In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a zinger:

 _The officials said one central concept connects a number of the court's opinions. The judges have concluded that the mere collection of enormous volumes of "metadata" — facts like the time of phone calls and the numbers dialed, but not the content of conversations — does not violate the Fourth Amendment, as long as the government establishes a valid reason under national security regulations before taking the next step of actually examining the contents of an American's communications._

 _This concept is rooted partly in the "special needs" provision the court has embraced. "The basic idea is that it's O.K. to create this huge pond of data," a third official said, "but you have to establish a reason to stick your pole in the water and start fishing."_

<comment><USER2> David Simon, creator of The Wire, has written extensively about this starting with this post: [http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked- shocked/](http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/)

It is well worth a read for an extremely well argued, and informed, opinion from the other side.

<comment><USER3> His basic point seems to be that the government should be allowed to do it as long as we don't hear about any specific abuses. There are two problems. The first is the one he points out: when everything is classified and anyone who notifies the public is subject to the treatment given to Manning and Snowden, even finding out about the abuses much less holding those responsible accountable is extraordinarily difficult. The second problem is that the _really bad_ abuses of an accumulation of power like this are so bad that we can't just wait until they happen before we do anything about it.

He also says some questionable stuff. Like this:

>We asked for this. We did so because we measured the reach and possible overreach of law enforcement against the risks of terrorism and made a conscious choice.

Everyone in Congress who read the Patriot Act before voting on it voted against it. So no, we didn't. We had a gut reaction to a tragedy, somebody pulled a defense contractor wish list out of a drawer and they passed it in a moment of sorrow and anger. The country is only now starting to reach the point that we can have a rational conversation about anti-terrorism without the pain of a recent tragedy allowing self-interested warmongers to goad us into an overreaction, and it's time that we seriously reevaluate what we allow the government to do on our behalf.

And I'm reminded of what John Oliver said hosting the Daily Show when all of this came out: "I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to."

<comment><USER4> In fairness, I don't think that's Simon's point. I think his point is, the government should be allowed to do things like they did on 'The Wire' as long as there is due process, i.e. independent oversight, transparent criteria, ability to change the criteria through a democratic process. And yeah, we did ask for it because we knew about AT&T secret rooms and there was no outrage. Until we demand public hearings about exactly what is going on and what constitutes due process we're still asking for it.

<comment><USER4> I mean, seriously, what percentage of people watched '24' and 'Homeland', and thought, OMG that is so unconstitutional.

Everybody believed that is actually what the intelligence services do, and applauded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There can be no "consent of the governed" when "We the People" are unaware of the actions which our elected, as well as non-elected, representatives perpetrate in Our name.

___Edit__

Yes, "unaware," as in "We the People" are perpetually "unaware" of what goes on in _secret_ court proceedings.

<comment><USER6> Unaware? Mass surveillance has been going on for a long time, and everybody who cared to learn knew the immense scope. This is not a news revelation, it is a media campaign by parties who need something to talk about.

Consent of the governed is the problem. The U.S. Senate is directly elected, and the public paranoia _wanted_ these broad pseudo-security measures.

Speaking of consent of the governed, why is the media saturated by Snowden-as- Bieber celebrity stories, and not election rigging by the IRS? Would you like to learn more?

<comment><USER7> ^ says the guy who works for ICx Nomadics, a Homeland Security contractor.

[http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/sn...](http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=9962980)

<comment><USER6> Work _ed_. When I was there I had the good fortune to mostly work on useful products, like non-fraudulent bomb detectors. (Mind you, I would cheerfully work on surveillance products.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > In one of the court's most important decisions, the judges have expanded the > use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the "special needs" > doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment's requirement > of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said.

This is political kabuki designed to make us think we have a representative government. We don't. We have an oligarchy composed of financial/industrial/military interests (as all oligarchies are) that runs the intelligence agencies of the government it owns.

The fact of the matter is that the NSA has always considered itself exempt from the law and the Constitution:

> "NSA does not have a statutory charter; its operational responsibilities are > set forth exclusively in executive directives first issued in the 1950s. One > of the questions which the Senate asked the Committee to consider was the > "need for specific legislative authority to govern the operations of...the > National Security Agency."

> According to NSA's General Counsel, no existing statutes control, limit, or > define the signals intelligence activities of NSA. Further, the General > Counsel asserts that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to NSA's > interception of Americans' international communications for foreign > intelligence purposes."

> > [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/C...](http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_10_NSA.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Excellent reporting by Eric Lichtblau based on "current and former officials familiar with the court's classified decisions". One key point:

 _In one of the court's most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the "special needs" doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment's requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said._

 _The special needs doctrine was originally established in 1989 by the Supreme Court in a ruling allowing the drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government's need to combat an overriding public danger. Applying that concept more broadly, the FISA judges have ruled that the N.S.A.'s collection and examination of Americans' communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the officials said._

<comment><USER10> Funny, I must have missed the part of the Fourth Amendment that carves out an exception for "special needs" or "overriding public danger." Hm, let's see:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Nope, I still don't see it.

<comment><USER11> The fourth amendment also doesn't have an exclusionary rule in its text

IE no part of it says if the police conduct an illegal search, they can't use that evidence against you.

Yet most people seem to get up in arms when Scalia/Thomas/whoever says that line of cases should be overruled, and that it's up to congress to pass laws to deal with police conduct

<comment><USER12> The rule existed in traditional English Common law from long before the U.S. declared Independence.

Being that the Fourth Amendment itself was a reaction against General Warrants and Writs of Assistance, it's hard to imagine the founders would have wanted even less protection here than English law already provided

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule#History_of_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule#History_of_the_rule)

<comment><USER11> This is a great policy and common law argument. But, much like the parent comment, can you point where in the text of the 4th amendment (or the constitution) where it says anything about an exclusionary rule?

Because if we are going to argue policy and common law, than we also have restrictions that don't appear in the text, but appeared in common law, as well.

<comment><USER12> The Ninth amendment states that the Bill of Rights is not intended to be exhaustive enumeration of liberty.

There is no danger in erring on the side of too much liberty. Parent errs on side of denying of liberty already clearly enumerated.

<comment><USER11> Sure. I think we are mostly in violent agreement. I'm actually not trying to argue that it's not a violation of the fourth amendment (i strongly believe it is). I'm arguing that the literal text of the fourth amendment _alone_ is not, by itself, a great explanation of what it really means in today's world. The reply I original made was to the argument that because 'overriding public danger' doesn't appear in the literal text of the 4th amendment, there can be no such exception.

As we've both gone through, the 4th amendment can't be viewed in a vacuum, or else it would be nonsensical.

So saying "i don't see where the literal text of the 4th amendment says that" doesn't seem to me a complete and total argument.

For example, it literally says nothing about anything but papers, persons, houses, and effects. None of this explicitly covers phone calls, or even e-mail. You have to argue by analogy or inclusion in today's equivalent of papers or effects

It also only prevents _unreasonable_ searches and seizures, and there is an argument to be made that "special needs" or "overriding public danger" make the searches not unreasonable. I don't personally buy it, but ...

As you mention, there is also historical context on all sides to consider.

That is in fact, exactly my point. Saying "it ain't in the text" is even far past what textualism adherents do, and i'd venture to guess, would not make for a very useful statute construction philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Secret courts, secret laws, secret prisons - what's your conclusion? Mine is: this is a secret dictatorship.

<comment><USER14> Well, if not quite yet, then with, say, another president like Nixon ....

Sorry 'bout that, but my conclusion was that, yes, he was a "crook".

<comment><USER15> Judging from the tapes he spent more time trying to destroy his political enemies than actually governing.

<comment><USER14> Yup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings." \-- John F. Kennedy

</comment><comment><USER17> Imagine you work at the NSA. Your boss comes through the door and says, "Hey, we just got approval to store the communications of everyone everywhere. We need the be able to cite credible suspicion before we can look at Americans' communications, though. What can you do for me?"

"Wait, we can intercept and store all the communications?"

"Yep, all of them."

"Because they might include ones that present a threat?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"OK. Well, what if we could narrow it down? What if we implemented a system to only scrutinize communications we thought were likely to be threats. That would be better, right?"

"Where are you going with this?"

"Well, we're already collecting everything, right? What if we went just a teensy bit further? What if we just added a step where we did semantic analysis of everything we collect? That way, we'd narrow down the stuff we were actually, you know, looking at to stuff we were already pretty sure was important."

"That's a GREAT idea!"

"Wait, I'm not finished. We could narrow it down even more if we maintained a graph of communications between everyone we know about. We want to affect the minimum number of people possible, right?"

"Well, we're worried about lone wolves too..."

"That's fine. We can get business records through the PATRIOT Act. We can make this a really fine-grained test. We can look for suspicious purchase patterns, medical conditions, attempts to avoid detection, you name it. What could possibly go wrong?"

</comment><comment><USER18> The FISA courts need to be dissolved, and replaced with something that is visible to the public.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why don't they get it over with and declare martial law? They clearly have decided they can do WTF-ever they want, by declaration.

