Windows Management Framework V5 Preview - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2014/04/03/windows-management-framework-v5-preview.aspx <comment><USER2> Almost a meta comment, but Microsoft seems to be knocking their BUILD conference out of the park this year. I think we've already seen more notable announcements and improvements than we'll see at WWDC.

Just the fact that there was a talk about developing iOS apps by the founder of Xamarin is telling. The fact that he was wearing Google Glass is another...

<comment><USER3> Yes, things are looking healthy for Microsoft's developer reputation. Now if only they implemented C99 and full POSIX....

<comment><USER4> You know Microsoft had a POSIX subsystem in Windows not long ago, right? [http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc754351.aspx](http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc754351.aspx) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interix](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interix) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem)

<comment><USER3> That's a very minimal definition of POSIX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is actually pretty awesome. I liked package managers (using linux and Windows on dualboot), one of the best tools for Windows is Cygwin (using Linux commands in Windows).. Where i can automate a lot of (manual) work.

It seems to me that Microsoft is going all-in on open-source and flexibility.

If you are using Asp.Net, you should check out Owin and project Helios - [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/02/18/introducin...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/02/18/introducing- asp-net-project-helios.aspx)

<comment><USER6> /ranty

Ahhh, Owin and Helios perhaps explain why the ASP.Net team are starting to feel like they are losing the plot.

Trying to put any of their new stuff into existing projects is a complete nightmare. Their new features are inflexible and brittle. WebAPI feels alien. Routing is getting more and more complicated instead of simpler.

And the new APIs just 'feel' wrong, as if they've been written by programmers who don't understand HTTP, javascript or the web. Programmers who haven't used apis on the web and know which ones are a joy to use and which ones are a nightmare. Programmers who don't seem to realize there a new javascript MVC hotness every week. Programmers who don't seem to understand that their javascript folders are never called '~/Scripts'. That 'S' still offends me.

Everything has to be done just so, their way. It's not flexible at all, things break all over the place. They've decided to adopt the zealot interpretation of REST, which doesn't work. The OData implementation is hard to step into and feels half-finished.

It's getting back to the bad old days where if you want to touch the pipeline at all ASP.Net gets angry and sulks in a corner. They're going back to their old 'MS knows best' model, where they can't trust programmers to choose their own (much, much better) practices. I wouldn't be surprised if they soon decide to start calling spans labels again because after all isn't that much clearer?

And it turns out it's because they've just given up on existing code base. Never a good sign.

I really just want ASP.Net Membership fixed to be super simple and not overengineered, the Request object to be fixed so I can get at the raw request when I need to without jumping through pre-generic collections, the cruft associated with the webform pipeline nuked and for no-one to ever, ever mention WCF to me ever again.

Oh and for-the-love-of-god stop trying to force a shitty URL/API structure down my throat and hiding the routing in totally different files.

I love C#, I am starting to seriously hate ASP.Net again. MVC 1 freed us, every subsequent release of MVC seems to smother, not liberate.

<comment><USER7> MVC5 uses AttributeRouting. Just put the routing on the controllers. No need for a routing table. (or routes.rb ;) )

ASP.Net Identity 2 is just that, easy and extensible membership.

Owin requests also give you what you're asking for also.

Don't like the S, change it? lowercaseroutes=true.

;)

Oh, and just to be snarky, the "programmers who don't understand HTTP" were lead by Henrik Nielsen, author of the HTTP spec, used to work for Tim Berners- Lee. ;)

<comment><USER6> Ach, I just needed to release a pressure valve. I think I'm mentally getting ready to abandon ASP.Net soon in all honesty, it's such a mess.

And just because you can make a car doesn't make you a great race-driver ;)

EDIT: WTF is going on with downvotes this week? If you don't agree with me, reply, don't down-vote.

A spec designer of HTML, which no sane person can claim isn't riddled with bad design decisions, is not magically a great programmer too

<comment><USER8> >down votes

It's because of what you said about ASP.NET. I have not been coming to HN that long, but from what I have seen, just about any comment that criticizes Apple, popular windows software, or praises open source alternatives to closed source immediately are met with a barrage of down votes.

edit: and just to clarify, it's not uncommon to see posts on the front page that appear to praise an open source alternative, but anytime you read the comments, the first one is almost always someone who claims that the open source version still isn't ready because it doesn't have that one feature that everybody needs. I know I'm going to sound like a kook, but I would not be surprised in the least if at least 15% of the active HN user base are "shill" accounts controlled by teams that are controlled by different entities. Would HN be a target for operations like this? I think so. There are quite a few high-profile people who regularly come here, and manipulating the opinions of those people are probably in the interests of many organizations. Making sure switching to open source software that isn't distributed by MS or Apple isn't a bold move but a dumb move is in the interest both corporations.

<comment><USER9> Uh, no.

I downvoted because I want to keep discussions civil and technical. Questioning peoples competency because they name a directory '~/Script' instead of '~/js' or whatever just won't fly here.

This isn't slashdot. You'll get used to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a long time on-and-off chocolatey user: YAY!!!

I prefer *nix but at work I need to use Windows sometimes, Chocolatey is a HUGE step in the right direction. It boggled my mind that MSFT wasn't throwing money behind the project- it does loads to make Windows friendlier to developers who prefer CLI.

I hope they commit a person/team to evaluating/maintaining/cleaning up packages in the Chocolatey repo.

One question I have tho is why they don't just adopt Chocolatey/cinst (chocolatey install) directly? What's the purpose of get-command (besides ownership which is obviously important). Why not just fork/rebrand chocolatey? Or is that what's happening?

<comment><USER11> Yes, Chocolatey has a lot of volunteer-maintained packages that have gone stale; official Microsoft support will pressure software developers to publish up-to-date packages.

This is good news for Chocolately, which should be able to support these packages even on older versions of Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how this compares to PsGet ([http://psget.net](http://psget.net)) - or is it simply a cmd-line wrapper around Chocolatey?

<comment><USER7> It's a plugin, but a cleanroom implementation of the protocol and file format of Chocolatey. It's not shelling out. They are side by side and compatible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you like your FOSS I can recommend MSYS2.

[http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2](http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2)

(disclaimer: I work on MSYS2)

<comment><USER14> I'm a *nix/FOSS guy with 15+ years of experience.

I spent a couple minutes trying to figure out what MSYS2 was from the project page/the project wiki/Google, and then just gave up.

Really, a single sentence on the summary page at [http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2](http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2) and the wiki at [http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/Home/](http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/Home/) would go a long way.

For anyone else in the same boat, I assume this is a replacement for MSYS, which according to [http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS](http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS), is a "collection of GNU utilities such as bash, make, gawk and grep to allow building of applications and programs which depend on traditionally UNIX tools to be present."

<comment><USER15> It looks to be a package manager for mingw packages:

[http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS](http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS)

At a minimum, they should just put a URL to the above.

<comment><USER16> This is MSYS (not 2). The web presence of MSYS/MinGW has always been poorly designed. Hopefully it will get better with MSYS2.

I've installed it recently using info from: [http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/MSYS2%20installation/](http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/MSYS2%20installation/)

It has a port of pacman (!) from Arch Linux for package managing. It feels so much better than mingw-get (package manager used for MSYS/MinGW).

<comment><USER13> Yes, pacman is wonderful. We're very grateful to the Arch Linux devs.

You guys are all correct, we've not paid nearly enough attention to marketing. Here's the description I tried to post:

MSYS2 is an updated, modern version of MSYS, both of which are Cygwin (POSIX compatibility layer) forks with the aim of better interoperability with native Windows software.

The name is a contraction of Minimal SYStem 2, and aims to provide support to facilitate using the bash shell, Autotools, revision control systems and the like for building native Windows applications using MinGW-w64 toolchains.

We wanted a package management system to provide easy installation of packages, and ported Arch Linux's pacman. This brings many powerful features such as dependency resolution and simple complete system upgrades, as well as providing the build system (makepkg) which is used to make these packages. The set of software-building recipes (PKGBUILDs) for MSYS2 itself are at:

[https://github.com/Alexpux/MSYS2-packages](https://github.com/Alexpux/MSYS2-packages)

.. and those for MinGW-w64 (i.e. native Windows software) are at:

[https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages](https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW- packages)

Both 32 and 64bit are supported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> for example Install Sysinternals from PowerShell via OneGet [http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2014/04/install-sysinternals- from...](http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2014/04/install-sysinternals-from- powershell-via-oneget/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I reading correctly that this is a 2012R2-specific feature? Thanks, but what am I supposed to do for the rest of my Windows infrastructure?

<comment><USER18> WMF 4.0 with PS 4.0 and DSC etc are available down to windows 7 I imagine this will be the same.

<comment><USER11> This is WMF 5.0, so the business side at MS could easily decide to drop support for earlier Windows versions that 8.1/2012R2 - I doubt there's any technical limitation though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is cool. I'm a *nix guy but this actually compels me to learn PowerShell for those rare occasions when I'm working on a Windows machine.

<comment><USER20> You should do it. I worked with PowerShell a few years ago and it was much better experience than shell scripting with bash or tcsh or others. Things I liked:

You get an IDE for free. It's quite usable out of the box and it's really nice for learning the language.

It's less reliant on punctuation. There are a few special symbols and they are highly regular in their usage. Syntax feels more readable (to me) than that of bash thanks to this.

