Microryza (YC W13) Is A "Kickstarter" For Scientific Research - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/25/microryza-yc/

<comment><USER2> I've said in the past that it's good to see a variety of groups trying to crack the science crowdfunding issue - it's tough, and differs from the more popular branches of crowdfunding in very important ways.[1]

The future of medicine, however, rests upon success; there's a lot of medical research that just doesn't get funded because the regulatory situation for commercial applications of research is terrible beyond all belief [2], [3]. The incentives there percolate back up the research chain to ensure that few people work on genuinely groundbreaking things, or on things that are intended to do something other than treat late-stage conditions in marginal ways.

Yet this is an era of plummeting costs and soaring capabilities in biotech - so much can be done now with a grad student and a few tens of thousands of dollars that 20 years back would have taken tens of millions and a whole lab, if it could be done at all. In recent years I've been privileged to watch the Longecity community work through the process of crowdfunding small research projects like microglia transplants in mice to evaluate prospects for neurodegenerative treatments [4], to pick one example. That is exactly the sort of thing we'd like to see better frameworks and a broader audience for.

In other words, work taking place in niche fields that are important but underfunded and underappreciated, but nonetheless have strong communities with a willingness to step up and help out.

But as I've said, it's really, really hard. You can't just kickstart a science project in the same way as for games, tools, etc. It doesn't work that way. So I'm hoping that one of these present ventures finds the key.

[1] [http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/06/you-cant-just- kic...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/06/you-cant-just-kickstart-a- science-project---it-isnt-that-easy.php)

[2] [http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/the-fda-is-a- dest...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/the-fda-is-a-destructive- force.php)

[3] [http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a- worl...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-world- without-the-fda.php)

[4] [http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/05/updates-on-the- lo...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/05/updates-on-the-longecity- crowdfunded-microglia-study.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> Given the furore that occurs whenever a Kickstarter doesn't actually produce the product that people had backed (and mistakenly read as "pre-ordered"), I can't imagine the fuss that will come from funding academic research.

My own research has often diverged down a path that I thought more interesting, dead-ended quickly from what I thought I should do, or turned out to either be trivial if done 80% of the way, or impossible taken 100% of the way, so I couldn't publish it.

I'm sure if I had a crowd behind me, it would have turned into a rabble very quickly. I would not have liked it.

<comment><USER4> True, but most funding mechanisms, short of no-strings-attached corporate gifts, have some rabble chasing you around, who may get angry in various ways if it doesn't pan out as they had thought they were led to believe. I'd rather have people on the internet disappointed that my research changed direction, than a DARPA program officer on the phone demanding an explanation for missing deliverables...

<comment><USER5> Although it may not be this way on paper, most academic funding agencies realize that the exact details of the research are likely to change. Usually as long as the general direction of research (e.g., solving problem X), they are ok with it. There's rarely deliverables, as far as I've seen. Though it is true that sometimes the defense agencies want something more concrete.

<comment><USER6> In a variety of government-funded computer science projects, I've seen everything on the spectrum from "here's some cash, tell us what you do with it" to extremely detailed, measurable deliverables with heavily negotiated deadlines. Some agencies appear to lean one way or the other, and it also seems to depend on the amount of funding. In my experience, more cash means more planning up front and more oversight. No big surprise there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an investigator myself I see huge promise for this type of program. However, I have a major and immediate concern for this funding mechanism. There is tremendous potential for unethical research to be performed here. Some of the projects currently receiving funding and presented on the web-site are already in potential violation of public safety and patient/animal rights violations. Asking people on the internet to participate in these research efforts is not only unwise, but unethical and at worst, potentially illegal.

For example, the project titled, "Viral Causes of Lung Cancer" featured on the homepage proposes to analyze, "...blood from a nine-year study of over 9,000 men.". As indicated in the background material, "People living with AIDS and transplant patients are at higher risk for lung cancer." Therefore, I am to assume that some of these blood samples may contain infectious HIV. At this point, this is only an assumption, but how am I to know that the research is being processed under required biosafety conditions? Equally as important, how am I to know that the patient data has been protected and adequately de- identified? I can make these assumptions, but when dealing with disease control and patient rights assumptions are not a place where I want to dedicate my money.

What happens if the investigator accidentally inoculates himself with patient blood via a contaminated needle? The entire proposal is predicated with the idea that the samples are laden with virus, so unless the investigator is wrong, there are at least some infectious samples. Similarly, what controls are in place to prevent the association of patient data with viral load and cancer status amongst other things?

How is Microryza going to prevent the investor from law suits in the case of a biosafety incident or patient/animal rights violation?

Regulatory committees are a blessing and a curse to all researchers. They are a curse in that it means a lot of paperwork, boring courses and regulatory meetings. But they are there for a reason, specifically to protect the individuals working on the research, the patients from which samples are obtained (when applicable) and the funding agencies supporting the work. Many regulatory requirement are put into place only following an accident or tragedy. I hope that Microryza is able to respond to this proactively instead of retroactively after someone has been harmed.

Perhaps this has all been thought out by the founders, but I was unable to find any information on the web-site about any of these issues. My general assumption is that when funding is provided to an investigator at a University that it will all be handled under the universities regulations. However, all funding agencies have a set of rules that must be complied to in order to protect themselves from these exact scenarios. And I can't even begin to imagine a mechanism to properly monitor 'citizen science' projects. These will largely not involve patient data, but may involve topics such as environmental monitoring of plants and animals. These also have their own issues of regulatory concern for the welfare of the environment and animals under study.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Denny here from Microryza. Excuse my HN pseudonym but I wanted to respond with regards to research regulations.

We are assembling a science advisory board to help us define several of the checkpoints you brought up, particularly when it comes to ethics and safety. Working with universities does help us to deal with this now, but we do strive to have a rigorous system that we can rely on, regardless if you might be an institutional or independent researcher.

We are also working on making the messaging about these topics on the site better in the coming weeks. I would love the chance to continue this conversation, shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com. We find these sorts of conversations very useful and important!

<comment><USER7> The poster above indicates that institutional IRB approval would cover things, but that can actually be a bit tricky depending on the regulatory board and the specific situation. For example, I am a member of our IBC (Institutional Biosafety Committee). We approve all scientific research done on our campus for safety reasons (chemical and biological). However, the legalities behind this are a bit unclear. The NIH and institution require this board, and you can't do research if you don't get our approval, but what is unclear is what would happen if something unfortunate occurred? Right now, we have legal backing from the institution which should cover all scenarios, but in speaking with said legal council, we are actually all personally liable for consequences from approvals we sign off on. Board members at other institutions have been personally sued, so there is precedent for this happening. However, with the backing of the University legal team it is much easier to swallow. It is difficult to see how Microryza will be able to replicate this without documenting full legal support.

I am not trying to be a Debbie Downer here, and I really like the concept. For most of your research topics this will not be an issue, but I would hate to hear how the entire organization got burned to the ground over some regulatory law suit, and I certainly would not like to see someone get harmed. Particularly since all of the hard work has already been done for you by other organizations. You just need to take advantage of it.

If handled correctly, this could actually be a marketing point for your organization over others. You would need to balance the headache of implementing these regulations against the real and perceived benefits, but I think folks would be much more confident in the process from an investigator or potential investor perspective if you implemented a transparent but rigorous system.

<comment><AUTHOR> >You would need to balance the headache of implementing these regulations against the real and perceived benefits

This is why we can do this and get by because we are still a startup. :)

But yes you are absolutely right. We are currently pursuing more formal legal agreements with our partner schools, and this was a proactive move on our part when a lot of folks questioned the need for it. We belive strongly in integrity of science, it just won't be simple to shoehorn this new process into the machine that is big science today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Eligibility is a bit unclear; is it in transition? On one page [1] it says "We ask that a researcher to be tied to a university or research institution in order to help us ensure the safety of a project's funds." But on another one [2] it says, "we love to see proposals from people outside of research institutions".

[1] <https://www.microryza.com/institutions>

[2] <https://www.microryza.com/faq>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out, we'll be sure to clarify that on the site!

For now we are currently able to host research that is based at universities, while private or independent research requires more effort to evaluate and vet the proposal on our end. We are working hard to launch more independent projects soon!

<comment><USER8> That's a reasonable place to start. I do think crowdsourced money could often go further outside academia, especially in areas with less required lab equipment, but requires more vetting on your part.

One idea could be to branch out of academia starting only with "less risky" areas, e.g. fund independent mathematics research but require medical research to be through existing institutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From their profiles (<https://www.microryza.com/about>), few of the founders present experience in real research, I doubt a team with little domain expertise aiming to change the game. They did not see the real problem with scientific funding system: to figure out how to spend the money effectively. It seems they were science undergraduate with experience in iGEM (science competition but not real research). Founders with real research experience should be like Quartzy's (<http://www.quartzy.com/about-us/team/>).