<comment><USER20> They might already have done so - in secret!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _In this case, however, a little-noticed provision in a 2008 law, expanding the definition of "foreign intelligence" to include "weapons of mass destruction," was used to justify access to the message.

The court's use of that language has allowed intelligence officials to get wider access to data and communication..._

That is really, really scary when you include the fact that the term "weapon of mass destruction" has been so watered down as to now include even a freakin potato gun.

[http://www.pri.org/stories/politics- society/government/expan...](http://www.pri.org/stories/politics- society/government/expansive-definition-for-weapon-of-mass-destruction-gives- prosecutors-the-power-13635.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> I do certification of high risk industrial installations for a living, and this story reminded me of one I heard about the Japanese Fukushima disaster.

One of the guys who does certification over there did some digging and found out that they had 3 sets of operating procedures for the plant: the independently reviewed and certified ones which would provide a high level of safe operation; the ones they didn't show anyone which was how they supposedly operated the plant day to day (cutting corners); and then the way they _actually_ operated the plant, which was even less safe.

When I read stories about the FISA, they sound shocking, but they also sound a lot like Fukushima's 'second level' operating procedures. Bad, and an obvious sideshow, but not even close to what's _really_ going on behind closed doors at the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER23> "...the first Galactic Empire, for Peace and Security!"

"So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause!"

</comment><comment><USER24> > the court is creating a significant body of law without hearing from anyone > outside the government

Legal precedents created by non-adversarial proceedings in a secret court are nothing less than terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER25> Somehow I don't think the FISA court is fixing the problems it was created to fix. It seems to have been co-opted.

Hopefully, in something less than a decade, one of our legislators can find time in his busy money-raising schedule to discover how that happened. And then start a task-force to make meaningful recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER26> In our country all laws have to be published in the "Staatsblad" (State- released paper/documents containing new businesses, laws, ...) So unless a law to allow secret laws was made we shouldn't have secret laws.

So that got me thinking, try outlawing secret laws ?

</comment><comment><USER27> A government that demands secret courts can not call itself democratic. It is the antithesis.

</comment><comment><USER28> The motivation here is security through obscurity, right?

<comment><USER14> Partly it's _security theater_.

<comment><USER29> I don't think it's arguable that collecting every piece of data on every citizen could be a benefit to national security. It's just the associated cost to privacy that makes it utterly horrendous.

<comment><USER14> Maybe Stalin, Hitler, Himmler, J. E. Hoover, the Stasi, etc. would all agree that having all the data would help them build a _surveillance_ state they would like.

Still, no matter who does/doesn't not like having all that data collected, for the Federal Government to be able to demand that data strikes me as a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Legal cases are being brought; maybe a case will make it to the SCOTUS; and maybe the SCOTUS will strike down as unconstitutional the laws that enabled such data collection.

I can't find anywhere in the Constitution how nice would be to have a Stasi surveillance state and have to conclude that the US founding fathers did not desire such a thing.

Anytime a clear majority of active voters want to have this situation turned around, around it will come, quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Unfortunately they do not need scrutiny from the public, these judges (supposedly) are experts in constitutional law and the public (according to law) does not have any say in it.</comment>


Lessons Learned Getting Other People to Sell My Ebook - <AUTHOR> http://jstorimer.com/2012/10/15/getting-others-to-sell-my-ebook.html

<comment><USER2> Would someone provide some more details around the $10 threshold for Kindle Direct Publishing? I read the page linked from the article [1], and it looked like the two options were 35% royalties or 70% royalties, and the qualifications for the 70% royalties didn't seem to mention any sort of pricing requirements.

[1] [https://kdp.amazon.com/self- publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26O...](https://kdp.amazon.com/self- publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's linked near the bottom of that page. [https://kdp.amazon.com/self- publishing/help?topicId=A301WJ6X...](https://kdp.amazon.com/self- publishing/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0)

<comment><USER2> Ah, thank you! I missed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting write-up. I wonder if the OP would bother with listing on Amazon next time?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would. There really wasn't much 'bother' to speak of once I understood how it worked. And even though it wasn't as fruitful as other efforts, many small returns add up quickly.

<comment><USER4> I'll be interested to hear how the print edition works out. So many things are different between the various ebook deals and their markets and the printed book deals and their markets.</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Jonathan Dale's Cancer Fundraiser isn't Doing Well & Time's Running Out - <AUTHOR> This was posted on HN a few months ago and got a lot of attention at the time (751 points), but I figured I would post a reminder to everyone about Jonathan Dale's cancer fundraiser. There's less than a month remaining and they only have about 10% of their goal:
https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/w704/beating-cancer-one-dollar-at-a-time-with-jonathan-dale
Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7390638 <comment><USER2> European here; I've clicked the link and read the introductory text but I am still not fully informed, so here I ask.

Why is Jonathan's health insurance not covering the treatment? Is it because of the terminality? Or because of the way the US health insurance system works?

I have very little experience with American insurance systems, but it seems that the public is asked to fund the costs of a family which was let down by the insurance system, and which desperately asks for more time with Jonathan.

Personally, this makes me less inclined to donate; donating would feel like I am throwing money at a problem which a foreign country (one of the richest in the world) is not able to fix itself.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, issues like this are not confined to the United States. Both my Aunt and Stepmother are currently fighting cancer. We're Canadian, thus we have universal health care, but each province is responsible for administering its own prescription drug plan. Thus, depending on where you live and your income, you may or may not have decent coverage for cancer drugs. Complicating the situation, there is often a gap between when a drug is approved and when that drug is available for coverage.

In our case, we are very lucky. Both my Aunt and stepmother have good drug plans that refund their expenses. However, their treatments still cost thousands of dollars out of pocket. They're relatively lucky - they're both seniors who were well prepared and highly insured. Even luckier, they don't have dependents.

I can imagine many, many circumstances under which someone with a family, even in our relatively good health care environment simply could not afford many of the drugs they need. For example, in many cases, complete drug coverage is a premium offering through private insurers. I'm not sure how many healthy people in their mid-30s would really consider premium health insurance a huge priority, especially if they have families. Rather, the tendency could be to assume that their good health will hold and they won't need insurance.

In response to your valid criticism, I do agree with most of what you say. But, I would also argue that cancer is an asshole and, if I were in a situation where saving my life could bankrupt my family, I'd sure pray that my community put helping me out above making a political statement about the quality of prescription drug coverage in Canada!!

<comment><USER4> US citizen here.

I have friends and family in Europe and Canada. One relative in Canada was told that they would have to wait several months for an x-ray needed for diagnosis (and might die by that time), so came to the US for treatment instead. A relative in Europe was told that he was too old to qualify for treatment, so he came to the US for treatment instead.

From what I've been told, some treatment options that are expensive or not- fully covered in the US may not even be available at all in Europe or Canada.

So, while the US has much work to do, I think the more socialized systems of some other countries are not better in all respects.

<comment><USER3> Good comment. In my province, there is a very long wait for an MRI. The wait is so long that, in many cases, it makes more sense to go down to the United States (or to a province with private MRI facilities) and just pay for the test.

I was raised with Medicare, but I see nothing but problems with how it is administered. And, I hope that your country doesn't follow our mistakes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickable: [https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/w704/beating- cancer-o...](https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/w704/beating-cancer-one- dollar-at-a-time-with-jonathan-dale)

</comment><comment><USER6> Here is $15. It isn't much and I would give you more but my Irish income per year is erm, peasant level.

Despite many members of HN being wealthy and/or well connected there are just as many of us that struggle to pay rent let alone for medical expenses. At the same time I and I'm sure others appreciate that this kind of thing is a very lonely and depressing experience with many dark thoughts. So here is a bro shoulder squeeze. Any of us could be in the same situation as you, it is a fact. Good luck man.

Aside:

I think it would be nice if us geeks/hackers had a healthcare plan for our community. A HN healthcare fund that both covered the basics in different countries and also pulled together contacts and information about new treatments for illness/disease, some holistic approach to be intelligently hitting the 'big killers' that are likely to strike.

