Programming Paradigm vs. Architecture - <AUTHOR> How do you think, is programming paradigm such important thing in comparison to software architecture, and moreover, the architecture of infrastructure? Doesn't the architecture make much more impact on the quality of software than the used programming paradigm? <comment> a-saleh It depends on what do you want to achieve, but in general, the language ecosystem is i.m.o. more important than each of these.

I.e. I really don't like Golang, because it has lackluster support for functional programming paradigm.

I feel that writing code through composing functions (map/fold/reduce mostly, maybe some walk, as I often do data transformations) makes me feel productive and producing less errors in my code.

In Go, I have to write for-loops.

On the other hand, the libraries and the rest of the Go ecosystem is really nice, especially if you target kubernetes and there is the feeling of 'there is one obvious way to do it', and I kinda like that.

So I write Go. Hm, reading this after myself, maybe that is some argument for architecture of infrastructure?</comment>


Liquidation Preference – Yesterday again tomorrow? - <AUTHOR> http://hedgeaccordingly.posthaven.com/936078 <comment><USER2> What is worse is, employees -- who make up the common-pool -- don't get to see the terms of these late stage rounds. So, their share of valuation is sinking and they are not made aware of it.

Also, doesn't outstanding stock an useless/misleading metric without disclosing liquidation preferences of the investors?

<comment><USER3> If the employees have stock, they'll be entitled to see the amended and restated certificate of incorporation, which would show liquidation preferences, etc.

If they only have options, they're not entitled to anything, though they could pay to download a copy of the certificate of incorporation from Delaware (it's a public document).

That said - your point is well taken. Most employees likely have no idea what terms the Company is raising money on at any given time.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that information.

NSO and ISO are usually termed Stock Options.

Which category are they? "stock" or "options"?

<comment><USER4> When you exercise your option, it's no longer an option, you're now holding a share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great analysis (and interesting idea regarding large funds recently raised by accelerators, etc.).

However, if the implication is that this situation is even somewhat common-- your analysis doesn't match the data.

If you look at Fenwick's VC Survey on Unicorn Financings[1], a paltry 5% involve participating preferred while even less (3%) involve multiple liquidation preferences.

Has OP identified a possible strategy to "fudge" one's way to a Unicorn valuation? You bet.

Are many companies using this strategy? Absolutely not.

[1] [https://www.fenwick.com/publications/Pages/The-Terms- Behind-...](https://www.fenwick.com/publications/Pages/The-Terms-Behind-the- Unicorn-Valuations.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting and well done analysis. The liqprefs change the returns for the investors at the top of the distribution stack dramatically, especially in less than stellar outcomes. But the desire to race to unicorn status on the part of founders may be setting up the company for such an outcome. In which case both employees and investors lower in the stack are likely to get screwed most of the time.

And the killer insight is at the end - this means that accelerators are then incentivized to raise huge funds so they can play in the big boy leagues at the top of the distribution stack.

Insightful post.

</comment><comment><USER6> > to invest $100mn in the it

Grammatical error?</comment>


Turns out Warren Buffett won't be the billionaire who saves newspapers either - <AUTHOR> https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/01/turns-out-warren-buffett-wont-be-the-billionaire-who-saves-newspapers-either/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22180166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22180166)

</comment><comment><USER3> Losing money on investments is not one of his hobbies.</comment>


How Do Committees Invent? (1968) - <AUTHOR> http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html <comment><USER2> _As long as the manager 's prestige and power are tied to the size of his budget, he will be motivated to expand his organization. This is an inappropriate motive in the management of a system design activity. Once the organization exists, of course, it will be used. Probably the greatest single common factor behind many poorly designed systems now in existence has been the availability of a design organization in need of work._

This is a great point, and it's not widely understood. Organizations always try to grow, and once they've grown, they will continue to do work, regardless of whether that's what anyone actually wants or needs them to do.

For example, say a popular website has gone a long time without much design work, and people are complaining that the site is hard to use. In response, the people in charge of the website form a design team, which succeeds in redesigning the site. But now that there's a design team, they will continue to do design work, and the site will likely be redesigned periodically. This will happen regardless of whether anyone actually using the site wants a new design.

<comment><USER3> From my experience, Facebook described to a T. I have a hunch you were thinking of the same site. Any other examples? I'm struggling to find any other examples that are as compelling

<comment><USER4> I think is this also what happened at Microsoft to cause them to put out a new programming framework every 18 months. They got some huge architecture team together to design .net, but then never disbanded them.

<comment><USER5> A new programming framework every 18 months? Is that an exaggeration? Teams are fairly dynamic; e.g. many of the .NET people went over to do Typescript. Then there is something like WPF that hasn't moved much recently (for better or worse).

