Many H-1B workers get temporary jobs, study finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9159838/Many_H_1B_workers_get_temporary_jobs_study_finds

<comment><USER2> This is a very misleading interpretation of the data. All it shows is that large companies like their best employees working at HQ. For Indian companies, that means they go back to India (5% immigration rate). For American companies, it means they stay in America (50%+).

Also, the idea that the H-1B program is supposed to be about attracting the "best and brightest" is new to me. The whole point of the H-1B is that America doesn't _want_ any immigrants -- the government agrees, metaphorically, to hold its nose for 6 years while we dirty foreigners get the work done, but we're not invited to _stay_. That's why the H-1B expires.

If the government really wanted the best and brightest from overseas to come and stay, they would have a points-based system and give us green cards, not temporary visas.

<comment><USER3> It's not a misleading interpretation of the data, it is a misleading interpretation of the purpose of the visa, and not necessarily by the authors alone. They are merely saying that a majority of the people who work on an H-1B visa, do not stay in the U.S. beyond their terms. The H-1B is officially a "Temporary Employment Visa", so, as you say, this was the intent.

Where the intent is muddled is in letting H-1B applicants apply for permanent residency permits, but choking the supply of these permits so it takes a decade to get one.

I agree with you that there should be a point based system for green cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _The study was called misleading by a spokesman for Compete America, a coalition of vendors, universities and other sponsors of H-1B visa holders._

As someone very familiar with the visa, I can tell you the article is not misleading. Comparisons to bonded labor always come to my mind when I think about the visa. While these may be a bit far fetched since any kind of visa is opt-in, the fact that the employer can kick an employee out of the country by firing them means that they exert extraordinary control over the employee.

What is worse, and what the article doesn't cover, is that by applying for a permanent residency permit (green card) for an employee, the employer all but guarantees that the employee has to stay with them for 4-7 years. That is how long it takes to go through the _initial stages_ of getting a permanent residency and abandoning the process in the middle means you have to restart it. They also exert even more control over the employee during this period because not only can they kick him/her out of the country by firing them, they can cause the time, effort and expense he/she incurred on the green card thus far to be wasted.

<comment><USER4> By the time the employee comes to work for the company, the company has already committed quite a bit of resources into the employee. It doesn't seem all that unfair that the employee now has a somewhat greater obligation to the company, particularly since the employee chose this route.

Similarly, my sister's employer invested several grand in training her in Crossfit. She is now obligated to teach Crossfit for a year at a fixed wage, or else repay (12 - # of months worked)/12 x 100% of her training costs. Is that also "bonded labor"?

<comment><USER3> Being committed for 1 year is very different from being committed for 4 to 10 years(as another commenter below pointed out).

The "significant resources" amount to around $4000 for an H1B if the company files the expedited visa and $2500 (IIRC) for the default route. This is significantly less than the monthly salary of a programmer in most places.

For a green card, the expenses are roughly double but often shared by the company and the employee.

So the scale here is very different. What's more, your sister is not going to be thrown out of the country if she leaves Crossfit before the year ends. I think it makes sense to have a pay-back agreement for legal expenses in the case of an H1B but not to have legal immigration status dependent on that specific job.

Skilled employment based immigration should be based on the immigrant's level of skills, not tied to a specific job.

<comment><USER4> First, I think you are greatly underestimating the cost of an H1B. It's more than just the application fee. For example, the company must create a job description so narrow that only the desired candidate can fit it. They must then advertise and otherwise attempt to recruit an American for that position, and a lawyer must make sure they tried hard enough. Once lawyers get involved, things get expensive.

As for getting thrown out of the country, it's my understanding that someone on an H1B is in the country for the sole purpose of relieving a shortage of skilled labor. Once the job is gone, they have no reason to remain in the US. They can also leave their job at any time. In contrast, bonded labor can not leave their job until their debts are paid off.

In short, I think you want the H1B system to be something that it isn't. The sole goal is to relieve a shortage of skilled labor. There is no reason we should make it easier for people to leverage an H1B into citizenship.

Now, I certainly think we should increase our immigration quota for skilled immigrants, subject to much greater scrutiny than we already have [1]. But that's completely separate from the matter of visas to provide temporary labor.

[1] I think we do a terrible job of making sure immigrants are a good cultural fit for the US and assimilating them once they get here.

<comment><USER3> Actually I have been on both sides of the table on an H-1B visa, so I am quite certain that I am not underestimating the cost of the H1B visa. The government fees are $2320 for a non-expedited application and $3320 for an expedited application. Lawyers usually charge $1000. Although this, obviously, will vary by firm and seniority of the lawyer in question.

The narrow job description and advertisements are applicable only to the green card where the total cost would probably reach over $8000, but again it is often shared by the employee and the employer. The job description is a few hours of work by an immigration paralegal or lawyer and newspaper ads should not increase the cost by much more.

I don't want the H1B system to be something it is not, the government has already muddled the intent of the system by allowing H1Bs to apply for greencards. In fact it is probably the only practical way of getting a green card as a skilled immigrant, but government chokes the supply of those at will, making it unpredictable. If the sole goal of the H1B is to relieve temporary shortage of labor, H1Bs should not be allowed to apply for green cards.

In the end, I think we have arrived at the same conclusions: that we should increase our immigration quota for skilled immigrants and establish a system independent of the H1B visa for it. I don't know how you intend to test for cultural fit, but I am open to listening to ideas there.

I was dreading putting the bonded labor comparison there, which is why I added the caveat. But a bonded laborer cannot leave their job until their debts are paid off, and an H1B with a greencard application pending cannot leave their job until they get a greencard (or risk losing whatever life/assets the have built up here). I see similarities there, although, _obviously_ the two are not identical.

It is easy to say that immigrants should not expect to build a life and live here permanently, just because they _can_ apply for a green card. However, the current approach to immigration causes uncertainty which hurts both the country (because very skilled immigrants, given a choice, will not accept the uncertainty) and immigrants themselves (for obvious reasons).

<comment><USER4> _I don't know how you intend to test for cultural fit, but I am open to listening to ideas there._

My general feeling is that immigrants should be tolerant, hard working and individualist. The second generation should be integrated into mainstream America, rather than clustered into a ghetto.

These are, IMO, the shared values of the US. A skill/work based system should weed out the lazy. There are basically 2 behaviors I'd like to prevent:

1.) Racism. If someone has a problem with their daughter marrying a black guy, they should stay home. We have enough racists, we don't need to import more.

I'd measure this by intermarriage and cohabitation rates. I.e., if X Americans and X immigrants don't marry people of non-X descent very often, that suggests X's are racist. I'd give people from country X a big penalty on the point system.

2.) Strong family/social obligations. Basically, forcing people (particularly one's children) via social pressure to conform to your own preferences. No clue how to measure this.

<comment><USER3> _My general feeling is that immigrants should be tolerant, hard working and individualist. The second generation should be integrated into mainstream America, rather than clustered into a ghetto._

I am with you 100% here. The good news, if you want to ask an immigrant, is that the U.S. is partly immunized against ghettos. Ghettos are caused by (and often require) two vicious circle type factors: a) An insular culture amongst the immigrants and b) An exclusive (exclusionary?) culture amongst citizens.

The great thing about the U.S. is that from the first day you land here, most people will treat you as an American. In my experience, this is one of the most powerful things America has working for itself. If someone feels like a part of America, the chances that they will harbor ill will for it are negligible and chances that they will want to insulate themselves from it are also low.

I think it is hard to design a racism test, so with the caveat that I don't have a better solution, I have the following problem with your racism test:

There is a high correlation between race and some religions. For example, IMO, the proportion of Muslims who are white is very low, while the proportion of Muslims who are brown is very high. So, in measuring the bias of say people from Pakistan against marrying whites, you might actually be measuring the bias of Muslims against marrying non-Muslims.

Actually, I don't think that is bad. My (potential) children will (and should) be free to marry whoever they choose Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians, whoever. (Hopefully they wont marry a Scientologist!) Legally, though, discriminating against a religious group for not marrying outside seems like it may fall afoul of some religious freedom rights. Having said that, IANAL.

Regarding (2), it seems that you are using strong family / social obligations as a proxy for testing how much more 'liberal' or open minded compared to the 1st generation, the 2nd generation will be. I think this is such a warped and complex thing though, that it is really impossible to test.

Coming from a background with strong family and social obligations, and luckily from a family with negligible social pressure, I can also tell you it has many positives.

I also think it would be interesting to see how middle and southern United States measure on (2) vs most of the world. I suspect you won't see as much of a difference here as you expect.

Good discussion!

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure we are immunized against ghettos. Ghettoization has led to violence/ethnic cleansing out on the west coast (Mexicans ethnically cleansing Blacks). In my neck of the woods, there is an Arab ghetto in South Paterson and an Indian ghetto in Edison.

Regarding 2, it's not so much about liberalness/open mindedness as it is about the fact that in the US, you choose your own destiny. Regarding the south, as far as I know they don't tend to try to prevent their daughters from getting educated/working in order to keep them under thumb (for example). I suspect (1) is more an issue for them than (2).

But then again (assuming you aren't from the US), do you really want racist American southerners coming to your country?

<comment><USER3> Are these ghettos as in "People of the same culture, living together like they did in their native land" or also as in "People of other cultures fear for their safety and are made to feel unwelcome here"? I am concerned about people sticking _only_ to their kind (insularity), but not so concerned about people preferring to stick with the familiar, which is human nature. It's a spectrum, but they are on different ends of it.