You deal with objects. You can reflect on them (great for exploration), call methods on them, while still having generic ways for composing them and manipulating in large quantities. Yet the language itself is _not_ object oriented, which makes it much simpler than it would be otherwise.

You get the whole .NET to use. Or most of it. You can basically instantiate and use any .NET class (and COM objects and other such things) without hassle.

There are a few concepts in the language which unify many concepts from the system. For example you can "cd" into a directory or a key in the registry or a network share or any number of other things which can be thought of as a listable resource.

This is coming from a programmer, so it's missing things probably important for sysadmins, like security management and built in process of signing and verifying scripts signatures before running them.

One think I didn't like: it was slow. The other: nothing worked on it (I mean things like python's virtualenv, which comes with .bat file, but not with .ps1 file), even Visual Studio command prompt. I ended up writing some PowerShell code for translating cmd.exe variables to PS ones.

And, of course, it's Microsoft, so forget about running it somewhere else. But, all in all, if you have to script something in Windows, it's by far better than any other tool.

<comment><USER21> > "cd" into a directory or key in registry.

You might be interested in my little project redditps - [https://github.com/manojlds/redditps](https://github.com/manojlds/redditps)

I wrote it to mainly highlight such cool features of Powershell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have been using Chocolatey for a while now without any regret. OneGet probably won't match apt-get at first but this step is definitively in the right direction. If all software providers would provide their repository information updating programs would finally be a one-klick (or one command)-operation.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Chocolatey is absolutely essential for a smoother Windows experience. That said, it still feels like a hack (hardly surprising), but it's nonetheless an invaluable one.

<comment><USER15> I use Chocolatey quite a bit now and can definitely agree with the hack aspect of it. It's not always clear when a package will need your input (since they couldn't automate that part) but for the most part it works.

I am hoping that since package management is now an official Microsoft effort, a large gain will be to address these "hacks".

The long term potential of this is that enterprise can build their own repository and push changes out as they wish. This would be the real value. Also, companies that already provide package/software deployment solutions will now have another tool to help them do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd love it if they added console tabs and text reflow / resizing to powershell

I use PS all the time - and it's killing me that I need 4+ windows open to account for all the different projects I've got to work on at the same time.

<comment><USER24> I agree. It's a big pain point for me. I've been using ConEmu recently which supports resizing and has tabs (among many other features). My favorite other feature is the tasks: you can define a set of steps to run as a task, then launch that task in a new tab.

[https://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/](https://code.google.com/p/conemu- maximus5/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> While I myself wold newer use windows for anything unless there was no other way, I hope that the stuff that Microsoft is doing might influence some windows people to start doing stuff the "right" way.

<comment><USER26> The phrase "the right way" always makes me chuckle a bit. We all seem to know what it is, yet we seldom agree on it. My first 10 years of programming was spent working on a system built on Windows. First ASP/COM and then later ASP.net -- and that thing practically printed money. Did we build it "the right way"? No, certainly not. But our stock options didn't seem to notice, and at the end of the day, that is what matters to me.

<comment><USER27> > The phrase "the right way" always makes me chuckle a bit

Here, outside Windowsland, we have been using package management for more than a decade and, after that long, I'd suppose we have it pretty much nailed down. There are still some different ideas and approaches (different dependency management schemes, pre-compiled vs. locally compiled, ports), but I'd guess we get it right most of the time. The "right way" is a tricky concept, but, seriously, this is all very mature by now.

<comment><USER15> Well put. It always amazes me how much further unix/linux is from Windows. Once you get your head out of the "all Microsoft for everything" you really start to see the real advances that are being made everywhere. And then you realize in some ways, Microsoft is always playing catch-up. For desktop apps building for Microsoft is a given, considering the OS monopoly in business and home but for most other things its a question mark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> can i distribute sources or do I have to compile them first? can somebody download compile my sources without having to download visual studio?

</comment><comment><USER29> I realise its a Microsoft article. But they really couldn't have a fallback monospace font?</comment>


Dine Dating App Shows Off UI in Silly Promo Video - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/dinewith.co/videos/548699468663276/ <comment><USER2> Looks good</comment>


Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name - <AUTHOR> http://jezebel.com/homme-de-plume-what-i-learned-sending-my-novel-out-und-1720637627/ <comment><USER2> In resume, the novel of a woman well known as author of books for children was rejected, when send later more polished versions of the novel under a unknown male name without traceable past the editors show finally interest.

A conclusion could be: "maybe the first version was plain bad", or "maybe I'm typecast as writer", or even "Editors are intrigued by a new fresh face"; but instead is a loud: "Editors (women and men) do not want novels writen by women; but, girl, you can create an atractive male persona, and when you have their interest, brag on internet under your real name about how clever you were and how stupid and mysoginist are those editors, unable to recognise feminine talent".

Not a very smart move, probably.

Yep, surely editors run away when see in the title "written by Joanna Rowling" or "Patricia Highsmith". This later is in fact a nom de plume so... maybe the problem could be in the name, not in the gender.

I think that this is a valuable history for HN. An interesting case of a writer trying hard to be free of the typecast jail and then succesfully boycotting herself in the last second.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now here's the question: Who rejected her while accepting "him", and why?

<comment><USER4> She explains it herself. I bet it's that.

>>> Third: with my name, maybe my novel was taken for "Women's Fiction"—a dislikable name for a respectable genre—but not what I was writing. If an agent was expecting that, I'm not surprised he or she would turn away after the first page or two. A George wasn't expected to be writing Women's Fiction, so he was taken on his own terms. <<<

<comment><USER3> She guesses that, but that's just one of many possibilities. Ideally, she'd send a survey--which, in turn, would only be answered by a few people. We still wouldn't know much, but we'd be closer to the truth.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I make a lot of money? - <AUTHOR>

I'm going to be a high school senior. I have great grades and SATs. I can go to a lot of different universities. What should I do and why? <comment><USER2> "How can I make a lot of money?" is perhaps not as enlightening or rewarding as "What do I really enjoy doing?". I strongly recommend this video of Buffett talking with MBAs at the University of Florida back in the late 90s: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogAxzPaU5H4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogAxzPaU5H4) . Here's a taste (from the rough transcript available at [http://www.tilsonfunds.com/BuffettUofFloridaspeech.pdf](http://www.tilsonfunds.com/BuffettUofFloridaspeech.pdf) ):

I get to work in a job that I love, but I have always worked at a job that I loved. I loved it just as much when I thought it was a big deal to make $1,000. _I urge you to work in jobs that you love_. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don't like because you think it will look good on your resume. I was with a fellow at Harvard the other day who was taking me over to talk. He was 28 and he was telling me all that he had done in life, which was terrific. And then I said, "What will you do next?" "Well," he said, "Maybe after I get my MBA I will go to work for a consulting firm because it will look good on my resume." I said, "Look, you are 28 and you have been doing all these things, you have a resume 10 times than anybody I have ever seen. Isn't that a little like saving up sex for your old age?

There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. When I first got out of Columbia Business School, I wanted to go to work for Graham immediately for nothing. He thought I was over-priced. But I kept pestering him. I sold securities for three years and I kept writing him and finally I went to work for him for a couple of years. It was a great experience. But I always worked in a job that I loved doing. You really should take a job that if you were independently wealthy that would be the job you would take. You will learn something, you will be excited about, and you will jump out of bed. You can't miss. You may try something else later on, but you will get way more out of it and I don't care what the starting salary is.

When you get out of here take a job you love, not a job you think will look good on your resume. You ought to find something you like.

If you think you will be happier getting 2x instead of 1x, you are probably making a mistake. You will get in trouble if you think making 10x or 20x will make you happier because then you will borrow money when you shouldn't or cut corners on things. It just doesn't make sense and you won't like it when you look back.

</comment><comment><USER3> The other day I was in line at the grocery store and buying frozen peas. I'm in the middle of a startup and money isn't tight, but not flowing either. The person in front of me said, "I see you're giving peas a chance."

I was so stressed out from business things that I responded with, "Ya, I like 'em" Then a few seconds later I understood the joke. He laughed and with his mostly gray beard he said "Yeah that was grandfather-level"

That last part really stayed with me. Grandfather-level. I think the the grandfather-level advice is what you're looking for. It is hard to say without knowing more about you, but my guess is that you want to work toward the thing you really really like. If you don't know what you really like, learn while keeping costs to a minimum so that you can _pivot to what you love_ once you find it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like math, economics, and CS. What would you recommend I pursue?

<comment><USER4> Heh ... that was me 18 years ago. I went towards CS because that is what I truly loved. My father wanted me to become a banker so he was disappointed for a few years but got over it. As I approach my mid-30s and quite unsettled in life, I'm not sure if I made the right decision. I love CS, but at the upper echelons it is extremely competitive. Too competitive, in my opinion. Knowledge capital in CS degrades very quickly. Good jobs are in the most expensive places of the country to live. The male-female ratio is crazy bad. I came across a blog post today that really bummed me out but makes valid points: [http://techtalk.dice.com/t5/Tech-Career-Advice- Archive/Why-a...](http://techtalk.dice.com/t5/Tech-Career-Advice-Archive/Why- a-career-in-computer-programming-sucks/td-p/144845)

I am going to disagree with most of the other posters around here and say you should try to maximize your monetary outcome. Those bankers everyone rips on ... if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. CS is very intellectually stimulating but who is to say that the code I write is better for society than what something a banker does. I don't think that is the case. Academia is for the birds too ... you will be chasing peanuts of funding for years until you have a strong enough reputation.

