchain-for-science- landscape-546b61bfbd1))

</comment><comment><USER33> While we are on the topic, why are we supporting IEEE? They have so many valuable as well as historical papers behind their paywall. I'm IEEE member and want to find out what can I do about this.

<comment><USER34> Why are you an IEEE member? Can't you just be not.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't solve the problem of getting open access to IEEE published papers.

<comment><USER34> They have DOI numbers, don't they? So you can just use sci-hub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nature used to be a prestigious journal. But its spinoffs, not so much. When they stuck to bio, they were good. Computer science, not so good. Nature Energy's hype pieces from flaky battery inventors have been mentioned on HN.

</comment><comment><USER36> ArXiv forever!

</comment><comment><USER37> Journals are based on prestige; researchers give their work for free to a publisher where it is reviewed by other researchers (usually for free) and then published such that other researchers must pay to get the work. It does create a well respected system since publishers want only quality work but the arrangement has become more and more one sided favoring the publishers.

TL;DR This isn't that surprising. The cost of publishing is lower than ever and researchers are tired of getting charged for what they give away for free.

<comment><USER38> > the arrangement has become more and more one sided favoring the publishers

Rather than "has become" this is publishers using their leverage to achieve this situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have a thought... Force car owners, business or consumer, to buy driverless car insurance. No insurance, no autonomous vehicle functionality. Insurance companies would love a new market opportunity, and they'd lead the push to make driverless cars safe enough to insure.

</comment><comment> a-dub Honestly, they should just flip the journal funding model on its head. Instead of readers paying for subscriptions, publishing institutions can pay for publication rights. In fact, they could probably take all the subscription money they get from institutions and change nothing but the name (something like "authorship fee", "membership fee" or "institutional publication service fee" or whatever). make the journals open access and not feel any change at all in revenue.

Besides, if you look at the money, fancy journals are responsible for a lot of funding that ends up in the coffers of researchers or the institutions that support them, so it really wouldn't be crazy. I read somewhere that a Science/Nature paper in some fields is thought to be worth >$1mm in funding.

<comment><USER12> You just invented the open access publishing model.

[https://www.plos.org/publication-fees](https://www.plos.org/publication-fees)

It seems less profitable than the closed-access regime, since copyright is an economically powerful tool.

<comment> a-dub I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that the vast majority of NPG's revenue comes from institutional subscriptions and that the vast majority of those institutions make use of NPG's review/editorial process.

I guess there's less of a notion of the accumulation of valuable property in the pay to publish regime.

But seriously, just call the subscriptions "membership fees." Revenue would probably dip 5% from non-publisher subscriptions and things would stabilize.

It would also neutralize the threat of open access journals gaining more ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wonder if we are repeating the sentiment from 1958: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184576](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184576)

</comment><comment><USER41> What's the point of journals these days, especially in computing with reproducible results (i.e. authors publish a paper on arxiv, code & dataset on github)?

<comment><USER19> Reproducible results? lol. A fraction of researchers actually put out code and data freely, definitely not a majority.

<comment><USER42> And even when it's out, does the code actually run?

Designing your code and data so it's truly reproducible is a ton of work, and most researchers are focused on the paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What is the alternative here - there doesnt seem to be one.

Is there a open, _free_ , peer-reviewed/crowd-reviewed journal paper website for artificial intelligence ?

</comment><comment><USER44> Who runs Nature, why don't you all hold the actual people personally responsible? Change in leadership.

<comment><USER45> How are you going to change the leadership of a company you don't own? What are you planning we do? Get together and buy 51% of RELX? It's a $33 billion company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Could ML's open peer review practices be adopted by researchers in other fields?

<comment><USER47> Copernicus Publications publishes a host of journals, many on the behalf of non-profit scholarly and scientific societies [1]. For some or all of their journals, including those by the European Geosciences Union, peer review is open and there is a month-long public discussion forum for each manuscript.

I've got a paper in review with one of the journals right now, but several of my colleagues have expressed caution with open peer review. I think a lot of scientists are worried about making work public that _hasn 't_ been privately vetted during peer review, and maybe being caught with an embarrassing mistake.

[1]: [https://publications.copernicus.org/](https://publications.copernicus.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> the article is about this statement

[https://openaccess.engineering.oregonstate.edu/home](https://openaccess.engineering.oregonstate.edu/home)

</comment><comment><USER49> If people can post a pre-print to Arxiv then why is it a big deal if it also gets published in Nature Machine Intelligence? Sure a better formatted and edited version may be behind a paywall but anyone can find the original arxiv paper and get the important points.

edit: To make it clear, I'm talking about submitting to BOTH Arxiv, where it's freely available, AND a paywalled journal like Nature.

edit 2: I get that we don't want to waste, often government, money on mere distribution of research, but I also think researchers need a way to distinguish their work from the thousands of arxiv papers that get posted every year. Whether that's through a Nature publication or something else is immaterial.