Also, users really like the fact that there will be a new version of C# with more features (async, pattern matching, etc...) with some continuity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To put it differently, committees don't invent. People invent. Committees coordinate (or gather, edit, filter, etc.).

So if three people invent three things, and they form a committee to put the parts together, then they typically end up with a thing having three parts.

This way of looking at it makes it all seem much less mysterious and profound, IMHO.

<comment><USER7> That's a much better way of thinking about it.

The real problems I've seen emerge when there is a clear mismatch between the organisational structure and the obvious (to everyone) solution to the problem involves altering that structure, even slightly. At that point everything becomes impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the most practical and important paper I have read this year, and I'm doing a masters in Information Systems.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe this is the true reason why Google lets engineers rule ?

Restricting them in hard ways essentially implies that the software produced would just reflect the final bureaucracy?

<comment><USER10> There's no way around the rule though, if the communication is ad-hoc it might be better than being dictated by clueless bosses, but everyone is still operating with imperfect information, just at a different level. Witness the chaos of their login systems before the sound of the Google+ battle horn.</comment></comment>


Speech-Jamming Gun Silences From 30 Meters - <AUTHOR> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/03/01/1429217/speech-jamming-gun-silences-from-30-meters We live in a George Orwell novel <comment><USER2> At wedding : 'Speak now or forever hold your peace!'

(jamming gun activate!)

At court : 'Any objections?'

(jamming gun activate!)

Someone screaming for help in library...

(too loud, jamming gun activate!)

Yeah, best idea ever! :)</comment>


SF Muni fare system shut down by randomware - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfexaminer.com/hacked-appears-muni-stations-fare-payment-system-crashes/ <comment><USER2> "Randomware" \- is that a new type of malware where it asks you to generate random numbers?

</comment><comment><USER3> See also "Cyber Attackers Crash Muni Computer System Across SF" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13047458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13047458)</comment>


Create a fully functioning command line interface with 1.5 lines of code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kongaskristjan/fire-hpp <comment><USER2> I can also write a fully functioning web application in 1 line of code if I exclude how big each dependency is.

<comment><USER3> If you can actually do that, it reflects positively on your dependency's ability to make simple cases short and easy. Many libraries and frameworks actually don't.

That's what this is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The example is clearly 9 lines long and included fire.hpp has 703 lines of source code excluding comments.

<comment><USER5> It also requires several megabytes of standard library, kernel, operating system and compiler, but the point is that you don't have to write them. That's why you use libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If we're playing CLI golf why not use macros to make it even dryer?

        int fired_main(int x = fire::arg("-x"), int y = fire::arg("-y"))

could just be

        int fired_main(int fire_arg(x), int fire_arg(y))

with something like

        #define fire_arg(v) v = fire::arg("-"#v)

The C preprocessor is still the thing I miss most when working in any other language.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's unfortunate you can't just write something like:

        FIRE(args) {
            // ...
        }

without the explicit registration step. Unfortunately in this case the macro FIRE should first declare the fired function, then main, then defined the fired function, and this would be problematic because the definition can't have the default values for arguments again. I can't see a way around that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Funny, jut a couple days ago I started using dotnet's System.CommandLine.DragonFruit which is similar in design philosophy to this - a main function with typed parameters and extra annotations. I would have never thought about this type of approach, or if I did I likely would have rejected it outright in favor of more typical classes / functions to do it, but I admit it's convenient for a quick tool.

</comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of Click for Python in that the CLI is built based on the functions that describe the commands and arguments.

Click uses decorators though. I don't know what the C++ equivalent could be.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd love a good library to handle an interactive prompt and state machine. You know press 1/2/3 for x/y/z etc. Java especially

</comment><comment><USER10> Somebody should explain that std::endl instead of '\n' is pointless, verbose, and also slow.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice. boost::program_options needs a rethink for modern c++

</comment><comment><USER12> What does 1.5 lines of code mean?

<comment><USER13> I think 1 line to modify the function sig, and .5 to call the library

Its purely marketing math, I think.

<comment><USER14> I think it's the opposite

<comment><USER15> Neither alternative makes sense, so you are both correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anything for C#?</comment>


Ask HN: Can we safely rely on HTTP HEAD to check remote filesizes? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently implementing a system that will download external resources and poll them regularly for updates, to redistribute further to mobile devices.
The external URL's can be coming from anywhere, as long as it's a valid HTTP url.
The HTTP 1.1 spec says that HEAD is the proper method to check stuff like this, but i'm not sure on what percentage of servers actally implements this properly. Does anybody have any stats on this? Experiences? Do you support it yourself? <comment><USER2> As others pointed out, no, you can not rely on HEAD requests. You may send conditional GET's though, as you pointed out: by using ETag/If-None-Match and/or Last-Modified/If-Modified-Since. Keeping a hash database in order to track changes is also reliable. You can also place a proxy between you and the rest of the world in order to deal with that, if the disk space isn't an issue.