If I was 18 again, I'd either become a medical doctor or directly go for entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurship is not just tech startups. Have enough b*lls to start a gas station or something. I've spend almost 2 decades learning technology and I am barely adequate. If I had spent half this time learning something like managing people, I think I would be far more successful according to my own metrics of success.

I honestly don't know what to tell you. Just one thing ... recognize the opportunities you are given and be mindful that you may not get the same opportunities again. So be the best you can be.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently between pursuing finance (banking), consulting, law, and entrepreneurship (CS). I love making new things, so I think that CS would be very freeing; however, I know that those other paths would probably be more straightforward for me, but maybe I should at least take a chance on CS.

That said, I'm currently no expert on programming. I've self taught Python, HTML, CSS, some js, and I'm currently learning Ruby on Rails because my friend and I are working on making a web app (he's doing most of the programming, but it was my concept). Right now, I'm not sure if I should declare myself as a prospective CS major or not considering my lack of credentials. Economics would be much easier for me to justify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Read this.

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make- yo...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better- person/?page=full)

</comment><comment><USER6> Go to Harvey Mudd and major in Econ and EE.

[http://www.payscale.com/college-education- value-2013](http://www.payscale.com/college-education-value-2013)</comment>


Please Pay for Your News - <AUTHOR> https://goel.io/pay-for-news <comment><USER2> I have a lot of thoughts, but in sum I think the article doesn't say much or engage in much soul-searching or really think about the problem in a serious/interesting way. Here are a few of my thoughts:

What about a patronage model? The demand for news is universal and the ability for people to pay the price of news they consume (not at all universal) lends itself better to a patronage model where a smaller number overpay rather than a larger number bearing true external costs. By this I mean is that the article proposes that people pay for 3 or 4 different news sources at a few hundred dollars a year. It's true that many on HN meet this threshold, and probably should pay for their news. But based on how few people have an emergency reserve, how many people live hand to mouth, how many people don't take vacations, I'm pretty sure many consumers of news simply don't have this kind of disposable income. Urbanites, who are the most likely to demand many forms of news, are also the most severely burdened in terms of other fixed costs (rent, food, insurance, transportation). The author sidesteps the disposable income question by listing other products they perceive to be more successful (like, say, Netflix) without really engaging what that comparison means.

By contrast to the individual subscriber, a single billionaire could endow many news organizations in perpetuity without blinking -- and in fact a lot of journalism is subsidized in this manner. The article quotes The Atlantic (being floated by the Jobs estate); the Washington Post (being floated by Bezos); and the LA Times (being floated by a wealthy doctor in Los Angeles). Of course all of these have ad and subscription revenue as well, but it speaks to the idea that there's an outsized role for institutional funding.

The same is of course true for government. It would be trivial for the government to endow local journalism all over the country, but there is a strong aversion to this because of the perception in America that state funding, state ownership, and state propaganda are all synonyms.

Local papers? If Jeff Bezos took 50% of his growth in net worth this year, he could permanently endow every single local newspaper in the entire country in perpetuity. Does it really matter what I do?

Hell, let's look at smaller patrons. The author is a senior software engineer at Google: one very simple proposal that we know the author can afford is buying, say, 100 subscriptions of a worthy paper and donating them. Is it likely this article is going to drive 100 new subscriptions by readers? I doubt it. So if the author really means to achieve the goal they are advocating, this is a route their article doesn't consider. One possible response is "it shouldn't be incumbent on me to be a public good provider" or "how dare you assume I have that kind of money" \-- both of which would be responses to the article's thesis, with the added benefit that the responders wouldn't be senior software engineers at Google. In fact, the author surely knows dozens of other SSEs at Google who also feel the same way politically about this issue. Why not solicit them?

Lest this seem facetious, when I look at what @pinboard has done with the Great Slate electoral campaign in 2018 and with his fundraising this time around, it's clear to me that approach is more effective than simply the righteous blog post. Skin in the game. I would enthusiastically upvote a Google SSE handing out hundreds of subscriptions because supporting journalism is important and $10-20k is trivial for them.

But also the decline of journalism is actually nothing to do with individuals not valuing it and everything to do with structural factors individuals can't impact.

To the extent we're talking about local journalism, a large part of the issue was national consolidation of publishing companies. This is a government issue and it requires muscular antitrust action to undo. It's also compounded by the national consolidation of advertising, and the national consolidation of other businesses. As long as big ad firms do most of the ad placement in newspapers owned by big newspaper firms, and most of those ads are for big companies, there will always be pressure towards viewing small local papers as unsustainable.

Second, a lot of the more recent wave of journalism cuts has been text journalism unsuccessfully chasing YouTube and Facebook money. It's well documented [1, using the authors preferred source] that Facebook misled video watch figures and that this led to the loss of tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is not an individual problem, it's a regulatory and structural problem. I could have told these places that chasing Facebook clickbait was going to bite them in the ass economically because it's a house of cards. They didn't listen. Why are Google and Facebook not looked at as the cause of this problem?

Also, the ad-first model has also hampered consumer direct-payment expectations. I can subscribe to a lot of paper magazines for $5/year. I don't want paper magazines, I never read them. So why does it cost 25-50x that to subscribe to the same content online? Answer: because that's the true price of what it ought to cost, but I've now been conditioned to free-ride. But I didn't ask publication to pivot to be ad-first, a variety of structural incentives did that.

Some other hanging user side questions: Why is it not easy to pay for the odd article read rather than a full price subscription? I read news from all around the country. I have no objection to a newspaper in Des Moines getting some of my money, but I won't be jumping through hoops to pay them $0.20. Why is search still so bad in online journalism? Why is there still an above-the- fold paper-first design paradigm? Why can't I customize sections without using adblock to block the sections I don't like? Why is so much of the page designed to get me to leave the page to share stuff on social media? Why are URLs so impermanent? Why is everything a low end liveblog format now? Why do major newspapers pay standing op-ed columnists to engage in empty punditry about things they know nothing instead of spending more soliciting the best possible external op-eds on a given subject? Who on earth thinks Bret Stephens has ever added value to any conversation ever? It might well be the case that making a product that's more convenient and less infuriating will solicit more individual compliance, but it's not individual feedback that drove these bad decisions to begin with.

I know this is a pretty far-reaching comment, but I think if we're going to have the conversation, let's have it.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/faceb...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/facebook- driven-video-push-may-have-cost-483-journalists-their-jobs/573403/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good discussion, but improving the model and sustaining the institution are orthogonal.

I do agree though that a lot of the problems are structural and systemic - that also does not negate the public's negative outlook towards journalism, or the sense of entitlement (read the comments here).

I do agree though that not enough tech people who can afford to don't pay for their news. Why? IDK. How to make them? Well maybe this post will persuade a few to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I tried, except, everywhere I looked, they promoted Op-ed pieces with equal billing and authority as traditional investigative reporting. Washington Post, NY times seemed liked the "best" based on track record for investigative reporting on politics and international coverage (with a US focus) but I cancelled both after a year. Open to suggestions...

Edit: Also NYTimes cancelation process is AOL levels of hostile. The Economists, less so.

<comment><USER4> Why not just ignore the op-eds? Or are you saying you would prefer NO news to news with op-eds?

<comment><USER5> WaPo especially, and NYT too, is mostly opinion and human interest commentary about how people feel, not hard news. It's exhausting to try to wade through it to find real reporting and investigations. I get why they do it (readers are dumb, mostly), but they don't even offer a "news" section.

<comment><USER4> I'm not disagreeing -- I subscribe to both and am probably going to switch my subscriptions to The Economist and WSJ, which do a better job providing actual news. I also subscribe to the Star Tribune which does a fairly good job.

I don't like op-eds either, but there are other options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The future of "news" is in podcasts & yt. I follow plenty of people who are doing well for themselves with a Patreon account + some premium content + public channel providing knowledge & news in their area of expertise, often very in-depth.

It's not only medium that is different.

People don't trust institutions anymore. They don't want to buy "New York Times" or any other brand, and pay for the office, shareholders, CEOs. They want small independent teams / individuals that they can connect with, trust and hold personally accountable. Someone that feels like they are working for their Patreons.

When you cut the bloat, it takes just a thousand patreons to support a creator on some salary-like level. Even less, with ad revenues etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish paying for news would actually make news organizations prosper. But subscription only slightly help. Looking at past revenue of the LA times, subscribers accounted for under 20% of revenue [1]. The remaining 80% was from advertising.

If we all subscribe to 3 or 4 papers right now, the best thing they can do for their business is bombard us with ads to make up for the remaining percentage. Well, we have adblockers now so it doesn't work.

I don't know what the solution is. Journalism that holds people accountable is crucial for society. But customers paying for the news doesn't work. It never did.

[1]: [https://idiallo.com/blog/we-never-paid-for- journalism](https://idiallo.com/blog/we-never-paid-for-journalism)

<comment><USER8> Author here: I don't think publications or journalists like ads themselves. However, if not enough subscription revenue is flowing in, they are going to have to use what's worked for them (but not for readers).

This is very much a bootstrapping problem. They need money and stability, and public support, to make the investments that would make the public support them.