<comment><USER50> Academic journals don't result in any value creation for society. If "publishing in Nature" is no longer a credential for academics, then Nature can't charge universities big bucks... that money can be spent by institutions on other things (like funding GPU's to do more _actual_ machine learning research)... so boycotting the journal is strictly a good thing.

<comment><USER47> This is absolutely wrong. Academic journals provide value through scientific aggregation, review, editorial curation, publication, archival curation, and promotion.

Yes, you can bypass all of this and put your non-reviewed pdfs on your personal website. No one will care, in part because _no one will even know_ and if they do, they have to do the hard work of review in order to decide whether a paper is worth trusting. But how will anyone find out?

As an author, I've made a point never to publish in a paper not backed by a non-profit scientific society with a decent open-access policy, after doing so in the past. I also put all of my pdfs on my website including appropriate white papers that are working drafts, making it clear to others that they haven't been accepted through peer review.

As a reader, however, I keep up with the literature (aside from targeted Google Scholar searches) through Table of Contents emails from a few journals --mostly non-profit society journals but a few others including Nature. The editorial curation aspects which limit the number of accepted papers per issue make this possible. I'm not going to drink from the firehose of shit that is produced each month, _especially_ before peer-review. Yeah, it sucks when your paper is accepted by reviewers but gets nixed by the editors because it's not cool enough, but... you know, get back to the bench and make it cooler if you want people to care. Welcome to the 21st century and attention scarcity.

You can change the name 'Nature' to whatever open-access journal you'd like, but the power behind it is that it's a sign that Important People have decided your paper is one of the 10 most impactful papers in your field that year. _That 's_ why people care.

<comment><USER50> Maybe I should have stated it as "paid academic journals don't create any marginal value for society vs. unpaid journals"

Nature is just a bunch of noted academics that come together and do peer- review (for free btw)... is that enough value creation to charge exorbitant amounts to universities and block content to the public that is funded by government grants?

If academics could build a peer-review board themselves (hint: now they can... thanks internet!) ... then everyone would have free access to science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> _> In my own field of machine learning, itself an academic descendant of Gauss's pioneering work, [...]._

Yes, and I'm a descendand of Julius Caesar, Confucius and Charlemagne. I won't tell you this when introducing myself though, because so is everybody else.

It wouldn't have occured to me that AI researchers have such inferiority complexes that they need to descend to such name-dropping, but I guess I was wrong.

<comment><USER52> I think he means that the field of ML has been built in part from Gauss's work on algebra and statistics, not that the author is related to Gauss himself.

<comment><USER53> The criticism is along the lines of "Yeah basically all fields are academic descendants of Gauss. Euler too." The article's aside is just odd, as is in the first place bringing up Gauss (linking to another Guardian article, maybe the real intent?) and an astronomer both paying another dude (some amount) what sounds like club member fees for letter redistribution.</comment></comment></comment>


ReStructuredText vs. Markdown for documentation - <AUTHOR> http://zverovich.net/2016/06/16/rst-vs-markdown.html <comment><USER2> One point that's not really touched upon is the fact that it really does matter whether the person writing the documentation is a technical writer or a developer.

If you're a tech writer, you're probably interested in using the best tool for the job, because writing documentation is what you do day in, day out. If ReStructuredText is the most powerful format, then you're going to strongly lean toward that.

If you're a developer, however, writing documentation -- while you may recognize its necessity -- is a task that is often a slog. It's something you do so you can get it out of the way, and you really don't want to spend very much time thinking about the "how." You especially don't want to spend very much time learning the intricacies of a new markup format, unless you absolutely have to.

I say this as a developer who is also a writer. I enjoy writing, but I know many developers don't. And if Markdown makes it easier for them to write documentation, either because they're already familiar with it or because it's just a simpler format, then I'm all for it, even if ReStructuredText might be a bit powerful overall.

<comment><USER3> Also, there are a bunch of editors for writing Markdown for most platforms and few (any?) for ReStructuredText.

<comment><USER4> You mean like vim, emacs, nano, kate, notepad, notepad++, wordpad, or any other plain text editor?

Really - I don't get this impulse at all. From my perspective, the entire point of markdown (and RST I assume, though I haven't used it) is that you can easily read and write it using any plain text editor.

If you are going to need a specialized editor to write it, you might as well use html, docbook, docx, odt, troff, rtf, or any of the zillion other formats.