If you think about it, many of the things likely to 'whack' us are going to be similar due to lifestyle. Overweight, back problems just as a typical example. If somebody out in SV thinks it a good idea then mention it to PG. Then ycombinator could not just be a incubator, but take us from cradle to grave! :)

<comment><USER7> From my family to you and yours, thank you. While you may have only given $15, you gave it and that in and of itself means just as much as any donation if not more. I wish there were better alternatives available to help offset medical expenses, however, despite being considered one of the wealthiest nations on the planet those that control that wealth see no need to share it. Our politicians vote in favor of those who have the money to keep them elected and see no need to actually care for the rest of us. Honestly, one of the statements I made to some friends and family earlier today was that I a) hope to survive and beat this cancer and b) win the lottery so that I can give away millions to help others who have found them in similar situations. I see no need to accumulate material possessions or wealth while others suffer. It's not in my nature to condone suffering and in the last few months I've found so many others who have had their own series of unfortunate events similar to mine which have left them in horrible places. Whether me meet our goal or not, the world will eventually know my story and those that have helped me. So once again, thank you for both the donation and the shoulder squeeze. I am humbled to know you and honored to benefit from your kindness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tell HN: Jonathan Dale's Cancer Fundraiser isn't Doing Well & Time's Running Out 74 points by rpm4321 1 day ago | 29 comments This was posted on HN a few months ago and got a lot of attention at the time (751 points), but I figured I would post a reminder to everyone about Jonathan Dale's cancer fundraiser. There's less than a month remaining and they only have about 10% of their goal: [https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/w704/beating- cancer-o...](https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/w704/beating-cancer-one- dollar-at-a-time-with-jonathan-dale)

Original post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7390638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7390638)

</comment><comment><USER7> I am quite honestly at a loss for words here. When this originally made it to HN I found out about it because I was awakened by the sound of my wife sobbing on the couch next to me. I had only been out of the hospital a few days and was sleeping on the couch at that time because I lacked the energy to do much of anything beyond sit there and force food into my mouth. At that time, we saw a huge amount of support from the HN community and I was humbled and honored that so many people stepped forward and demonstrated what I believe is the most important thing in this world. That is, that if we are to survive as a species we must unite and cooperate and, whenever and wherever possible, help those in need.

Over the last few months, I've finally found a good balance between food and the medicines I must take to simply survive. I am still paying ongoing medical costs which insurance is paying a large chunk of, however, insurance doesn't pay for everything. Just some rough numbers based on costs submitted to insurance shows that a single day in the hospital is roughly $3,000/day and a single gamma knife treatment is roughly $100,000. The gamma knife treatment is the best available option for treating tumors in my brain, however, getting that approved by insurance isn't easy. The last time it happened, the neurosurgeon had to submit a written statement indicating that my life expectancy was at least 6 months beyond the time of treatment or they wouldn't pay.

The money from the fundraiser is being used in one of 3 ways: Medical expenses, Putting food on the table, or final expenses which include funeral costs and paying off the house and car debt so that my family will have a roof over their heads when my time comes. For those that have given, I will never be able to say thank you enough nor will I ever be able to repay you. I do hope that your generosity will be repaid to you ten-fold in some way. I've seen many of you give small amounts and many of you give large amounts, however, the common theme is that you are giving what you can while also wishing you could give me. From me to you, whatever you give is precious. Even it is only $5 it is precious because you have taken the time to give and demonstrated that you believe in providing hope and compassion to others and because those $5 donations add up quickly when it is thousands of people giving.

I lost my grandmother this month from cardiac arrest. Because of my health, I couldn't attend her funeral. That was and continues to be a very painful thing for me. She was always there to make sure I was taken care of and even spent several weeks with us helping to keep me fed and motivated despite her own health failing her. She passed at 80 years, 8 months, and 8 days of age and the legacy she left me was to help others as much as you can. Even though my own health is failing, I am doing whatever I can to bring attention to others whose situations are just as bad, if not worse, as mine.

At this point, even though my prognosis has not changed, I am feeling better. I still have trouble moving around as I run out of energy quickly and fight pain constantly. There is still no cure for the type of cancer I have and the treatments I am on will likely cease to be effective at some point. While there is likely to be a point at which all treatment options have been exhausted, I continue to have hope that a cure may be found before that happens. Quite honestly, even if it meant that I was physically unable to do anything and even if it meant that I had lost a substantial amount of my cognitive function, if I was alive I would be fine. That is truthfully the only thing that I have ever wanted. I simply want to live, to watch my children grow, and to die of old age with my soul mate by my side.

I want to bring your attention to some other individuals whose situations are, I think, worse than mine.

First, there is Nathalie. She is a 15 year old who is battling a rare form of cancer. She is trying to get access to a drug which could very well save her life and might even save mine one day. She meets all of the requirements except for her age. Because she isn't 18, she can't get the drug until it's been approved by the FDA. You can learn more about her situation at [http://www.4nathalie.com/](http://www.4nathalie.com/)

Second, there is Ben. He is a father of 4 who was diagnosed with cancer of the Brain and central nervous system in December and given weeks to live. He's fought an impossible battle and managed to exceed doctors expectations. At this point, he has exhausted all available treatment options and may soon meet his end. I'm not entirely sure what the needs of his family are at this time, however, he does have a fundraiser at [http://www.gofundme.com/ben-fights- brain-cancer](http://www.gofundme.com/ben-fights-brain-cancer)

If you feel the need to give but are unable to give to more than one of us, I would ask that you give to either Nathalie or Ben. Although my family does need the help, I want to leave this world better than I found it and that starts by helping others. If my time comes, I would rather that my legacy be that of someone who helped others rather than that of someone who begged for help as others in need were left standing alone.

Thank you again for all that you have done for me and my family. I know that I will never be able to repay your kindness.

Jonathan Dale

</comment><comment><USER9> Still could use all the help we can get thanks to all so far that have found it in there hearts to pay it forward and help out our family in this time of need thankyou from us is not a lot but it what I have to give hope to some day give it forward to someone else in there time of need

</comment><comment><USER10> His blog:

[https://d4l3.com/blogs/darthclue](https://d4l3.com/blogs/darthclue)

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's to hope you still have it in your heart to help out thankyou to all have given so far look beyond the systems we have so payitforword and may u be blessed beyond your years

</comment><comment><USER11> Donated.</comment>


Docker 1.8 released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.docker.com/2015/08/docker-1-8-content-trust-toolbox-registry-orchestration/

<comment><USER2> Really happy to see volume plugins in stable :)

We wrote up a demo of using volume plugins in docker 1.8 with compose here, in case people are interested: [https://clusterhq.com/2015/08/04/docker-volume- plugins/](https://clusterhq.com/2015/08/04/docker-volume-plugins/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Glad to see they finally gave some love to running docker on osx, as it is definitely a pain point for a lot of people. Hopefully Docker Toolbox is what we've been waiting for.

<comment><USER4> I started looking at Docker during vacation last week. I had a slightly outdated copy of Boot2Docker that didn't play well with VirtualBox 5.0. With limited bandwidth, I downloaded the docker-machine executable rather than the whole Boot2Docker package. Worked fine, and I was able to set up a variety of containers.

When I got back to work this week, I started setting some of this up on my work Mac, and found a release candidate for the Docker Toolbox. It looks like it's the docker, docker-machine, and docker-compose executables plus the Kitematic GUI (haven't tried that yet). Looks like a decent package.

Grumpy, off-topic digression after a week with limited Internet: please supply offline docs (Unreal), don't put a git clone command in the configure script to build them (Rust), don't require an external crate in a tutorial (random number generator for Rust), don't put a link to a CDN in your offline docs (Leap Motion SDK), don't require activation after a 2 GB download (Unity Personal). I did luck out and find a WebSocket library in the Go tutorial, which I used to grab JSON from the Leap to load into MongoDB (in a Docker container).

Grumpy, mostly on-topic digression: docker-compose doesn't work on my work Mac, and no one seems to know how to fix it:

[https://github.com/docker/compose/issues/271](https://github.com/docker/compose/issues/271)

Haven't yet managed to rebuild it locally as suggested.

Edit: some observations after installing Docker Toolbox.

Kitematic is an Electron app (complete with a Toggle DevTools menu that covers the window with a web dev console). It doesn't tell you what it's doing, but docker-machine shows that it created a machine named default using the VirtualBox driver with the default settings.

Opening the Docker Quickstart Terminal stopped (and deleted?) the machine that Kitematic made and started a new one with the same name and settings.

I think I'd be just as happy with only the docker and docker-machine executables.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for trying the Toolbox! Did you happen to run both at the same time? It's possible there was a race condition while creating the default VM via Kitematic and the Quickstart Terminal at the same time.

Lastly, choosing "Custom Install" in the Toolbox installer will let you de- select Kitematic, Docker Quickstart Terminal or any other parts you may not want!

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the reply.

I hadn't quit Kitematic by the time I started Quickstart Terminal, but Kitematic had completed the creation of its VM: docker-machine ls showed default as running, and the docker cli button at the bottom of the window opened a usable docker session in that machine.

It looks like Quickstart Terminal looks for the default VM using VBoxManage, rather than docker-machine, and hardcodes its location as /usr/local/bin. Mine's in /usr/bin, so the script failed to detect the existing machine.

I don't have time to report this now, but I'll look at filing an issue this evening.

<comment><USER5> This is very helpful! Thanks for the info

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations!

It seems the memory issue with "docker" daemon hasn't been admitted/resolved. (See [https://github.com/docker/docker/releases/tag/v1.8.0](https://github.com/docker/docker/releases/tag/v1.8.0))

In all of my deployments, "docker" daemon memory keeps increasing. The worst case is 37% in a 512MB instance in Digital Ocean. Then docker daemon crashes...

That's to say, congratulate but I don't really want to upgrade ... :(

<comment><USER7> Memory issues can be caused by a number of things. There's been a lot of work done to improve some leakages around the logging -- both by being able to disable logging if you don't need it or switch to a different logger, and general improvements to the default jsonlog logger.

There's also been a known issue around creating lots of `docker exec` instances and those references not being released (so you can query for status later), this is also resolved.