I am personally familiar with folks from Edison, and at least in my experience, they are not insular although it could be selection bias. Standard reasons for a newly minted NYU or Columbia grad (or a fresh H1B) from India to live in Edison is easy access to Indian food, cheap rent and staying near friends. It is not staying away from "corrupt Americans". Indeed, most of them would prefer to live in Manhattan if they could afford it, and when they can many do.

I live in Atlanta, where people are very family oriented but I can count on one hand the number of times I have faced racism in the 7 years I have lived here. I suspect the number would be similar or more in any other country. I'd be ok with these people coming to my country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> H-1B are almost a lottery. The day they start accepting the requests (usually April 1st) they go over quota and they proceed by random selections (in October). Of course the processing fee is not refundable (over $1000).

With the money I spent in visas and attorneys in the past 5 years, you could hire a full time coder oversea for at least one year...

<comment><USER6> Actually, in 2009 they didn't run out of quota for a long time. (Too bad I was only interested around April 10, 2008! By the time 2009 came around, it was a bit harder to find a job...)

<comment><USER2> The conditions of TARP for the banks meant that they could not hire H-1Bs. Since banks -- not tech -- were the biggest hirers of overseas workers, they still hadn't hit the cap in November 2009.</comment></comment></comment>


Submarine to visit deepest parts of the ocean in Five Deeps Expedition - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/submarine-to-visit-deepest-parts-of-the-ocean-in-five-deeps-expedition-2018-10 <comment><USER2> > It's a spot no human has ever explored, and it's so deep that any > communications from the submarine will take seven seconds to travel back up.

I found this interesting. Are they going to use sound waves for communication? Aren't there any electromagnetic wave based communication mechanisms that work in the ocean or does the depth of water absorb all emails?

<comment><USER3> The depth a RF signal reliably penetrates to in water is proportional to its wavelength.

Hence the ELF sites used to communicate with submarines - we're talking EM radiation at a frequency of a few tens of hertz.

These transmitter sites are huge - not to mention the power requirements, which is easily in the MW range - so they could only be used to communicate from shore to submersible. Return comms would have to be by acoustic means, due to size and power constraints in the submersible.

Also, the bandwidth of ELF systems is very low - think several seconds, if not minutes per bit - the bandwidth of an acoustic system is orders of magnitude higher.

Edit: I had bungled the first paragraph. My apologies.

<comment><USER4> ITYM "proportional", not "inversely proportional". The ELF transmissions have very _long_ wavelengths.

<comment><USER3> -You are right; I was thinking 'frequency' but writing 'wavelength'. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> While I have to admit I am dubious of the scientific value of sending humans down into the abyss, I'll keep an eye out for news on their progress; there's no denying that most of the world's deep oceans are pretty much blank spots.

Also, while I think an AUV or ROV could accomplish as much as a manned submersible, I am envious as [ __ __] of the people who get to go down there! Where do I sign up?!?

<comment><USER5> Really? In my mind it sounds way too scary to do so!

But for some reason I would like space travel rather as to me it sounds safer but I can't back that up.

Going towards lesser extremes, I am also fine with flying but really dislike being on boats. Probably just an irrational tjinh I though.

<comment><USER6> Could it be that our species has had time to develop an instinctual fear of deep water that we haven't had the chance to develop for space travel?

<comment><USER7> Your assumption that the species isn't afraid of space travel is invalid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure comfort is not the top design criterion when building a machine that can take multiple humans miles deep, but I'd love to see the inside of it. I imagine even a bathroom break could be challenging.

<comment><USER9> There's some detail on the interior of the sub on their site [1]; note the slider on the "Key Features" photograph that shows you the inside when the slider is moved to the left.

[1] [https://fivedeeps.com/home/technology/sub/](https://fivedeeps.com/home/technology/sub/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if they will find more ecosystems independent of the sun. Or may be a good footage of the giant or collosal squids. Or something we can't even fathom currently. This is almost akin to deep space exploration for aliens except that here we are guaranteed to find some...

</comment><comment><USER11> "Cthulhu likes that"</comment>


Parsing floats in C++: benchmarking strtod vs. from_chars - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2020/09/10/parsing-floats-in-c-benchmarking-strtod-vs-from_chars/ <comment><USER2> FWIW there is also absl::from_chars, with some included benchmarks and results at the bottom of the benchmark code.

[https://github.com/abseil/abseil- cpp/blob/master/absl/string...](https://github.com/abseil/abseil- cpp/blob/master/absl/strings/charconv_benchmark.cc)

ETA: I adapted the benchmark in the blog to use absl::from_chars and it's more than twice as fast as strtod.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested in more information about performance was achieved, Stephan Lavavej gave a talk about this very subject during CppCon 2019 [1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P_kbF0EbZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P_kbF0EbZM)

</comment><comment><USER4> The first example is incomplete: it forgets to clear and then check errno and/or check the returned value to +-HUGE_VAL! That'd probably slow down the strtod version a bit more.

<comment><USER5> strtod() could also return 0 on underflow.

But to be fair, the C++17 example doesn't check for underflow or overflow either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Performance in the opposite direction is also useful; the Ryū algorithm[0] is a fast float-to-string conversion that I've used recently to great effect[1]. Namely, to convert path information from glyphs into vector graphics for a minimal math-oriented Java-based TeX implementation[2]. The result is code that converts 1,000 simple formulas as strings into individual SVG documents in under 600 milliseconds on newish hardware.

[0]: [https://github.com/ulfjack/ryu/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/ulfjack/ryu/blob/master/README.md)

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17633182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17633182)

[2]: [https://github.com/DaveJarvis/JMathTeX/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/DaveJarvis/JMathTeX/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER7> Locale should not be a big deal in most of the code, since majority of applications use "C" locale anyways.

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess someone has an optimized function for this which is faster than the one that comes with the compiler.

<comment><USER9> I'm trying to think about which use cases would really be bottlenecked by parsing floats and they basically fall into two categories:

1) You're writing a JSON/some other human-readable serialization library 2) You need to interact with some API that you can't change that sends floats over the wire as strings (a subset of which will fall into the case of (1)).

For something like currencies you'd need a custom parsing engine anyways since you'll typically represent monetary values as fixed-width integer multiples of the smallest unit (eg; cents or basis points) except for trading engines where proper accounting isn't required. In fact, a lookup table may even be faster if the valid values are bounded.

My guess is most of the things in (2) are going to be reading telemetry from embedded devices with firmware that simply won't be changed anymore and values are sent as text.

<comment><USER10> Except for trading engines is pretty big exception :) A lot of exchanges still use FIX, which is a very simple text format.

<comment><USER9> Except you don't send IEEE floats over FIX. The precision is typically bounded. Also, that's more for placing orders.. NASDAQ for instance uses ITCH which is a binary stream.

<comment><USER10> You're right that you'd be leaving performance on the floor if you used the new function in the hot loop, but it would still be quite handy for recorded FIX messages for compliance, auditing, risk tools, maybe for hedging, and maybe for execution tasks outside the hot loop -- that's a huge surface area.

As for exchanges, CME _only_ had FIX for latency-sensitive order entry until the iLink 3 migration began last year. CME is huge and there are others like it, even further behind. There is plenty of liquidity you're missing if you ignore non-binary protocols.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Incompetent American Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.knowing.net/PermaLink,guid,cd4a40f8-0549-4332-83d6-a71eca0d4417.aspx

<comment><USER2> The person who runs that site is top notch at creating interesting or controversial headlines, but usually delivers a rant at best or--in this case --nothing at all. As best I can follow, this article's outline is this:

1\. He met a presumably incompetent coder before the first bubble, who was possibly arrogant. 2\. He previously complained about a incompetent coder in South America. 3\. He has also met a competent coder in South America. 4\. That competent coder may or may not have horses, but he definitely might have them, and he probably has a nice house as well. 5\. He's pretty sure that people like the guy who is competent. 6\. Wages don't correlate with quality.

I guess what gets me about his articles, is they are usually about something I'd like to know more about, and he presents this veneer of of authority, but always skims over the point of his argument where one might reasonably expect him to defend his position beyond simply stating it as a solemn truth.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... I guess what gets me about his articles, is they are usually about something I'd like to know more about, and he presents this veneer of of authority, but always skims over the point of his argument where one might reasonably expect him to defend his position beyond simply stating it as a solemn truth. ..."_

The question I keep thinking of is why? He is the founding editor of GameDev and Software developer mags. So you would assume he has some idea of writing. I'll keep that in mind next time I (think) of posting one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's called Link Bait.</comment>


Indians Find Ways to See Rape Documentary Despite Ban - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/world/asia/indias-efforts-to-ban-rape-documentary-spur-greater-interest-online.html

<comment><USER2> I continue to find it highly amusing that the governments [India, China, ...] seem to think they can hide information from citizens en masse.