I wrote a couple of services that need to poll for remote resources. They look like your usage model. I'd advise against PHP though. We already tried that and failed. Several times actually. The timeouts kill the workload if the remote isn't responding. Using an async framework like node.js proved to be more appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER3> From my recollection of randomly curling sites to look at their headers, many sites don't respond to HEAD with a valid content length for web pages (presumably because their CMS doesn't bother to generate the page for HEAD requests).

Quickly checking with curl -LI www.google.com www.apple.com, I see neither of them do. And weirdly, it looks like Cloudflare chops it off all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've also dreamt up some tests, and I have a theory:

I could be okay, since I will be downloading mostly ZIP files. These will most likely not be served through a serversided scripted proxy, but allowed to be handled as a raw file, so HEAD _might_ work.

Now just to find the time to do these tests :) I hope to whip something up tomorrow.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like an awesome idea for an API: Submit a URL/URI and get back metadata without your app or mobile device having to do the heavy lifting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why not just test it for yourself?

It's a very, very common request, it's "required", and apache2/nginx/IIS will all support it out of the box, but it might depend on the application server in question. If you're dealing with an internal application, all bets are off.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to get an overview of what's 'out in the wild'. The Urls that will be checked are not under my control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How are you using this data ? - are you using the file-size to detect if it's changed or to ensure you have enough disk-space, etc ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Depending on filesize and Last-Modified or Etag (which ever will be available) i'll determine wether or not the file has to be re-downloaded. Then i use (additionally) md5_file in php to see if it's changed in comparison with our last copy of the file.

(This is actually part of a matroesjka doll / onion like mechanism i've built to synchronize data from our servers to mobile devices. Based on global/group/user rights. I'll be publishing a blog post on that later)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It will _generally_ work for static files served up by the major web servers. Other than that: no.</comment>


A Node.js Podcast - <AUTHOR> http://nodeup.com

<comment><USER2> On a related note, what other good programming-related podcasts are out there? I'm currently aware of The ChangeLog (<http://thechangelog.com/>), which is pretty infrequently-updated, and This Developer's Life (<http://thisdeveloperslife.com/>), which, while super-interesting, is only superficially technical (and more about life interests that developers generally have in common).

What are some good balls-deep-in-code podcasts out there?

<comment><USER3> Not many that are general, but tons that are language specific. I've found that language specific ones often cover relevant topics, even if it's not your language (such as TDD or DI). Many have shows that are completely off subject matter (I learned of PhoneGap for the first time on a .NET show)

In my rotation: (.NET) .NET Rocks, Hanselminutes (one of the hosts on This Developers Life), Deep Fried Bytes, Herding Code

(Ruby) Ruby Rogues, Ruby 5 (5 minute news, 2x/week), Ruby Show (seems to be on hiatus)

(JavaScript) JavaScript Jabber (sister of Ruby Rogues), JavaScript Show (same hosts as Ruby Show - also on hiatus)

<comment><USER4> _Ruby Show (seems to be on hiatus), JavaScript Show (same hosts as Ruby Show - also on hiatus)_

We start recording again next week :-)

Also, seconding recommendation of Ruby Rogues - and not just for Ruby developers. It digs into a lot of interesting stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> another great js-influenced podcast I enjoy <http://javascriptjabber.com/></comment>


Important Notice: unauthorized access to payment card data in U.S. stores - <AUTHOR> https://corporate.target.com/discover/article/Important-Notice-Unauthorized-access-to-payment-ca <comment><USER2> "We have determined that the information involved in this incident included customer name, credit or debit card number, and the card's expiration date and CVV (the three-digit security code)."

Why do they have the CVV available to steal? Do they need to store that for processing?</comment>


What is the best way to clean my MBP Retina screen? - <AUTHOR>

I purchased a product called Whoosh! at the Apple store and was told it was the only safe product Apple recommends to clean retina screens.  The weird thing is that Whoosh isn't sold at Apple store anymore and I'm wondering if it's because of the residue/streaks/film I'm seeing when I use it?<p>http://imgur.com/dWqtPvM <comment><USER2> I seem to get tons of lint particles on the screen no matter what kind of cloth I use (I tried microfiber, tissue paper, paper towels, etc). Lately I've been using a clean white sock (with no liquid) and it works alright. I just buff out the smudges rather than trying to clean them off with a liquid.