I think the stakes are high enough for us to bicker about chicken and egg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I personally would love to pay for my news (in a sense I try to do that by regularly donating to Wikipedia as I think it's a fantastic open-source-esque news source)

My trouble is the dearth of non-biased media sources. (Hacker news may be considered biased as it's often skewed for people in tech?) This might just be my inability to trust but I see multiple issues:

1\. Presenting facts in any way can be seen as biased as you pick which facts and how to present them

2\. Many news sources have different editors and journalist with a wide swathe of opinions that it's hard to trust one news source completely based off of reading just a few articles.

3\. Picking one news source makes it likely to have confirmation bias, which is something I want to avoid.

Usually I stick with Wikipedia and its references for each subject and try to synthesize all sides of an issue. Or I pick specific writers who I've seen with a good track record that really try to be objective even with they are giving opinion pieces (Gwern is often my goto for a lot of topics)

So really I don't have a good answer for this, I would love other people's thoughts and other sources of good news or systems for finding good news

<comment><USER10> Unbiased news does not exist. To get a good appreciation for the real "ground truth", one must accept bias exists and seek several opinions on a given issue, from different outlets or sources.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely this. "I'm looking for unbiased news" is a standard line by people who do not read the news.

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry if my point wasn't clear, I'm looking for as close to non-biased as possible. As I layed out in my numbered list I'm completely aware that there are no unbiased sources. To claim I don't read the news is just attacking and not really helpful to my legitimate desire to find news sources that aren't just pundits of organized interests.

<comment><USER4> Okay, then I'm really not sure what you are trying to say. It sounds to me like, you have tried a bunch of news sources, and none of them are as unbiased as you would like, so you would prefer the news not exist at all than exist in this state.

Or maybe you are saying, you don't want to pay for the news unless it matches your expectations -- but you DO want the rest of us to pay for it so it continues to exist?

<comment><USER9> I would say, like I said, that wikipedia has been my go to and what I support because it has a HUGE reference list for each article. My question is simple where are the news sources that list as many sides of an issue and list all their sources that they pull from?

I don't know where you are getting this notion that I want others to pay for something so then I can deem if it's worthy for me to pay for...

<comment><USER4> I mean, I'm with you 100%. I don't know why the news doesn't do a better job of presenting both sides of the story. I get around this by getting news from a lot of sources. It doesn't take very long either. My morning news intake:

\- minnesota public radio (my local) \- economist news briefing \- the journal (from WSJ) \- WSJ tech news briefing \- up first (NPR) \- the daily (nytimes).

I would LOVE to add a more conservative one into the mix here. I'm just saying, there's a difference between people updating wikipedia vs people who have a full time job that involves covering the news, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. That is worth paying for. FWIW I also pay for wikipedia. But I also pay for nytimes, washington post, and the star tribune.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know whether my position is morally sound, but it's at least pretty clear in my head:

\- I want society to support professional journalism.

\- There is an infinity of worthy things to read on the internet. I want to browse content from many sources.

\- However, it is no longer the 1990s. People don't choose a single newspaper to be delivered to their houses and open it over the breakfast table.

\- Accordingly, I don't want to have to choose a single newspaper to support, like people did in the <=1990s.

\- Personally, beyond checking the headlines, I mostly read the news nowadays with a feeling that I'm time-wasting: that I should be spending my time doing something more worthwhile.

\- So it really seems that payment has to be per article. Presumably some sort of subscription-based micropayment service: pay $20 a month; can read content from (and thus support) many professional journalists. Something like Blendle. Although when I tried that a year or so ago it didn't offer the type of browsing I was looking for.

<comment><USER4> Since you asked, here's my take. I agree with all the issues you have listed. Given the choices I have now, here's what I do.

1\. I pay for nytimes, Washington post, and star tribune. This costs me around $20/month I think. I've wasted more on unused Linode servers.

2\. I skim the headlines of all of these. Tbh I rarely find something I want to click on on nytimes and Washington post, but I do on star tribune. 3\. Then I listen to podcasts. I listen to Minnesota public radio, the economist daily briefing, the intelligence, wsj tech briefing, the journal, up first, and the daily. Even here I look at the description first and see what I want to listen to. The economist and wsj ones are the best, which means I'll probably be changing who I give money to soon.

I listen to the podcasts that sound interesting while I'm on the treadmill.

I guess I feel like there are enough options that I've been able to find something I like, and I give money based on that. Nytimes is a bastion of liberals, and I'm a liberal, but I don't find it the best for me. There's definitely some initial investment required to figure out what works for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing about paid news is that they're offering a "premium" product, but that product has notable omissions. You know what I'd expect from news that you have to pay for? A bibliography. Something like (an idealized version of) Wikipedia, with a list of references included somewhere, each scoped to a particular claim—even if a reference just amounts to original research conducted by the news org. E.g. _Interview with Terrance Bodwell, 2020 May 17_.

It's almost like the raw deal you get with most commercial software. Consider the case where you have some open source thing that tends to be both free (as in price) and you get the source code to it. Now, someone is offering a premium alternative. What do you get for you money? In most cases, you actually have to _give up_ on being able to look at the source.

<comment><USER4> So your argument is, since it's not exactly what you want, you aren't going to pay for it.

<comment><USER13> Well, yes. Even as the parent poster says that this isn't their argument, let us assume it is. Why would I pay for something if it doesn't fit my needs? I don't see other merchants think they're entitled to my sale.

<comment><USER4> So just to be clear, the choices on the table are,

1\. Let the news die.

2\. Pay for the news, suck up the fact that it isn't exactly what you want it to be.

3\. Don't pay for the news and hope the rest of us pay for it so it doesn't die.

If you see another choice please let me know.

<comment><USER13> I'd pick 1. I don't believe news is some sacred service that must exist. Of course, if it were, the government could provide it, but it might cause issues with independence of state and the people, depending on the type of government. So, it's a service based on the free market, thus it must compete on the free market, no?

It seems like you believe that news is sacred, so your conclusions will differ from mine as we draw from different axiomatic beliefs. If that's the case, we won't be able to convince each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm paying for news. It's mandatory to do it in Germany and I'm really grateful for that. Especially in times like we live in today. It's a great basis for my daily and necessary dose of news. All those extras like good documentaries on media portals are bonus and only hindered by the private media restricting unlimited availability of those materials.

Everything beyond that has pretty much grown into either a quite expansive special I don't see a justification to pay for, things that everybody else already has and therefore is free or sources that does not offer a way to make a single time donation I'd love to do to reward a good or interesting article.

I'll not subscribe.

<comment><USER15> You are paying for bad news. The quality of the forced state TV in Germany is not great.

No analysis, just giving politicians a platform for their uninformed propaganda. The main objective is to program the population to keep working without complaining. Bread and circuses.

If you want facts or background, get the Financial Times.

<comment><USER14> Oh look at you ant those lines you gathered at the bottom of German society. Just admit it: you hate them because they report on people like you and you don't like to see your face in the mirror.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would be prepared to pay per article. I am not eager to subscribe to any particular newspaper. I want to consume media "a la carte", not "all inclusive".

Unfortunately, newspapers wants me to susbcribe and here we are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you ask for per-movie pricing from Netflix?

<comment><USER17> We've been asking for ala cart cable pricing for a long time.

Netflix is pocket change and my family gets more value from it than anything other subscription besides trash and recycling.

I'd pay 2x as much for reliable, newsworthy, and succinctly written coverage that clearly separates fact from opinion.

As it is now, I don't fully trust any news organization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of people justifying not paying for news by saying that they don't like ads.

Question then: do you never read the news? Because if you do, you are consuming the product. So clearly, you are not against the ads. You just don't want to pay for it (even though the median income on HN is high enough that it would be a rounding error for most).

<comment><USER18> I think there is no good answer for many people. I don't want ads (and will continue to block them) and I don't want to pay directly for news either.

I have paid for news in the past and found that it wasn't worth it. Part of the issue is that to get the news I would want I would have to have a subscription at like 10 different companies. Not to mention the fact that many of them still have ads EVEN if you pay.

I already have enough subscription fatigue with streaming services, apps that have gone subscription model, etc. that it just isn't going to happen.

There is no business model I've found worth supporting yet for news. I'm still waiting to find a news product good enough to pay for. It doesn't exist for me.

So my current process is to just mostly avoid articles and news sites in general and let the news that gets to me through various means (free email digests/newsletters that aggregate and summarize, other people, social media, etc) be enough. The only exception being the occasional link on an aggregator- type site like HN where someone has linked to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> On the issue of bias - I'm not confident that paid news is necessarily less biased than news that relies on clicks and ads. Two potential issues:

1) A news agency might be further incentived to publish biased, "echo-chamber" type of news if they are more effective at convincing readers to pay.

2) Detailed news with in-depth research and thorough analysis is expensive to produce, so news agencies that produce such material, if they were to rely on subscriptions, need to charge appropriately expensive fees. This means only a select group of people can afford this news. To generate more revenue, such a quality news sources are incentived to cater content to this limited audience set. Over time this can make quality news inaccessible and even irrelevant to most of the public.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not paying for news because I want to see the current model of news die out.

It's opinionated, biased, and heavily edited. When the news gets back to factual unbiased reporting I'll consider spending money.