<comment><USER3> And how amusing do you find the fact that their censoring works for the most parts, and that many, many Indians, Chinese, etc. do indeed never see the content that's been censored?</comment></comment>


Should entrepreneurs take vacations or work 24-7-365 on their startups? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestartup.eu/2010/08/should-entrepreneurs-take-vacations-or-work-24-7-365-on-their-startups/

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting question. Unfortunately it's not always up to us. I found out that I cannot control my ups and downs and that if I could (meaning, that I could have a steady rhythm of work every day) then I would accomplish a lot more. So I was looking for the solution on how to achieve more self control. I asked a friend of mine, who is a medical student and a very passionate person who loves what she's doing. She said something very simple, yet it somehow never occurred to me as clearly. She said that when she feels motivated she works 200% and that way she can afford the unpredictable "downs" without worrying too much.

Also, there's probably a correct observation that american culture may affect the judgement here. Entrepreneurial culture in US seems to cultivate this workaholic lifestyle, which I always envied. However I don't think that this culture is able to alter human psychology (and probably biology), and so some people who are naturally not inclined to have steady workaholic lifestyle and are trying to adopt it may, in fact, only suffer. For what it's worth, I am sure there are examples of both successful people who worked 7/356 and successful people who worked 200% one day and procrastinated the other day. There are even examples of successful people who worked less than it seems necessary. But I'd love to meet anyone who has ever worked 200% every day for at least a year non-stop and who became successful - that seems very unrealistic to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nailed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. 365 weeks a... 7 years?</comment>


Things XSLT can't do (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/nono.html <comment><USER2> Much content in this article is interesting, with some caveats.

* The title feels very wrong and may reduce the article content's actual value for people who use XSLT. The good scenario of this title would be: it helps angry people finding the article and if they actually read it they get enlightened. Does it happen?

* A dose of redundancy (dynamic includes for example are repeated a number of times).

* Some issues are genuine limitations, e.g. "Two column table from unsorted data", because "if you want to do further processing on it you have to convert the r-t-f to a node-set" and I've run into that. Solved since.

* Some questions are misleading because asked with a wrong approach, like an instance of the XY problem ( [http://xyproblem.info/](http://xyproblem.info/) ). E.g. "Non well formed HTML input" -> such approach looks like the user actually wants a template mechanism, and instead of that asks for pasting invalid HTML. As written in article, "XSLT is about trees, not tags"... and IMHO that's where it gets a lot of power from!

All in all, this document _is_ interesting, though most value in it is in _understanding the spirit and style_ of XSLT, like "Variables in XSLT have scope based on their appearance in the stylesheet not on runtime behaviour"

If after reading it you understand better what you _can_ do with XSLT (because false paths are now marked in your head, making good paths easier to spot), then it was worth reading.

And for you that read this far: use XSLT for simple things, don't try to pack inside stylesheets issues that don't belong there. Generating ad-hoc XSLT (with whatever tool that can do that well) is fine. Also, since style sheets are XML, generating them with another "upstream" XSLT stylesheet if good, though you have to take care of namespaces. You might think you have to problems instead of one, but they are actually much more doable. KISS and "divide and conquer" principles still apply.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an outdated article. Many of the things it claims you cannot do, you can in fact do, you just weren't able to when this was penned.

For example:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31437121/how-to-output- am...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31437121/how-to-output-ampersand- from-xslt)

Just setting <xsl:output method="text"/> will let you more or less output whatever you want. It doesn't care at that point if the output is valid XML. It is used regularly to convert XML to other text formats using only XSLT.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article is from 2003. Notably, since then XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XSLT 3.0 have been released.

Whether unfortunate, or due to design, most/all of these are still valid.

<comment><USER5> I flagged this article. It needs a [2003] tag to indicate that's it's completely outdated and obsolete.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, it's still valid for the most part. You can't reassign variables, but instead are forced to if-blocks within variable assignments to e.g. assign c node if it exists, otherwise b.

<xsl:variable name="BorC"> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="/a/b/c"> <xsl:value-of select="/a/b/c"> </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise> <xsl:value-of select="/a/b"> </xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:variable>

<comment><USER6> XPath 2 supports conditionals so you could put all that in a single select expression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What XSLT could or couldn't do was already discussed back in 1999 [1]. XSLT was then proven Turing-complete in 2001 [2].

As recently as 2008 (ahem), I implemented a website transforming XML into HTML/DOM using xsl-stylesheet instructions and it worked pretty well on IE6 and FF back then.

But XSLT's Turing-completeness, for me, kind of spelled the death for in- browser XSLT, as XSLT was becoming pointless when you already have JavaScript in the stack.

I don't even know if xsl-stylesheet still works in browsers (supposedly not when using HTML5). But XPath in the browser certainly isn't dead ([3]).

[1]: [http://www.biglist.com/lists/lists.mulberrytech.com/xsl- list...](http://www.biglist.com/lists/lists.mulberrytech.com/xsl- list/archives/199906/msg00270.html)

[2]: [http://www.unidex.com/turing/utm.htm](http://www.unidex.com/turing/utm.htm)

[3]: [http://www.xmlprague.cz/day2-2017/](http://www.xmlprague.cz/day2-2017/)

<comment><USER8> > As recently as 2008 (ahem), I implemented a website transforming XML into > HTML/DOM using xsl-stylesheet instructions and it worked pretty well on IE6 > and FF back then.

Oh ! Me too ! It was based on ATOM and PHP to recreate the files when content was updated.

<comment><USER9> I did it in 2010, in C. Must have been insane.

<comment><USER10> As some one who has modernized these apps: screw you guys. That stuff is dying and deserves to die. Yeah, good developers can do elegant things wit it, but for the remaining 90%, well they create layered spaghetti: xsl, html, JavaScript, and that's just the front end. Back end is xml and xsl pipelines with Java/c# intermixed. I've seen business logic in all these layers, in the same api call. It is truly astounding.

<comment><USER11> This is the double edged sword with XSL as it has enough that it _can_ do that it's hard to tell what you _should_ do at that layer. When it's useful though, it's very useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a shame that CDuce is dead, because it's an interesting take on the "XML transformation language" space: [http://www.cduce.org](http://www.cduce.org)

I used CDuce for a significant SOAP project ([http://ocsoap.forge.ocamlcore.org/](http://ocsoap.forge.ocamlcore.org/)) after a previous negative experience with XSLT. It (CDuce) was a mixed blessing. It was very easy to parse and transform XML, but lacked major features like being able to print debugging information. Also because CDuce couldn't process XML schemas you ended up having to rewrite the schema in CDuce language in your own code. Code example: [http://git.ocamlcore.org/cgi- bin/gitweb.cgi?p=ocsoap/ocsoap....](http://git.ocamlcore.org/cgi- bin/gitweb.cgi?p=ocsoap/ocsoap.git;a=blob;f=src/wsdl.cd;h=280aeefed56034f934ad8a4c5b37ce1629068826;hb=HEAD)

<comment><USER13> I always figured you could get the vast majority of XSLT's benefits without its (numerous) drawbacks by implementing the core match/transform idea in an actual general-purpose expression-oriented language like Haskell or Clojure or Ruby or whatever.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. CDuce was a noble (but IMHO failed) attempt to add an XML-like DSL with functional-language overtones. For example you could write:

        transform bib with
             <_ (a)> [(x::(Author|Title|Url)|_)*]  ->
                 [ <book ({isbn="fake"}+a\year)> x ]

where the <...> syntax looks similar to XML. (This example copied from [http://www.cduce.org/tutorial_patterns.html](http://www.cduce.org/tutorial_patterns.html) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We use server-side XSLT at work. We use it as a file based CMS. Our XML is an HTML-abstraction and transforms to Bootstrap. Site has ~12000 single pages.

While I love it, I always wonder if others might think I am crazy.

<comment><USER15> I don't think your crazy, in fact I've gone looking for such systems in the past while researching static site generators and wanting a more universal solution to let me pull in remote content as xml and json.

I would love to hear more about the system you work with.

<comment><USER14> We're running XSLT 1.0 on Apache Cocoon.

Within the abstraction, each of our "Elements" has his own XSL stylesheet containing the whole transformation of it. So for developers, it's easy to navigate the code. All elements are compatible with each other.

We've a task running in the background that groups all element into a single XSL stylesheet.

Within Apache Cocoon, you can setup a transformation pipeline. The "elements" will be applied in one step, other steps take care of i18n, i10n and "custom pages"/widgets.

Our documentation is written in that setup, too. We've also setup automated tests for our ~60 custom written EXSLT functions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is not really helpful, I took over a reduxulusly huge XSLT project a while ago and just used functions the way you would a variable. Aka do ( x, y) { if (x < 10) { Return do (x+1, x + y * 2) } else return y * 2 + x - 1; }

Stupidly wasteful and kind of a pain for anything complex sure. But, I never found any code I could not write like this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Several of these (like #2 and #6, and possibly others) can be accomplished by having XSLT generate the XSLT you use to transform the XML.

Cumbersome perhaps, but I've seen this used in a big system, and when properly cached and used in the right circumstances, it performs just as well as a single XSLT.

<comment><USER18> [https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/65589810.jpg](https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/65589810.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just think of XSLT as something to document XML and make it human-readable. I've used it a few times on things that have an XML API, so that if you look at the output in a browser, it looks better. But it never seemed to be intended for uses much beyond that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Most of these are by design.

Is there anybody else here who thinks that DSSSL was a nicer language than XSLT? Mind, it couldn't do most of these things either, but it was basically functional Scheme. And I'll take Scheme over... whatever XSLT is any day.