I really admire watsi.org, which is non-profit and makes it transparent to transfer all the money raised to the lives in need. It is unnecessary to have a layer between donor and researchers. For social good, it is better to have a non-profit "Microryza" rather than the current for-profit one, because: if Microryza perfroms really well in financing high quality research and generating breakthrough of social good as watsi, which in turn makes them a perfect non-profit to be supported by various foundations (it is likely for research facilities with great contribution for scientific advancement to be funded by billionaires), they grow; if not, they die. And being for-profit decreases research budget and "sometimes caused messy disputes in the unsuccessful ones" (<http://ycombinator.com/ycvc.html>). Also as they explained, "As long as you are building something that people love, then a corporation status doesn't change how likely you are to succeed" (<http://blog.microryza.com/why-is-microryza-for-profit/>). So, why not stop thinking about making money but funding good science?

In conclusion, I am afraid using microfinance to feed non-filtered research proposals may not necessarily make Kickstarter for research.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

I saw this comment and the one on TC as well, though a little bit later than expected.

I'd love the chance to chat with you further, since it seems you have many unanswered questions about our process, our mission, our research backgrounds, and our process of transparency. We are working hard to improve the way we message these things, so a chance to answer them for you would doubtless be helpful for future inquiries.

Feel free to drop me an email at email@example.com! I would really love to learn more about what you are thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a great need for greater amounts of private funding in scientific research, but I'm worried that this format could contribute to sensationalism and rushed/biased results.

<comment><USER9> Funding for a typical research project is in a scale of $10^5~$10^6. And private funding like $5000 or so doesn't do much in most "real" research but may be a part of the whole project and if in this case, it is definitely duplicated ([http://www.nature.com/news/funding-agencies-urged-to- check-f...](http://www.nature.com/news/funding-agencies-urged-to-check-for- duplicate-grants-1.12317)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding the notion of duplication in grants, there is still a need for both repeating research and following projects with repeated aims, though in a slightly different fashion as promoted through recent reproducibility initiatives ([http://www.nature.com/news/independent-labs-to-verify- high-p...](http://www.nature.com/news/independent-labs-to-verify-high-profile- papers-1.11176)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think they'll need a re-branding if they want to be successful. Kickstarter is a very easy word to say, spell, and understand. It can also be used as a verb ("Did you kickstart that project?"). Microryza has none of those things. That said, hopefully they can do better than petridish, which seems to have floundered.

</comment><comment><USER12> I really don't understand differentiating a crowdfunding platform based on specific industry.

This would imply that the platform can create a community of people who are willing to donate over and over again to several relatively similar campaigns. Kickstarter does not work this way.

Kickstarter has been successful not because of their "community of investors/doners" but because they provide people who have an idea with a tool that they can use to reach out to their already existing followers and friends.

The doners of kickstarter campaigns come from the campaigns existing connections.. not from kickstarter itself.

<comment><USER13> Don't you think that specific industries may need specific tools that Kickstarter doesn't provide?

And the "return" is absolutely different...

I think that these simple things are the sparkle to create the need for separated platforms.

However, many of these alternative croudfunding platforms are not implementing any difference. And there I will support your point of view, there is no need to do that. In fact, it should be better to take advantage of Kickstarter's moment of inertia.

<comment><USER12> I can't really think of a good example of a tool that is needed to crowdfund a project in a specific industry.. but this is the best argument I've heard and I can imagine something like this actually actually adding some value.

<comment><USER13> There are many things I'd expect as such tools/customisations... A pair of simple examples:

* Specialised support: the croudfunding platform could offer legal and strategic support in the narrow field they are focusing. I think Kickstarter cannot embrace all industries even if they try.

* Specialised tools and rules: Each platform must have extremely distinct interactions with the backers and product outcomes. In an academic platform (as the one being discussed) I'd expect some tools for scientific divulgation (which must be a mandatory "return" from crowdsourced research projects) and collaboration (which must be extraordinarily stimulated). I think Kickstarter will never consider/establish these rules/tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just me, or are the targets for this obscenely low for doing any 'real' science? $5000 doesn't do much in most labs..

</comment><comment><USER15> I worry a little about this idea because I think it's a little limited in scope. The kind of scientific ventures that the founder described she had trouble getting funding for (summer undergraduate research) aren't exactly the best examples of the financial needs of most scientific research. Even relatively minor projects can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (and often take longer to get results!). We don't see that sort of money on the already-popular Kickstarter very often, and it's an uphill battle to woo people as much much as one can on Kickstarter.

For very small, 3-month projects? Sure. Maybe. For projects at the same level of academic research? Not now, and it's gonna be tough for it to happen in the future.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you just took Europe and the US together, you'd have 700 million people. Convince half of them to donate an average of $100 a year for "science", then we could help accelerate scientific progress. The hard part is figuring out how to spend the money effectively.

</comment><comment><USER17> Are contributions tax-deductible?

<comment><USER18> Contributions will be tax-deductible soon!

We work closely with the development offices at universities to allow the university to provide tax receipts to donors.

<comment><USER17> Cool! Looks great. Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> See also <http://www.petridish.org/>

<comment><USER20> Petridish appears to have no active projects and their blog hasn't been updated since August 2012. I'm assuming they are dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm a little unclear on the concept here, because this doesn't sound at all like Kickstarter.

Microryza sound like nothing more than middlefolk between my research and funding sources. They "vet"? And their domain knowledge in my field is...?

Am I missing the idea? Why do I want another layer between me and a funding source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! The idea is that we don't do much vetting. The only criteria that we evaluate on are:

1) Is the researcher who he says he is? 2) Is it actually research? 3) Is the researcher capable of meeting the research aims? e.g. is it a matter of expertise, equipment time, etc?

Beyond that, we just work with universities to ensure that the standard research guidelines are in place (ethics, practices).

In the future, we have ambitious ideas of opening up this process into a more democratic and transparent flow.</comment></comment>


Focus on weights to understand neural networks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sicara.com/about-convolutional-layer-convolution-kernel-9a7325d34f7d <comment><AUTHOR> Which CNN should I choose?

I could never find the time to test them all, nor have a quick idea why one architecture is better than another. To improve this, I created some go-to checks to see the pros and cons of each one.

I discuss one of those in this article.

What are yours?</comment>


Volunteering with ScriptEd - <AUTHOR> https://www.coryetzkorn.com/blog/volunteering-with-scripted/ <comment><USER2> ScriptEd employee here! (We're a nonprofit) - we're looking for more volunteers to teach web dev in under resourced high schools in San Francisco, Oakland, and NYC.

If you're interested, apply + learn more here: [https://www.scripted.org/volunteer/](https://www.scripted.org/volunteer/)

Happy to answer any questions too!

<comment><USER3> Becca you do amazing work! So impressed with you and ScriptEd's trajectory the last few years. Keep it up!

<comment><USER2> Oh hi! Thanks very much :) keep your eye on us too, we have some exciting things in the works in the next year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been volunteering with ScriptEd for 4 years now, and it's an incredibly motivating experience! I just got to write my first college rec last year (for a prior student who will be the first in their family to go to college). So powerful to see the kids you teach go on to do great things.

Also happy to answer questions if anyone has them!

<comment><USER5> Love that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi! Cory here. I wrote this post :)

Highly recommend doing this! I volunteered in New York last year and had a great time. If you're even a tiny bit interested, be sure to reach out to a ScriptEd coordinator. They can help accomodate your work schedule, find a convenient school location, and make volunteering work for you!

Feel free to reply if you have any questions about the experience.

<comment><USER7> What if I'm near a major city but not in NYC or SF, how can I volunteer or get a chapter started near me?

<comment><USER2> Hi imglorp - send me an email at email@example.com . We're considering growing to more regions, and would love to hear from folks who are interested in volunteering outside of NYC or SF. In the meantime, I may also be able to recommend some other orgs that need volunteers near you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been working with ScriptEd in San Francisco and it's also been awesome! It's really special to be a part of their program and see the impact they're having on local kids and community.

</comment><comment><USER9> I volunteered with ScriptEd for a couple of their summer sessions in NYC and it was a great experience. Would definitely recommend to any devs looking to volunteer in NY/The Bay Area.

</comment><comment><USER5> ScriptEd employee here too... AND I'm also volunteering to teach a class because our students are so great.

If you are unable to volunteer, you can support our work by volunteering here: [https://www.scripted.org/give/](https://www.scripted.org/give/) or connect with us on social media! [https://twitter.com/scriptedorg](https://twitter.com/scriptedorg)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've worked with ScriptEd for a number of years; volunteering, fundraising, judging hackathons, hosting interns, etc. I've seen first hand how their organization can have a great impact on the students (and the volunteers!) If you can't devote the time to teaching each week, think about hosting a field trip, volunteering at a hackathon or maybe hosting interns in the summer!