<comment><USER21> When was news factual and unbiased?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If a business has to beg customers to pay, maybe they should step back and re- evaluate the value that they are purporting to offer and the methods with which they are offering it.

<comment><USER23> It's an odd problem. What newspapers have done historically with respect to reporting on local politics is almost unquestionably a social good. It's also inarguable that they've done so as businesses, funded by advertising for the most part. That has worked because people wanted to pay a little bit (each) to read them and advertisers were willing to pay a lot (in aggregate) to reach those readers.

So what's changed? Advertisers are less interested in the medium itself. Meanwhile, readers have built a very low estimate of the value of journalism.

But what is that estimate based on? Suppose that as citizens we all accepted that local political reporting was absolutely vital to our society, and that without it we would face an unmitigated wave of corruption and worse. How much would we each pay to avoid that?

I understand that people don't accept that news journalism is that vital, and that this affects their estimate of the value. But are they correct?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm working on this with [https://intrgr.com](https://intrgr.com).

We look for the <meta> field on any article we aggregate for their payment request id [https://www.w3.org/TR/payment- request](https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request).

In the near future, the article owners will then be paid a portion of the reader subscription corresponding to their share of the total readership.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been a fan of the correspondent since they launched: [https://thecorrespondent.com/principles](https://thecorrespondent.com/principles)

Pay what you want, ad-free, paid reporters and staff, and focused on solutions versus sensationalism.

<comment><USER5> The articles available on their site seem to all be opinion columns, not news?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is not my responsibility as a potential customer to subsidize a company's business model, regardless of their product, even something as noble as news. If a company cannot stay in business, they deserve to die. That is the nature of evolutionary free markets.

</comment><comment><USER26> > We herald news as a public service, we forget that tax dollars don't pay for > this public service

Here in Aus our tax dollars pay for a very good news service (www.abc.net.au/news) Costs us ~11¢ per day each.

The commercial news services here are mostly crap and I wouldn't pay them cent.

</comment><comment><USER27> As difficult as this trade-off for business is, I prefer to financially support journalism that isn't compromising its values by using third-party ads. The journalism that rejects advertising is the virtuous journalism that most deserves our dollars.

<comment><USER4> In that case, how do you support journalism?

<comment><USER27> I support ad-free journalism, such as Democracy Now or journalism organizations like the Freedom of the Press Foundation. I haven't actually done all the homework I'd like to do in order to identify an ideal list of all the journalism (particularly local!) that is at least as good as I can find.

I didn't mean to suggest that we should insist on ad-free before donating at all, but it's a concern. I'm more _inclined_ to donate when there's no ads, and when there are ads, I'm extra hesitant.

I also don't like paywalls. So, really, I'm thinking about how to highlight and support the free-to-all work that is also uncompromised by ads. That's what most deserves and needs support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> To all of you here complaining about the ads on many news websites:

Why not use an adblocker?

<comment><USER4> Seriously, reading the comments here is making me nauseous but I can't seem to stop. HN is the essence of privilege. Reporters are getting assaulted out there.

<comment><USER29> But "advertising" today is a twisted caricature of sponsorship models of years ago.

Advertising, like "location services" has become a two-way surveillance system.

I would love to be able to have a system of payment where we could pay a small amount of money for high-quality journalism? (and do it actually anonymously)

<comment><USER4> Unless someone kickstarts a system like that, which would be insanely high startup cost with insanely high risk, the way to actually get to what you are talking about is for a lot more people to pay for the news, so eventually they can stop relying on advertising.

<comment><USER30> Another way is to boycott news with advertising so that they're forced to find a model that doesn't rely on it. Why is advertising the only choice here? Why do you assume they'll drop that revenue stream when they "get enough subscribers"?

<comment><USER4> Boycotting generally doesn't work. When Trump was elected there was a lot of fuss to boycott companies that did business with Trump, but it had no effect.

> Why do you assume they'll drop that revenue stream when they "get enough > subscribers"?

Fair, I don't know if they will. I'm just saying that I don't see a better choice on the table right now. NOT subscribing to the news is not a better choice to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't mind paying for news, but almost all news websites would keep track of what I read if I do that, and it's easy to figure out a person's political biases from their reading habits.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious, how do you get your news in a way that lets you bypass the tracking? Why not continue to get your news that way and just subscribe to ensure the news continues to exist?

<comment><USER31> I mostly get my news through RSS feeds (I have a small Python script that makes use of readability-lxml to convert partial RSS feeds -- the kind that most news websites provide -- into full feeds).

<comment><USER8> You can continue that and pay for the publications. Those two work together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For diversity of opinions, can also try the independent individuals on Youtube with their own news channel. Yes, do try support them, too if you consume their content.

</comment><comment><USER33> I disagree. Don't pay for the news.

I might pay for Netflix or HBO. If one is insufficiently entertaining, I won't. It makes sense for Netflix/HBO to compete on producing the most entertaining and addicting product, and I know that's exactly what I'm paying for.

If news agencies are funded by having more subscribers, they'll also be incentivized to produce the most entertaining and addictive content.

The value of news is not in telling me what I want to hear, nor you what you want to hear, it's in telling us what we need to hear but don't want to. You & I might both be high-minded enough to pay for news that bores us or offends us - but I hardly expect the typical person to do so.

I don't have a better suggestion - but a per-article paywall, or even a subscription, leads to the same clickbait sensationalist rot that advertiser- supported news suffered.

<comment><USER4> Great, so you are saying that NO news is preferable to the current situation.

<comment><USER30> Elsewhere in this thread you've claimed that demand for news is _universal_. With such high demand why do you fear a NO news situation? If all classical news outlets die surely _something_ will rise up to fill this void? Sure, it may not look anything like what we currently have, but that's kind of the point.

<comment><USER4> This concept is not new, it's called Tragedy of the Commons ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)). Basically, everyone wants something and no one wants to pay for it.

<comment><USER30> I'm familiar with the trope, but "news" is not some finite resource we might accidentally use up, so that wouldn't seem to apply here.

Perhaps no one is currently willing to pay for it because (a) they don't have to and (b) a lot of it is utter garbage. It doesn't stand that should these "options" disappear other ones wouldn't take their place, perhaps even ones worth paying for.

<comment><USER4> Terrific, you're welcome to not pay for the news and not read it then. Getting NO information must be the better option if what you are saying is true. People have spent their lives doing this job, but surely you know better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is there any other industry that believes it is entitled to your custom?

</comment><comment><USER35> the idea that paid news sources are some unique arbiters of truth is dangerous

<comment><USER23> let me know how to find the non-paid source who works full time checking out my local city politicans and officials (because that's a full time job even in a city of 80k people)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> News is public knowledge. What you pay is the opinions of the news reporters. I personally have no interest in paying for politically skewed opinions of a pol-sci grad of few years ago. That is why I will never ever subscribe or read any newspaper in print or online. When I acidentally click on a link which takes me to NY Times or LA times or Atlantic titled website, I immediately close it without even perusing the first few lines of content, because I know it will be a political writing, not objective news.

<comment><USER28> Public knowledge must be compiled, and that requires some amount of work. Whether this work needs to be paid for is up to you.

Further, many news agencies conduct investigations. Perhaps the most well- known of these are the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. By paying for news you also pay to fund their investigations, which may or may not result in newsworthy information.</comment></comment>


Shortest program to print "Never gonna give you up..." - <AUTHOR> http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/6043/were-no-strangers-to-code-golf-you-know-the-rules-and-so-do-i

<comment><USER2> Joke answer

      $h = "549d9635795ef37857e0b3dc02e52e53";
      $v = 0;
      while( $v == 0 ){
        $n = "";
        for( $i=0; $i<1943; $i++ ){
          $n .= chr(rand(0, 127));
        }
        if( md5($n) == $h ){
          echo $n;
          $v = 42;
        }
      }

By the time we have our answer (or a collision), we forgot what the question was.

<comment><USER3> It is only funny because it is true.

Change your loop to only loop while $v < 42, and then when the md5 matches, set $v to be the number of copies of "gonna" in the text. ( * ) Print the final string at the end.

If you had a good random generator then with very high probability this program would be correct, although it is unable to run in any reasonable time.

* There are exactly 42 copies of "gonna" in that text. Did God speaking through Douglas Adams subtly rickroll all of us?

<comment><USER4> Could this not also theoretically colide with a string with the same hash and _more_ than 42 occurrences of "gonna"? Better set the flag to `$v==42` just to be safe.

<comment><USER3> The probability is overwhelmingly against there being another string of the same length and even 10 copies of "gonna".

The odds of another one with under 2k bytes and exactly 42 copies of "gonna" is a lot higher than having one with 43 copies of "gonna".

In a code golf competition, one character matters. Therefore the odds are that you should use "<" not "==" here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 597 bytes of Python:

        : d="""ou@on@he@ell@ w@ay it
        : @ otUr@BVna @make4 @ve@'re@ing@t's been@ a@
        : (Ooh@o @ g@
        : YX@ t@ know@nd @
        : N2@ how I'm feelJ
        : @iL4 up@6)E)8giL, n2giL
        : (G@ yX@
        : I justSannaxT47Gotta Munderstand0@eLrP@
        :
        : We'Lqn eachQ for sClVgzr UarHFchJ butzKxoCshyxCsRInsideSe bothqShaHBoJ V
        : WeqxUBameF9weKPplR@
        : 8g68let4 down8runFrX9a9desert48Mcry8sayBoodbye8tTF lieF9hurt4@WeK nCstrangersxCloLzqxU rulesF9sCdCI
        : A full commitment'sShat I'mxhinkJ ofzSXldn'tBetxhis fromFnyQBuy31A9if4Fsk me7DV'txT me4KxoCbli9tCsee00
        : E,B6)E,B556)1300
        : """
        : for s in 'XVUTSRQPMLKJHFECBzxq9876543210':
        :  a,b=d.split('@',1)
        :  d=b.replace(s,a)
        : print d

I could make it a little better, but could only spend 30 minutes or so.