<comment><USER5> Back to the main point, for non-developers all of those can be quite confusing especially when you're used to Word/Google docs/etc. A text-only editor where you don't get live feedback is quite an adjustment and there is a cognitive switch to the text you're writing and imagining how that text will be presented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A couple years ago I put together one of the more popular themes for Sphinx. It's the one used by Read The Docs and you've likely seen in countless times when searching for Python libraries.

I prefer Markdown.

It's readable and easy to start writing by non-technical folk. More than that that, it's less flexible and isn't as likely to be destructive. At the end of the day rST is as complicated and as flexible as something like HTML. The biggest problem is its ability to nest markup. Markdown is pretty flat and you're not putting lists within tables within blockquotes. As someone making a theme, it was pretty difficult to style against the level of nesting that people end up using rST for. This is of course me bitching about how people write their rST, but there it is. I think rST by nature leads to inconsistent markup.

Basically what I'm saying is. At that point, I'd rather just write HTML. rST sits in some weird middle world where it can get very verbose, but you end up losing all the simplicity that you wanted in the first place.

Also want to note that rST doesn't HAVE to be so complicated. Plenty of people write clean, rST docs. However, as someone who spent a good deal of time learning the Sphinx system and the markup quirks of rST, in general I ended up seeing people use it in all sorts of crazy ways which then led to weird styling errors.

When it came time to document my own projects, I just built a simple markdown system with a tree structure and added some syntax highlighting. That's gonna get most projects 95% of the way there. While you can do a lot more with rST and it is really powerful, I really think it's only for those 5% of projects or more than likely, scientific documentation that needs more context.

<comment><USER7> I don't think there is anything in RST that encourages deep nesting level or verbose markup, on the contrary with default roles it can be _more_ compact than Markdown. If you look at good documentation examples, like The Python Standard Library documentation ([https://docs.python.org/3/library/index.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/index.html)), nesting is very limited and the documentation source is very clean and readable.

<comment><USER6> I agree with everything you say. All I'm saying is that in practice, the rST docs I saw, and the issues that came up around theming rST docs led me to believe that the flexibility of rST was its biggest problem (and strength).

Markdown doesn't have that problem because you can't do much with Markdown.

<comment><USER8> I think you are both right. This discussion reminds me of the classic C vs. C++ discussion.

> [http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version- > control.git/57643...](http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version- > control.git/57643/focus=57918)

Ultimately, I lean towards rST since you can combat complexity with "good practices" (as a Python guy this is akin to being _Pythonic_ ) but the opposite is not true for less complex implementations.

But there are merits to both approaches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Similar previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11292280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11292280)

And from my comment in that thread:

After having written a fairly popular 400+ page book, and dozens of documentation sets in Markdown (and having worked on a few in other languages), I have to say—Markdown is _good enough_.

It will take an order-of-magnitude difference to unseat Markdown as the 'simple plain text formatting syntax' default, IMO. But use what makes you productive and is most conducive to writing effortlessly!

<comment><USER10> I wrote my dissertation in markdown because LaTeX added so much noise to the text. In the end I had to go back and manually reformat chunks of it in LaTeX (especially the floats), but it was still worth it for all the bits I never had to write LaTeX for. In the end, it's not either-or, it's Markdown plus conversion to something with more knobs to turn. (All thanks to Pandoc!)

<comment><USER11> Pandoc even lets you include LaTeX in your markdown, so you can just use it inline for the few times you need more control, without having to faff around editing the output.

<comment><USER12> What happens if you include LaTeX in Markdown and select a different output format, such as docx? is it just ignored?

<comment><USER13> Yes. Depending on what are you including, a better alternative might be to use Pandoc filters that change their output depending on the output format. So for latex you might end up with fancy figures side-by-side, but for word you just have them as figures one after an other

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Don't forget asciidoc; Markdown-like but much more powerful.

[http://asciidoc.org](http://asciidoc.org)

<comment><USER15> I must add Asciidoctor. Which is mostly compatible with Asciidoc, but even more powerful.

I have spent a lot of time trying to make Asciidoc create beautiful PDFs for technical documentation, but Asciidoctor makes it all a lot easier to customize its own stylesheets.

The only negative thing about it is that it is hard to install since it typically isn't found in your distros package repo by default.

<comment><USER16> And perhaps, just one more standard to unify all of them!

<comment><USER17> Obligatory xkcd - [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This whole argument presupposes that anyone who cares will get a choice in the matter. We all know that most bespoke software is written for corporations. And despite the immense drawbacks of "Word" (too many to mention, but let's start with autocapitalization...), most bespoke software is documented in "Word" despite "Word" not being fit for that use.