</comment><comment><USER21> False. XSLT is Turing complete. Trololololol.</comment>


Joe Biden is so mad at Facebook he wants to "revoke" SEC. 230 for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/?p=1645167 <comment><USER2> Curious what impact if any this would have on news websites. If CNN reports on hate speech for example, would they be liable for the hate speech if they accidentally aired any of it?

</comment><comment><USER3> He doesn't belong to modern times. Yang and AOC do. Not many others.</comment>


How Facebook M Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/time-to-meet-the-wizard-facebooks-messenger-head-pulls-back?utm_term=.eu56k25XK#.elB0eQL23 <comment><USER2> > The trainers are a group of a few dozen human contractors working in > Facebook's headquarters. These humans, as Marcus explained it, review each > of the AI's responses and decide whether they're good enough to pass along, > or whether they need revising. When the trainers revise, the AI watches and > learns: "With every single one of these interactions, that data is fed back > into that AI instance that will then use the data to learn how to automate > more and more answers or how to get better and better at those things," > Marcus said.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that the training elements won't work on a larger scale. Yes, the underlying AI can, but the training system can't handle thousands of requests per day.

People previewing M post things like this ([https://twitter.com/neilkod/status/654442151837831168?ref_sr...](https://twitter.com/neilkod/status/654442151837831168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)) where M does "magical" things like lowering Comcast bills, but this is all stuff that trainers would either have to intervene for or train some system for. The result is that people beg for it to go public, expecting this level of assistance -- even though M won't have nearly the same level of "intelligence" on the backend.

Google Now, Siri, and Cortana could all have the same level of "usefulness" if there was an army of "trainers" on the backend, constantly adding new features for very odd requests, but they wouldn't respond quickly and probably wouldn't be available.

<comment><USER3> They do claim the quality of responses is improving. Will it get to the point where they can send responses without trainer approval? Who knows, but if they can get to that point for a majority of responses then it might work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only thing that has me confused is why Apple, Amazon, Google and MSFT aren't doing this .. or at least one of them. It seems like the right approach, but I'm surprised by the lack of competition and wondering if there is a reason for it.

I guess they're in wait and see mode. I guess theoretically, if it works out you could always throw 100s of millions at contractors to "train". My only thought though is that there are a lot of automated toolsets being built that aren't typical deep learning. Things like APIs / screen scraping / automated voice / etc etc. You can't build that sort of stuff over night.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm lead to believe that the AI misspelled "price" as "prince"?

I guess it's in the cracks that we see the human shine through.

</comment><comment><USER6> Buzzfeed, on MY Hacker News?!

<comment><USER7> They've been doing significant, important stories for at least the last 2 years, after having built up what is now maybe one of the largest investigative teams with several Pulitzer winners:

[http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/04/8543804/...](http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/04/8543804/chris- hamby-joins-buzzfeed-pulitzer-hand)

At some point, HN removed the ban against the domain, and so BuzzFeed stories have been appearing with some frequency:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=buzzfeed.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=buzzfeed.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From wit.ai (FB acq)..

> Wit.ai works bottom-up. Let your end-users express their intents freely, and > have your app learn from that and adapt. Not the other way around.

> Each item in your Inbox is something you can act on in order to improve the > accuracy of your Wit.ai app. A good practice is to start having beta users > test your app as soon as possible, even if the initial configuration is the > bare minimum with just a few intents, and then use the Inbox to improve your > app.

[https://wit.ai/docs/console/complete-guide#extract- entities-...](https://wit.ai/docs/console/complete-guide#extract-entities- link)

</comment><comment><USER9> > The trainers are a group of a few dozen human contractors working in > Facebook's headquarters. These humans, as Marcus explained it, review each > of the AI's responses and decide whether they're good enough to pass along, > or whether they need revising.

So the AI of the future is being trained by a group of stressed-out and underpaid humans screening machine output as quickly as possible. _How could this possibly go wrong?_</comment>


Free worldwide calls for a month - x-sam http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/prices/subscriptions/unlimited-world

<comment><AUTHOR> I once had a paid for account with Skype. One day I woke up with my account hacked into because of their poor security procedures, and the hacker having drained all the money (enjoying the automatic recharge), making international calls, until the limit of automatic recharges per day got exhausted.

I was curious about the break-in of my account because I always used good security practices, having a unique password for Skype, always logging in over https or the Skype client. Also I use a Linux distribution (Arch) so the chances of being infected by a virus of having a key-logger installed are pretty low. I found out that tools to expose any Skype accounts password were readily available online, so my security practices were pretty irrelevant.

Given that Skype's security is non-existent, I since assume that whatever info I put in my account is public and that there is no protection or security of my data whatsoever.

Since then, I revoked their access to my PayPal and my credit card. They are not trustworthy of my money, and I keep hearing from time to time about new huge security holes in their accounts. I do not recommend that anybody authorize any payment with them.

<comment><USER2> Just yesterday I learned about a flaw that, knowing the previous one, allowed you to change password recovery email address on any Skype account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "After the first month, your subscription will automatically continue and payments will be taken monthly unless you cancel within 27 days of the start date."

Oldest trick in the book. They must be a bit desperate.

<comment><USER4> It's all about how you sell it. Subtle difference that make it completely different.

\- No obligation 30 days free

\- Sign up & get one month free

<comment><USER5> I can attest to that. I signed up the day the offer came on deals.woot just to find the destination I wanted to reach was not supported. Promptly cancelled. They say I still have the free month.

it is a bit sketchy that they don't accept amex though...

<comment><USER6> Here (NZ) Amex has higher fees than other cards, and until recently, they were way, way higher.

<comment><USER7> When I ran a retail shop in the US I never accepted AMEX because the fees were significantly higher, mostly because of the flat monthly fee and low volume of people using AMEX.

Frankly I don't know how they are still around. Since everyone with AMEX always has a back-up card there is no incentive at all for merchants to accept it.

<comment><USER4> The original way they did things was by being available only to rich people and then trying to get merchants to treat them extra nice. These days they charge merchants and bribe consumers with extra goodies. If you're into points or miles, you can usually get more on Amex or Diners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You'll have to authorize with paypal/cc.

You can immediately cancel the subscription:

"You've cancelled your Unlimited World subscription. You can continue to make calls until it expires on December 15, 2012. No further payments will be taken unless you reactivate this subscription."

<comment><USER9> Is this within the Skype or the Paypal interface?

<comment><USER10> "If you want to cancel during your first month, that's easy to do. Simply sign into your account and disable the subscription by clicking Subscription settings on the Call phones tab."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It doesn't actually include all the world, and very few countries where you can call mobile phones for free.

[https://secure.skype.com/account/call- phones/settings/free?p...](https://secure.skype.com/account/call- phones/settings/free?package=global-region-landline-world-v3-unlimited)

<http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/prices/pay-monthly/>

The US is included (both landlines and mobile phones)

<comment><USER12> > The US is included (both landlines and mobile phones)

I guess that is why they call it "worldwide".

<comment><USER13> Hehe, just like the World Series only includes the baseball teams that matter.

<comment><USER14> in fairness, the USA based baseball teams harvest players from all over the world. If you're at the professional level of skill and consistency, no matter where you live, you have a shot at playing in the majors in the states. The most recent world series teams provide ample evidence of this.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I'm sure that's appreciated by the professional teams in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Dominican Republic and Cuba.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > A fair usage policy applies. Excludes special, premium and non-geographic > numbers.

As so often, unlimited actually means some unspecified "fair usage" policy that can be interpreted by them at will.

<comment><USER16> im not a fan of that either, but at least for voip i'd be pretty surprised if it was possible to bump into a soft limit without doing something obviously abusive like resale or using the circuit 24/7. Mostly the only thing they're worried about is losing customers to resellers. The worse i'd expect otherwise would be an occasional "mysterious" dropped call to limit calls that lack active participants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> it's interesting how well some established pricing models can hold up even as the underlying cost structure radically changes. even among this tech savvy crowd people will regard this as some kind of deal even while we all know optical data costs are approaching zero [1].

voice is of course just super low bitrate data with a legacy last mile that (sometimes) requires a DA converter. tricky? not at all. at least in the us and places with a similar regulatory environment it's awesome - actually way easier and cheaper than pushing pure bits, at least when you're up at a tier 1/tier 2 level. imagine if the government mandated free open access peering for local ip traffic - already tiny ip traffic costs would probably drop almost as much as the fiber glut caused. yet that's basically what you can do with voice in these markets, with some exceptions.

every all you can eat voip provider offers 30 days or more free, usually with a lot more features, inbound, no calling restrictions, etc. why not when it will probably cost them way less than a dollar (at least for outbound only) and whatever keywords they are buying on google probably cost several dollars (informed wild ass guess) and aren't anywhere near as qualified.

for comparison's sake if you want cheap US/CA outbound calls it is easy to find deals like 5000 minutes that don't expire for $5.00 and doesn't require any recurring billing.

Now obviously it doesn't matter too much since even overpriced anyone's voip is still a small fraction of an hours work, i just find it funny that people think a free month is some kind of deal yet wouldn't in a million years vote up a story about netflix offeraing a free month of streaming, something that probably costs them a couple of orders of magnitude more.

[1] some rounding errors may apply

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds great, but it's not completely worldwide. The offer covers mobiles in 7 countries and landlines in 40 countries.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a paid subscription that sets up recurring monthly billing of $10.95. Fix the post title OP.