 _Added in edit: a small tweak gets it to 594 bytes - not included here._

<comment><USER6> "not included here."

Didn't we learn anything from Fermat?

<comment><USER5> OK, 589 bytes:

        : d="""ellU wTay it
        : S otherRConna Qmake4 PveMndL aK'reJingHt's beenFo E gC
        : (OohB
        : Youz txKL q know9
        : N28 how I'm feelH
        : 7iM4 up66)B)8giM, n2giM
        : (G5 you4
        : I justTannaxU47Gotta PuLerstaL03eMrQ2
        :
        : We'M9n eachR for sElongzr hearFKchH butzJxoEshyxEsSInsideTe both9ThaFCoH on
        : We9xheCameqweJQplS1
        : 8g68let4 down8runKrouLqdesert48Pcry8sayCoodbye8tUK lieqhurt40WeJ nEstrangersxEloMz9xhe rulesqsEdEI
        : A full commitment'sThat I'mxhinkH ofzTouldn'tCetxhis fromKnyRCuy31AL if4Ksk me7Don'txU me4JxoEbliLxEsee00
        : B,C6)B,C556)1300"""
        : for s in'UTSRQPMLKJHFECBzxq9876543210':a,b=d.split(s,1);d=b.replace(s,a)
        : print d

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing I find interesting is this simple task highlights a constant problem with programming: clarification. Looking at the utf8 example, who wins, the fewest bytes or the fewest characters? It's always those little details that tend to cause the biggest issues.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how long the program would be if written in Malbolge. <http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-malbolge-995.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> I started writing a solution in Google Blockly, but alas it does not yet save programs, and procedures have incomplete implementation.

</comment><comment><USER10> the sed one is great!

</comment><comment> n-gauge 104 bytes:

<iframe src="<http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=wwvdjvEj> width="100%" height="100%" frameborder=no></iframe>

<comment><USER11> no external sources allowed :)

<comment> n-gauge Doesn't say that in this thread! (prior to your reply)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook users aging fast. "A parlor for the middle-aged?" - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/MNTS18KFB8.DTL&type=printable <comment><USER2> The middle-aged crowd is the one with the money. Middle-aged housewives are the ones with the money to spend, and the time to discover new things to spend on. This is why _so much_ of the retail world is aimed at _them_. As a result, much of our culture is distorted by the lens of their viewpoint. I think a lot of youthful rebellion of recent decades has been changed by this.

One middle aged woman I spoke to on the plane noted that there is a need to be able to "compartmentalize" one's online social networking, much as one does this for work. Her country club employees (where she works) have Facebook profiles which she uses to try and make contacts for new sales, and she finds that some of her fellow early 20's employees have Spring Break pictures only a few clicks away from hers. Not the best thing for her. I suggested LinkedIn, but this doesn't quite work for what she has in mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> The difference between 25 and 45 is much much less than the difference between "hit up my wall" and "whats 'the facebook'?"

Age as a signifier in itself is slipping.

<comment><USER4> My own use of facebook is probably a-typical, but I have used it to reconnect with a bunch of people that I'd lost touch with over the years, now that that has happened I'm no longer an active user, we communicate using different media now.

No need for me to visit facebook to keep in touch, email, the phone and so on work just fine.

<comment><USER5> Many people find Facebook easier to use than email - if you're on a Windows box, Facebook messaging is sexier and sleeker than either Gmail or Outlook. Facebook's also done a brilliant thing with its Phone Book. If I access it from a mobile device, it lists the phone numbers of all my friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After seeing the cesspool MySpace turned into, I'm okay with this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Calculating the aggregate age of all facebook users is irrelevant since the only people who matter to you on the site are your "friends". So my 15 year old cousin's friends are mostly her real world peers and her 45 year old dad's friends are mostly her peers. While there is a tiny overlap, it wouldn't be considered significant.

It isn't like a bunch of old people are now trying to hang out with the young cool kids causing the entire system to be less cool.

<comment><USER5> That compartmentalization is what makes Facebook such a neat social site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm one of those middle-aged users of Facebook. What I find appalling about Facebook is how much its context changes users' online behavior. Many of the people on my friends list of Facebook are people I also know from specialized, topical email lists. On the email lists, the people are serious and thoughtful, but on Facebook some of the same people let loose with a bajillion "What grocery produce section vegetable are you?" quizzes and endless flair and bling and mafia wars. My friends are less my friends, and more of an annoyance, on the Facebook platform. Facebook turns adults into kids.

So although I appreciate Facebook for linking me up to a few former classmates from childhood (my first Facebook friend was one such), if I want to do what I really enjoy, as a grown-up adult, I look for those same friends in other contexts. And that, I think, is why Facebook is extremely unlikely to build a business model through which it can gain more revenue per user than it has expenses per user to serve up cute photographs and videos.

</comment><comment><USER9> The 34-54 age-group is a 20-years interval (28%) versus 24-34, which is a 10-years interval (25%). In other words, there are almost twice as many users in the 24-34 interval as either in the 34-44 or the 44-54 intervals (contrary to what the article states). Am I missing something ?

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone know of a decent firefox extension for sending print articles back to the regular web page? I keep my browser maxed on a 1920x1200 monitor, so these are unreadable (though they're great on my Pre). I'd rather have ads and pictures than a giant wall of text, especially since I have adblock, but is there anyone else who shares that need?

<comment><USER9> Maybe remove the "&type=printable" at the end of the URL ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope I'm not the only one who doesn't care how old anyone else is. So what if your parents (or your kids, or your teachers, or your employer, or anyone else is on Facebook).

The guidelines of Facebook oughta be the same as the guidelines of hn which oughta be the same as the guidelines of kindergarden. Don't post anything you'd be embarassed if _anyone_ else saw and don't say anything online you wouldn't say in person.

<comment><USER12> The trouble is it is not only you that has to follow those guidelines. Friends can put up pictures of you and tag you. Not all content about you is placed there by you.

<comment><USER13> And you can set who can search for tagged pictures of you...

<comment><USER12> I think the average person will find it easier to socialise on two different sites or possibly have two different facebook identities, rather than altering the settings so that they can make sure that relatives can't see pictures of them looking silly or doing things that they wouldn't approve of.

<comment><USER5> Because it's a lot easier to create two separate IDs and log in and out between the two of them, or to bookmark two separate sites in the hopes that the same friends use both of them and that the interface is just as easy to use on both of them or that the features are equally good on both. Come _on_.

<comment><USER12> I'm not suggesting that the same friends use both of them, I'm suggesting that the youth will partition their social lives like they already do.

You have your friends and you have your family. You want your granny to be able to see the pictures your mum took, but you don't want your mum to know you are friends with bobby that she disapproves of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The 30-40+ crowd have been on livejournal for a good few years now, it's not surprising that they're on facebook too.</comment>


Licensing Software Engineers Is in the Works (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://theinstitute.ieee.org/career-and-education/career-guidance/licensing-software-engineers-is-in-the-works <comment><USER2> The most powerful part of state licensing of professionals is the ability to punitively delicense people for actions the state disapproves of which have nothing to do with their competence in their field of work, depriving them of their career because of any arbitrary act of noncompliance in their lives.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm all for it, as long as it doesn't become a supply control mechanism that has onerous BS requirements like "X years experience with a licensed union tradesmen". Software is notorious for the "1 year of experience repeated 10 times" problem. Theses tests should be about pure aptitude.

 _Warning: If certification becomes more about permission than proficiency, you 'll get corruption instead of competence._

<comment><USER4> Well _of course_ it's a supply control mechanism. That's a whole _point_ of a guild.

It's also an IEEE money-minting mechanism, a state licensing board revenue- generating mechanism, and a small-company and freelancer screwing mechanism. (Large companies are exempted from the screwing, of course.)

 _" Most software engineers, including those who work for a government entity or large company, won't be affected by the licensure requirement"_

<comment><USER5> Well the rent seekers are coming apparently, as much gain as I see coming from this I also see a lot of malaise from it.

"I'm only doing what the best practices say I should." Sounds somewhat like a cya mechanism akin to what architects do. Along the lines of sprinklers every N feet, walls have to be buttressed no longer than N feet and with Y giant bolts etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a terrible idea. Software is a rapidly evolving field which simply can't be captured by a single examination or a set amount of experience.

Indeed, apparently "four to six of experience" would be required. So suddenly no 20-somethings can work in software which might impact "public health or safety, security, property, or the economy." Say goodbye to half the tech teams at health and fintech startups...

<comment><USER7> They could, as long as the work was overseen by a senior developer with the appropriate paperwork. However, since when was the IEEE an outlet for computer science? Where does the ACM stand on this?