To me, this is like watching intense baseball fans argue who was better, Babe Ruth or Joe Dimaggio - neither one of them is going to play again.

<comment><USER19> This!

So here's a story: I work at a large engineering company building custom automated research systems. The system engineers do the the design/development/testing and documentation.

I have been searching for nearly 9 months for a documentation system to replace our current documentation system (500 Word docs in an EDMS). Goal is to increase re-usability and decrease maintenance cost by something more like a wiki/markdown system.

The problem is, even though formatting and maintenance of Word docs is abysmal, they make inserting images and references drop dead simple. Plus, everyone has it installed on their machine.

All the markdown versions don't have good references or image support (plus the best IDE is gitbooks which is... buggy). RsT is too much of a burden to setup. These are engineers writing, not programmers.

I've looked into Confluence, Gitbooks, Dozuki, Inkling, Sphinx, ... nothing is quite so friction-less to "just write the docs" than Word.

<comment><USER12> I agree -- I originally wanted a markup language to do away with LaTeX for typesseting but then I realized that getting image sizing and placement right on any markup language is even more painful than with LaTeX, so I just never jumped ship.

I still wish I had a publishing toolchain that produced multi-format output (HTML5, docx, ePub, Kindle, and plain text) from the same source file. It can be done with LaTeX sources but the result is sub-optimal.

<comment><USER20> As I wrote in another comment, this can be done quite easily with Pandoc. It is a really powerful processing tool and with the right set of templates it can do wonders. Have a look at Kieran Healy's work: [https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2014/01/23/plain- text/](https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2014/01/23/plain-text/)

<comment><USER19> For some definitions of "easily". For a programmer, yes.

For an enterprise organization with a full gamut of technical ranges from "maintain 40 github repos for fun" to "I still don't trust anything but Word, Excel, Powerpoint and email", pandoc is not the solution (as nice a tool as it is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a non-issue. Here's a simple algorithm:

1\. Do you want to write something that MD is sufficient for? Write MD.

2\. Do you want to write something that you need RST for?

2a. Is your document already in RST or is there no document? Write RST.

2b. Is your document in MD? Pandoc to RST. Pretty print. Write RST.

The reason this is useful is that the 90% use-case is probably hit by MD. You may never need RST. And you won't spend more time deciding and discussing than actually doing because this algorithm only takes a few seconds to execute.

</comment><comment><USER22> RST has some great ideas (as mentioned in the article, roles and directives are fantastic ideas). But it also has quite a lot of unnecessary complexity built in. It's also great that it (kind of) has a specification, not just a bunch of hand waving. But even with the specification there seems to be no independent re-implementation, so I wonder if the specification is really complete. It also makes some syntax choices that just make no sense at all to me. Making the most basic and important feature (bullet lists, titles) annoying to use was not a smart move.

The (only) good thing about Markdown is it's (allegedly) simple. IMO it's on the one hand not simple enough (e.g. HTML has got to go) and on the other hand it's too simplistic.

Ideally I would like to have a tiny core specification with a clean and simple standardized mechanism for extensions like roles and directives. With a bunch of standardized but optional extensions. Only the most important features (90% of usage) should get special syntax (bold, bullet lists, titles, roles, directives). For everything else (90% of features) there should be a named role or directive.

Trac actually uses a similar system. linkExtensionName:content, [[extensionName(content)]] or {{{#!extensionName multiline-content }}} is all you need to remember. Could be simplified a bit, but it's quite usable.

<comment><USER7> I've used a lot of RST and from my experience the specification is very accurate. If there is some inconsistency, it should probably be considered as a bug and reported to Python docutils. What exactly is the problem with bullet lists? AFAICS they are pretty much the same in Markdown and RST.

<comment><USER22> In RST you must have a blank line between parent bullet and child bullet. This really discourages adding small child bullets.

In RST you must indent child bullets exactly to the indentation level where the text starts in the parent bullet.

<comment><USER23> a. In RST you must have a blank line between parent bullet and child bullet. I don't think that's correct, this works:

# Remove the spaces at the start to put in a file (HN rendering)

      * Bullet 1
          * Sub-bullet 2
      * Bullet 2

# Both worked fine:

      $ rst2html --verbose test.rst test.html
      $ pandoc --output test.html test.rst

b. In RST you must indent child bullets exactly to the indentation level where the text starts in the parent bullet.

Also untrue as far as I can see. Vim does do automatic indents for me so they have to be consistent AFAIK, but not to the `exact` same level as where the text starts in the parent bullet.

<comment><USER22> a. That's not a child bullet, it's a paragraph continuation. This exactly demonstrates the problem with RST.