It would be awesome if you could profile it and submit a bug report with how you are using docker and where you are seeing memory growth. Let me know how I can help so we can get this resolved.

<comment><USER6> Hi @cpuguy83,

Thanks for your feedback. I couldn't gather enough information for bug reporting (But I had few rich logs that told "docker" has invalid memory access.)

As a work-around, I use a special patch of docker-compose that helps the containers to restart automatically when "docker" daemon restarts :)

> There's also been a known issue around creating lots of `docker exec` > instances and those references not being released (so you can query for > status later), this is also resolved.

Woh, this seems my case, though I am not sure about "releasing" (We run "exec" and "exit"; we don't hold any "exec" for longer than 2 seconds.) I haven't seen this mentioned in changelog (FIXME). Let me try again in ticket system!

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's docker that was holding on to these exec instances (and cluttering up the `docker inspect` output if you do a bunch). We now do GC on these.

ps, you can add `reastart: always` to your compose file, and docker daemon will automatically restart those containers for you.

<comment><USER6> Thanks a lot. I wonder why this is not mentioned in the changelog :)

Regarding the `docker-compose` issue, it's described here [https://github.com/docker/compose/pull/1723](https://github.com/docker/compose/pull/1723) . Aanand Prasad has a better PR in [https://github.com/docker/compose/pull/1754](https://github.com/docker/compose/pull/1754) (merged).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was kind of hoping they'd enable IFF_MULTICAST ([https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/3043](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/3043)), but am glad to see it's slated for 1.9.0.

</comment><comment><USER9> Been using Dinghy† for my OS X Docker needs, as it sets up a relatively painless NFS share for mounting my user directory into the Docker VM. Has file sharing on Mac been improved with Docker Toolbox? VirtualBox's native file sharing is quite slow.

† [https://github.com/codekitchen/dinghy](https://github.com/codekitchen/dinghy)

<comment><USER10> I've been just running a full on Ubuntu VM, then installing SAMBA for sharing the necessary paths... so I can edit in my host OS, but run via SSH into the VM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So are the docs out of date, or does Docker still not use user namespaces? This was promised quite a while ago and has slipped multiple versions so far, and it's a lot more important to serious uses of Docker than `docker cp`.

[https://docs.docker.com/articles/security/](https://docs.docker.com/articles/security/)

<comment><USER12> > it's a lot more important to serious uses of Docker than `docker cp`

This is a cheap shot and has no basis in the reality of how open source projects are managed and how people contribute to them.

<comment><USER11> I don't see much daylight between Docker the open-source project and Docker the venture-backed company trying to convince my clients to buy into their platform and not the other venture-backed companies' platforms. The Docker _company_ and its employees have talked a lot of game and their security story is consistently subpar, be it recommended Dockerfiles running stuff as root users or the lack of stuff like user namespaces or running as a giant daemon where even read-only operations must run as root.

The literally-literally most important security concern in containerland, _not allowing container escapes to have host root_ , is not done by Docker. But `docker cp` is, built at least in part by people working for Docker-the- company (I went and looked to be sure). So you can call it a cheap shot, and that's fine, but this is something promised a long time ago and my concern is for the people who buy the hype because they don't know any better, not the people generating it and should.

<comment><USER13> Just to clarify: user namespaces will be a great additional layer in security, but they are still a relatively new feature, with very little actual use in production. You can already use them in runC [1] (Docker's low-level container runtime which we have broken out as a standalone tool). And once we have sorted out the hairy side-effects on UID mapping and network namespaces, we will integrate it into the Docker engine itself. But even then, we won't recommend running untrusted code as root inside a Linux container until the community has more time to battle-test user namespaces.

[1] [https://github.com/opencontainers/runc](https://github.com/opencontainers/runc)

<comment><USER14> I think that you're missing the point (or at least talking around it). Namely - what is your timeline for actually securing Docker? Features like `docker cp` are nice, but don't help me when I really can't use Docker securely in production until things like user namespaces are running. I have multi-tenant systems and right now the only way for me to run Docker securely is to use it w/in a VM.

Certainly, it will take time to battle-test anything, so the sooner that feature has been released, the sooner that we can get started doing the battle-testing.

It would be helpful to have a clearer roadmap for features like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great to see the support for Fluentd and GELF logging drivers =)

Logging is such a big part of production deployment, and it's good to see a couple of solid options in Docker's core.

</comment><comment><USER16> For me pushing new images to (our own) registry are failing with 1.8. Be careful.

<comment><USER17> Hey sorry to hear about that, would you mind opening an issue at [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/new](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/new) with additional information (versions, logs, how to reproduce) ?</comment></comment>


Hackers extorted $1.14m from University of California San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53214783 <comment><USER2> If someone is curious why universities are getting hit - it's usually a mix of them being riddled with security holes while being very challenging environments to secure in general.

Add a constant lack of budget and there we go. Expect to see more of these in the upcoming weeks / months.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Paying ransoms outside of kidnapping should be illegal.</comment>


Podcast Interview about Erlang, Forth and how to become a rock star consultant - <AUTHOR> http://techzinglive.com/?p=63

<comment><USER2> Why is #5 not on iTunes? I can only see 1-4 from my iPhone. I can't use desktop at work to download and move the mp3 to the iPhone, so as a result I can't take it with me right now and I will probably forget about this later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Episode #5 is on iTunes, but there may be a problem with the auto updating. If you manually update in iTunes it will download. We'll definitely look into the iTunes auto update issue, but it may just be that it takes a little while for iTunes to fully register an uploaded episode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome stuff. Very interesting, really good stuff comming from these guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the positive feedback! We're still just experimenting and trying to figure out the format, but the HN community really is our target audience, so any suggestions about people we should interview or topics we should cover would be very welcome.

<comment><USER4> I ought to speak faster. Hope it didn't bother anyone.</comment></comment></comment>


Loud. Arrogant. Rebellious. Asian. - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonshen.com/2011/loud-arrogant-rebellious-asian/

<comment><USER2> It bothers me that as a generation, we are rejecting our parents way to play the game, when instead we should be rejecting the game.

Humility and willingness to work hard without complaint are the most valuable things my parents gave me.

Definition of success in terms of material wealth, academic prestige, and public recognition were the most damaging.

Our parents' generation sacrificed so much for us and emphasized these things so that we wouldn't know the poverty that they did. Maybe they didn't realize how well they would succeed and that in doing so they would leave us impoverished in much more deeply profound ways: intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. I can't blame them, but our generation's discourse needs to be about more than worldly success. It needs to shift from tactics to strategy.

Our parents gave us what they could; we need to give our children more.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your comment joebadmo. I share your sentiments about our parents - they sacrificed so much so that we could have a good life here in America. My problem is that the many of things they taught us do not produce the results that we - this generation - are looking for (or perhaps more kindly, are necessary but not sufficient).

I want adventure in my life, an uncapped career trajectory and yes, I would like to have money. But other people might want other things too - like the writers and poets featured in the Paper Tigers article.

The important thing is recognizing what you really truly want and not letting other people's expectations stop you from going after those things.

<comment><USER2> My point is that the conversation still seems mostly to be about how to get the things we think we want. I want to talk about what we should want.

This passage in the article stood out to me:

 _Things that somehow come naturally to people who go to school in the suburbs and have parents who are culturally assimilated.? I pressed him for specifics, and he mentioned that he had visited his white girlfriend's parents' house the past Christmas, where the family had "sat around cooking together and playing Scrabble." This ordinary vision of suburban-American domesticity lingered with Mao: Here, at last, was the setting in which all that implicit knowledge-- about social norms and propriety--had been transmitted. There was no cram school that taught these lessons._

What's beautiful about this "ordinary vision" is that it's a portrait of domestic tranquility and love, simple and unpretentious, not that it's some sort of cultural transmission conduit; and it's totallly perverse to even frame it that way.

Another:

 _One succinct evocation of the situation appeared in the comments section of a website called Yellowworld: "If you're East Asian, you need to attend a top- tier university to land a good high-paying gig. Even if you land that good high-paying gig, the white guy with the pedigree from a mediocre state university will somehow move ahead of you in the ranks simply because he's white."_

The second, conditional sentence is the one that seems to get all the attention, but I've always felt that it's the first one, the premise, that deserves criticism. The article makes a head-fake toward it, but then lets it slide. This is the real problem with our culture: not that we aren't getting enough of the highest-paying or highest-status jobs, enough wealth, enough exposure, or enough recognition. The problem is that that's all we care about.

The tragic truth about putting everything into breaking through the "bamboo ceiling," I suspect, is that it doesn't actually look any different on the other side of it.

None of this is to say that wealth, exposure, or recognition are inherently bad or wrong. 1 Timothy 6:10 says "Love of money is the root of all evil." Not money; love of it. It's our _preoccupation_ with wealth, exposure, and recognition, our search for these to the exclusion of all else that leaves us with nothing truly substantial inside.

Yes, the author briefly mentions artistic pursuits in passing, but it's still in the framework of external measures of success. What's the takeaway?

 _And though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone's happiness, and to dare to be interesting._

"[Be] interesting," he says. Interesting to whom?