Cleaning it in daylight helps a lot as well, much easier to tell what you're doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be extremely careful when washing your Macbook screen.

[http://www.staingate.org/](http://www.staingate.org/)

This recently happened to someone I know, after attempting to clean the display. It is not covered under warranty, and there is no fix.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I was aware of that site and problems long before I purchased my 2015 MBP-R 13". I have only used Whoosh cleaner and I'm starting to notice a stain. I'm guessing this is why Apple pulled this product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204172](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT204172)

<comment><AUTHOR> I had heard not to use regular water, however the Apple support link you provided stated it is safe. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> i found dry microfiber cleaning cloth best.

<comment><USER6> This is good. I use a cloth from the eyeglass store. They gave them to me for free.</comment></comment>


The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway <comment><USER2> "Runaway capitalism" means one big winner in each sector. This is the result of the "frictionless economy" \- distance doesn't affect cost much, and organizations can scale to planetary size. It started with shipping containers and faxes, and continued to cloud-based services and the attention economy.

So we have Google, Facebook, and Amazon. (China has Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba, but they need the Great Firewall to compete.) The US is down to four big trillion-dollar banks. (Bank #5, the Bank of New York, is about a third the size of #4.) Telecom is consolidating to AT&T and Comcast.

These companies act like monopolies. They stop competing on price and influence government and culture instead. While organizations, rather than AIs, they optimize for size and shareholder value. That's runaway capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ted Chiang as always is a joy to read.

I hadn't made the 'mirror' connection before and it's a great image, but pretty much the first time I heard Bostrom, Musk et al talk about this I really wondered how absent any issues of political or social tension was that they are fuelling.

Andrew Ng talked about this too. Instead of talking about how technological change is impacting our social, cultural and political life the tech industry lets their machinations lose on the world and everybody else can deal with the fallout.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author touches on a salient point: capitalism has no market for social good. Social good does not equate to profit, in fact, it is usually an exorbitant cost.

Furthermore, capitalism has obvious logical limitations that most people who are in love with it seem to ignore. It runs on resource and energy extraction from the earth. All economic operations run on energy and materials. There will come a point where all resources are extracted from the earth, so no new wealth will be generated in that way.

At that point (likely much sooner), capitalism as we use it today will not function what so ever.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish the author dipped into accelerationist philosophy and its adherents. Most accelerationists nowadays seem to be into Bostrom-esque singularitarianism and the idea of marching forward with unabashed capitalism as an 'optimum resource allocation process' to allocate capital into AI technology efforts. Essentially: Bring the singularity faster, through more capitalism. They are pretty explicit about it, and I would bet the author would have a good time taking their ideas head-on instead of avoiding them entirely. See: Nick Land, Robin Mackay, Benjamin Noys.

</comment><comment><USER6> This elegantly captures something I think I've always observed, but been unable to articulate, in all of the superintelligence literature and the AGI / AI safety line of thinking: There is an implicit set of unarticulated underlying assumptions, and biases, that form the foundation from which the rest of the argument is "logically" progressed or extrapolated/ inferred.

<comment><USER7> Could you elaborate what you think those underlying assumptions are?

<comment><USER8> That artificial super intelligences are not science fiction

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen similar arguments before (for example here -> [https://thoughtinfection.com/2014/04/19/capitalism-is-a- pape...](https://thoughtinfection.com/2014/04/19/capitalism-is-a-paperclip- maximizer/) ) and I think it's a good analogy.

What I don't understand is how this gets presented as an argument _against_ AI risk. If the "paperclip maximizers" we construct now out of humans, machines, institutional processes and legal codes already exist, are successful, exhibit runaway growth, are a danger and lack insight in Chiang's sense, isn't that actually evidence _in favor of_ the viability of such entities? If they are already dangerous even with humans in the loop and relying on cumbersome institutional processes, isn't that all the more reason to think about how much more dangerous they can get as they become more autonomous and agile?

<comment><USER10> > What I don't understand is how this gets presented as an argument against AI > risk

I took it that the author wasn't doing that. He was using the "AI Threat" argument and pointing it back at the tech entrepreneur's current creations: their companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > This scenario sounds absurd to most people, yet there are a surprising > number of technologists who think it illustrates a real danger. Why? Perhaps > it's because they're already accustomed to entities that operate this way: > Silicon Valley tech companies.

This argument is not from technologists! The major proponents I'm aware of are Nick Bostrom, a philosopher, and Eliezer Yudkowski. Musk is simply repeating their argument, because he found it convincing. It strikes me as extremely dishonest to psychoanalyze an argument based on the celebrity who repeated it.