</comment><comment><USER11> I volunteered for one of the summer Dev Lab sessions in NYC and had a great time! I highly recommend

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this an in-person only volunteering work? Can it be done online through web conferencing?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your interest! Most of our volunteer opportunities are in-person (in-person teaching, mentoring students at Hackathons, hosting field trips to your office, etc.).. but one way someone could help remotely is contributing to [https://popcode.org](https://popcode.org) . This is an open-source HTML/CSS/JavaScript editor that we use in our classrooms, developed by a A+ volunteer in NYC. There's a whole list of issues that someone could work on for us, which would help us have even better tools with which to teach in schools: [https://github.com/popcodeorg/popcode/issues](https://github.com/popcodeorg/popcode/issues)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Former four year volunteer of ScriptEd. It's an incredible organization and the easiest way to meet awesome, down to earth devs. Happy to answer any questions from prospective volunteers.

</comment><comment><USER14> I volunteer in SF -- would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to be more involved with making the tech industry more diverse and accessible!</comment>


Live coding is great fun - <AUTHOR> http://hughrawlinson.me/live-coding/post/tidal-is-great-fun/

<comment><USER2> > In fact, in haskell, everything is a function. There aren't any variables in > haskell, but you can declare a function that takes no arguments and returns > only one result

This is a common myth [1].

[1]: [http://conal.net/blog/posts/everything-is-a-function-in- hask...](http://conal.net/blog/posts/everything-is-a-function-in-haskell)

<comment><USER3> It may be wrong, but is it, perhaps, a harmless and useful way to understand Haskell?

(I have a friend who always tries to show me examples of neat stuff he's done in Haskell and I can never wrap my brain about it)

<comment><USER4> It's not useful at all, it makes Haskell sound bizarre. Haskell is much more of an ordinary programming language than this would suggest: like ordinary languages it has functions but also numbers, strings, list, arrays, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm just starting to get into this, and yes, it is a ton of fun. I started out using Tidal, now I'm moving onto Overtone (a Clojure library for making music) because it's more about synths and scales than Tidal, which is more about loops and samples.

Both of them are great though. Whichever you get into just depends on what you want to do. Overtone integrates with midi really well too.

<comment><USER6> How did you learn Overtone? I've used Emacs a bit but never Clojure. How would you recommend getting started?

<comment><USER5> I just read through the Overtone docs on Github. I've been using Light Table for my IDE. I'm still faster with that than I am with emacs.

Edit: If you just want to basics, this should work for you: [http://seabre.github.io/blog/2013/08/31/a-simple- livecoding-...](http://seabre.github.io/blog/2013/08/31/a-simple-livecoding- environment-for-overtone-with-light-table/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: do you think there is a market for a "polish" web consultancy? - <AUTHOR>

No I don't mean polish as in people from Poland! I mean the attention to detail that is sometimes missed when you have your head in code.
For a flat fee you submit your website and a team of designers give you a document that outlines potential bits of the website that'll need a bit of fine tuning.
It may be 404 pages, missing content, badly aligned text, bad usability choices ...
Stuff that when is broken makes the reader of the site go "ugh" but when it works and everything is nice and shiny the viewer goes "i love this".
I recently rolled a new site for a client, and found that i had to leave the site for a few hours and go back to it to get a clear head. <comment><USER2> I get 25 mturks to do this for me. Costs me about $5. IMHO 25 different people playing with your site can find a lot, compared to one "expert".

<comment><USER3> How do you word your HITs? "Try this service and let me know what you think?"

<comment><USER2> Yup, something like that. I also write the intent of the app and that gives them a line of attack. "Easy to use tool? This is NO WAY easy to use! I ripped out my hair to understand feature X"

In the HIT form, I give them a nice big text box to write their comments. Then I ask them some specific questions and give them radio buttons / check boxes to reply with. They've told me stuff that I would have otherwise never imagined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Based on personal client experience, the ones most likely to need the service will have the least desire to pay anything for it. If they are willing to spend the kind of money to get things done at a high level, they will have already paid someone more qualified the first time around and avoided such problems from the start.

<comment><USER5> This can't be said enough. Most people either know they need polish, in which case they work to add it, or they have no clue, in which case they think it's pointless and won't pay.

I don't see why you'd separate it, anyway. Just be a standard web consultant. Polish is always a part of looking up web sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> www.sspsystementerprisellc.com</comment>


The Internet's loop of action and reaction is worsening - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/technology/shut-down-internet-donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html?ribbon-ad-idx=36&rref=business&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Business%20Day&pgtype=article <comment><USER3> In engineering systems can often be characterised as having feedback - <USER2> is, the output feeds somehow back to the input. Active suspension, robotic navigation and amplifiers are all examples of this.

The problem is that these types of systems can become unstable. A classic example is a microphone too near a speaker. The output over-influences the input, resulting in larger output, resulting in a correspondingly amplified input... etc. Quite quickly everything has fallen to bits.

What if the internet is simply providing too much feedback for our system of governance to handle?

Interesting thought. I suspect only time will tell what happens.

<comment><USER4> You're talking about positive feedback. Negative feedback is also a thing, and it doesn't lead to instability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yellow journalism ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism) ) has been around for a long time. Its rise on the internet should probably have been expected. I don't know how it will be resolved, but until the money doesn't flow to the "first and most" eyeballs I suspect we'll have to put up with it.</comment>


Requests moved to Python Software Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/psf/requests <comment><USER2> This move is not new. It has been there for a while. Kenneth is the only one committing right now and none of the people who can make new releases are maintaining it. At the moment master is accidentally broken on 2.x, has a bunch of questionable merges in it and CI is failing.

I have been told that the PSF is aware of these issues.

<comment><USER3> At this point, i am seriously considering using urllib3 instead of this project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one troubled with the fact that the most important third-party library in the Python ecosystem has a git history that looks like that[0]?

[0] [https://github.com/psf/requests/commits/master](https://github.com/psf/requests/commits/master)

<comment><USER5> Given this article, I'm also very confused about this move:

[https://vorpus.org/blog/why-im-not-collaborating-with- kennet...](https://vorpus.org/blog/why-im-not-collaborating-with-kenneth- reitz/)

<comment><USER6> Wow, I had no idea this was the situation.

Is it possible that this move to the PSF is good then? Is Reitz involved in the project at all now?

As a side anecdote, from my own experience with bipolar friends and family that kind of private manipulation + large-scale deception seems sadly familiar. I'm not sure if it's a feature of bipolar disorder or if it's a sad coincidence in our experiences.

<comment><USER7> > _Is Reitz involved in the project at all now?_

Judging by the commit history and the README.md, with his name in fancy cursive on top of the PSF logo, this seems to be the Kenneth Reitz Show featuring PSF at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Feels like a good home for Requests.</comment>


Stingray Tracking Devices: Who's Got Them? - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/maps/stingray-tracking-devices-whos-got-them

<comment><AUTHOR> Relevant news article from today: [http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CENSORING_SURVEILL...](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CENSORING_SURVEILLANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-12-14-47-09)</comment>


ReactOS now has killer features (0.4.2 is gona be awesome) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/HeisSpiter/status/735892174399766529 - ReiserFS read support
https://twitter.com/HeisSpiter/status/736165157336932352 - UFS/FFS read support
https://twitter.com/HeisSpiter/status/735778145941356544 - EXT3 read/write support
https://twitter.com/HeisSpiter/status/711682747190931456 - BtrFS  read/write support
https://twitter.com/reactos/status/735644558135074817 - .NET 2.0 apps support
https://twitter.com/reactos/status/735141249775194112 - Cygwin support
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJTL8srScQI - The elder scrolls V Skyrim playable
https://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=121704#p121704 - Doom 3 playable <comment><USER2> really want to give it a try but do not have any PC's left with a CD ROM to try it on. all the factory embedded windows systems are USB Install. Still good progress and I can wait.

<comment><USER3> I'm not actively following the project, but can't you just install it with VirtualBox?

<comment><USER4> Seems you can: [https://reactos.org/wiki/VirtualBox](https://reactos.org/wiki/VirtualBox)

Edit: just tested, and it works.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding Stovetop Cookware (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://forums.egullet.org/topic/25717-understanding-stovetop-cookware/ <comment><AUTHOR> Physics based foundation for understanding the nuances of the various pan materials and manufacturing processes that help inform pan selection.</comment>


A traditional german christmas story with Kanban - <AUTHOR> http://www.it-agile.de/christmas-story-2010.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I work for this company. But this story was to good. ;-)</comment>


New iPhone 4 Pre-Order Ship Date Slips Again, to July 14th - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/new_iphone_4_pre-order_ship_date_slips_again_to_july_14th/?utm_campaign=feature

<comment><USER2> The caption on that picture in the article is perhaps the most apropos comment I have seen regarding the iPhone 4.</comment>


Precise Higher-Order Meshing of Curved 2D Domains - <AUTHOR> http://graphics.cs.uos.de/bezierguarding.html <comment><USER2> After some skimming of the paper and googling of terms, I'm going to take a whack at an ELI5 (note I have no special domain knowledge here): Some fields such as GIS or CAD are given a polygon and need to represent the interior area as a 'mesh' or set of triangles in order to perform certain operations on that interior. The current approach to building a mesh gives an approximation of that area where the method in the paper gives a mathematically exact representation, which is a 'big deal' where accuracy counts. Corrections welcome.