</comment><comment><USER19> I understand the marketing, but I can't help but feel faintly irritated that I'm already paying for a Skype subscription. Should I cancel it and get my free month and then renew it again? ...

<comment><USER20> It's the same as all other companies. "Switch to our Halifax, and get £100 free. Offer only available to new customers". It's rare to see a company that rewards existing customers instead of disregarding them and focusing on the new ones.

<comment><USER19> Pleasingly some mobile networks in the UK are doing this, but that's only because they have an incentive to retain customers. I don't know of a good competitor to Skype. Google Voice, perhaps, except it lacks subscriptions and a nice native iOS app (to my knowledge).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So they are trying to get some good PR now?

<comment><USER22> No, they're counting on people not cancelling the auto-renewing payment.

<comment><USER23> God, this is almost as bad as Vonage. It's 30-second-TV-pitch low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> never, ever my credit info disclosed to skype.. again, never.

<comment><USER19> What happened? Anything potential customers should know about? I appreciate the flaw recently, but I wasn't aware of a way a third party could steal my money or my card details...

<comment><USER25> Just a continual procession of major security issues, never with a proper response or analysis from them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> x-sam Bad excuse for such huge holes in our security.

</comment><comment><USER26> It looks like a potential banana skin for customers.

       Trial must be redeemed by 15/11/2012. Offer available only to existing Skype users who have been registered with Skype more than 29 days. To qualify for the offer, you must provide valid payment details. After the first month, your subscription will automatically continue and payments will be taken monthly unless you cancel within 27 days of the start date. Only one free Unlimited World subscription can be claimed per customer. Offer not available in China, Korea, Russia or Taiwan.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this smart? What if hundreds of millions of people now start doing hour long calls during this month? If the quality goes down, this wouldn't be good advertisement and would also anger existing costumers.

Is VoIP bandwidth so low by todays standards, that they can scale without problems if they have to?

<comment><USER28> Skype is peer to peer. That this THE clever invention that put them ahead of all competing services when they launched. They can scale without any significant additional bandwidth or server costs.

<comment><USER29> This is true only for Skype to Skype connections. Calls that have to reach The PSTN[1] need to be routed through telephony servers somehow, exposing the possibility to cause some stress on Skype's servers as FrojoS mentions.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_netwo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_network)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> For some reason I have a SkypeOut subscription. It tends to get used only when the SO is simultaneously making long distance calls on the landline.

Skype quality is usually attrocious. But yesterday I had my first crystal clear call in over two years. It only cost about $72 to finally get that!

</comment><comment><USER31> Page Not Found [https://secure.skype.com/account/buy/packages/company- alloca...](https://secure.skype.com/account/buy/packages/company-allocated)

Have they changed their mind or they won't offer it to anyone that uses skype manager...?

</comment><comment><USER32> What would be safer here? Paying PayPal or credit card, assuming there is some kind of data leak?

</comment><comment><USER33> A quick piece of eye catching news to bury the security flaw that came out yesterday!

</comment><comment><USER34> >Trial must be redeemed by 15/11/2012. Offer available only to existing Skype users who have been registered with Skype more than 29 days. To qualify for the offer

Is that some sort of joke ?

</comment><comment><USER35> And all you have to do to get them is log into someone else's account!

</comment><comment><USER36> Their definition of "worldwide" only includes 40 countries.

</comment><comment><USER37> Just another way to collect credit card numbers

</comment><comment><USER38> No thank you, i would not share my credit card info for this.</comment>


Semi Essessi – Campaign for Guildford - <AUTHOR> http://semi4guildford.co.uk/ <comment><USER2> It's not very clear form the username, but are YOU the candidate?</comment>


Proof Checking: Not Line by Line - <AUTHOR> https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2020/06/13/proof-checking-not-line-by-line/ <comment><USER2> Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination (took higher math only as part of an undergraduate engineering curriculum), but as I understand, this still applies to Andrew Wiles proof of Fermat's Last Theorem:

> A proof that only has many small steps but no global picture is hard to > motivate.

Wiles' proof is considered a 'modern proof' in that some of the constructs he used int he proof (modular elliptic curves I believe) did not exist in the time of Fermat. A proof involving them while certainly not fitting the margins where Fermat scribbled his famous claim, would also not meet his criteria of 'elegant'.

I wonder the search for his version of the proof still continues?

<comment><USER3> AFAIK, not really, because most historians of mathematics consider it highly unlikely that Fermat's purported proof (if it existed at all) was correct. In fact, in all likelihood it has been "rediscovered" many times by the hordes of people who put forth incorrect proofs during the three and a half centuries before Wiles finally cracked it.</comment></comment>


Lord Blair: we need laws to stop 'principled' leaking of state secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/26/lord-blair-laws-principled-leaking <comment><USER2> Having spent quite a bit of time in the last three years living in countries where there is no free press or protection for critics of the government at all, I feel I can pretty confidently say that a completely unanswerable government is far more of a threat to its people than any outside terrorist threat could ever be. Without checks on government power, corruption is absolute.

If people that have been carefully vetted for security clearance are willing to risk their freedom and perhaps even their lives to bring to light abuses of government power we should _protect_ them.

<comment><USER3> > outside terrorist

We all know this is a big word to make headlines and influence people to be in favor of extreme laws. No country has ever been destroyed by Terrorism. Terrorism is, before all, a political tool. That's why States finance terrorist actions (the archives are full of that) to reach political means.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

George Orwell, 1984

</comment><comment><USER4> He argues that the release of this knowledge facilitates terrorism. I'm curious, has there actually been a leaked secret that could facilitate terrorism?

Perhaps in the accidental leaks back when the password for all those diplomatic cables leaked?

Or is the only way they facilitate terrorism that they make the public mistrust the authorities?

<comment><USER5> It would be hard to prove with the existing leaks, but there are certainly forms of information that _could_ be considered very valuable to and likely to incite known terrorist groups, no? I'm thinking things like detailed floor plans for embassies, personal info about members of the special forces, confirmations of extralegal executions and details of the people who carried them out, etc.

So far it seems no-one who has leaked information has had the clearance to get to the truly painful stuff, but the psychological screening to get to those levels is specifically designed to keep potential Snowdens and Mannings out.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, which known terrorist groups? If you say Al Qaeda, you're forgetting that there's still not a single attack in the west which has, in a court of law, been shown to be their doing.

"The Terrorists" are "The Reds" are "The Jews". It's not "us and them" because there is no "us" and "them". There's just "us".

<comment><USER7> It almost seems as though you're asserting that facts can only be established by court trials, which is a farcical notion. Sorry, but just because there was never a trial doesn't mean Al Qaeda wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks.

<comment><USER6> Really? So you'd argue that we should sentence people, and pass judgment on groups, without any legal basis?

Without a trial, there is _NO VERDICT_. The entire point of the judiciary is to adjudicate - and without their judgment, in legal standing (which is what, y'know, laws, such as those being proposed, are based upon), there is no fact, nor precedent.

There's no doubt in my mind that Mickey Mouse and the Legion of Doom carried out the 9/11 attacks. I mean, who needs a trial or a legal process to reach a conclusion about a legal matter?

<comment><USER8> >So you'd argue that we should sentence people, and pass judgment on groups, without any legal basis?

Of course not. We should obviously have a trial before passing _sentence_ on any individual, but it's ridiculous to suggest that legal judgements are the only valid way to establish facts about a particular situation. There were no trials relating to 9/11 because anyone who could have been sentenced is either dead or in another country. So suggesting that a trial be used as the burden of proof in this case is preposterous.

<comment><USER9> In a way, you're both right.

You are correct in saying that particular example (9/11) cannot be be tried in court. Sometimes the perpetrators are obvious and sometimes it's impossible to follow established court proceedings to legally appoint the blame.

But the former poster is also correct that we shouldn't go around passing judgements without taking matters to court and giving all parties a fair opportunity to prove their case.

This is the problem that the government face, they do occasionally need special powers to combat unusual circumstances. The problem is knowing where to toe the line. In my opinion, they've hop, skipped and jumped over that line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We are facing a troubling future as increasingly squeezed natural resources combine with the ever mounting public debt burden to create a toxic environment, perfectly suited to breed civil unrest, subversion, and anti- authoritarianism, terrorism and open revolt.

The stability and security of a well-ordered society demands conformance to certain social norms and limits on behaviour. These limits must be upheld even in the face of rising food insecurity, income inequality, and economic distress.

The protection of civil order requires the enforcement of conformance to behavioural norms, which in turn demands that that we crack down on destabilising influences, both in traditional and digital/distributed media.

Fortunately, modern digital tools allow the state to monitor and control discourse, behaviour and thought as never before. These tools must be exploited to their full potential, and dissent and nonconforming behaviour - in all it's forms, must be detected, isolated, and crushed immediately.

For example, forums such as this one are hotbeds of dissent - anarchic and destructive cess-pits of ideological filth that lead our vulnerable and easily influenced youth astray.

The state must identify the minority of subversive participants in these forums who are actively encouraging dissent -- and must silence them, for the good of a well-ordered society.

</comment><comment><USER11> He claims the release of information facilitates terrorism, without sharing any argumentation: no examples, not even hypothetical scenarios, nothing.

He's asking to restrict the sharing of information, supposedly information on how "the government fights terrorism". He glosses over the fact that once law enforcement can persecute people for sharing some information, it is incredibly easy to persecute people for the sharing of _any_ information if it choses to. Power creep is a scary and dangerous thing, and it is very hard (impossible?) to guard against it.