<comment><USER12> Stuart Russell is also a proponent of the idea. You'd be hard-pressed to say he's not technical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> He totally misunderstands the danger of runaway AI's. Even perfectly intentioned AI researchers living in his imagined utopia would be at risk of accidentally creating one. Aligning AI's with human values is a non-trivial technical problem, and there's no guarantee we'll find a solution before someone creates a super intelligent AI, regardless of how well we structure society.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why not both?

<comment><USER15> Why not neither?

The greatest danger to Civilization, in my not-so-humble opinion is tribalism. My country is better. My religion. My political philosophy. My color. My sex. My gender.

And I'll riot and kill if you don't agree.

Capitalism? Socialism? AI? Those won't overcome the stupidity of large populations of humans.

<comment><USER7> Tribalism has been around for the entire course of civilization, and has decreased over time since we got the idea that it's a bad thing. So if civilization seems like it's in trouble now then it seems unlikely that tribalism is the cause.

<comment><USER16> Tribalism is not a bad thing, neither is nationalism, it is only a problem when it turns sour. Just like everything else. It's horribly limiting to think in only black and white.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Extremism of any sort is the actual threat. People as a whole seem repulsed by moderation and centrism, happily sailing the seas of entropy to the extremes.

</comment><comment><USER18> Runaway capitalism, oh shit. So that does that mean:

\- Global poverty will continue to decrease

\- We'll get a variety of options to choose from whenever we want to buy something

\- We'll get to choose how to spend our own money

\- We'll get quick and diligent service

\- If we don't like something, we can choose to stop buying it or working for them?

The horror!!!!!

<comment><USER19> We'll also get highly optimized algorithms that sell us things we don't need through the use of psychology and the exploitation of human nature.

We'll also get rampant misspending of scientific research funds, which will go to boner pills and hair replacement techniques, rather than curing malaria or exploring space.

We'll also have the end-game for all capitalist nations be leadership that is completely bought and paid for.

We'll also have workers treated as useless and interchangeable cogs, while public markets sway back and forth, removing jobs, pushing mergers, cutting pay.

We'll also get things like McDonald's and Coca-Cola, two of the largest companies in the world, both of which are literally, 100% dedicated to selling addictive foods that are diabolically unhealthy.

Capitalism ensures people get what they want most. The problem is, people are fucking horrible, and what they all want most is cheeseburgers, soda, angry Facebook rants, fake news, and bigger dicks.

Sure, society wants much more than this, but at the individual level, these are the second-to-second motivations, and capitalism's atavistic psychic mining project always ends up down on this dopamine level of reaction in all things.

Humans can be wonderful and do good things. The problem is capitalism is a race to exploit the worst in human nature, effectively heading off those better instincts with porn, fast cars, and lap band surgery.

<comment><USER18> And what would your solution be? Because I imagine it would be government control on what we're allowed to spend money on. You are a totalitarian, and while it might be a "good" thing in some situations, that kind of power is quickly and easily corrupted. How long do you think you can last before regulatory capture happens? How long can you last before you're persecuting people for thoughtcrimes?

I'll take the "people can spend money on what they want" dystopia before I take yours. Because the capitalism dystopia to presented can be fixed by people changing their minds and changing their spending habits. Your dystopia can't change without deaths.

<comment><USER20> The government controls a LOT of what we can buy already. Sex work is highly regulated, and you can't buy _people_. You also can't buy endangered animals, ivory, or nuclear weapons.

In terms of people spending money on what they want, people spend lots of money on opioids and it ruins their lives, or kills them. Should doctors and pharmaceutical companies not be bound by any regulatory body? Should people just be allowed to OD on fentanil because they want to spend their money on it?

<comment><USER18> Lol, you're using the opiod argument because you think it's a slam dunk.

People who use drugs are not harming anyone with force or fraud. And if drugs were decriminalized, they'd be far cheaper, and drug addicts wouldn't have to turn to crime to pay for their drugs. The drug war is a massive failure and a huge civil rights violation.

I would also hope that, when drugs are decriminalized, the drug addict would choose a safer opiate, like simple morphine or heroin. Yes, they are very addictive, and they can cause overdoses, but if people could buy their drugs in a legal market they could actually get good dosage information and it wouldn't be cut with shit like fentanil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe the Corporatocracy is inevitable, only with stupid names instead of Weyland-Yutani or OmniCorp.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's runaway capitalism It's runaway socialism It's runaway what-ever-ism

As always it's hard to take anything from buzzfeed serious when they are so obviously biased in everything they post. What ever thing can 'runaway' is a threat to civilization, from pollution to propaganda in the news.

<comment><USER22> While generally I'd agree, this is a pretty respected (guest?) writer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> capitalism is easier to fix than AI gone rogue, probably

</comment><comment> aaron-lebo Nicely done Buzzfeed.