Fry: Hey, professor. What are you teaching this semester?

Prof. Farnsworth: Same thing I teach every semester: The Mathematics of Quantum Neutrino Fields. I made up the title so that no student would dare take it.

</comment><comment><USER3> High order meshing is becoming increasing important in Computational Fluid Dynamics since high order numerics requires the boundaries to be more accurately represented. Would be interesting to know if this method could be extended to generate quadrilaterals.

<comment><USER4> As someone with only a basic knowledge of FEA, why would a quadrilateral mesh ever make more sense than triangular?

<comment><USER3> There are multiple reasons but they all can be application specific.

First reason is that quadrilaterals can be mapped to a square and so you can use "Tensor product" elements which is just a fancy way of saying that you can uncouple the equations to be 1D for each direction. So you can think of your problem in 1D and easily extend them to 2D by using quadrilaterals.

Second is somewhat related and is sparsity. The matrices generated for quadrilaterals would be sparser and hence your performance will be higher.

Third is accuracy. Quadrilaterals are regarded to be more accurate however I am not sure there are proofs or conclusive studies on this, more a rule of thumb.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Django or Flask? - <AUTHOR> I am noob to programming. For web development, what is your choice django or flask? <comment><USER2> Depends on what you want to do. You get a lot built in with Django, but the learning curve might be a little steeper because there's more to learn. On the other hand Flask is relatively light weight in comparison and you can extend the functionality such as authentication/apis, but it's up to you to implement that.</comment>


Is Apple's iPhone 6 Phablet Too Late? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jlim/2014/09/09/is-apples-iphone-6-phablet-too-late/

<comment><USER2> It's an Apple product, they'll always have a group of people willing to buy it. Now, if they are able to polish and improve on Samsung's mistakes, this might actually be a good thing for them. We'll have to wait and see.</comment>


PyTorch 1.4: Custom mobile builds, distributed model parallel, Java bindings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/releases/tag/v1.4.0 <comment><USER2> The RPC framework for model parallel training is super cool: [https://pytorch.org/tutorials/intermediate/rpc_tutorial.html](https://pytorch.org/tutorials/intermediate/rpc_tutorial.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Experimental Java bindings is definitely something I will check out.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't believe they added AMD support

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish there were officially supported csharp bindings</comment>


Why Is Copywriting Important for Freelancers - <AUTHOR> https://kodeblok.com/posts/why-is-copywriting-important-for-freelancers-and-how-to-get-good-at-it/ <comment><USER2> I think avoiding run-on sentences is important, too.</comment>


Rackspace DNS DDOS - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+RackspaceHosting/posts/8yVxbLqfx6Q <comment><USER2> RAX has a 6.3 billion market cap. If an org this size -- specialising in hosting -- cannot field a DDOS-resistant DNS server, who can?

I'd like to migrate or even perhaps add a secondary DNS but RS DNS doesn't seem to even offer zone transfers (the best you can do, I guess, is to use the API to get your records out).

<comment><USER3> >cannot field a DDOS-resistant DNS server, who can?

Its tough to do. DNS is a dumb and ancient protocol from the "lets all be friends" days of the internet. Its a bit more complex than installing mod- evasive and calling it a day.

DDOS is currently an unsolved problem for many popular protocols and services. Blaming just Rackspace seems unfair. Last week in was Namecheap. The week before it was someone else, etc. DNS DDOS is just a non-trivial problem to solve.

This should also be a reminder to have more than one DNS provider in your domain record. A backup nameserver from a different provider saves you and your customers a lot of heartache.

<comment><USER4> Hm. I always thought DDoS protection for DNS was rather simple problem to solve, since anycast works with DNS traffic pretty much by design, so you can have hundreds of machines spread all over the world, handling hundreds of gigabits of bandwidth. And filtering of DNS packets is also relatively simple thing to do at line rate.

<comment><USER5> It's simple except that you need to have capacity greater than what is achievable by people controlling the DDOS.

I'm not up to date on what that number is these days, but a few years ago 100Gbit/s was the target. For an Anycast DNS service, you don't need that in every site -- if you're willing to take small sites offline and degrade your service's end-user performance in this scenario. You will still need it in 2-3 sites, probably located in US west / US east / EU west because of the cost of datacenter space and the availability of cheap connectivity.

Serving 100Gbit/s requires 20 10G circuits in each site (~$15-30k/mo), 80 servers (2-3 racks, so $5-10k/mo), and a not-so-cheap router.

So your monthly opex is $20-40k per site, $60-120k worldwide. Your capex is $450k per site, $1.35mm worldwide.

It's not an insane amount of money, but it is kind of a lot to spend on DNS. It's particularly tough to justify at a lot of companies that you need this kind of buildout, when normally you can operate on 1/20th that amount of hardware.

<comment><USER6> Good post. I would argue some of your locations and how many servers are actually needed, but that's splitting hairs.

The real point I want to make is that the only companies really putting this amount of money into DNS infrastructure are DNS providers themselves. I know of no hosting provider/ISP/etc. who puts nearly this much thought or effort into DNS.

Even for myself - and I consider myself a DNS junkie - my anycast cluster was a dozen or so servers worldwide co-located w/ a mid-market CDN provider (plus a few locations from my own ASN). That setup was greater than 99% of DNS installs out there - but it would have fallen over under a major attack. It truly takes some skill and financial commitment to build out correctly.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you, there are only two kinds of companies with the kind of DNS infrastructure that could withstand a large scale DDOS:

1\. DNS hosting companies (Dyn, Amazon, etc.) 2\. Large Internet companies (Yahoo, Google, etc.)

And for sure not all of them! A former employer's public zone was hosted by a DNS hosting company that didn't use Anycast, didn't have a footprint outside US/EU, and seemed to have little to no idea when or why traffic spikes happened.

So to do DNS really right you need a fair amount of money, some specialized expertise and knowledge of some non-DNSy things (Anycast, among others). I'm really not interested in hosting my own (public) DNS these days at work, it's just not worth the time and effort until you get gigantic. As with e-mail, there are specialists who can do it better than (most) places can.

I do kind of worry about depending on one DNS provider, so I've tried to use two when possible. That's a whole other world of hurt though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those looking to export your zone from Rackspace, the rackspace python library (prax) will let you:

[https://github.com/rackspace/pyrax/blob/master/docs/cloud_dn...](https://github.com/rackspace/pyrax/blob/master/docs/cloud_dns.md)

You could also do it via CURL: [https://community.rackspace.com/products/f/25/p/1743/4945#49...](https://community.rackspace.com/products/f/25/p/1743/4945#4945)

</comment><comment><USER8> Been dealing with this all morning, finally got all of my zones migrated to Route53, but with the amount of time it takes for DNS changes to propagate we are going to be feeling this all day.

Any advice for the future on how to add redundancy to my DNS setup? Is it as simple as maintaining Nameservers on two different providers and pointing to them both on my domain?

<comment><USER9> Some decent suggestions brought up from a few weeks ago here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8716662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8716662)

Seems namecheap and DNsimple have suffered from these attacks lately. I had some sites affected by namecheaps DDOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's easy to blame 'large hosting provider' and suggest going with 'specialized provider', but isn't stuff like this really leapfrog between hackers and the good guys?

Sure, service X might be able to block a 50 foobit attack but what about when the next vulnerability is found and they can launch 500 foobits of DDoS?

<comment><USER11> > but isn't stuff like this really leapfrog between _hackers_ and the _good > guys_?

Said the guy on the _Hacker News_ website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://status.rackspace.com/](https://status.rackspace.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> We went through this recently at Codeship when our provider, DNSimple, had an outage due to DDoS- [https://blog.codeship.com/dnsimple-ddos- outage/](https://blog.codeship.com/dnsimple-ddos-outage/) DNS is a service that often ends up as a single point of failure in infrastructures I've seen as it's non-trivial to implement redundancy. Having a repository/API approach to deploying DNS records saved us in this incident: [http://blog.codeship.com/dnsimple-dns-history-continuous- dep...](http://blog.codeship.com/dnsimple-dns-history-continuous-deployment/)

<comment><USER14> Nice to see you mention a repository - I love storing DNS details in git, and setup a site to push that on to Amazon's route53 infrastructure ([https://dns- api.com/](https://dns-api.com/)).

Having revision-control is wonderful for history-tracking.

<comment><USER15> This is a really cool idea. I'd like it even more if I could add "remotes" for different providers. DNSimple, Route53, etc. and push my changes to each one. I suppose the service would need to support a number of providers that themselves support APIs.

<comment><USER16> Would also be possible to use the dns_deploy tool one of my team mates wrote ([https://github.com/codeship/dns_deploy/commits/master](https://github.com/codeship/dns_deploy/commits/master)) or by extending Terraform ([https://terraform.io/docs/providers/dnsimple/index.html](https://terraform.io/docs/providers/dnsimple/index.html))

<comment><USER15> Hey I wanted to thank you for showing this to me. I am using it on my personal domain and plan to use it on some customers as well. Really cool tool, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's nice having cheap/free DNS from people like Rackspace and Amazon, but situations like these make you realise that it's sensible to use a company like Dyn ([http://dyn.com/](http://dyn.com/)) that are experts in highly- available DNS, rather than something that's a small part of a hosting provider's services.