<comment> bjelkeman-again This is from a person who persued the initiation of an illegal war. I was watching as Blair said "If you knew what I know, you would support [our war]" (paraphrasing). It turned out of course that he knew nothing that would justify a war. Why would we expect anything less than draconian measures from Blair on the issue of state secrets?

Reference for illegality of the war: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The peer insisted there was material the state had to keep secret, and powers had to be in place to protect it."

How does he propose that we keep a check on the state to make sure that it is not abusing its powers? Did he omit to mention this obvious flaw in his proposal, or is it an omission of the journalist reporting on what he said?

<comment><USER13> >" _Did he omit to mention this obvious flaw in his proposal_ " //

Is it a "flaw". Surely it's impossible to have a system where the state retain information as secret that yet has third-party oversight and doesn't require the populous to trust a person in power (the third-party).

It seems more to be an outcome or corollary than a[n unexpected] error or "flaw".

<comment><USER14> Here's a work around for the "flaw."

Reduce the need for secret information.

<comment><USER13> No. A work around would have to entirely remove the need for secret information.

<comment><USER15> This. The "need" for secret information frequently means covering up for whatever rotten thing the government is doing somewhere. Decades later, you get to see the declassified documents, and you can see why the criminals of the time wanted it all kept a "secret".

<comment><USER14> There are legitimate needs for secret (or protected) government information.

However, over-classification tends toward the abuses you fear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What we actually need are laws that make it an offence for any government to cover up projects and operations that materially impact the lives and rights of their citizens. Whether a single citizen or all of them are affected it should be a punishable offence if higher ups cover up the actions of a government official.

<comment><USER17> What you should be learning from this is that there is no government that rules government - that laws, constitutions, and democracy exist only when and where those in power believe they ought to. I'm not arguing they're all amoral monsters. Often, it's their moral side that's the problem. They want a reasonable thing, such as protection from terrorism, and they sweep all impediments aside to obtain it, because they care, and they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is getting very scary. Politicians who say something like this at any time, should be met with extreme outrage and make them lose whatever position they're holding _immediately_. Otherwise they'll get their way, rise to power, and attract more like him there.

What he's saying is unacceptable, but I fear many in the governments think like that right now, which why extreme outrage over this is so important.

<comment><USER19> _This is getting very scary. Politicians who say something like this at any time, should be met with extreme outrage and make them lose whatever position they 're holding immediately._

Ian Blair is a Life Peer, not a politician. The UK's House of Lords is not a democratic institution even in pretense.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Snowden did not leak the information he did because he felt that states should not have secrets. I think any reasonable person would agree that there is information states legitimately need or want to keep secret. What Snowden did was in response to abusive overreach in secret domestic surveillance, which (to me anyway) is quite different.

<comment><USER6> * > I think any reasonable person would agree that there is information states legitimately need or want to keep secret. *

Such as? Why should the state have a higher expectation of privacy than its citizens, if it's representative of them?

<comment><USER21> Names of undercover agents infiltrating criminal organizations, to start?

<comment><USER6> You mean, names of agent provocateurs infiltrating peaceful protest groups?

You see, the thing is, as soon as you say "well, clearly X needs to be secret", you open the avenue for all of the unintended, unforeseen uses of said secrecy.

The only solution, as far as the state is concerned, is to have no secrets. Undercover police/intelligence work would be obviated by not defining economic and social systems which engender the kind of behaviour that mandates such in the first place.

<comment><USER22> > You mean, names of agent provocateurs infiltrating peaceful protest group

Yes. And when they leave, abandoning the infant child that they had with a member of the protest group. Yes, that happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _He warned there was a "new threat which is not of somebody personally intending to aid terrorism, but of conduct which is likely to or capable of facilitating terrorism"._

== What. The. Fuck.

<comment><USER24> Didn't you get the memo? When someone says that something is causing terrorism, you must stop thinking about it and just take their word for it.

<comment><USER25> Memos can be used by terrorists, so no I did not get a memo, terrorist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Next time you hear the word 'terrorists', stop listening.

<comment><USER26> Correction: Every time you see or hear "terrorists" replace it with "citizens".

> Lord Blair told BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme: "The state has > to have secrets – that's how it operates against _citizens_.

<comment><USER27> [http://skunk.marcus- povey.co.uk/debogotron/?url=http://www.t...](http://skunk.marcus- povey.co.uk/debogotron/?url=http://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2013/aug/26/lord-blair-laws-principled-leaking)

:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We know we have a problem when transparency is largely demonized. Allegations of "terrorism" seems to be bringing much benefit to government. I saw a movie recently from the 1980's called "They Live!" I noticed that in the movie the word terrorism, allegations of terrorism or terrorists toward those who opposed them, was the weapon of control of the disguised, camelion totalitarian regime in power. Only those with special glasses could see them. It would seem as if this would be the playbook in protecting criminal government activity done under the auspices of law. Al Capone would have drooled for such type of power.

Top Secret should not be an excuse to undermine the law, the rights of individuals, and the Constitution of the United States. Those who witness such crimes have the duty to come forward to the public. By keeping quiet and turning a blind eye to crime, one partners with it.

Crime grows in the dark while the light of day exposes it. Freedom requires transparency. A war on whistle-blowers is really a type of barometer as to the amount of freedom that we really have.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is not even politics. This is irrelevant politics. The article boils down to a retiree saying something.

<comment><USER30> Afraid not. He used to be less political than he is now. He used to be in the police, now he is a life peer and gets to actually vote on stuff.

<comment><USER31> A policeman joining the police state lobby. Well, I never.

<comment><USER32> He's not a mere lobbyist, though. He sits in the House of Lords, where he wields actual legislative power but has no corresponding accountability to the electorate.

If you ever wondered why so many people have been campaigning for an elected second chamber in the UK, now you know.

<comment><USER33> And who elects them? Politicians ready to bestow favours. Thus we have a self- appointed club. Hereditary peers had at least one worthwhile characteristic in that they owed their position to no one save a long-dead ancestor.

<comment><USER31> I think he means a second chamber elected by voters. That's certainly what I mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So he is wanting a new law to cover people who haven't signed the Official Secrets Act from spreading information that is covered by that act?

Given how existing legislation is abused I would hate to see how that could be used. What if I've read something secret that I shouldn't have - would I be commiting Thought Crime?

<comment><USER35> Actually the provisions of the OSA cover you even if you _haven 't_ signed it. Signing it is generally just a reminder thing, hence the fact that if you have to sign it once, you will probably end up signing it several times (when you join, when you leave, when you change roles, etc).

The OSA primarily covers how you handle secret information that you legitimately have access to. He was talking about stuff _outside_ the scope of the OSA - i.e. when you acquire material that you shouldn't have to start with.

<comment><USER23> Good point, but still, one still needs to just laugh at this guy. The idea tha any idea (data, knowledge) can be mis-used for terrorism is non-falsifiable hypothesis. It makes a mockery of the adverserial justice system.

Many pieces of data can be used for such purposes. Its precisely the _innocence_ of the victims and the _innocuous_ and everyday nature of the means, that is the purposes of this new bloody sport.

THE TERRORISTS WENT TO FRIGGIN FLIGHT SCHOOL.

We taught them how to fly a guided missile into a FRIGGIN SKYSCRAPER.

We gave the STUDENT VISAS.

<comment><USER36> Teaching people how to fly can facilitate terrorist acts. Therefore we must arrest all flight instructors.

<comment><USER37> s/flight instructors/flight manual authors, readers, flight sim writers, players, planespotters, and anyone who knows what an NACA 0012 is/

<comment><USER36> I'd say lock up everyone and let the juries sort them out but I wonder where we'd get juries in that case....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is probably an attempt to move the 'overtone window' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_Window](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_Window)

<comment><USER39> It's an attempt, but I suspect one which moves it in the opposite direction to what he intends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "The state has to have secrets – that's how it operates against terrorists"

Secrecy allows the state to do a lot of things.

<comment><USER41> Defenders of the State on this issue tend to answer the question they _want_ to be asked - "should the state have secrets".

No-one (except maybe Julian Assange) is arguing that the State shouldn't have secrets - the recent leaks occurred not as a blow against secrecy but to expose State wrongdoing. That's why it's whistleblowing, and not just vandalism.

Guys like Blair like to pretend that they're fighting for the government's right to keep secrets, which no-one is seriously challenging; they run shy of addressing the specific secrets exposed - be it military misbehaviour against civilians, civil servants deceiving lawmakers and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The root cause of all of this is really simple - our definition of terrorism, and the fact that we are at war with it. The solution is unfavorably not simple.

First thing's first, we need to redefine what constitutes terrorism, otherwise this situation will only get worse.

</comment><comment><USER43> As often with powerful tools, what we miss is an effective counter-power to restore balance. In this case, I'd investigate:

* making it a crime for officials to use anti-terrorism provisions without a serious enough ground (this poses the problem of legally defining "serious enough")

* nullifying any legal procedure which uses anti-terrorist laws yet doesn't yield a terrorist indictment (Today, sticking a terrorist charge on an investigation just gives free super powers to judges and cops; with this caveat, making terrorist claims would become an all-or-nothing gamble, which would be used much more carefully)

<comment><USER44> From what I've seen in the US political and judicial system (I may be too cynical), I believe that the following would happen:

Point 1: The definition of what is "serious" would be so watered down and full of political rhetoric that anyone, at any time could be found to be a 'serious threat'.