<comment><USER8> From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_professionalism

"In 1993 the IEEE and ACM began a joint effort...to explore making software engineering into a profession...The ACM pulled out of SWECC in May 1999...ACM determined that the state of knowledge and practice in software engineering was too immature to warrant licensing"

Granted, that was in 1999. I haven't heard anything since.

The ACM article explaining why they pulled out is here: dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=581602 (paywall)

Two states adopted the IEEE's recommendation (against the ACM). Florida and Texas. In Texas, it's illegal to call yourself a "Software Engineer" without 16 years' experience. It's absurd. sce.uhcl.edu/helm/SWEBOK_IEEE/papers/10%20reprint%205.pdf

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pointless, no matter how you spin it. Real engineers deal with measurable items like gravity and wind and light that don't change. Software can be anything, any language, any target, any industry, any size, any skill level required, etc. There is nothing practical to test that relates to everything. In my 3 decades of being a programmer there is absolutely nothing meaningful remaining from my first job: if I had had some magical license it would be pointless today.

<comment><USER10> ... until that software controls an actuator that _does_ deal with gravity, wind, light, or the human body.

Things like control software for elevators and pacemakers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Right now I tend to think of Software Engineering as an ad-hoc guild, where one can gain entry simply by proficiency and talent and recognition of those attributes by your peers, fellow software engineers. It's a system that seems to work relatively well.

This licensing business seems to be an attempt to cut software engineers out of this peerage for the sake of HR, in addition to being a cash-grab as mentioned by other posters.

<comment><USER12> No, this is not the right way to look at it. Everything started in the state of Texas, where you have to be licensed to have the word "engineer" in your official job title. Since there were a number of "software engineers" running around in the state, they figured that something needed to be done to ensure that such engineers were licensed.

<comment><USER11> TBH I don't really care what the State of Texas thinks is appropriate in this matter, despite being a citizen of the state and a software developer.

If you happen to agree with the State's opinion, then fine. But don't tell me my opinion is incorrect. It's an opinion and presented as such.

If you know anything about Texas government, you'll know that their licensing schemes are another way they soak the little guy while bending over backwards to help out the big guy. Certification by my peers in the form of their acceptance and recommendations are much more important than some arbitrary test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how this will fare compared to the efforts of the BCS (British Computer Society), who have tried to push 'certification' for years with their MBCS (Member of the British Computer Society), Chartered Engineer and Chartered IT Professional certifications. I got all three years ago and then ditched them because (i) I have yet to find an employer who gives a flying XXXX about them, (ii) some employers see them as a 'warning sign' of mediocrity like 'Sun Certified Java Programmer' became and (iii) I had to pay every year to renew them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is software development a branch of engineering or mathematics?

I'm ok with them forcing me take additional coursework to pass the FE exam as long as they also have to go back to school and take a year of real analysis, a year of abstract algebra, and a semester of complex analysis. I'd prefer to see number theory, with proofs, as well. I'm sure we can come up with a difficult and expensive comprehensive exam as an extra hurdle.

This has about as much to do with software "engineering" as the FE exam.

</comment><comment><USER15> Software Engineers in Canada are already able to become licensed Professional Engineers after graduating from an accredited Software Engineering program, writing the ethics exam, and gaining the prerequisite experience working under another engineer.

However, because there is no current requirement for any software to be certified by an engineer, most graduates don't care much to get it, and won't end up working directly under a P. Eng. anyway. So in my experience it hasn't really taken off as a licensed discipline. I have an Iron Ring, but that's as far as my P. Eng. path has progressed.

<comment><USER10> > _because there is no current requirement for any software to be certified by > an engineer_

Certifying software is difficult, even under the best of circumstances.

Edit: Er, I didn't substantiate the first sentence. So here's an example. Apparently the reason that most medical devices run on Windows NT (as opposed to, say, Linux) is that Windows NT is already certified for that use, so it becomes easier to certify your custom MRI scanner because you can just include the pre-certified Windows NT part and only have to get the new code your company wrote certified. Similarly, seL4 is the only OS I can think of that has been formally verified (i.e. proven correct mathematically); I'm quite certain none of {Windows, Darwin, Linux} has been formally proven to be correct.

When I attended a recent talk at my local university, I found out that the shutdown routines for a local nuclear power plant were running on 40-year-old mainframes because those mainframes were certified to survive earthquakes and things. Work was in progress to find new hardware and rewrite those routines, although the Engineer I spoke to was under the impression that none of the hardware made in the last decade was certified to operating under the same level of confidence.

<comment><USER16> Indeed, a lot of verification logic techniques were developed _for_ nuclear shutdown code. By David Parnas, no less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funny, I don't see coding ability, distributed systems, or algorithms anywhere in the exam spec, which is what most engineering teams actually interview on. Also, though I've been an "engineer" for the past five years, I don't have a college degree which means I'm ineligible for taking this test. Therefore, "the public" won't be able to trust me to write code for them, whatever that means. Thank goodness I never plan on taking a government job.

</comment><comment><USER18> As if this is going to make the slightest lick of difference. Those that are already employed and producing good quality code aren't going to get canned from a company. Managers are going to evaluate those that deliver and make a choice "can I afford to lose this guy just because he hasn't got a license?" No! Likewise, those who are moving fast and breaking things are those that are starting their own companies and finding lucrative exit strategies by getting aquihired.

The funny thing is, once you're proven, it doesn't matter what your credentials say. Demand speaks volumes more than paperwork, and it always will. Risk is all about perception, that little license says "the State thinks this guy is less of a risk than another," but let's face it, when it comes down to it, would you hire the guy who started the last Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare that isn't licensed, or the guy that just moved in next door you never heard of that has the license?

Just like the MCSD/MCSE, it'll go out of the window the minute everyone realizes that the piece of paper doesn't actually mean this guy can deliver, it just means that he can pass an exam.

</comment><comment><USER19> _"Just as practicing professionals such as doctors, accountants, and nurses are licensed, so should software engineers," Thornton says. "The public needs to be able to rely on some sort of credential when choosing a contractor to write software."_

Yep, and thank God America's healthcare is so affordable because of these licensing requirements!

What a horrid idea.

EDIT:

Here's the deal. I'm a mechanical engineer by training, and could've after several years of paying dues gotten my Professional Engineer cert. There are technical fields where I demand that the products I consume (especially those which service thousands of people every day, as is the case with public infrastructure) have a very strong line of qualification.

The fact is that >>99% of software (as it is consumed today) does not require anything near the formal qualifications of civil or structural or chemical engineering.

If you want a really poignant reminder of how having professional engineers with quality control and certification can result in bad progress, go look at what's become of NASA and Armadillo Aerospace.

We are so lucky to be in a field where our ability to ship working code is valued above our ability to get off whoever the current power broker is (and this includes investors).

Let's not willfully throw away that windfall.

EDIT2:

If we expect to conduct business as has become the norm these days--move fast, break things, learn, repeat--and as has done so well for us as an industry, doing anything which artificially limits the supply of potential hands is bad. Doing anything which prevents people from trying new things with minimum investment is bad.

They don't understand us, and they're greedy bastards, so Something Must Be Done (and this is not only for .gov folks--the professional groups have a lot riding on being seen as useful. Jane and Bob the Bad Coders stand a lot to gain by collecting dues for the American Society of Software Engineers).

Actually, that's kind of funny. American Society of Software Engineers. ASSEs. Huh.

<comment><USER20> That being said we've had many times more deaths from bad software than from bad spacecraft([http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~nachumd/horror.html](http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~nachumd/horror.html) vs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight- related_acc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight- related_accidents_and_incidents)).

I understand your point that you might write software that has few consequences if it fails, but thats not always the case.

<comment><USER21> The solution for this is to solve it in the domains where it is necessary. If you want to write or adopt software for use in a critical system in aerospace then you need to be a licensed _aerospace_ engineer, etc.

There is absolutely no need to license web developers or those who write the usual line of business software etc.

<comment><USER22> > Only those whose programs might "endanger the public health or safety, > security, property, or the economy will need to be tested."

I don't think the people pushing for licensing disagree with you that web developers don't need a license.

<comment><USER21> Are you sure? The description you just gave is unreasonably broad. What does "security, property or the economy" even mean, and what justifies their inclusion?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure few people remember the Certified Data Processor exam (CPD) but I thought it was hilarious. I took the practice exam in high school in the 70's and passed. It was more about data management practices than actual computer knowledge, interestingly by knowing how computers worked you could infer what the best practices would be, and hence my ability to pass it by just figuring out what would "make sense" to any of the 250 multiple choice questions.

However, it has also been a source of disgust for me that companies would refuse any sort of warranty for their software at all. What sort of company sells you a widget and tells you, "By the way the box may just contain air for all we know, we don't warrant that it does anything!"

The risk of liability was too huge. Nobody wanted to sign up for their operating system crashing when you're rocket took off, or their spreadsheet getting the numbers wrong because binary really wasn't a great system for representing fractional decimal numbers.

I would be all in favor of fixing this total "get out of jail free" card first before we try to figure out who to license software professionals.

</comment><comment><USER24> Reliable software has more to do with proper testing than proper engineering. Rather than license engineers, they should license QA methodologies.

</comment><comment><USER25> Title should say (2012).

It is, nonetheless, a good article. The software engineering exam is offered once a year, in April; the first one was in April, 2013.

<comment><USER26> Wait, so this has already been passed, and it's a real thing?