It's easy to forget that you can have redundancy in your load balancers, web servers and databases (replication, multiple data centres, etc), but DNS is how you're found by the rest of the Internet.

No DNS resolution = no one reaches your expensive, lovingly-crafted infrastructure.

<comment><USER18> I think Rackspace invests a lot of money into their DNS infrastructure. Yea it's free but its mostly because you're paying so much extra for the servers and support.

No DNS doesn't always mean no one reaches your expensive infrastructure. That may be true for websites relying on lots of random traffic, but most if not all of our customers have been to our site before so there's a strong chance that the DNS has already been cached on their computer or router.

<comment><USER19> But that's no use if you use the default TTL of 2-3 hours that I always see whenever I configure new dns entries. Sensible TTL should be at least 24-48 hours, maybe even more for your returning users to not be affected by those kind of outages.

<comment><USER20> A 24-48 hour TTL means you're hosed for 24-48 hours if your hosting service has an extended outage because you can't point any of those visitors at the IP addreses at another host. With a short TTL on the other hand, the worst-case scenario is that your DNS provider is offline and you have to change nameservers at the registrar. With a hosting outage, you can just point the domains at the new IPs and be back up in minutes to hours.

<comment><USER21> Agree with your points.

"you have to change nameservers at the registrar"

Would add that that this is also one of the reasons not to use your registrar for DNS, as a generality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here is the status page - note that it uses Rackspace DNS, though:

[https://status.rackspace.com/](https://status.rackspace.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> For anyone else worried about this, the best way to mitigate this going forward is to have secondary DNS servers.

Your primary DNS provider should allow automatic zone transfers. This makes it so that any changes you do to your primary service gets propagated to the secondary service within seconds.

Once setup you'll automatically have redundancy incase the primary provider starts timing out.

</comment><comment><USER24> Who launches these massive DDoS attacks against DNS infrastructure? It would require a substantial botnet to pull off, so they must have some compelling reason. Maybe there's something obvious I'm missing, but I don't see one, except perhaps for a government or large organization which had many competitors using the DNS service they attack.

<comment><USER25> Until more orgs implement BCP 38, it only takes a handful of servers with an open resolver to multiply the attackers bandwidth by a factor of 30 or more. UDP does not verify the source IP is the sender. Most of the internet will drop spoofed packets already, but there are still enough netblocks passing spoofed traffic, and vulnerable DNS servers for this to be a concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> All of my websites using Rackspace DNS where down for around 9 hours.

It was not a good start on a Monday. And it was even harder to explain that your websites are up, but not up to a client lol, and there is basically nothing I can do.

So yah this marks the point at which I will be using R53 and RS DNS servers.

<comment><USER27> Tip: If you're using >=2 providers to survive DDOS attacks, it's best to use no more than two name servers from any one provider. That's because resolvers will generally try up to 3 different name servers before giving up.

The "no more than two nameservers" rule means that those attempts will always span at least two providers.

<comment><USER26> Amazon by default gives 4 nameservers, can you only use two?

<comment><USER28> Sure you can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> some-dude314 I'll make the answer simple. Market cap and size do not matter. All it takes is _competent staff_ and management support. Actually DNS is not that hard to mitigate. You just need optimized compute and the bandwidth to take it to the clean up equipment.

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone with an idea how well Google Cloud DNS handles DDoS? I would image it just sucks it up, because they already saw any DDoS volume (would it be any or every, I'm not a native speaker?) before.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not savvy to this stuff so pardon the unsolicited conspiracy theory, does this DDoS have anything to do with the NK internet outage, or is it just coincidence?

<comment><USER31> It can be difficult to tell. If the traffic is coming from a botnet, only identifying the Command And Control operators will tell you anything.</comment></comment>


How Zuckerberg "hacked" the residence networks to build his photo database. (Scroll down) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/531743/1140 <comment><USER2> ConnectU used to look like junk back in August 2007: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070826023826/http://www.connect...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070826023826/http://www.connectu.com/)

Now, it's REALLY similar to Facebook once you look around the inside. It's pretty ridiculous, because it seems that ConnectU was recently updated to appear just like Facebook to make their case stronger ?!

<comment><USER3> Those ConnectU people are worthless jokers and they have no idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1764.html> is what links to this, they have more documents. The best is this, <http://www.02138mag.com/asset/1135.html>, it's an email where Zuckerberg talks about working for the ConnectU people.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.scribd.com/doc/531743/1140>

<comment><USER6> Scribd should just slurp the whole internet... everyone's quality of life would rise dramatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really fascinating to see the beginnings of something as huge as Facebook.

Is this written by Zuckerberg, or one of the guys suing him for "stealing" Facebook? Is it a journal, or a chat log, or something else?

More details plz!

</comment><comment><USER8> I also love how his initial idea for FaceBook was putting pictures of Kirkland residents next to farm animals to see who is hotter..

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook has changed so much since then.

<comment><USER9> Has it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was being sarcastic :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The more you learn about Zuck, the more you start to dislike the guy :(

<comment><USER11> Seems pretty clever. Not letting arbitrary barriers stand in the way.

<comment><USER12> Rules against downloading personal data in bulk for commercial purposes are not arbitrary barriers.

<comment><USER11> Rules in general are the _epitome_ of arbitrary barriers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is this document from, a court case or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, as rms pointed to: <http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1764.html></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Electronics Components Market - <AUTHOR> Trying to scope what kind of opportunities exist in making electronics components (microchip/generic IC), aimed for makers and tinkerers. What is the main driving force in this domain - low price or low power or specialty components or open source products<p>An example would Espressif, but even though it is 12 years old, I couldn't find much written about it. Anyone has any insight why it is such a success, what is their business model? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Look at the many electronic devices for Raspberry Pi and Arduino. The good/interesting ones get funded really fast even if they already have dozens of competitors. So it seems opportunities do abound.</comment>


Decide the outcome of Apple v. Samsung with this handy flow chart - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/apple-v-samsung-comic.jpg <comment><USER2> Is there a reason to link to a cut-and-paste instead of the original at <http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1729.html> ?</comment>


The Art of Being Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/james-marks-on-life-and-business/the-art-of-being-wrong-71720f51c940 <comment><USER2> The art of being wrong isn't about admitting it to others. The 'real' art to being wrong is being able to constantly challenge your own conclusions and not be afraid to ask yourself, "could I be wrong about this?"

In the author's case (and in so many other examples just like this one), it did not occur to him to question his own conclusion -- hey, his own personal experience told him that this was a good guy and that was good enough for him. So good, in fact, that he ignored the contradictory experience from his team members.

It didn't occur to him that he might be wrong until he actually sat down and tried to work with this guy. At that point he realized that everyone else was right and he was wrong, but it was almost too late because he was on his way to losing his reputation from his team members.

He concludes the piece with the following statement, "Sometimes, we have to admit weakness in front of the people who's respect we depend on the most. Don't worry about it– despite what you might like to believe, they already know you're human."

Being wrong about something doesn't mean that you are weak. It just means that you were wrong.

Near the end of the piece, the author states that it takes strength to admit your mistakes and you will grow from that experience. Unfortunately, I think he really misses the mark here in that the more important lesson that we can learn from this is how to avoid this kind of scenario in the first place: we must constantly challenge conclusions that we draw from personal experience.

It is only by constantly asking ourselves if we might be wrong that we can know with any degree of certainty when we really are right.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're wrong about something you can just say it. Just say you were wrong.</comment>


A terminal-based presentation tool with colors and effects - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vinayak-mehta/present <comment><USER3> Hey, author here! Just wanted to add that you can write your slides using Markdown (most of its features are supported).

Also reposting my comment from the asciimatics post that was here yesterday:

I made this on top of asciimatics, which is awesome! I had a lot of fun making this thanks to all the effects asciimatics already has.

I was also able to extend an internal asciimatics class to add a feature for pre-recorded playable code blocks. It lets you play code in your terminal presentation like someone's typing it! You can learn more about it here: [https://present.readthedocs.io/en/latest/codio.html](https://present.readthedocs.io/en/latest/codio.html)

<comment><USER4> How did you do the matrix raining code in the demo? I did not see it in the examples. I use an mp4 of that as a screen saver but would love it in terminal instead!

<comment><USER3> You can use the matrix effect by adding `<!-- effect=matrix -->` to the top of your slide! :)

These effects are supported right now: fireworks, explosions, stars, matrix, plasma. I plan to add more asciimatics effects soon!

<comment><USER5> I'm hoping for <\-- effect=gol --> for a Game of Life simulation. For whatever reason, it comes up in my talks often. It seems I exude geekness acme whenever I talk about hacking and self-propagating code.