I have a different message: Be interested.

Yesterday's xkcd explicates it better than I can: <http://xkcd.com/896/>

<comment><USER3> I agree that people don't spend enough thinking about what they _ought_ to want and are overly programmed by consumer culture and advertising.

I include myself in this group.

I used to be more thoughtful about it, and even wrote a series on "finding yourself" - <http://www.jasonshen.com/2006/finding-yourself-in-7-days/> as well as a manifesto on creating your own life philosophy: <http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/48.05.SuccessPhilosophy>

Thanks for reminding us about what really matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whinyness and narcissism of these guys completely astounds me. Boo hoo I went to stanford but I don't get to date hot girls. Or FU Im so angry because my parents suck and look I date hot girls.

Here is some advice - everyone's parents suck in one way or another and you were lucky you werent born in Africa where 30,000 babies die every single day.

True happiness comes from within. Not from achievements and not from material possessions.

<comment><USER3> If you're astounded that people who have been given much want more, you haven't been following the trend of CEO pay or the activity on Wall Street or history of human conquest. It is part of human nature to always be wanting more.

Leaving the snarkiness aside, you make a great point. It is always worth thinking about how lucky you are and how much worse things could have turned out.

There wasn't a place for me to note my appreciation for what I've been given in the article, but know that it exists. My statement about getting after what you want still stands.

<comment><USER4> My point is that you want the wrong things and when you get them you still wont be happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Error Establishing Database Connection"

Way to fight racial stereotypes dude. My prejudiced view of asians as people that know how to build websites has totally been challenged.

<comment><USER3> Hahaha - thank you. Glad to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What always strikes me when reading articles/entries like this or the Paper Tigers article itself is how opaque the unique difficulties people in subcultures or minority cultures face. Not only that they exist, but why they exist: Usually, the issue is so nuanced as to be seemingly unalterable.

Take, for example, incarceration rates and the likelihood of incarceration by race. At face value it's absurd that being born a black male means you are more likely to go to jail than a white male born at the same exact instant. It's just as absurd that other minority populations are seemingly systemically disallowed from positions of executive authority in businesses.

Obviously the reasons for these difference are incredibly difficult to parse and weight; how do you go about correcting this aberration?

I guess learning things like this make me frustrated and confused.

<comment><USER2> I think it's hard to talk about because it's often systemic, invisible, and cultural simultaenously. Even when it becomes visible, it's easy for one side to blame the culture and the other side to blame the system, when both are probably to blame, and there's a symbiosis between the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You're kind of like an asian Charlie Sheen.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Yes, it is about attracting those women whose hair is the color of the midday sun and eyes are the color of the ocean, and it is about having sex with them. "

No-no-no. That's the wrong attitude.

I think the key is this -- women are animals, just like men, with slightly different genitals. And they should be treated like men, not put on a higher pedestal.

I'm sorry, girls, but if you think that just because you have a vagina you're somehow better than the rest of the world -- you are wrong. The worst possible legal thing you can do to a man is not have sex with him. And if you think having sex with you is the best and indescribable pleasure one can have -- you are wrong. Sex is not as fun as it sounds, it's a physical workout, it gets tiring, there's sweat and weird noises and everything. It's overrated. Get over it, not everyone is dreaming of you everyday of their life and you are not the fantastically beautiful cute cuddly thing you'd like to think you are.

You wanted equal rights, have fun.

Now, this is a question you want to ask yourself "Would I treat her differently if she had a penis?" If you say yes, you are biased and you need deep introspection into yourself and your life-values.

I'm tired of all this miserable bullshit where people take things like color of the skin, or genitalia, or height, or whatever into account to justify their own laziness, incompetence, mental illnesses and whatever personal problems they have.

<comment><USER6> You missed the central point of the statement:

 _This is what he prefers, what he stands for, and what he is selling: the courage to pursue anyone you want, and the skills to make the person you desire desire you back._

It's not wrong at all to put what you want on a pedestal. It seems pretty obvious to me that when you desire something it's because you value it.

<comment><USER9> Not wrong, just backwards and ineffective. It's often when you stop caring that the object of your desire arrives at your door.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a first generation of Chinese immigrant, I personally experienced bamboo ceiling in a government agency. While I am still not very comfortable and skillful to raise my voice at my workplace, I totally agree that young Asian generation should raise your voice and demand what you deserve in a meritocratic society. Go ahead, be a real Asian tiger!

</comment><comment><USER11> This made me chuckle:

        [warning, this post contains graphic language]

Kind of undercuts what goes after. Good piece though.

<comment><USER3> My first post with a lot of swearing... You gotta start somewhere, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Apologies about the site being down intermittently - I'm leaving my webhost (Bluehost) as the uptime has been atrocious as of late.

</comment><comment><USER12> site seems to be down, cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.jasonshen.com/2011/loud- arrogant-rebellious-asian/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why are Asians to race oriented?

<comment><USER2> Why can't non-Asians form sentences and why do they generalize so much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This all seems really shallow and superficial. "Money!" "Women!" "Pushups!" "Fuck yeah!"

I don't like loud douchebags of any race. I'm not saying you're a douchebag, but what you wrote here says to me that strive to be one.</comment>


London's Surprisingly Rich History of Transit Textile Design - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/01/london-transport-textile-design-archives-tube-history/581728/ <comment><USER2> I actually don't care about textiles yet I found this fascinating: the designer's brief surely proved Blake's aphorism that one can see a world in a grain of sand.</comment>


Top 4 Things To Never Do To Your Users - <AUTHOR> http://codeulate.com/?p=10

<comment><USER2> _Make them confirm their email address to register_

The only good reason for this is it helps prevent people from signing up other people to harass them. But even then, most sites I've seen aren't smart enough to require confirmation to change the email address once registered so it does no good.

Companies should just offer RSS feeds for people who really want junk solicitations.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Make them log in by account number.

Really, who does this? Might as well remind us to register domain names instead of using IP addresses.

<comment><USER4> American Airlines and Scottrade both do this. Dumbasses.</comment></comment>


The Year Silicon Valley Went Morally Bankrupt - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/139147/year-silicon-valley-went-morally-bankrupt <comment><USER2> > The consequences of Zuckerberg's inaction are now clear. On December 4, a > North Carolina man brought a loaded weapon into Washington, D.C.'s Comet > Ping Pong to investigate a conspiracy theory called #Pizzagate in which > Comet is the hub of a child-trafficking ring organized by Democratic Party > operatives. The story was popularized by fake news.

In the days after the election, I too believed in social media's major role the unexpected results. However, after more reflection, the problem seems far beyond facile dissemination of fake news: a large portion of the population are either post-truth thinkers, or, simply never learned how to fact check their news sources. If someone is going to be swayed to elect a different candidate because of a story that popped up in their news feed, there's not a whole lot we can do besides ensure that the next generation is better educated in healthy skepticism and critical thinking.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how you "fix" the problem of fake news. most of the people that believe that CNN is "fake news" also believe the fact checking sites are biased too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, they tear Zuckerberg a new one for not policing fake news hard enough, then end the article with: "Algorithms can't solve everything."

And this was written by "Sarah Jones [...] the social media editor at The New Republic."

Sarah needs to take a forest-level view of her life. There is a striking contradiction in the way she has played her cards.

<comment><USER3> I have a hard enough time with Facebook algorithms choosing what people see without some sort of dashboard to control it as it is. The first amendment still exists and people have a right to consume any garbage they want.</comment></comment>


Nba.com uses AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://global.nba.com/ <comment><USER2> They are using Angular with WordPress, ew!

</comment><comment><USER3> how do you tell that they use Angular?

<comment><AUTHOR> Look at the html or more embarrassingly the errors in the console :P. Their stats page has used it for a longer time, the global page seems to be something new.</comment></comment>


E-recycling innovator is going to prison for trying to extend computers' lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-microsoft-copyright-20180426-story.html <comment><USER2> > E-recycling innovator is going to prison for trying to extend computers' > lives

No, he's going to prison for counterfeiting software -- to the extent of having overseas manufacturers print custom CDs with fake Microsoft holograms on them.

More discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946478)

<comment><USER3> You're right. But you should also note that the software he counterfeited was free software.</comment></comment>


Scientists hope to use neutrino experiments to watch a black hole form - <AUTHOR> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/september-2015/the-birth-of-a-black-hole-live <comment><USER2> Interesting stuff, but unfortunately the title is linkbait (The birth of a black hole, live). The subtitle on the page would be a lot better: _" Scientists hope to use neutrino experiments to watch a black hole form."_

<comment><USER3> Thanks, we updated the submission title.</comment></comment>


When Tragedy Dictates Software User Experience - <AUTHOR> http://www.williamha.com/when-tragedy-dictates-software-user-experience/

<comment><USER2> I had the opposite situation where, along with other media, I was accused of being an accomplice of the shooter for showing the video on my site (autoplay off). [http://newslines.org/blog/i-am-not-vester-flanagans- accompli...](http://newslines.org/blog/i-am-not-vester-flanagans-accomplice/)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a huge difference in the emotional salience of video, as opposed to images or text. It's why I don't watch the news - I'd prefer to not have my emotional responses getting hijacked in that manner.