Check the specification: [http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtex...](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#bullet- lists) See "examples of incorrectly formatted bullet lists", or [http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/dev/rst/problems.html#b...](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/dev/rst/problems.html#blank- lines-in-lists) or [http://docutils.sourceforge.net/FAQ.html#could-the- requireme...](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/FAQ.html#could-the-requirement- for-blank-lines-around-lists-be-relaxed) It's a well known problem.

b. Check the spec. It must be exactly aligned. If it's not exact it's not a child list. It's just an independent list with random indentation.

See e.g. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5550089/how-to-create- a-n...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5550089/how-to-create-a-nested- list-in-restructuredtext)

<comment><USER23> oh wow, didn't know that. Arg! _all_ my personal notes have list that will have to be re-formatted that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> First, there is commonmark that is trying to standardize markdown. There is also recommonmark which will parse commonmark for sphinx:

[https://github.com/rtfd/recommonmark](https://github.com/rtfd/recommonmark)

However, commonmark currently lack support for tables, so I fall back on rst for tables(actually I think the syntax for tables in rst is much better than tables in other markdown flavors).

Also, resolving links using commonmark in sphinx is a mess, right now. I actually extended recommonmark so sphinx will properly resolve cross references(including reference to elements in a domain). However, I had to update sphinx as well, which I have a PR open with no response from them, here:

[https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/pull/2644](https://github.com/sphinx- doc/sphinx/pull/2644)

It seems unfortunate that sphinx devs are unresponsive to contributions. The devs for mkdocs are a lot more responsive, but seem more interested in monetary contributions, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER25> My choice is Markdeep: [https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/](https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Anyone remember that Show HN which let you create diagrams from simple text like this:

        A <----- B -----\
                        |
                        V
                        C

Then there was a link in the discussion to a similar tool.

<comment><USER26> Found it thanks to the two suggestions below and a search, shaky:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10290073](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10290073)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm still using Textile. My blog engine ([https://github.com/rcarmo/sushy](https://github.com/rcarmo/sushy)) can cope with ReST, Markdown, Textile, raw HTML and iPython notebooks, and I still turn to Textile for complex tables and other niceties. Out of the 7000-odd pages on my site, most complex pieces are Textile (although most newer items are Markdown).

I find ReST incredibly awkward to use, really, because it's anything but intuitive - both Textile and Markdown are easier to write off the cuff.

More importantly, though, I really wish that Textile, Markdown, ReST, etc., were formally specified as PEG grammars or similar. There's just too much variation, and "standards" or specs defining them tend to be written in ambiguous English rather than something that could be formally validated and easily ported across to new languages (rather than the spaghetti messes of regexps that most parsers turn out to be when you look at the source).

<comment><USER28> Here you go: [http://commonmark.org/](http://commonmark.org/)

<comment><USER27> Actually, I was thinking of CommonMark when I wrote that. The spec is still ambiguous, and a reference implementation is not a formal grammar...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> While I do like simple markup, I think that all markup languages will become a lot better when text input hardware slightly evolves. We are so close to having this.

We have Unicode but most of its symbols are a pain to generate on conventional keyboards.

We have touch-screens but desktop computer keyboards don't offer them and software on phones/pads still tries a bit too hard to emulate a conventional keyboard layout.

Imagine if all _standard_ keyboards had touch displays on the side to quickly flip between tables of related symbols, optionally with some context-sensitive mode? Then, instead of having to use creative ASCII tricks to make it "simple" to describe what you want, you just _do it_ through your input device.

Ultimately I think markup languages will have to distill their features down to a few structural elements, and rely on Unicode (and easier Unicode input methods) to handle what is currently being done with ASCII hacks.

<comment><USER30> Would the Optimus Maximus keyboard work?

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Optimus+Maximus+keyboard&tbm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Optimus+Maximus+keyboard&tbm=isch)

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

It exists but hasn't taken over the world.

Apparently Apple's working an OLED display above their keyboard.

[http://9to5mac.com/2016/05/23/apple-prepping-thinner- macbook...](http://9to5mac.com/2016/05/23/apple-prepping-thinner-macbook-pros- with-oled-screen-above-keyboard-touch-id-for-q4/)

<comment><USER12> A keyboard with OLED keycaps that change depending on the context would be reason enough to get a new laptop altogether, even though I have a brand new one.

As someone who context-switches from XCode to IntelliJ to Photoshop to Emacs, sometimes I confuse the shortcuts, and I don't learn more shortcuts because I'm afraid they will not carry over to other programs. Having discoverable shortcuts would be amazing.