<comment><USER3> That would be awesome! I'll work on it and add it some time! Opened [https://github.com/vinayak- mehta/present/issues/45](https://github.com/vinayak-mehta/present/issues/45) to track it :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a major missed opportunity here - you can create codeblocks but there's no way to _run_ the codeblocks.

[https://github.com/marconilanna/REPLesent](https://github.com/marconilanna/REPLesent), a similar tool for Scala, supports this by pressing `r` on any slide - <USER2> code will be evaluated into the REPL.

<comment><USER7> Also imagine they'd combine their codebase with shellshare (live streaming shell)

[https://shellshare.net/](https://shellshare.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice! Something similar but maybe not so extreme is Deck Set. [https://www.deckset.com/](https://www.deckset.com/)

Write markdown and it does the design for you.

<comment><USER9> DeckSet is great, but is quite limited in terms of allowing theme customization. If they allowed themes to be modified directly with CSS — or better, YAML/TOML/JSOn, that'd be excellent.

I've been looking very closely at Marp[1], which is a engineer-focused solution to this.

[^1] [https://github.com/marp-team/marp](https://github.com/marp-team/marp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> During this years juliacon there was an absolutely amazing termnial based presentation on building terminal based UI's:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TASx67pphw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TASx67pphw)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for posting, this is such a cool and informative talk! I love the typewriter animation :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Made me think of this that I have used previously: [http://suso.suso.org/xulu/Shellshow](http://suso.suso.org/xulu/Shellshow)

I had played with writing a pandoc filter that would add formatting escape sequences based on markdown, your tool does a better job than where I got to.

One thing I want in a tool like this is to be able to display ascii charts like from gnuplot, which is why I liked the simplicity of Shellshow. I will have to dig in to see if this is possible, if not I expect it would be easy to add.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for pointing me to Shellshow, I hadn't heard of it before, it looks cool! I'll look into it in detail sometime this week and see if I can add some of its features to `present`.

> One thing I want in a tool like this is to be able to display ascii charts > like from gnuplot, which is why I liked the simplicity of Shellshow. I will > have to dig in to see if this is possible, if not I expect it would be easy > to add.

I've thought about adding charting features too! Asciimatics supports barcharts: [https://asciimatics.readthedocs.io/en/stable/asciimatics.htm...](https://asciimatics.readthedocs.io/en/stable/asciimatics.html#asciimatics.renderers.BarChart) and lets you extend classes to build other types of charts too.

Would you like to open an issue and describe this feature a bit in detail? [https://github.com/vinayak-mehta/present/issues](https://github.com/vinayak- mehta/present/issues) For example, what should the API look like, should it pick up data from a csv file and load it up into a barchart etc. I would love to work on this when I find time!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wrote a terminal graphics library! It might be interesting to use something like this to be able to embed graphics into terminal-based presentations:

[https://github.com/dheera/python- termgraphics](https://github.com/dheera/python-termgraphics)

<comment><USER3> Termgraphics looks awesome, I'll try it out this week!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is also patat ([https://github.com/jaspervdj/patat](https://github.com/jaspervdj/patat)) that does a similar thing.

It does not have effects, but it can do colors and has many other features one would expect from a presentation tool. It has also been around for a while, it is rather stable and written in Haskell. Many Linux distributions already have it in their repositories ([https://github.com/jaspervdj/patat#installation](https://github.com/jaspervdj/patat#installation)).

Worth trying out as well!

</comment><comment><USER14> Those special f/x are really slick. Always nice to see new Terminal development.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very cool. Runs on repl.it nicely: [https://repl.it/@amasad/terminal- present](https://repl.it/@amasad/terminal-present)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for adding the repl.it badge!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can it do a PDF export? I'm usually providing a PDF of my slides with some comments, as people pretty much always request that if I don't.

<comment><USER3> Not currently. A lot of people have requested that feature, I'll look into how that can be done! Tracking it here: [https://github.com/vinayak- mehta/present/issues/43](https://github.com/vinayak-mehta/present/issues/43)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Used it last week for a presentation. Loved it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks again! I loved that presentation! Looking forward to a longer one :D

</comment></comment><comment> Pirate-of-SV What tool(s) did you use to record the example gifs in the readme?

<comment><USER3> I used [https://github.com/phw/peek](https://github.com/phw/peek) but I plan on trying asciinema / terminalizer soon.

I was able to record `present` with asciinema, just need to see how nicely it renders into a GIF!

<comment><USER18> You may be interested in [https://nbedos.github.io/termtosvg/](https://nbedos.github.io/termtosvg/) \- it can take asciinema recordings and turn them into animated SVGs.</comment></comment></comment>


Please critique our little website - <AUTHOR> http://squarechat.com

<comment><USER2> There is a test room that never expires(The rooms created expire after 20 minutes) if you want to chat with others from HN <http://www.squarechat.com/hntest>

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.opinbot.com/reviews/show/agdvcGluYm90chwLEhVyZXZp...](http://www.opinbot.com/reviews/show/agdvcGluYm90chwLEhVyZXZpZXdzX3Jldmlld3JlcXVlc3QYxT4M)

<comment><USER4> opinbot - that's a funny site. I can't tell if the review of people's twitter feeds is real or satire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Needs a better explanation of what it is, what it does, and why anyone would use it - think of the end users.

Also, for time-sensitive video chat, Twitter OAuth is where it's at.

<comment><AUTHOR> why have any auth at all?

Agree fully on the explanation... like I said it was a test for something else and we just threw it up on the server to see how it worked.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't work so well. I think the guy there wanted to tell me something, but I could only hear his words VERY slow. Like a magnetic audio tape played back at much less than the normal speed.

Then again, who knows how far apart we were from each other, both geographically and from the point of view of the connection.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool. So it's kinda like TokBox but without the suck.

Gimme an API and a sense that you'll be around for a while and I'm in. Better still, give me the tools to set up my own server.

And charge me money for it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We wrote this a while back as a test for another project. Would love feedback!

<comment><USER4> What is this for / how will it help me?

<comment><AUTHOR> Was hoping you'd tell us!

Obviously its a video chat program... question is exactly what good is it? Would love to hear your ideas. :)

<comment><USER4> Reviews are free, but I charge $ to be a product manager :)

<comment><AUTHOR> :) Well said. upvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I couldn't get it to work in Mac OS X Snow Leopard with Chrome. I could see myself, but the other box was always either non existent or white.

<comment><AUTHOR> the other boxes are other people who did not turn on their cameras or didn't have one.

<comment><USER8> I'd consider the lack of that info a bug, unless you are expecting people to deduce that. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It lags a lot. That's really the only problem I see with it. A share link would be cool so it could be like tokbox.

</comment><comment><USER10> Your Get Satisfaction widget brought up the feedback options for Get Satisfaction itself instead of for your app.

<comment><USER2> Thanks should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see a white square with nothing in it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't know WHY it bothers me, but I should mention that it DOES -- the 'square' in the logo is rectangular, and my mind can't get over that.

I'd rework the logo entirely if you could actually, and I don't know when the 'feedback on the left side of the page' became a popular phenomenon, or who started it, but I honestly find it to be extremely silly.

That said, I like the overall look of the site, though it's obviously quite spartan at this point.

<comment><USER2> Haha, good point about the []. And also thank you for the input on the feedback link.

<comment><USER13> I really don't like get Satisfaction very much at all.

I prefer email support any day.</comment></comment></comment>


China Uighurs: A model's video gives a rare glimpse inside internment - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53650246 <comment><USER2> As fellow humans, there is no way to look at this situation and find something positive. The actions of the CCP need to be condemned. If you disagree with this point, we are fundamentally at odds.

To those complaining about the anti-China narrative, it's the CCP (government) which are at fault, not the people. I think we should always make it very clear that it's not the Chinese people we take issue with and we are not condemning people based on race.

As for actions taken against China and masquerading behind human-rights to justify them, I think it's okay to temporary align ourselves with those whose actions align with our ideology, even if the motivation is different. Life is about compromise and we're going to find very few allies if we will only work with people perfectly aligned with our own motivations.

<comment><USER3> > To those complaining about the anti-China narrative, it's the CCP > (government) which are at fault, not the people

What would you say if the people widely supported it? Do you have evidence otherwise?

Most mainlanders don't seem to care at all, that's pretty common knowledge and not some fear of speaking out issue. There's plenty of online forums where they anonymously express themselves and widely mock and criticise the government yet you won't find many being about Xinjiang province other than what the West is reporting on it.

Have you spent much time on the Chinese internet?

So to go back to my question, if it's actually the people who support this, do you consider them the enemy too?

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-30/why-many-in-china- sup...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-30/why-many-in-china-support- beijings-xinjiang-and-hongkong-policy/11749148)

<comment><USER4> This isn't unique to Chinese mainlanders. If you look at other countries: U.S, Sri Lanka, Israel, Brazil, France etc., you're going to find a significant portion of the population that seems to support far-right populism based on ethnic nationalism.