Point 2: This would simply increase the amount of 'terrorism' convictions, and may actually lead to a quicker trials and harsher sentences --- surely the police and prosecution wouldn't bring a charge to MY court unless it was serious! Look at the new law that makes it so!

The issue is that the people using the powerful tools are also the same people allowed to write the checks and balances. . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great, so the government would have laws that prevent us from ever knowing what they think is an acceptable level of surveillance of our daily lives. That has no potential for misuse.

I get that the leaks could potentially give an advantage to terrorists, but if they're so smart they're following the leaks with baited breath and reworking their tactics, the likelihood is they're probably already avoid using channels that they believe are compromised. If they're using channels that are compromised they're probably too ineffective to pull off a large scale terror attack.

<comment><USER46> Well, as for the bad guys, most of the public perception of them seems to be based on Holywood movies. In real life their sophistication seems to be absolute BS -- crude stuff that only works (sporadically at that) because a) it's simple to the point that nobody can prevent such stuff anyway, b) the agencies let it happen, c) the agencies are incompetent.

I don't believe they blocked any large scale stuff we don't know about. If they did, they would be shouting it on the rooftops, to show how effective and necessary they are.

<comment><USER45> That's the argument isn't it, 'we need this to protect you, but we can't tell because it's super classified'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> If you want to see the largely-tamed press suddenly become rabidly anti- national security, go ahead guys.

The press is still massively powerful in the UK, and even more so in the United States, where the First Amendment still holds relatively strong. More importantly than any legal protection, civil society won't stand for it.

I think I've made clear through previous comments that, by HN standards, I'm slightly to the right of the Kaiser on SIGINT to prevent terrorism. Large scale persecution of the press would be enough to get even me to consider switching sides.

</comment><comment><USER48> He is right about one thing: times are changing and our institutions need to change too.

There are things considered to be "tenants of democracy." Press freedoms (independence, access, source anonymity) political rights (secret ballots, right to organize, rights to protest). People actively claiming those rights is seen as a sign of health for democracy. If a government is harassing journalists, finding out people's vote or preventing political protests we immediately see this as an attack on democracy. These are protected by public opinion (formed over generations), courts and basic/fundamental/constitutional laws, usually old ones. They are not protected by governments.

If the definition of "leak" or whistleblower is left to governments (pretty much any current government in the world), they will define them as some variant of "traitor" or "terrorist."

In order for a distinction to be made between someone who makes information available to The People and someone who make information available to The Enemy, courts need to be involved. They need to have basic laws to lean on.

BTW, I think that distinction is incredibly clear. All the cases under discussion made information available to the US public (and in some cases the subjects of other governments). They were primarily of interest to the US public. I believe independent courts would be able to make that distinction easily.

</comment><comment><USER49> Yeah, I get the logic: 'terrorism' is knowing what the government is doing. Perhaps there's another logic: a government which hides in the shadows terrorizes everyone.

</comment><comment><USER50> Why don't 'they' get it? What the Guardian has leaked does not benefit terrorists, and I've heard nobody make a case that it does. Until they make that case, the reason this was hidden was not because of terrorists unless we've widened the definition to preliminarily classify the whole worked as such.

Sure there's stuff that's reasonable to keep secret (in my opinion), but if this is identified as such that just weakens the case for any of it being secret.

</comment><comment><USER51> And the "War on Dissent" rears its ugly head again. Anyone that doesn't gladly salute the state is "terrorist."

</comment><comment><USER52> _> "I think there is going to have to be a look at what happens when somebody possesses material which is secret without having authority."_

Terrifying.

This describes journalists and news organizations unless his proposed ratchet- tightening carves out clear and bold exceptions, which are, by definition, not clear, bold, or easy to define in this age of new media.

</comment><comment><USER53> What the hell makes this guy a lord? Secrets are secret because they are controversial or out right illegal (from what Snowden has showed us at least). So what he's basically telling us is the government should be allowed to be above the law because they need to catch terrorist while at the same time broadening the definition by including journalists reporting of the truth. The only people these journalists re terrorizing are the people in power who are hiding their abuses of power by classifying them top secret.

</comment><comment><USER54> Does anyone have an original thought on this, or is everyone going to keep saying "this is bad because I read it in a book about bad things"?

I personally, coming from admittedly a position of ignorance where I don't know what secrets may or may not exist and what their implications may or may not be, have trouble picking a side. As we don't know the secrets, any opinion we take on them, other than a general one, is purely emotional.

</comment><comment><USER55> Aren't there laws already in place? If I have access to confidential information, and I disseminate, there's criminal and civil consequences.

Laws that revolve around preemptive action to prevent something that's already illegal (war on terror, gun control) offer marginal benefit at the cost of making life difficult for those who wouldn't have violated the laws already in place.

</comment><comment><USER56> How is this not a bigger deal? This man is completely mind boggling. Is the corruption in the UK really this bad?

</comment><comment><USER57> There must needs be an independent and viable channel for whistle blowers to report government abuse to and be protected from retaliation. The problem with terrorist is real; but there is also a real problem with bad/corrupt government cronies.

</comment><comment><USER58> The State is the one that must have no expectations of privacy and in fact be held to rigorous transparency an independent audit, not the other way around.

Like in software, security that relies on closed source is in fact more vulnerable.

</comment><comment><USER59> Well, if government stopped abusing our trust, we wouldn't need leaks. What this ex policeman is saying is that we have no right to know if government and his lot in the police are abusing the power we grant them.

What a surprise.

</comment><comment><USER60> Most people don't challenge the states right to keep secrets, what Snowden, Assange and others challenge is the right to commit crimes and keep them secret.

</comment><comment><USER61> Then maybe governments should stop doing things that require people of principle to have to make the difficult decision to leak state secrets.

</comment><comment><USER62> Coming from Ian Blair, this is fairly unsurprising. It's amazing he's even being put in print, given his prior behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER63> I've got a great way to do that, no law necessary!

Stop having state secrets that 'principled' people will want to leak!

</comment><comment><USER64> Is it just me, or are the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" starting to lose their meanings?

<comment><USER65> Did they ever have any?

"Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no legally binding, criminal law definition.[1][2] Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror); are perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal; and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians). Some definitions now include acts of unlawful violence and war. The use of similar tactics by criminal organizations for protection rackets or to enforce a code of silence is usually not labeled terrorism, though these same actions may be labeled terrorism when done by a politically motivated group. The writer Heinrich Böll and scholars Raj Desai and Harry Eckstein have suggested that attempts to protect against terrorism may lead to a kind of social oppression.[3][4]

The word "terrorism" is politically and emotionally charged,[5] and this greatly compounds the difficulty of providing a precise definition. Studies have found over 100 definitions of "terrorism".[6][7] The concept of terrorism may be controversial as it is often used by state authorities (and individuals with access to state support) to delegitimize political or other opponents,[8] and potentially legitimize the state's own use of armed force against opponents (such use of force may be described as "terror" by opponents of the state).[8][9]"

\- wikipedia, at the time of writing

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We're not in _1984_. We're not in _Brave New World_. We're not even in Zamyatin's _We_. We're in bloody _Brazil_.

                                         INTERVIEWER
                             Deputy minister, what do you believe
                             is behind this recent increase in
                             terrorist bombings?

                                         HELPMANN
                             Bad sportsmanship. A ruthless
                             minority of people seems to have
                             forgotten certain good old fashioned
                             virtues. They just can't stand
                             seeing the other fellow win. If
                             these people would just play the
                             game, instead of standing on the
                             touch line heckling

                                         INTERVIEWER
                             In fact, killing people

                                         HELPMANN
                             In fact, killing people  they'd
                             get a lot more out of life.

                   We PULL AWAY from the shop to concentrate on the shoppers.
                   Helpmann's voice carries over the rest of the scene.

                                         INTERVIEWER
                             Mr. Helpmann, what would you say
                             to those critics who maintain that
                             the Ministry Of Information has
                             become too large and unwieldy... ?

                                         HELPMANN
                             David... in a free society
                             information is the name of the
                             game. You can't win the game if
                             you're a man short.

<comment><USER66> Not sure this is fair. The government isn't crazy like Deputy Minister Helpmann in Brazil. It really is trying to do its job. Imagine if every American football coach had to announce his play to the other team. What purpose would there be in it? So, there needs to be a system in place that helps keep secrets. But, the question is how should those that expose secrets be dealt with? No one wants to deal with those exposing state secrets because they are doing it to no one in particular, and aren't being seen as actively trying to help terrorists. That is the problem and that is the reason we are comparing things to the movie Brazil here.

Growing up in the U.S., we were all taught the history of our country, which included Benedict Arnold. But very few see a parallel to Benedict Arnold in Snowden. They cannot see how someone whose main claim to fame in the press has been, "They are watching you!" has exposed state secrets. Neither do they think Julian Assange is Benedict Arnold. Julian is just posed as a well- meaning but much misled Australian hacker that probably got framed in a rape case and is on the run, like a modern day Frank Abagnale, but with state secrets instead of fake checks.

The fact is, our governments need respect in order to keep secrets better, but prosecuting and hunting down these people is not the answer, neither are other "control" techniques. They just need better security. If they had better security, I for one would respect the fact that they said, "Oops! I guess I left the playbook in front of the press tent. I guess I should keep it on my person at all times."