Not autoplaying video is a no-brainer for my set of preferences.

</comment><comment><USER4> I did not know I could disable the auto play. I find it so annoying, nice to know!</comment>


Show HN: Flowie – A Better GitHub Workflow - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Xtremilicious/flowie <comment><USER2> I suggest you avoid using abbreviations like MLH. I had to google to find out what it is and I'm still not sure if I got it right. Is it Major League Hacking?</comment>


Ask HN: Represent SQL using JSON? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any tools (preferable open-source) which represent SQL using JSON and then converts the JSON to a SQL query? <comment><USER2> you should post this on stackoverflow. i find this page useful: [http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/sql- comparison/](http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/sql-comparison/)</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone heard of this 'ASBE Algorithm' before? - <AUTHOR>

I was directed to http://www.merlincryption.com/ASBE.html. I had never heard of this. After reading what they're selling, flags went up everywhere. So I decided to do a little research on the topic.<p>I googled it, and I found this: http://premsobel.info/stat_asbe.html (it seems to be his website). In which he claims it isn't peer reviewed (and the little that has been done is classified). And he also claims that governments should want obscurity over security. <comment><USER2> _" Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break. It's not even hard. What is hard is creating an algorithm that no one else can break, even after years of analysis. And the only way to prove that is to subject the algorithm to years of analysis by the best cryptographers around."_ (Bruce Schneier, 1998)

You are right to be cautious of snake oil vendors. The thing is, most of them are completely sincere in their belief that the new scheme _is_ secure. But if it hasn't been tested by people qualified to break things, it isn't secure.

The difficulty is two-fold: (1) inexperienced cryptographers are unable to test the security of an algorithm sufficiently; and (2) experienced cryptographers are not common, they are generally busy enough already, and it's tough to get them interested enough in a new algorithm to really take a close look at it.</comment>


The Case for Learned Index Structures - <AUTHOR> https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1712.01208v1/ <comment><USER2> This article was already posted a few hours ago.

But the cool thing I discovered thanks to this post is arxiv-vanity : it renders arxiv PDFs as html webpages so you don't have to download the PDF. Previous thread here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534580)

A great thing would be a browser plugin that redirects arxiv to the arxiv- vanity page.

EDIT : there's a bookmark that redirects to arxiv-vanity, available there [https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/](https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15894896](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15894896)</comment>


ASK HN: What's your setup? - <AUTHOR>

What do you hack on? Are you do 13" Air guy who uses nothing else and hacks around coffee shops or do you have three 27" screens on your desk? What is your computer's configurations, which OS do you use? <comment><USER2> Retina MacBook Pro 15" 16GB/512GB SSD. Which I like mainly for the screen, use it at the simulated 1920x1200 res. It sucks that it can barely play flash or do other cpu intensive things without it getting fucking hot and loud. Its a shame because the GPU is pretty fast. Wish Apple could make a fucking decent thermal design.

Thinkpad X220 16GB/256GB SSD, Win7 Pro. I love it for its small size, long battery life, and ruggedness. Although I should warn you the plastic doesn't get on well with mosquito repellant, I learned that in Costa Rica last year. Also the trackpoint, 3 mouse buttons, and keyboard. It actually has a bigger keyboard than the rMBP despite being classified as a 12" laptop. Oh and a 3-year warranty where a guy comes to your house to fix whatever is wrong that only cost $100 or so. The screen is painfully tiny at 1366x768 though.

I guess I couldn't decide on one laptop, there are both good for different things. At home I sometimes plug into a 24" Dell 1920x1200 LCD and use a Kinesys Freestyle Pro keyboard and Logitech Anywhere MX mouse. That is nice for extended computer work.

My phone is a HTC First. Yeah the Facebook phone. Its a reasonable size, looks nice, you can uninstall all the facebook junk, and the battery lasts me 3 days. And I only paid $170 for it because no one wants them. Oh and the GPS and 3G work unlike my previous Galaxy Nexus.

Software-wise, I mainly use Debian under VMWare for work. And Firefox for browsing natively. The builtin sync feature is good. mutt and notmuch for email. I run irssi and bitlbee for jabber on a server, which I connect to with mosh.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- 27" iMac (i5, 16GB RAM, 1TB) (dev + browsing)

\- Win 7 PC (i7, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 4TB storage), 2 x 29" (dev + some gaming)

\- Win 8 PC (i7, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 8TB storage), 30" (mostly for entertainment)

\- MacBook Air 11" (dev while travelling)

\- Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 as my primary mobile devices.

\- iPhone4, Lumia 900, a few random Android phones, for playing around.

</comment><comment><USER4> Primary hardware: Dual 24", 1920x1200 monitors; IBM Model M keyboard (manufactured in 1990) still clicking strong; computer is a 4-year-old 2.67 GHz Core i7 920 (which is plenty adequate now that it has 24 GB RAM). Laptop is a 3-year-old Sony, purchased because it was the only model available at the time that was at the intersection of relatively small size (14" screen), highish resolution (1600x900), and Core i5.

Operating environment for both is Ubuntu 12.10 using xmonad as the WM; most hacking right now is in Clojure via Emacs.

Pretty happy with this setup, though I'd like a buckling-spring keyboard with a few more buckybits; I'm also contemplating a switch back to a Kinesis Contoured keyboard. The laptop will probably be looking at replacement sometime soon; Linux support for it has never gelled (power management and external monitors) though it's been generally adequate.

</comment><comment><USER5> Asus G55VW, classified as a gaming laptop. I do not game.

\- 15.6 inch screen on 1920 x 1080, 16GB of RAM, excellent cooling and noise control.

\- Windows 8/Ubuntu.

The only regret so far is not getting the 17 inch model.

How about you share your configuration as well since you started the discussion? :)

<comment><USER6> This is almost exactly me, except I have the 17-inch model.

Also dual-boot Ubuntu/Win8, though Win8 is just for games they don't have for linux. I'm a developer and 95% of time is spent in linux.

I find my 17-inch model is a little too large sometimes--barely fits in a backpack. But it's worth it when I sit down to code.

<comment><USER5> I think portability is the reason why I opted for the 15-inch model originally, but in the end it seems that I don't carry it outside that much. However, I can assure you that you made the right decision if you're using it for work/programming, it was a bit difficult at first to get used to such a high resolution on a 15-inch screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thinkpad x220, 8gb RAM, i7, 2xSSD and run ArchLinux on it with Awesome WM, which is a really really great tiling window manager. At home I plug into a 23in screen, mouse and keyboard, which works really well.

<comment><USER8> How'd you squeeze 2 SSDs in there?

<comment><USER7> you have one normal drive bay for a 2.5inch ssd/hd and then you also have a msata connection below the keyboard next to the wifi card. it doubles as a pcie bus in which you could put a mobile broadband card or a msata ssd such as this one:

[http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT480M50...](http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT480M500SSD3)

<comment><USER8> TIL they make msata ssd's .. very cool :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 15" Mid 2009 MBP and two 24" Benq screens (unfortunately TN panels). One screen is dedicated to a Windows 7 tower for more intensive processes (Q6600, 4GB ram). Apple Keyboard (with keypad) for programming, Das Keyboard for other things. Razer Deathadder mouse for both; I prefer gaming mice for everyday use. I use Synergy to share mouse and keyboard between Mac and Windows. 2TB network drive for sharing files and making backups.

It's pretty dated if I'm honest! Problems of a poor student.

<comment><USER10> Your idea of a poor student and mine are somewhat different!

<comment><USER9> Hahah reading it back I suppose it is quite a lot! I suppose I see people on here and Twitter with 27" Thunderbolt screens and MBP retinas and seem to adjust myself towards the poor end when in fact it's not the case with regards to my fellow students.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I initially got the 13" Macbook Air (maxed out) planning to only use it while on the go, but it's started to replace my desktop. It's a beast of a machine when plugged into an external monitor.

Most of my development is either done on OS X or in a Linux (generally Debian) VM through VMWare Fusion with Vagrant. For iOS development I use both Appcode and Xcode. Anything else is done in a Tmux/vim/zsh session.

</comment><comment><USER12> \- Macbook Pro 13" (128GB solid, 8GB RAM), magic mouse (I almost exclusively use the trackpad). \- 2 year old custom built gaming rig (i7K @4Ghz, 16GB of Ram, GTX 580, 256GB Solid, 750GB secondary, 27" Samsung Monitor, Shitty logitech gaming keyboard, shitty cyborg 7 mouse)

I almost never use my pc other than as a media center and occasionally some hardcore games. All my work is done on my mac.

<comment><USER12> Forgot to mention it's the retina version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lenovo w520 w/ 8gb of RAM and i7. After a USB drive update from lenovo stopped Windows from booting completely switched to Debain Sid. It has a NVIDIA Optimus, but I think its turned off ATM. I also have the built in color calibration too but it doesn't work.

I also have a Logitech trackman and hope to someday live in a place bigger than a shoebox so I can use a damn monitor.