I wonder how quickly it's catching on and who requires them.

<comment><USER10> > _Only those whose programs might "endanger the public health or safety, > security, property, or the economy will need to be tested," continues > Thornton._

It's perfectly sensible to introduce this when Software Engineers will be working alongside people who are also licensed and accredited. So, software engineers in safety-critical fields -- writing firmware medical devices, or shutdown routines for nuclear power plants, or pacemaker firmware -- would definitely benefit from this. Whether software engineers working on consumer- grade electronics need something like this is more hazy (Pebble smartwatch firmware? Probably not. But what about the people writing the iOS app for a diabetic's glucose blood monitor? Hmm.)

I'm under the impression that Software Engineering has been licensed by certain local engineering bodies for at least a few years now (Professional Engineers Ontario comes to mind), so this is nothing new. Not going for the accreditation won't harm your chances of being hired by a Google or Facebook, nor will it prevent you from starting your own company.

<comment><USER27> There's nothing "sensible" about asking any computer scientist to pass the fundementals of engineering exam. That has aboslutely nothing to do with anything in the computer science curriculum.

<comment><USER10> If the software you write controls a pacemaker, I would want you to be able to pass the fundamentals of engineering exam. If you're writing routines for SolidWorks, or AutoCAD, I would want you to be able to pass the fundamentals of engineering exam. If your program will be used by Civil Engineers to figure out the composition of soil that needs to be placed under a brick pathway that students like me will use every day, I would want you to be able to pass the fundamentals of engineering exam.

If you're going to be the next Mark Zuckerburg, I give negative fucks about whether you have an engineering degree. Go take a speech communication course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I tried to register for the exam, but didn't find software engineer as one of the options. Turns out the SE exam is not offered in California.

I think it may be reasonable because this kind of certificate can be disruptive to the current way of things. The government may not want to take the risk on something so vital to California's economy.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well I looked at doing the professional development in the the UK but the BCS/IEE kept changing the rules on prior experience.

The main question is whats in it for me? what benefits do you get and what since brunell died have the professional bodies done for engineering profession in the UK.

Ps and I already have gone part of the way down the mech eng track

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm a freelancer in Virginia. I work on web apps for companies that want to figure out their sales figures better. I work on reports for non-profits who want to see how they are raising money. What hospital in its right mind would buy a heart monitor from someone like me? What car manufacturer in their right mind would want me to work on their control systems?

I could do it, but that's not the point. Those examples they provide, they are already controlled. They're already covered by very large corporations that have these sorts of controls in place. If they subcontract out to me, the responsibility lies with them to verify that my work is suitable.

This is just about preventing people like me from doing what we're trying to do: quit our jobs, make some money, bring their friends in and bootstrap a company.

<comment><USER20> This has nothing to do with you writing webapps as a side job. It's about having some way for those corporations to prove the people who are verifying your work are competent to do so. That is the _whole_ point of the PE stamp!

<comment><USER30> They said the people working for government and big corps _wouldn 't_ be subject to the license. The very people most likely to be writing or verifying code that might hurt people are exempted under some hand waiving "big corps will certify themselves", under some sort of code review process or something. So why don't they just certify themselves? Why the license?

And it's not my side job anymore. It's my full livelihood. It doesn't seem any of this has teeth yet, but when will it? And yearly fees? This is so obviously nothing more than rent seeking.

Fuck it, I'll just move. Oh, wait, I can't. My wife has an electrical engineering job with a branch of the government. They _also_ are not required to license themselves, and they write code that affects more lives than I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here are the specifications: [http://cdn1.ncees.co/wp- content/uploads/2012/11/Exam-specifi...](http://cdn1.ncees.co/wp- content/uploads/2012/11/Exam-specifications_PE-Software-Apr-2013.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER32> an activity's being called "software engineering" does not make it any more likely to be a form of engineering than one's being called "armstrong" makes one more likely to be strong. we might as well call it "software writing." it is obvious that lives will depend on some software working as expected. the solution is not to license the writers of the software, but to make sure software doesn't fail in ways that could end lives. a certification scheme doesn't add anything to the solution of this problem if the solution doesn't already exist.

</comment><comment><USER33> How would this work with "software engineers" who are educated as Computer Scientists? Not everyone who writes important software was necessarily trained as an engineer, nor do they really need to be.</comment>


Welcome - The Ruby Game - <AUTHOR> http://therubygame.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but why require Twitter out of all things? I thought Ruby had the multi-auth thing nailed.

<comment><USER3> It does. It's trivial to use as well. <https://github.com/intridea/omniauth>

Why would you not hook this up to github for auth?

EDIT: The site is great by the way. My tone of disappointment at the authentication system is motivated by how nice the thing is.

<comment><USER4> The game actually uses omniauth for authentication. Github support may be in for next weeks challenge :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > This code has already been submitted by darkphnx

Ok, so I have to add random noise to my solution? O_o

<comment><USER6> This is really lame, especially if elegance is part of the judging criteria.

<comment><USER7> a) this check only checked identical code so any more (or less) elegant code was still permitted.

b) we now don't check for this but "similar" code will be grouped together to make things easier to hear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really love this idea, and I want to compete but it appears the site is down, and I'm unable to submit solutions. I've been wanting a version of Vimgolf targeted at Ruby for quite some time, it's an awesome way to improve your skills and uncover great tricks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Inject is a beautiful thing, and looking at the leaderboard, a lot of people seem to agree.

</comment><comment><USER9> I really loved this! I liked the fact that I could read other people solutions.

Is there an equivalent for Python, or any other language?

<comment><USER10> vimgolf is very similar, and has an interesting mechanic of not letting you see significantly better entries than your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "This code has already been submitted by catphish."

Is this by design?

<comment><USER11> Also, if it's by design:

Placing a random comment after my submission lets it through. So you might want to strip out comments for that bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a little slow this morning....the top solution is just a string? The submitter just did a fake entry to get the answer and then submitted a second one?

<comment><USER13> They cheated. The page says all code will be rerun with different input at the end of the week to determine the true winner, so all the hardcoded answers will drop out at that point.

Though it seems this problem has an obvious fastest solution that has been found and mimic'd repeatedly.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps they should rerun with different input immediately after submitting.</comment></comment></comment>


What Is True Automation in the Ad Tech Industry? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.automateads.com/true-paid-media-automation/

<comment><USER2> Outside of what I can see in the screenshots, Facebook, Google Analytics, and DCM, what other DSPs can you plug in?</comment>


ONLamp.com -- An Introduction to Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2007/09/13/introduction-to-erlang.html

<comment><USER2> Joe Armstrong's thesis "Making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors" (<http://www.sics.se/~joe/thesis/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf>) is a really excellent introduction to Erlang and the ideas behind it. I'd recommend that, along with "Programming Erlang", to anyone interested in learning Erlang or in simply becoming a better programmer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am learning Common Lisp recreationally to familiarize myself with functional programming using Mr. Graham's books (they are fantastic by the way). But Lisp does not seem to be in favor in industry. I do however hear a lot about OCaml and Erlang. Which of the three do you recommend I focus on?

I am leaning towards Erlang now. It seems to be a network programmer's wet dream.

<comment><USER4> Just get a basic knowledge of each of them.

CL is pretty special and has features you just won't find in most other languages (macros, interactive error-handling, generic functions), and raw speed (SBCL).

OCaml...I hear discussion about it, but personally having evaluated it, I don't know what kind of a future it has (I really doubt it will ever be a 'big' thing). It has some real cruft around the edges, and I can see Haskell or Scala picking up real momentum before OCaml ever does.

Erlang: learn it. It is a simple language and as a programmer you'll probably find it very interesting. Also if you haven't done much functional programming, Erlang will push you into it. Erlang obviously has an advantage when it comes to parallel processing, but we'll have to see whether the string support ever gets better, whether it gets more mainstream libraries, and whether the complete lack of objects is an issue for adoption.

Right now I think Erlang is being hyped a little prematurely, but that might change if other languages can't adapt adequately to multi-core programming.

<comment><USER5> _interactive error-handling_

It's pretty good, but the Lisp world has stagnated, and you'll find equivalent (and better stuff) in other environments, like Squeak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice intro. If you haven't picked up "Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World" by Joe Armstrong, I can not recommend it enough. One of the few programming books that you look forward to reading.

</comment><comment><USER7> Erlang is a good example of "crossing the chasm" in a programming language ([http://welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics.htm...](http://welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics.html)) - despite many other shortcomings, it is great for distributed environments, and for its concurrency model. This is enough to give it a boost into the 'big time', if they play their cards right.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ahh, it feels great to see Erlang getting press. It's a, "funny little language" that has a whole lot to offer and even more to teach!

Joe Armstrong's book is brilliant because it seems to be the only one not written in boring-professor-speak.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hopefully one day we will find our silver bullet. With the number of languages/platforms getting touted these days, we are certainly looking hard for it :)

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure that we will ever find the one silver bullet. IMO, you need to choose the right tool for the job and sometimes that means leaving your favorite programming language behind for a project or two.

Speaking as an Erlang advocate it is great for communications and concurrency, but the string processing leaves a lot to be desired. It is good enough, but if you are doing text manipulation as your primary task Erlang may not be right for you ...

But if you are working on communications technologies, you really need to look into it ...</comment></comment>