 _Billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a superintelligent AI will stop at nothing to achieves its goals because that's the attitude they adopted._

Kind of reminds one of _Ex Machina_. If amoral profit maximizers design AI, it's very possibly gonna be an amoral profit maximizer.

It still irrationally bothers me after 30 years of shitty MS products and Gates literally preventing technological progress so he could make money, he's one of the good guys. It's like if you donate enough to the church you can earn penance. The new versions of Gates don't seem much different.

<comment><USER18> But he's not donating to the church for "penance". He's helping save lives from malaria, and working on other projects to help the developing world! You can't dismiss that, and he's giving away so much of his money that it can't be considered a "fee". He's gonna 90% of it away by the time he's done.

<comment> aaron-lebo Of course and you can't knock him for doing that. It's good, good for him. We could at least acknowledge that others didn't accumulate that wealth because their standards for business were higher than his.

<comment><USER19> Gates is doing this because in a few short years he went from America's darling super rich success story, to the monopolistic Satan most of us tech people remember. He was not prepared for being vilified so quickly and completely during the anti-trust years.

Same thing as Andrew Carnegie: After the violent putting down of steel worker strikes, Carnegie was seen as the devil himself. He was so upset that this would be his legacy, Carnegie went about doing charitable work to change his image. You probably have a library he built within 50 miles of you, no matter where you live in the US.

Gates is doing the same thing. He does not want his legacy to be that of a businessman, but rather, that of a philanthropist.

<comment><USER24> The Carnegie library I grew up near is the reason I am where I am today in life. If I hadn't had access to all the books I spent my childhood and teenage years reading from that library, I'd be a lesser person.

<comment><USER25> There's a few Carnegie libraries around Ireland too [0] and as a child I fully benefitted from my local one. In fact I obtained my first Linux distro from there all the way back in 1997 when I was supposed to be studying for my high school finals .. it was a pivotal moment in my career

[0] [http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary- hist...](http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary- history/carnegie-libraries-in-ireland/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Capitalism is danger for civilization? Writes who? A buzzfeed. A very, very leftist media site.

How we end up in situation when huge portion (if not majority) of hacker community turned out to be _die hard socialists_? (nowadays they call themselves social-democrats)

I remember when I lived in Uzbekistan and I didn't have access to internet, I got floppy disk with saved copies of Eric Raymond articles. Once I've read "How To Become A Hacker", it influenced me a lot. I would say it was the most influential article I've ever read in my life.

I imagined "a hacker", an individualist person, who likes to find non-standard solutions to problems, who thinks out of box, who don't blindly follow authority, who likes decentralisation as opposed to centralisation. "A hacker" is a person who almost by definition right-libertarian.

Latter I found this article of Eric Raymond:

[http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/libgates.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/libgates.html)

Years later, I found articles of Paul Graham. It was amazing to read him. And he also turned out to be on free-market side:

[http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

I like his quote:

> This is why so many of the best programmers are libertarians.

Now, what I've see is disappointing, I don't like this and it shouldn't be like this at least on Hacker News. We have more than enough people in the world who wants more government, more authority, more religion.

<comment><USER27> Your worldview is common, but doesn't really understand where left-wing, pro- democratic socialists are coming from. Like you, we are driven by a deep mistrust of power. We hate absolute authority, like decentralization, and are especially interested in out of the box thinking.

Right now, the box we find ourselves in is a capitalist society where capitalist ideology is completely pervasive. The most powerful and dangerous authorities are corporations and excessively rich individuals. The best hopes for decentralization lie in genuinely decentralized solutions that give power back to workers, like worker cooperatives, democratic labor unions, and political protest.

What we reject is the idea that capitalism has any of the right answers here. To the left, capitalism is the primary agent of centralization of wealth and power and authority. I don't expect you to agree, but I hope you better understand where we are coming from.

<comment><USER18> Socialist governments killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century. They acquired power far more completely than any company has.

Big companies come and go. They may have power, but it's temporary, and there's nothing violent when they start losing their footing.

I'd rather have Amazon delivery my groceries than live in Venezuela.

<comment><USER28> > I'd rather have Amazon delivery my groceries than live in Venezuela.

This is an either-or logical fallacy, acting like the only two options are either pure capitalism or pure socialism.

Many countries in the world manage to have some basics like socialized healthcare and education, yet they manage to not be hell-holes. Germany managed to enforce anti-trust legislation in their country to such an extent that Walmart left the country, yet "tens of millions of people" haven't been killed in the process.

Any ideology taken to a violent extreme is bad. That includes both communism and capitalism. Market failures are real, and the increase in socialist tendencies in the US is because most people recognize that those market failures need to be corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not surprising from a publication who has editors that openly support "full communism"[0].