</comment><comment><USER14> Win 7 PC (i5, 8GB RAM, SSD, very quiet), 27" Dell TFT display (U2711). HP washable keyboard, Logitech G3 mouse. Most of the work is done in PuTTY windows on remote servers.

I'd love to use the 24" iMac and the 13" Air more, but the (german) keyboard sucks for programming ({[]}@ etc.), even after remapping.

I miss my ThinkPad 720C, best laptop keyboard ever...

</comment><comment> jizue_-f Lenovo Thinkpad T420, Mint 14, intel core i5, 16gb ram, nvidia nvs 4200m,60gb ocz ssd, and is regularly hooked up to a 22inch acer monitor.

</comment><comment><USER15> 2 x 24" LCD in landscape and 1 x 19" LCD in portrait mode. Connected to home built Core2 Duo 3.2GHz with 4G RAM. Running Ubuntu 13.04. Use a Samsung ChromeBook on the road.

This is sufficient since most of the real work happens on AWS with multiple instances and clients' AIX & HPUX clusters.

</comment><comment><USER16> MacBook Air 2013 13"/8Gb/i7/128

Lenovo z580 15"/8Gb/750 with Arch Linux, i3wm

Sometimes I plug in a spare monitor if I need the extra screen space but I really prefer a portable setup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you got any wireless connectivity issues with the Macbook Air?

<comment><USER16> No I haven't, it's been working fine for me so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Linux Mint 14 Nadia (upgrading to Mint 15 in the near future) on an Asus laptop with nvidia GPU and external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. I use the pre-installed Windows for games that don't play nicely with Wine.

</comment><comment><USER18> Asus Zenbook prime 13" 1080p with an i5, 128gb ssd. Runs Fedora 19. Have a 23" 1080p monitor and cheap keyboard/mouse but I barely have it docked.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thinkpad T430 (8GB RAM, i5 and Windows 8) and 1 lenovo wireless mouse. This is sufficient to take care of my coding needs

</comment><comment><USER20> MacBook Air an external monitor (24 inch) Apple Keyboard Logitech Mouse

<comment><USER21> Me too! Except I use an Apple Trackpad.

<comment><USER22> Is the extra portability worth it with the Air? I still have a chunky 15" MBP with 16GB RAM (despite supposedly being limited to 8) but it's relatively heavy in the backpack.

<comment><USER16> I'd say compared to the a 13" Pro, the Air is noticeably lighter but not enough to be a deal-breaker if you value the Retina. For me personally, I was sold on the 2013 Air because of the battery life mostly. There's rumors of major changes to the Air in 2014, seeing as it hasn't changed in appearance since its release, so if you're willing to wait a bit longer it might be worth it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Add a Readability button to your website - <AUTHOR> http://keyboardy.com/web-design/readability-button/

<comment><USER2> This doesn't make sense at all. If your site isn't readable, or it's too distracting, maybe you should spend some time figuring out why, rather than just slapping another button on there.</comment>


Key Takeaways from Zero to One - <AUTHOR> https://jakkaps.com/key-takeaways-from-zero-to-one-by-peter-thiel/ <comment><USER2> One of my favorite points in the book is the explanation for why any sort of niche small business software sucks.

In consumer software, customer acquisition cost is low and development costs can be spread over millions of people, so there is a big profit potential even though the price is low. For large enterprises, the customer acquisition cost is high (lots of meetings with suits), but the payout is high (millions of dollars is good value for software that is going to be deployed at 20,000 locations and serve millions of customers). For a small business, customer acquisition is still expensive (sales and support done personally), but the price is still pretty low.

The book cured me of mumbling "I could make software better than that in a week" every time I saw a receptionist at a small office struggling with a bad app.

<comment><USER3> _The book cured me of mumbling "I could make software better than that in a week" every time I saw a receptionist at a small office struggling with a bad app._

What if the acquisition cost could be made low? Doesn't patio11's appointment reminder app fall into this category?

[https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my- appoint...](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my-appointment- reminder-business-to-12k-mo-2b8720ca25)

<comment><USER4> It might. He talks about revenue but not about profit. So we dpn't really know much about his costs, aside from him mentioning that he was spending a meaningful amount on insurance.

It could very well be that acquisition cost was quite reasonable, and he may have talked about this elsewhere. I just don't think the IH interview tells us enough to know for sure one way or the other.

<comment><USER5> He's published a huge amount of detail about revenue and costs, his profits aren't enough to sustain a family.

I say that with the greatest amount of respect for the man by the way, he's super super smart and I love his writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The point of lean startups isn't so that _your_ startup finds the global maximum.

Investors invest in many startups. Each one starts in a different valley and starts climbing the hill. The investor's job is that one of the startups pays off. Your job is to climb your hill quickly and cheaply.

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on which way you look at. I wrote the article from the perspective of a founder, not an investor. The math analogy is a bit stretched though. Following it, the only thing that matters is where you start. If you started in the hill leading up to the global maximum you'd be good. I have no statistics to back this up, but I would suspect reaching a global maximum is more expensive than reaching a local one. Truly world-changing ideas, therefore, don't lend themselves as well to the lean methodology.

<comment><USER6> I guess it's a matter of scale, like a fractal. If your idea is big enough, it might be easy to get fooled into thinking you are at the top when a small detour might lead to a much higher summit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The point about Lean Startup is close, but ultimately incorrect. The whole idea behind pivoting is to make a dramatic change when iteration starts to put you into a local maximum. Eric Ries explains it exactly in this way: when each additional iteration leads to less and less improvement, that is when it is time to pivot. Pivoting is not A/B Testing, it is not iterating. It's making a leap in a new direction.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for this, it resonates with me strongly but somehow I didn't pick it up from the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "From what I've observed, really smart people tend to be right, and you can safely accept their viewpoints."

What?

I couldn't believe this statement. It completely neglects the massive differences that exist between people of any intelligence in terms of _what_ and _how_ they think. I'm talking about things like educational level, ideological biases, epistemological approaches to thinking, etc. It also completely neglects the honesty and integrity of the person you are emulating.

To give just one example: I've found that most of the "conspiracy nuts" I've met (people who think we didn't go to the Moon, etc.) are highly intelligent, probably pretty far above average. If anything being highly intelligent makes it much easier to rationalize a ridiculous belief system. Any idiot can imagine a round Earth that spins and orbits the sun but it takes someone with very high intelligence to understand ether vortex theory. Judging by the intricacies of their speculations the "bakers" who assemble bizarre far- fetched conspiracy theories out of QAnon's cold reading act are also quite intelligent.

Con artists also tend to be highly intelligent, hence my comment about honesty and integrity.

For some odd reason it seems like a whole lot of very bright people have adopted this weird kind of biological determinist hard materialist view of cognition and its quality. By materialist I mean it reminds me of Marxist dialectical materialism: the idea that the state of society is a pure function of its technology and other capital. A bunch of people think you can measure someone's IQ and that will tell you how correct their opinions are. Smart people have better opinions because they can think more faster, or something.

I struggle to understand how anyone could possibly believe this. It's patently absurd. It's roughly analogous to saying you can tell the quality of a driver by the performance of the vehicle they are driving, or that the correctness of a computer's output is a pure function of processor speed irrespective of what software it's running.

<comment><USER10> I wager you're getting down voted due to people who see themselves as "smart" taking taking offense at the implication that they are just as fallible as every other human on the planet.

<comment><USER11> I'm assuming it's downvotes for implied respect for anyone that could question the moon landing or consider QAnon theories.

<comment><USER9> If that's the case then the downvoters dreadfully misread my post. That's not what I was saying at all. I was pointing out that bad ideas can be held by people regardless of their raw intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _People have too much faith in their opinions. Exempting yourself from a general human behavior is dumb..._

That second phrase is gold!

<comment><USER12> This sort of thing always comes up when I talk to my friends about marriage. I tell them that I'll never get married because of the divorce statistics, and they tell me that only dumb foolish people get divorced. I tell them "how do I know I'm also not a dumb foolish person or whoever I marry isn't a dumb foolish person?" I haven't found an answer to that yet.

Genuinely not trying to start a flame war, just trying to make an interesting point.

<comment><USER13> That's the kind of observation I've come to appreciate the older/wiser I get. You start off life feeling invincible, that those kinds of stats won't apply to you because you're not a fool like everyone else. But eventually you learn to pay attention to the stats because much more often than not you fall pretty close to the center of the bell curve for most things in life, _no matter what._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find the fact that this book encourages monopolies troubling at best and dishonest at worst. He seems to be in favor of authoritarianism and domination more than freedom. I find it disingenuous especially for a billionaire who preaches 'Faith' in the free market when one of his teachings is essentially eliminating competition.</comment>


I am a mediocre developer - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/sobolevn/i-am-a-mediocre-developer--30hn <comment><USER2> You can't possibly be a "mediocre developer" if you do all that mentioned in the article. I guess that was the joke :)

Re: "I google simplest things all the time", I once wrote my own regular expression parser, context free grammar parser, etc. in Lisp, Python, Perl, and JavaScript.

But to this day I still have to google javascript syntax to work with regular expression for certain things.