<comment><USER30> Yea, it always surprised me that Apple hadn't fully copied this idea for Mac books. Maybe it needed to wait for OLEDs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Re: 30 flavors of Markdown: did you guys know that Atlassian uses two different flavors of MD for jira and bitbucket?

<comment><USER32> Since Atlassian acquired bitbucket, the products have two separate development histories, so I'm not too surprised.

<comment><USER31> But if one of your main selling points is integration, you'd better standardize to one, especially if (as an other commenter pointed out) the one in bitbucket is subpar.

<comment><USER32> No argument there - but no surprise either that upgrading bitbucket's markup might be something lower down on the priority list for the Atlassian engineering team either. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Having authored texts in nroff, groff, HTML, DocBook, Markdown, ASCIIDoc, and LaTeX, as well as numerous proprietary formats and word processors, my considered view is this:

Let authors use the fucking tools they know and prefer.

Organise common text through translation tools. Pandoc is fucking amazing.

Formatting for final production is a separate task.

(Not without some irony, I'm reviewing a set of guides and commentaries on productivity and creativity in a few other tabs....).

 _When you are writing_ your most important task is to capture the gist of what's in your head onto a tangible medium. If that means fucking Messinian marble and diamond chisels, so be it.

The marginal productivity gains _for someone already proficient in a tool_ are low in switching to something else, _relative to domain knowledge_.

The challenge is that you're then stuck with high-level, vs. low-level definitions and tools. Which is where the whole "what do I use for creating my documents" question ends up at.

Systems such as HTML5 (the semantic elements, not all the canvas and DRM crap), or LaTeX, or DocBook, are hugely useful here _because their definitions are largely semantic_. You _write the structure, not the style_.

After that, so long as a tool or language can produce ingestible input given an author's output, that's fine.

And, frankly, by the time you're worried about specific low-level structure, use a dedicated tool which provides that. My experience with LaTeX was that it was actually _amazingly_ simple to use for basic creation -- it gets out of the way. Paragraphs as linefeeds, rather than HTML's incessent <p> </p> pairs, helps immensely. For more complex structures, you can go back and add what's needed later.

Markdown offers a wide set of capabilities with the option of fallback to HTML, which again is powerful and a good option for composing.

And there's value in simplicity.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm in the middle of converting a project's legacy plaintext documentation (emulating man page format) into RST/Sphinx. The support for semantic markup with roles and directives was attractive for my goals (without falling down the rabbit hole, being able to: 1. translate from one source to formats compatible with both presentation-markup and semantic-markup, and 2. lint the docs).

I've come to rue this decision in some ways. I like what I've been able to accomplish, but I've found most customization of default Sphinx and docutils behavior to be torture. I don't mean to drag contributors to those projects through the mud--they work well if you can just write documentation without fiddling much.

</comment><comment><USER13> (Shameless plug) If you want to extend markdown, consider this: [http://scorreia.com/software/panflute/](http://scorreia.com/software/panflute/)

It's a Python package that allows you to extend markdown through pandoc filters. It allows you to easily manipulate the AST created by Pandoc to add any number of features.

For instance, I wrote my dissertation in Markdown , and used this to include algorithms, CSV tables, include directives, etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> Another interesting publishing system is Pollen [http://docs.racket- lang.org/pollen/](http://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/). It integrates with Racket to give you the full power of a programming language while writing markup. The guy behind it, Matthew Butterick, is a typographer and has put a lot of work into it.

</comment><comment><USER36> When I started writing the documentation for a software product I make I went with Markdown. It was what I knew and I thought it was great.

As I started writing the documentation though, Markdown's drawbacks became more apparent. Especially as the software I'm making is multi-platform and there are features that exist in one platform and not the other and I'd like to include/exclude documentation of those features based on platform, and the fact that I'd like the documentation for each platform to contain images from the program running on that platform, and so on, and this is not something that Markdown handles well.

And so I switched to ReStructuredText. RST is not as clean or as simple to write compared to Markdown, however if you are producing documentation then it is much more flexible. I can live with less clean syntax in order to get the flexibility to do what I need to do.

</comment><comment><USER37> What blows my mind is that every time I need to write anything in markdown (once a month or so), I can never _ever_ figure out how to use it without doing tons of googling. Why can't sites add some easily accessible documentation?

Hacker news, tumblr, reddit, github all do it. Honestly, if it didn't look fine in the editor and then throw an apeshit fit when posted, it wouldn't be that frustrating. But I'm so damn tired of hitting "preview" or editing my posts after posting because of misleading previews and text boxes.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tables in RST are far more difficult than in Markdown; you have to essentially draw the table you want.

In both, it is difficult to have a block of code with one line in bold, or italicized for emphasis. (The same seems to hold for asciidoc.)