Look at Trump, who is currently attempting to push an anti-China narrative in the US, but still gave Xi Jinping the green light to build camps for the Uighurs, and said it was "exactly the right thing to do." [1]

Should we judge them? Are they our enemy? I don't know. But this seems to be a systematic bias that pervades humanity in general.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-53138833](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53138833)

<comment><USER5> Please do note that is a John Bolton claim with no independent confirmation and denied by Trump. And no single nation - not even the US - has any power to give a "green" or "red" light to China currently.

The only way any pressure would work is with a league of nations applying sanctions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A recommended watch: [https://youtu.be/WmId2ZP3h0c](https://youtu.be/WmId2ZP3h0c)

This is what China wants you to see. Now think about what they don't watch you to see.

<comment><USER7> This is what happens when you show this evidence to a Chinese Ambassador and diplomat. [0]

[0] [https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1284784810200838145](https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1284784810200838145)

<comment><USER8> Those are prisoners.

<comment><USER9> If those are "only" prisoners, then it should be okay to let foreign inspectors in and talk to the "prisoners", shouldn't it?

<comment><USER10> American prisons don't allow the UN in for inspections. (Maybe because the US was founded on slavery and never really got away from it so now relies on 2.2 million enslaved black people doing forced labor as a punishment for nonviolent drug crimes or inability to pay fines).

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-usa-torture- idU...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-usa-torture- idUSKCN0WA2B8)

[https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/05/1063292](https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/05/1063292)

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-us-wont-let-the-un- loo...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-us-wont-let-the-un-look-inside- its-prisons)

[https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2015/07/25/809496/united-...](https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2015/07/25/809496/united- nations-urges-washington-to-allow-it-to-inspect-us-prisons)

<comment><USER11> What's this whole conversation have to do with America?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > His uncle ... believes the video could galvanise public opinion in the same > way that footage of the police treatment of George Floyd became a powerful > symbol of racial discrimination in the US.

The worrying thing is, protests like those for George Floyd won't be possible to happen within China, and even if they happen overseas, most people inside China won't even be aware of them.

With the information control in place, long lasting suppression against minorities is one of the most terrifying things that can happen.

<comment><USER13> Also turns out that the uncut bodycam footage leaked yesterday isnt damming evidence of racial anything in the case of George Floyd. The body footage shows a standard arrest gone bad because the suspect was currently overdosing on fentanyl and having a panic attack.

Hopefully some people start to feel a little bit embarrassed over there reactions and support of violent riots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're interested in this topic, I strongly suggest you all read The China Crisis By: James R. Gorrie It provides amazing insight into what's happening in the region & what we can expect to see over the coming years.

<comment><USER15> Could you share some of those insights?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The CCP has two things that keeps them afloat: Chinese nationalism (and lets admit that the US really is out to get them at this point) and the economy.

In 20 years China may very well be completely technologically independent rendering economic sanctions impotent and foreigners aren't going to be able to change any Chinese minds. Change will have to come from within the CCP, it always amused me that those HK protesters were talking more to the foreign press than trying to infiltrate the mainland bureaucracy.

<comment><USER2> > Change will have to come from within the CCP

And I'm guessing if the West and Russia had waited, the Nazis would have stopped putting people in concentration camps too? The CCP is exactly the same party that still covers up the 1989 Tienanmen Square Massacre - they can't even admit their previous failings.

> it always amused me that those HK protesters were talking

> more to the foreign press than trying to infiltrate the

> mainland bureaucracy.

It's hard to find any amusement in the HK situation at all.

I am not aware of any scenario where the Communist dictatorship has listened to reason or has allowed the infiltration of it's mainland media. Their entire dictatorship is based on narrative - whilst it's positive, they stay in power over the people and army. Any deviation throws their rule into question, which is why they crush it at any cost.

Edit: Grammar

<comment><USER17> > ...the Nazis would have stopped putting people in concentration camps too?

It's possible.

After the Trail of Tears, I don't think anyone would have believed the US would fight a Civil War and change so much.

Give China a hundred years and who knows what will happen.

Taiwan was a dictatorship until the late 90s. All China needs is that one leader to put things in motion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does one compile this and other evidence to present to expatriate Mainlanders? Is it even worth it?

<comment><USER19> Why do we think expats would be interested in this? What's the point anyway?

Shouldn't we use this evidence instead to wake people up on the impacts of consumerism?

Didn't _we_ allow China to become what it is today due to how _we_ buy things (all things are made in China today?) and how companies are constantly seeking to reduce costs and in some cases irresponsibly? What have we said to those companies?

Disclaimer: I'm from Europe.

<comment><USER20> This is the issue, it is not a matter of convincing the Chinese people their government is a problem it is a matter of convincing politicians in the Western world that China is truly a problem and pressuring corporations at stock holder meetings the same.

Both need to be told the same thing, doing business in China is not acceptable. Corporations can be forced to change course by stock holders and national or state governments, governments can only be changed by pressure on the political parties in each.

* I own both Tesla and Apple products, my statement on not buying an Apple product made in China needs to be expanded. I will not buy an Apple product or another Tesla until both leave China or the Chinese government changes direction; which I believe will only get worse if the believe the US government slides in weakness or non interventionist form

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That loudspeaker broadcasting fun "facts" is an interesting way to reeducate captives. IIRC, the consensus among most Western experts is that this type of brainwashing isn't effective.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps, just a thought, that is because it's not intended for brainwashing as that term is usually used, but simple behavior modification. The difference being that it's not about inducing belief in the content of propaganda, but constantly underlining what beliefs it is acceptable to _demonstrate outward compliance with_ , while other avenues demonstrate the cost of non-compliance.

The brainwashing doesn't happen to the people that are directly subject to it, but to the ones raised in an environment surrounded by people who, if they aren't true believers but are still around to be seen as models, have been cowed into behavioral conformance.

<comment><USER23> So it is just harmless nudging?

<comment><USER22> I don't know where you got "harmless nudging" from that description of it as part of a system of violent coercion of the immediate subjects that is long- game brainwashing directed beyond them, but, no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been wondering how I could bring this up with the mainland Chinese I know. It's particularly difficult, because for some of them I'm in a supervisory/managerial role, but I don't want to put pressure on them, which would raise all sort of other ethical dilemmas and would likely not be effective. Anyone else can share experiences?

<comment><USER25> There are two outcomes: 1: They really will not know what you're talking about and think you're crazy and just hate Chinese people (this is common). 2: They will somewhat know what you're talking about, and have a massive list of bad things your country has done/is still doing, and you won't be happy (this is also common, but slightly less common)

If you were good friends, you can mention this and drop it and try to move on. If you're doing this at work, it won't end well for anyone involved, and it'll be doubly bad if you're in an authority position.

<comment><USER26> Note that the outcomes you describe are only bad at preserving the status quo at that workplace.

<comment><USER25> The outcomes will also give them a heightened sense of nationalism and feed into the idea that the West is just out to get China and Chinese people, which the media plays up quite a bit.

As an American, sitting down next to a European on vacation for more than a few minutes is never fun. Once they inevitably ask "Where are you from?", they follow it up with a lecture on American politics before I can even finish my sentence. It's tedious and it's nothing new.

It's probably way more frustrating for people having to listen to their _boss_ lecture them at work about how screwed up a country they've never been to but you've lived your whole life in is. You're not in a position to just politely say "bye" and never see them ever again without any consequence. You certainly can't speak up against them because they're in a position of authority.

<comment><USER27> That's my worry too. A lot of us are very defensive now even to be reasonable. However it is hard to buy these videos if you were born and raised in China, simply because you understand the culture around it. For example there are a lot of Vloggers in Xinjiang [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRXnF42z1oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRXnF42z1oM) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3VGz4HFs_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3VGz4HFs_A)

If you understand the language and culture the locals talk a similar way to the responses from the BBC video. And in the Vice video the locals even spoke for the secret journalists.

Also for mainland china everyone refers people from any ethnic background from Xinjiang a 'Xinjianger' not a singled out 维族人. I'm sure there are a lot of injustice but ethnic minorities are known to entitle a few 'privileges' such as carrying knives and not subject to one-child policy. Hence the cause of the inevitable unfair treatment and conflict (to be honest many policies are not up to modern liberal views). I'm not defending ccp ever, but I'm also shocked people knew very little about everything else.

<comment><USER28> I think this is an important point. Even if GP "open the eyes" of coworkers on the matter, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will side with the Western point of view. For a variety of reasons they might approve the government action, which will cause additional tension to an already rude situation, as explained by other posters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's more than enough evidence now with or without this so I'll put it simply.

Those who defend this abuse of an ethnic group are as complicit as the nazis of last century.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's atrocious what the CCP under Xi is doing. And it's dismaying that other quasi-authoritarian countries are taking note. From Basil Rajapaksa (part of the political family in Sri Lanka responsible for various war crimes during the civil war):

"I want our party to be a party like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how they act... We have learned from many political parties in the world. The best two are the BJP and CCP." From [http://www.newswire.lk/2020/07/30/basil-wants- slpp-to-become...](http://www.newswire.lk/2020/07/30/basil-wants-slpp-to- become-like-chinas-ccp-or-indias-bjp/).