Buzzfeed "news" is the last place I look for an objective article.

[0] - [http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the- wrap/article/BuzzFee...](http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the- wrap/article/BuzzFeed-Editor-All-I-Want-For-Christmas-Is-12438485.php)

<comment><USER30> It's not an article. It's an essay by a science fiction writer.

<comment><USER29> I question the biases driving which essays they choose to publish.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Collection of UI Examples? - <AUTHOR> I'm tasked with showing a group of business folk what is possible on the web, prior to a day-long design/brainstorming session for a major app.
The idea is to assist them to break them out of the box, showing them all the possibilities of a Web UI, so that they can be more free in their brainstorming, and not just ask for the standard leftnav and forms.
So the question is -- does anyone have a collection of sites that could be used to demo different UI concepts?
If not a collection, even just recommendations on creative, but effective UIs would be of great assistance.
Edit: This could include all components of an app -- Navigation, Forms, Data Views, Reporting, Widgets/Controls, etc... <comment><USER2> Here are a couple of good sites on design patterns for various components, with nice examples:

<http://www.welie.com/patterns/>

<http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/> (obviously)

<http://ui-patterns.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://patterntap.com/> [http://designinformer.com/how-to-drastically- improve-your-de...](http://designinformer.com/how-to-drastically-improve-your- designs/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out Chris Messina's extensive collections on Flickr. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/collections/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Also try chromeexperiments.com.

And, I have a collection of UI links at the bottom of this page:

<http://wiki.factoryjoe.com/Screenshotting></comment>


Is 4chan the Future of Human Consciousness? - <AUTHOR> http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/art-entertainment/lost-filth-simulacrum

<comment><USER2> No, it's just a place where those weird, greasy high school kids post their nonsense for the world to see and try to gross each other out. Every generation had 4channers, they just didn't have 4chan.

<comment><USER3> And somehow, in the process, they generate the memes, jokes and stories everybody will be obsessed with one year later. That is the crux of the story, and one you have missed. The despicable part is true, and all too obvious. The idea generation is harder to explain.

<comment><USER2> Did you ever actually sit down and talk to those kids in high school? Beneath their greasy veneer and scatological obsessions, a lot of them were pretty damn funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _And they are the ones furthest ahead of the pack, leading us._

If posting child porn up in unrelated forums or in the middle of otherwise innocent looking YouTube videos is where we're headed, I'd rather be a Luddite.

</comment><comment><USER5> _The brave pioneers of 4chan are the Magellans of media desensitization, who abandon the grim reality of their parents' basements to wallow in infinite, recursively self-referential filth._

So when My friends and I talked incoherently while bing drinking, year after year of college, we wallowed in "infinite, recursively self-referential filth."? Wow, I didn't know my generation was that unique.

</comment><comment><USER6> _What is happening here? The escape from the constraints of the flesh? The escape from the constraints of being human? The inevitable purge following the collective unconscious' information binge? With the Internet we can now erase space and time, erase the restraints placed on the mind by matter._

And just a few paragraphs before hand, he accuses Fox News of overstating the matter.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sure, 4chan can be like the Great Link of the Changelings in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." Humans will develop a hive mind via 4chan and basically exist as a single unit, but just made up of many individual parts. Hopefully we'll use this newfound transhuman existence for something other than silly memes and pictures of cats.

</comment><comment><USER8> _They say the children are our future. But if 4chan is any indication of what they have in store for us, we are in for a very rough time indeed._

Huh? They lost me at the title really - but I clicked through for fun and was greeted with that.

Hmmmmm.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hope not.

<comment><USER10> It's funny how, given a ridiculous enough title, a Reddit-style zinger _can_ garner a positive reputation here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Troll culture (4chan, Autoadmit) has a sort of "secret society" flavor to it-- catchy memes and in-jokes, plus new words, much of which spreads out into the mainstream. (Pwn, "over 9000", Final Fantasy fetishism). It's a guilty pleasure and mostly harmless, but its creepiest 0.1% gets a lot of press.

I know a therapist who deals with trolling addicts (yes, this is a real problem for some surprisingly smart/high-functioning people) and believes troll culture is a casual sex replacement; that the sublimated, transgressive, and self-destructive energies that used to lead to casual sex are now being directed into troll culture. It's as good an explanation as any. That should be comforting, because as bad as 4chan is, it's a lot less destructive than casual sex.

<comment><USER3> Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, so that's where my energy is going.

Okay, I'm stopping. Found it appropriate to make 4chan style jokes in a thread about 4chan.