Which is why I eventually gravitate back to HTML. (See [https://github.com/oreillymedia/HTMLBook](https://github.com/oreillymedia/HTMLBook) as well - full disclosure: I have done writing for O'Reilly.)

<comment><USER23> For standard RST tables I use vim-table-mode ([https://github.com/dhruvasagar/vim-table- mode](https://github.com/dhruvasagar/vim-table-mode)) which is fantastic as it automates RST or markdown tables.

There are some other RST table types:

a. List table: Pretty simple to use ([http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html...](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html#list- table))

b. CSV table Supposed to be used for CSV imports I guess but I've never used it ([http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html...](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html#id4))

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> org-mode + pandoc let you convert org files to anything

</comment><comment><USER40> Leanpub promotes a superset of Markdown called Markua. It is claimed that Markua is more suited to the writing of books and documentation. See [http://markua.com/](http://markua.com/) Personally, for my projects, I use rST, but that is only because the wind happened to be blowing that way the day I made my choice.

</comment><comment><USER41> I really wish Adobe didn't screwup FrameMaker. It was on all the major platforms and did its job. Then, they went and dropped it from everything except Windows and it's basically languishing ever since.

I wrote a number of documents in FrameMaker back in the 90s and I loved it. I really wish I had something like it now.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've always preferred RST just because there is a wonderful PDF renderer called rst2pdf [0]

[0] [http://rst2pdf.ralsina.me/stories/index.html](http://rst2pdf.ralsina.me/stories/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> In the real world, people use Microsoft Word, or even LibreOffice Write. Yet another flavor of Markdown is not helping.

<comment><USER44> > In the real world, people use Microsoft Word, or even LibreOffice Write.

Please point to towards an API or library documentation written in the native format of either of those. In 10 years as a developer, I've never come across such a thing.

> Yet another flavor of Markdown is not helping.

Agreed. That's pretty much what the article states, and RST, luckily, is not that.

<comment><USER45> The C# and PowerShell specifications are written in Word ;)

In any case, there's a lot of things people use in-house and never bother to tell the outside world about, and you'd be surprised how far that is from what people on HN or Github habitually use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why is the choice between these two? Both are very limited in what they can do for documentation of any complexity.</comment>


Rhinos and Tigers - <AUTHOR> http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/rhinos-and-tigers.html <comment><USER2> I'm also working on a rhino/javascript web framework...I am about 15% to where I want to be but the concept is there. With all this talk of "programmer's insecurity" and release often and early (this might be too early) I thought i should put this out and solicit feedback. Any would be appreciated, thanks.

(lacks documentation and tests, but if you look in the contexts folder I think hackers should be able to grasp whats going on)

<http://code.google.com/p/env-framework/>

[http://code.google.com/p/env- framework/source/browse/trunk/e...](http://code.google.com/p/env- framework/source/browse/trunk/env-framework/contexts/hello- world/controllers/home.js)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the actual talk: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttI-y9VzXQ>

</comment><comment><USER4> "...people kept trickling in, and I estimate there were about 400 people stuffed in the room by the end. It was standing-room only, and people were spilling out into the hall. The conclusion? The other talks must have been really boring."

Actual conclusion: people eat lunch. His talk was at 12:45, and the previous round of sessions had completed at 12:30.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't really see a need for this; I can use haXe to get the additional interoperability Yegge refers to with Rhino/Javascript, and I won't have to use the JVM to get it.

That he pooh-poohs all static languages by pointing to some excess of Scala and using a slippery-slope argument from there doesn't really help.

Plus the verbosity.

</comment><comment><USER6> Having skimmed it, I can reduce the 11,500 words to just 128:

\--

The future lies with dynamic languages; their success in big systems, and Scala as a complex move in the anti-dynamic direction, are both inconvenient developments for Java and static-typing orthodoxy. Still, the JVM and VMs in general are good for dynamic language implementations.

Javascript/Rhino is better than you think, and among the best of the JVM languages -- better than Java, and still easy to integrate with Java in both directions. Rhino is getting investment from Google and elsewhere; remaining objections will be conquered.

Google will open-source 'Rhino's not Ruby' (aka 'Rhino on Rails') this year (he hopes). RnR has been used by a 20-developer team there to build a huge web app in a small code footprint. Google's JSCompiler for compressing JS will likely be open-sourced, too.

<comment><USER7> _Still, the JVM and VMs in general are good for dynamic language implementations._

Not just good, but vital for just-in-time optimization. The argument of JIT bringing dynamic languages to the speeds of Java/C++ seems compelling...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Scala argument in Paper Tigers is incorrect. If Java-style static typing catches 90% of the bugs that can be caught with 5x more complex type system, I would say some trade-off for simplicity is acceptable and it is reasonable to just use the simpler type system.