</comment><comment><USER30> My Kazakh office mate is so angry over this. He swears there is going to be jihad.

<comment><USER3> That was the problem in the beginning though, waging a separatist war. It's why all this started when a lot of Uyghurs came back from Syria after fighting for ISIS.

Do you think more of those bombing campaigns, taking hostages at police stations and throwing hand grenades out of cars into busy market bazaars will improve the situation for the people of Xinjiang?

<comment><USER31> are you assuming they should try to find independence with democratic means... in autocratic china?

<comment><USER3> I'm saying it's not a good idea. Just like the Rohyingyas who the West cheered on and waxed lyrically about their treatment for years, when push comes to shove no one did a thing to either take in the refugees or pressure the tiny weak impoverished government to stop committing genocide against them and their rebellion. If the West won't stand up to Burma, what do you truly think they're going to do against nuclear armed China, the second largest economy on Earth?

It's all well and good to have ideals, but don't pretend they apply in the real world of politics.

Feel free to say your country will take in a hundred thousand Uyghurs to free them, we all know it won't happen. The UK somehow has space for a million people from HK but there's no way on Earth they'd take 1% of that from Xinjiang province.

Words are cheap. Just ask the Rohingyas how they are fairing in 2020.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And don't forget what's happening to Falun Gong practitioners in China [0][1]. Although I can't be sure, from observation it seems to me like this information is still more heavily embargoed both in China and beyond. The persecution of Uighurs is getting China a lot of heat internationally but domestically it doesn't seem to be as disruptive.

Demonizing Uighurs has been much easier given their different ethnicity, religion and effective confinement to a given region. It's easy for people to assume this will never affect them. With Falun Gong you're dealing with millions of members of the mainstream Chinese society who have been subject to all this and worse.

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

[1] "Hard to Believe - Full Documentary - Now free to watch during coronavirus lockdown" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR5o43zZSiA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR5o43zZSiA)

<comment><USER17> Don't forget that the Falun Gong newspaper, The Epoch Times, was banned from Facebook due to publishing conspiracy theories,

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/technology/facebook- ads-e...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/technology/facebook-ads-epoch- times.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is disgusting. Even in Ad Seg in a Texas prison, with the most violent schizophrenic inmates, you can't be handcuffed to a bed.

To treat people like this based on their ethnicity is beyond the pale.

<comment><USER34> …that doesn't mean they don't. Pregnant women are routinely handcuffed while giving birth. If you want to see the peak in inhumane treatment of prisoners, go to any American prison south of the Mason–Dixon. Forced feeding, solitary confinement, executions, no foreign investigations (the US won't let the UN inspect American prisons), single-ingredient dietary plans as punishment – I've seen a lot of it working with a local prison abolitionist group for the last few years.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/24/shackled- pre...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/24/shackled-pregnant- women-prisoners-birth)

[https://www.pix11.com/news/coronavirus/rikers-inmate-with- co...](https://www.pix11.com/news/coronavirus/rikers-inmate-with- covid-19-dies-while-handcuffed-to-a-bed)

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/solitary- confinem...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/solitary- confinement/working-prison-i-witnessed-inhumane-conditions-solitary)

[https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/force-feeding- pris...](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/force-feeding-prison- supermax-torture/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> John Oliver did an excellent piece on the situation of the uighur last week you can watch it here: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=17oCQakzIl8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=17oCQakzIl8)

I have to say he has really developed his show into an excellent mix of education and entertainment. I used to not like him very much (didn't like his type of humor), but I learn something every time I watch one of his shows, even if it covers a topic I'm already quite familiar with.

<comment><USER35> I agree, used to be cheap digs / preaching to the choir style humour; Has become more informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The comparison of the situations of the Uighurs and the African Americans is straight out of the CCP propaganda playbook. The Soviet Union used to run stories about racism in the US.

</comment><comment><USER37> As an American, as terrible as the Chinese actions against the Uighurs in Xinjiang are I still feel we should prioritize ending our nearly twenty year long war in neighboring Afghanistan.

We've created millions of refugees, caused over a hundred thousand people to die, and committed numerous human rights violations. Yet the press coverage it gets mostly centers around how we dropped the "mother of all bombs" on them or how disgusting it is to hold peace talks with the Taliban in September.

And for all the calls of "whataboutism" this is likely to raise, if we are unable to fix our own problems our attempts to fix China's are unlikely to benefit anyone.

<comment><USER38> You're completely right, but it's not going to stop the campaign against China, because human rights are not the issue. If it was, people would be out in the streets protesting all day against business done with Saudi Arabia. And people would also protest daily against the human rights violations perpetrated by the US around the world (the UN hasn't lift a finger about that either). The whole goal of the campaign is to raise popular support for a commercial campaign and maybe even a war against China.

<comment> abc-xyz Plenty of people are protesting against business with Saudi Arabia. The reason you see so much anti-China sentiment is likely a result of China having managed to become a part of the lives of people in western countries.

Oil states play a huge role in the lives of people who follow football due to UAE/Qatar having ownership of large clubs, similarly, there have been a lot of protests with regard to the 2022 FIFA World Cup which will take place in Qatar.

Another example is the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.

<comment><USER37> That you can make this post without mentioning the continued US/Saudi war on Yemen largely proves their point. People care when oil states are involved in a sport they follow or a US residents life. What is happening to millions of people in Yemen doesn't register.

<comment> abc-xyz I would say it proves my point. Most people couldn't care less about what happens outside their borders unless the country responsible also do things that impact their life. No on gives a damn when North Korea starve its citizens to death, subject them to hard labor and execute them left and right. But the western world care a lot when they imprison/torture a western citizen.

Similarly, no one cares about China kidnaping girls from neighboring countries to force them into marriage/prostitution in China. But people care a lot when China force gaming companies to censor their games and ban western citizens playing western games in a western country because they write "Free Hong Kong" in the chat.

<comment><USER37> I will remind you that this thread is about what is happening with the Chinese Uighurs, a group that has no impact on Western lives.

>Most people couldn't care less about what happens outside their borders unless the country responsible also do things that impact their life

The US is the country responsible here. US military commanders have said that the war in Yemen would end tomorrow without US assistance, and the US declared war on Afghanistan.

<comment> abc-xyz It does because these Uyghurs are subjected to hard labor where they're producing goods for Nike, Gap, H&M, Amazon, Puma, etc. It's a lot harder to look past these things when you know they're happening (similarly to how it's hard for football fans to look past the slave labor used for the World Cup in Qatar). The fact that their treatment feels equivalent to the holocaust makes it even worse.

It also adds great frustration/anger when western companies fight for human rights in USA while they stay silent on China's human rights issues (and even censor western citizens voicing support for them).

<comment><USER37> > does because these Uyghurs are subjected to hard labor where they're > producing goods for Nike, Gap, H&M, Amazon, Puma, etc.

I have not heard these allegations of slave labor surrounding these internment camps. Maybe you're thinking of US prisons.

>The fact that their treatment feels equivalent to the holocaust makes it even worse

I'm still not defending China here, but their actions seem limited to cultural genocide not actual genocide. The US treatment of Muslims in Yemen is far worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Downvote me for this - If you're using China-made products, you're responsible for the bugger balls of CCP, unethical/illegal selling of human organs and what not.

They are no different from a radical terrorist organization.

<comment><USER40> > If you're using China-made products, you're responsible

What sort of limits do you have to this statement? You're posting this on a forum. Have you checked the country of origin of the servers and components used by the telecoms for their equipment between you and those servers?

<comment><USER24> That's a straw man though. Nobody said you need to be perfect, however there are enough products where we know exactly where they made and still ignore the human rights violations, maybe that's a good start.

<comment><USER6> There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

Stop blaming individuals and expect more from your leadership.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trading Students for Employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20110531.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> The Census Bureau report mentioned in this submission

[http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/governments...](http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/governments/cb11-94.html)

shows that school spending per pupil is continuing to increase around the country. The longer, more detailed Census report from which this information is drawn

<http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/09f33pub.pdf>

provides more details. The National Center for Education Statistics publishes time series reports including a report

<http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011033_5.pdf>

that shows that "Total expenditures per student in fall enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools measured in constant 2009-10 dollars rose from $8,832 in 1989-90 to $12,236 in 2007-08, a 39 percent increase (see table A-36-1). Most of this increase occurred after 1998-99." (.PDF page 102)

The report further notes, "In 2007, the United States spent $10,768 per student on elementary and secondary education, which was 45 percent higher than the OECD average of $7,401. At the postsecondary level, U.S. expenditures per student were $27,010, more than twice as high as the OECD average of $12,471." (.PDF page 106)</comment>


Ask HN: Supported locations for merchants (Play store) - no new countries - <AUTHOR>

This is the list of supported countries for publishing paid apps on Google Play Store:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/150324
Years go by and the list is mostly intact - why can't Google do more? Are they really trying? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

[https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answ...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answer/150324)</comment>