<comment><USER6> _> The government isn't crazy like Deputy Minister Helpmann in Brazil._

Who said Helpmann was crazy? He's perfectly sane and rational, from his frame of reference. So are our governments. The issue arises when the subjective reality in which ones leaders reside and the subjective reality in which you reside are radically disconnected, which makes decisions and actions made by either side seem irrational and scary.

I'd argue that governmental secrecy is bad, in all its forms, as it _always_ ends up being abused, from the perspective of the cit. I understand your point, but it's demonstrably the case that secrecy begets secrecy, which begets corruption.

I stand by my parallel of Brazil, for we do not exist under a brutal, evil, autocratic government, nor under a consciously designed society intended to be "better", but instead under a self-sustaining zombie bureaucracy that no longer connects to the world it governs, and in fact is attempting to reshape the subjective reality of others to suit its own ends - which are, in fact, none, other than perpetuation of the status quo and hegemonic systemisation of anything which conceivably can be - which was the crux of _Brazil_.

<comment><USER67> What I admire about Edward Snowden was that he leaked documents that revealed secrets that are important for the public to know. But most importantly, his leaks did not contain secrets about the whereabouts of American personnel. No one was put in immediate danger because of his leaks. And Mr Snowden has stated himself that was his intent; he had come across documents that revealed a far reaching system that he simply could not justify not revealing.

However, while Mr Snowden's conduct was admirable, there will be some people out there interested in state secrets, with the intent of malice. With the intent of doing harm to the government, the state, people working for the government/state or the people of that state.

I agree that secrecy is bad, but I feel we must at least have _some_ secrecy, but clear and public requirements for when something can become (or remain) secret.

<comment><USER68> Sweden has a relevant law to define a public requirement for when someone can become liable for publishing secrets¹. It demands evidence that shows that the information was correctly classified, and that some damage actually happened from the publishing. Simply having a seal on the document is not enough.

The precedent case for this law happened during the cold war, and was about a newspaper that published a counter-espionage report (Case: _NJA 1988 s. 118_ ²).

The military argued that the national safety was damaged by the publishing, but would not give any details because of the nature of doing national security work.

The court made two tests to decide the case. Did the information deserve to be classified under secrecy, and was the damages reported by the military believable. On the first, they said it was doubtful, and on the second they said a straight no. Case dismissed.

To me it sounds as very clear and public requirement, which would work fine in both Snowden's and Manning's cases.

1) Please note that this is only about publishing secrets. Breaking a contract or an oath can and is likely to be punished under different laws.

2) [https://lagen.nu/dom/nja/1988s118](https://lagen.nu/dom/nja/1988s118)

<comment><USER67> Was the law used in the 1988 ruling? Or was the law created following that ruling? I assume it is the former, as Sweden is a Civil Law countries and judgements don't make something enforceable.

But regardless, that is a decent enough requirement system. The military refusing to present evidence in the case also hurt their argument, which is how it should be.

<comment><USER68> Correct, the law(s) was made before the ruling. Sweden still use precedent cases as guides, but they don't decide the law.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, blogvio.com - <AUTHOR>

Blogvio launched publicly a few minutes ago, today, after more than 10 months of development and 50.000 EUR invested!
We're by far still in beta, but we thought it's good to start collecting real feedback from users world wide and improve the system and the concept.
We're creating a platform for content distribution and I would be excited if you guys would let us know how we've done so far. We've iterated so much on the product design that I feel at this point we could just keep on doing it, or launch it. So we picked today and put it live!
I'm most interested in the Composition creation flow, if you guys find that easy and intuitive.
Once we have this perfected, we can open our API for all users.
Any feedback and of course bugs found :-), would be very, very much appreciate it! Have an awesome weekend! Hola from Spain! :-)  http://blogvio.com <comment><USER2> It looks like you've done a great job with the widgets, but the copy on the site is very, very confusing.

Customizable "blank" for your website - this is confusing because it changes from "widgets" to "utilities", etc. At first, I thought it was some sort of web site editor that lets you change text on your page.

Who is the main user of your widgets? I'm assuming blog owners/publishers.

I think the headline should say something like:

"Easily integrate beautiful videos, galleries, and other widgets into your blog or web site"

Talk to the user one on one. Use words like "You", "Your", etc.

What is the main value you provide? Make sure you state that as a benefit, not as a feature.

that's my 2 cents

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think of:

"Add beautiful widgets to your website."

It's as short and easy to remember as the current tagline. How does it sound for a native english speaker?

<comment><USER2> I think the word "widgets" may be confusing to a lot of people. It could mean a lot of different things. I would actually spell it out and include "videos, audio, images, and more..."

<comment><AUTHOR> It's explained in an animation, going through the words describing it: players, galelries, and ends up on widgets. I believe that might work! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> \- I'm not sure what your main unit on the front page is supposed to convey. To be honest, I don't even know if it loaded properly. which is pretty bad. All I see is a huge blue background with one line of text on top and some sliding text on the bottom. It doesn't tell me anything.

\- The icons on your footer are not obvious (except maybe for the contact and twitter ones). I had to go through all of them from left to right to see what each does. I'd suggest keeping the text permanently above the icons. You have plenty of room there.

\- It seems to me like your FAQs could use a bit more info

\- You've misspelled CoffeeScript as "CofeeScript" on your careers page

Anyway, it looks like you have an interesting product here. Mult succes!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi and thanks for the feedback!

1) It's a sample widget. Hit the widget word and it will loop through several. Those will change as we release them so that we feature new ones constantly.

But I understand how it can be confusing.

2) The plan is to keep the user focused on the only thing that matters, the widgets. We'll think this through.

3) Agreed! :)

4) Will check, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clickable: [http://blogvio.com](http://blogvio.com)

I can't make heads or tails of it. I'm on my BlackBerry Q10 and nothing is happening. I compliment you on the mobile version though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, sorry had to mention it! We did stop the iPad version as it needs work on the touch events. So it redirects you to mobile too.

On mobile you have what you've seen :-) so that we don't loose the users. It wouldn't make much sense for them to use Blogvio there as the screen is small for content creation.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Launched my side project: DecideOnADate - <AUTHOR>

http://decideonadate.com
I know the market is saturated with event planning applications but I was finally able to get one of my side projects launched to completion so I wanted to show it off.
The goal of DecideOnADate is to be a dead-simple way for a group of friends to decide on a date for any event.
Let me know what you think! <comment><USER2> Hope this helps....

Overall interesting start, you did execute on an implementation which deserves kudos for that. I like the simplicity but the UI does leave much to be desired. Needs a little polish to take it away from the standard output from Rails (aka looks too Railsy, if such terminology usage exists). I'd try picking one market segment initially to design towards (one underserved by the current event app market) and go more in that direction to establish a beachhead.

Homepage, consider an easier to read font. The background color of the center content area doesn't match the white background. Make the facebook like way more prominent! Make the support/feedback also more prominent! Perhaps don't show the app quite yet, but illustrate the steps to convey the message more clearly than a block of text.

Consider teasing functionality and increasing investment of users time by creating the first panel of the event before getting hit with the reg page.

Consider making the reg a modal window.

At login/reg screens, until mass audience is registered, make it smaller component to the right.

The password match can be ajaxed without the page reload needing to take effect.

Consider date entry as a calendar control

Consider adding end date to the date options. Duration won't be needed if end date is there. I would actually use this tool for proposing dates for our annual weekend trips. But no end date makes that very difficult.

Invite entry screen is too cumbersome for the lazy (like me) to use. Consider integration with Gmail or Fb.

A word on the logo is to take it out of that box, leave it on the background and make the stroke around the words thicker and white. Try to soften the entire interface up so that less harsh box structures exist. There is great opportunities to do something fun and interesting with the center -- so try it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for the helpful feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks pretty. Would you mind explaining how this is different from existing apps (e.g. doodle.com)? And I agree with frankdenbow on the email issue. Maybe a screencast or some more elaborating would help (by the way: doodle.com doesn't require an email address).

<comment><AUTHOR> Without knowing too much about these other sites, what sets DecideOnADate apart is that we focus on driving a group towards a date that works for as many as possible and doing so with the least amount of effort as possible on part of the organizer. Our goal is for the organizer to create the event, and then not have to do a thing. We will notify them when a date is decided on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Might be better if you didn't force people to make accounts, like this:

<http://whenshouldwe.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks good, although it would be helpful to know more about how this works before pushing us to create an account. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right! Previously users could create an event without creating an account, but I was worried that people would abuse the system. Therefore I added mandatory accounts and email verification. Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER6> I might subscribe to the oft-repeated mantra to not fix what isn't broken, especially considering that users cannot view other users' calendars, so mediocrity or spam is not of a major concern to you.

That said, awesome app. It's certainly a problem I'm sure many are constantly faced with. (I know I am) My first impressions though include a lack of detailed info (how does it work?) compounded by the inconvenience of making an account for the site. (I still haven't registered)

Edit: As for a small change you can do right away, I feel like users would consider "John Doe" <firstname.lastname@example.com> more intuitive than "Invite Name" <Invite Email>. (Consider making the name optional altogether or just having a more intuitive input method, like multiple <input> prompts)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickable: <http://decideonadate.com></comment>