Memory is no longer a competitive advantage, the real competitive advantage is the ability and discipline to do everything OP talks about in the post

<comment><USER3> He uses good practices, but at the time he can be bad dev. Because programming isn't about variable naming and etc. It's about writing working algorithms and if you can't do this, then nobody cares how good you at not writing working things.

<comment><USER4> If programming is really about writing algorithms then why people(both candidates and employers) complain about whiteboard interviews? I think that most of the programming done today are in fact declarative due to abundance of high-level languages frameworks, libraries and other great tools that abstract business logic away from the low level imperative instructions. Obviously it's good to know how everything works behind the scenes but I know many people who are far less familiar with the CS basics than me yet they are tremendously more productive in software development.

<comment><USER3> If all your work is to read/write data from DB and represent it in different ways, then yes, you can know absolutely nothing, use standard framework functions and be stackoverflow developer 8/5\. But if you need to write something specific, something more complex, you can't just take two functions from your %framework_name% and make it beautiful and working. You should know how to do it and furthermore, you should know how to do it with existing tools. And here the majority begin to have problems.

<comment><USER5> Honest question, when's the last time you had to do that.

Second honest question, did you _have_ to do that, or did you do that because it was Not Invented Here?

Virtually no-one in our industry needs to write algos regularly. If you are, that probably means you're a bad programmer suffering from NIH syndrome. Or you're one of a tiny group who actually need to because you're doing something cutting edge.

<comment><USER3> It's shouldn't be cutting edge. There may be no open source library or commercial library for your needs (e.g. parsers for most telecom protocols). Your algorithms can be client specific. There may be only awful libraries especially if you use a language in an area for which it is not designed (e.g. something like C/C++ and Websockets). And there may be hundreds and thousands of other reasons. Of course, many people use Spring/Boost/etc. for routines like data transfer and popular protocols (JSON/XML) parsing, but it's only part of big picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like most developers, honestly.

I think about 5% of all developers out there nowadays are actually good developers. IME, most would have no idea what to do if you took away stackoverflow or their abstractions that make their day manageable.

A part of the problem might be that a lot I've met aren't at all interested in development, it's a job and they like the pay. They also just see it as a stepping stone to management.

When I do ask people at work how something actually works they rarely know. I get told just use 'x' it hides all that stuff away for you!

When I bring up basic concepts around coding, and therefore issues in their code, I get blank stares.

I mean, i've seen me having to explain to a C# dev with a few years experience why something like the following didn't work:

        string s = "foobar";
        s.Substring(1, 2);
        Console.WriteLine(s);

He didn't know strings were immutable, didn't know how to understand the documentation for Substring and had never heard of immutability.

Similarly, I've had to explain why something like the following prints 5 and not 6:

        void Main()
        {
            int x = 5;
            Foo(x);
            Console.WriteLine(x);
        }

         void Foo(int x) => x++;

A developer this time who had no idea about reference types & value types.

I don't know how we fix this though. As the people hiring and doing the interviews often don't know what they are doing either. So the blind hires the blind.

<comment><USER7> I am having difficulty believing that someone wouldn't know how variables are scoped/refernced in function calls like the one you showed in the second example.

About the immutablity of strings : Is it absolutely necessary for a string to be immutable? What harm could it do otherwise? I learnt immutablity on my own and apprently there's no such constraint in languages like C/C++, although the same behaviour can be replicated using `const`.

I don't know C# but shouldn't `Console.WriteLine(s.Substring(1, 2));` have worked. No need to worry about immutability, at least in this case.

<comment><USER6> Strings being immutable in .NET is a good thing, for a few reasons. e.g. string pooling (less assembly bloat), string interning (performance) and performance in general.

You also get linq style benefits, e.g.

        string s = "this is a string";
        if(s.Substring(5).ToUpperInvariant().StartsWith("I"))
            Console.WriteLine("true");
        Console.WriteLine(s);

If strings weren't immutable, you'd have to copy s to avoid changing / breaking it.

These are things that I would expect a .NET developer to know. They are basic fundamentals.

<comment><USER8> > performance in general.

Really? Forcing you to copy whenever you want to modify gives you worse performance.

> If strings weren't immutable, you'd have to copy s to avoid changing / > breaking it.

That seems like a disadvantage to me. With mutable strings, you have the option to modify it in place instead of being forced to copy.

<comment><USER9> Ideally you have strings that can be both mutable and immutable based on context. C# is not that smart so they opted into the only other sane option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing that saved my bacon is to write scripts that test production data is valid (for the few things that cannot be enforced by the DB, at least not easily).

Invariably, those scripts found invalid data, which pointed to hard to spot bugs. Catching those early saved me from having huge amounts of invalid data to manually sort through.

<comment><USER11> Do you want to give a quick example?

<comment><USER10> Sure, let's say you have an organization, in which you have users and devices, so users and devices have a nullable FK to organization. Also, a device can be linked to a user, so a device has a nullable FK to a user.

Now, when a device is linked to a user, both should be on the same organization, right? I don't see how to easily do that as a constraint (but I have to admit my SQL skills is quite low, and I avoid bypassing the ORM). Well, in production, devices might land somewhere else, and now you have a device that is supposed to be on organization A which is linked to a user on organization B, if you didn't force the organization when a device is linked to a user.

Depending on your use case, it could be expected, an operational error, or something that should be resolved automatically.

Edit: another example. We have a legacy system. Part of the data is supposed to be mirrored on both new and legacy system, via API calls (I don't know of a better way, I'm not a great dev, DB are different, not shared and on a different provider). Well, check if they are actually the same from time to time (at least the obvious stuff).

<comment><USER11> >Now, when a device is linked to a user, both should be on the same organization, right? I don't see how to easily do that as a constraint

I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to SQL either, but in this case wouldn't it be better if the "Device" table had two columns: "UserOwner" and "OrgOwner" which in turn have FK connections to "Users" and "Organizations".

If the logic is that every device is only owned by a user or an org (never both) at any time, you could constrain: check(UserOwner is null or OrgOwner is null).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not memorizing pointless shit (argument order, all function names, etc.) is actually a sign of a skilled developer who uses memory for important things, not things that can be looked up on Google in a second. Yes, if the Internet drops all productivity stops, but that's not because everyone needs to copy shit from stackoverflow every 2.5 seconds. Being able to develop without an Internet connection ... whoopty fucking do. Not impressive at all (unless you're trying to do well at a stupid whiteboarding interview) since without Internet, I'm pretty sure all work grinds to a halt and it's a ridiculous situation to prepare for. Why not code without computers (again, getting into the territory of beyond stupid interviewing here, the only place where this would be useful)? If you want to be a good developer, relying on memory and memorization for trivial things is a terrible use of your own inner resources as is trying to be productive in an environment without proper tools (no Internet / computer to work on).

<comment><USER13> Human memory doesn't work like your hard drive. The notion that you have some sort of 'free disk space', because you don't remember function names is ludicrous. Quite contrary, the more you train your memory, the more you can remember.

<comment><USER12> I didn't say it works like a hard drive. Yeah, the more I train, the more I remember what I trained and remembering function names and argument order is something I specifically don't want to do because I can only train my memory for so long each day and I'd rather remember important things, not trivial shit like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would argue that OP isn't mediocre if they accept their faults. I also search on SO a lot ("how to check for string prefix in PHP" or my favorite "php variable reference").

A good programmer is someone who can see the architecture of a program when given a high-level description of the problem. Someone who I can realistically tell "write me a program to backup my files" and will end up writing a reasonable backup system. Someone who I can task with coming up with an application protocol with certain constraints. In short, someone who can be an artist, engineer or scientist depending on what is needed.

Good practices are largely irrelevant to being a good developer, you can be a good dev writing spaghetti code and a bad dev using TDD and OOP.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd kill to be mediocre. Being a _bad_ developer is my pinnacle achievement.

</comment><comment><USER16> This blog post has the paradoxal property that the act of writing seems to immediately contradict it. This person does not seem mediocre. He's humble, that goes a long way.

</comment><comment><USER17> Good tooling can save you a lot of googling mentioned here. Your editor should tell you the required order of arguments, for example.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not even a mediocre developer, since I'm just a hobbyist, but I have found it extremely helpful to invest the time and just sit down with a printed out 'cheat sheet' and learn standard library functions and standard packages and their functions by heart. Just recently did it with peewee.

<comment><USER18> Do you feel this significantly speeds up development?

I've always found this a pointless exercise since I can get the answer I need with a quick Google search. After working with a language or library for some time, most of these things become muscle memory.

Rather than making a conscious effort to remember all of these things, I let my brain unconsciously decide what's important enough to remember.

<comment><USER13> I think it does. Not because I save the time of the Google search, but I can apply the functions and methods without distraction. Sure, a quick websearch is nothing that really holds you back in terms of time spent, but it opens a new tab in your browser _and_ your brain and will divert your attention away from solving the actual problem you are working on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A great keynote by Jacob Kaplan-Moss at PyCon 2015 along similar lines: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE)

</comment><comment><USER20> As a more mediocre developer than the author, I would add that instead of copy-pasting code, you actually type it out. This makes it _stick_ better for me.</comment>