I think types should be optional. ECMAscript actually supports optional types, doesn't it?

The whole argument of static vs dynamic typing seems wrongheaded. It should be all about minimal code size. Normally you want the shortest program possible. But you also want some confidence that your program works, hence you write unit tests. If tigers are too scary, than you can use the optional static typing, write more unit test, etc - all at the cost of increasing code size.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can one person really produce so much text? Does he have a team of writers or what?

<comment><USER10> I wish there was someone around who has had a chance to look at some of his code. Something I've noticed from years of doing code reviews and consulting is that people who are that verbose in their writing tend to be very verbose in their coding. I wonder if Steve generates massive classes when they could be done much smaller.

Again, it's totally unfounded, I'm just speaking from anecdotal evidence.

<comment><USER11> He's transcribing a speach. Speakings always more verbose than writing.

<comment><USER10> Sure, but everything he writes is incredibly lengthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> +1 for the first person that posts a summary.

<comment><USER13> First. (You said "first". You said nothing about quality.)

To get from 11,494 words to 400 words, every 29th word:

Rhinos — it's bite-sized of find transcribing rest... a (out about been make of not. nice. through drive JavaScript you, help JVM your of top who Empire machines don't his get. it's last tent... And at the people. of And single of best this talk hard!" dinner well, vs. And And you'll but introduced of of that's do talk to And finally that It's of is they Kuperberg's], a kind it: — running the change change the this for thick You to where are new. You're it, spells to them recognize inadvertent: do a you Note: same access with client; it's we Google want People picked this right, do it Yeah. the C mean, have you for proof I I a it's which tried wrote Sure, right? But rehash compilers, ever on It's we of the Wow. there's "Make came So You ability for you now or do but in things. to So function, just bit to welcome to by "JVM So blocks little compare stank. were it weighted comparisons much to leave an think work match addChild(), people are it, is But they A fun! The who science said, probably freaking You these he implement where application not not string language, that, The Unit I thinks languages] testing (pointed if on have it conflicting [Java] JavaScript cool. bottom Java literal using right? a called hundreds now Subclassing! And And you extent, work when you you're And still room There're you I'm shortly got Ruby": of didn't really to lost sort not So widely The languages. their doing you people, Right? matter mind. Mmmmm, of Scala's language a very system this types Haskell.] like, hear dynamic performance. know tigers and not let's PHP. and static "Well! fun tiger need It's x) using They Engineering camp what this extra story terms The maybe like, much the have got to JavaScript up it that whatever think. here... You this Java a it, In almost in thing> — and put species. and JSON sometimes for working pretty get embed C# this That Now labels, to — Language a is bytecode. [roughly] you pretty pop, interpreter fast. allocation. objects]. comparison] provable it's And down You'll it's can true. code because Ajax So Which And a says, you try be and RnR], there by think compilers folks. don't so to quickly, Google is: not have? There brought to They're directions bugs. in thank

<comment><USER14> I got as far as:

Virtual Machines are good because they help language interoperability, which is something we need more of on the server side, but I gave up half way through before I could glean "How" VMs actually help language interoperability, but I think it has something to do with Rhine. Anyone care to read the last half? I'd read the rest, but I need to figure out why my virtual hosts aren't working in Apache on my new Debian server.

<comment><USER15> I believe his point is that it increases interoperability if all languages sit on top of the JVM.

<comment><USER14> Right,I got that part, I thought I was clear that my question was "HOW?"

How does the JVM increase interoperability? What mechanism is special about the JVM that is not available in the native machine that makes the JVM more appropriate/better as a platform for language interoperability?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I ran this through an automated text summarizer.

Didn't make much sense then, either. Best I got was a discussion on languages running on top of the JVM and a mention of PG.

<comment><USER17> OS X's Summarize service, by sentence:

> Basically I argued in that talk — successfully at Stanford, so I think that > was... something — that for just-in-time compilers, it's becoming pretty > clear, they have a lot better access, a lot better data at runtime about how > you're actually using your program right now than the compiler ever had.

By paragraph:

> Case in point? Regular expressions. (raise hand) Who likes to write their > own giant deterministic finite automata to do string matching? Heh. It's > weird — nobody raised their hand.

So, something about people not wanting to write their own compilers?

<comment><USER18> What I learned from your comment is that I should write my own 'summarizer service' that picks a random sentence from a document, calls it a summary, slap the phrase 'N-tier' on it, and sell it to Fortune 500 companies.

At least both those sentences are somewhat important points he had, but most of the talk was about JVM languages and specifically Rhino.</comment></comment></comment>