That hypothesis is very interesting actually, as it concerns me personally. I've gone through a trolling phase not late ago :( and I fit well in the target demographic (male, young, won't comment on the smart part).</comment></comment>


FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions - <AUTHOR> https://www.beseen.com/blog/talent/faang-managers-answer-interview-questions/ <comment><USER2> As someone who has social anxiety and depression I don't think I can be honest with a lot of these questions. My real weakness would be inability to connect with people and constant fear of doing something wrong or being terrible at what I do.

I usually think up some random weaknesses that I consider irrelevant and speak about those just to prove that I can be self aware.

Also I think very big portion what I am saying is bullshit because I don't even particularly remember a lot of the details of the stories that would match those questions. So I have to come up with new stories or think up details for the stories I don't quite remember.

I passed Amazon interview process and all the other behavioral interviews I have ever attended so I must be doing something right despite my constant feeling of terror and anxiety.

I do think that I want to find a completely remote job now, I hate being in the office around people and I feel so much better when I can work from home. However I am afraid this might worsen the issue since I am not putting myself out there. But it doesn't seem to me as if putting myself out there has also helped my anxiety.

<comment> barry-cotter > As someone who has social anxiety and depression I don't think I can be > honest with a lot of these questions.

You're not supposed to be honest. No one expects you to be honest. Everyone knows everyone knows it's a game. It's like the algorithm and data structure interview; it shows preparation and intelligence to be able to answer the questions well, whether your answers are based on a real event or pure fiction. If you can pretend to be a fantastic hire with lots of preparation there's a reasonable chance you can actually show decent judgment if hired.

<comment><USER3> >No one expects you to be honest.

From OP:

>What's your weakness?

>"Please don't take the Michael Scott approach and turn this into a backhanded compliment ('My biggest weakness is that I care too much'). I'd highly recommend giving an honest answer, and one that is as specific as possible and not handwavy.

Some people believe in this B.S.

<comment><USER2> I remember the quote by Michael Scott when he said that sometimes he starts the sentence unsure of what he is going to say and that he hopes to find out along the way. I can definitely relate to this one during interviews. Especially since it is recommended not to pause and think for too long.

It is actually quite often I can relate to Mr. Scott I can't help but to feel entirely sympathetic towards him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Please don't take the Michael Scott approach and turn this into a backhanded compliment ('My biggest weakness is that I care too much'). I'd highly recommend giving an honest answer, and one that is as specific as possible and not handwavy. This shows that you're self-aware and are able to independently identify areas for personal growth

I disagree. People should be aware of the downsides to their strengths when they exist. One can be very creative but with the cost of a very scattered focus. One can drill down extremely deeply on problems but have trouble knowing when to move on.

Then again I think this whole exercise in telling people what managers want to hear in an interview is pointless, subjective ego masturbation.

What if your greatest weakness comes off as a false red flag? What if you know there's a high likelihood that they'll take it as such even though you're an above average fit for the position? Of course the manager wants an honest answer - this is the ideal answer from the manager's perspective, but piss poor advice for a candidate. Personally, I can't imagine putting an interviewee on the spot like that for such a poor, noisy signal.

<comment><USER5> This question sends a message "I'm a boss, you're a rank-and-file employee. Now, when we've made it clear, do a little self shaming."

Imagine addressing this question to a senior lawyer that you need to sort out some complicated situation. I guess, the lawyer would be first stunned for a second and then insulted that he's being treated like a kid.

<comment><USER6> Would they? Lots of law firms advertise when not to use them, and will often refer you to other, better options.

<comment><USER3> But you don't go to a lawyer and ask what they don't do. You ask whether they can solve your specific problem.

<comment><USER6> And you don't (often) hire full-time employees to solve a specific problem. They may work in a domain, but you don't hire someone to solve a specific problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "What's your biggest weakness?"

"Well, I tend to think about things that may be interesting and even have implications for work at hand for a given organization, but may turn out to be impolitic. For example: to what degree do behavioral interview questions either _resemble_ on the job activity, or _correlate_ with performance? If that degree is small, what's the real function of behavioral interview questions? Now, I'm sure you'll agree, that's an interesting question, maybe even one that could be used to generate productive insights for the right company. But on the other hand, it may not be very well directed to my immediate interests and goals -- there may be a much more productive answer that's more likely to result in concrete positives, like a job offer. So, you know, probably something for me to work on."

(This supersedes my previous nose-thumbing answer, which was "Fire.")

<comment><USER8> I appreciate the thought you have put into this. I'm open and honest, which means it took me a long time to get into a very senior position, where it's looked on as a strength while rank-and-file are punished to this day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've done my share of interviews at FAANG companies, on both sides of the table, and I haven't encountered most of these questions except "Tell me about a project you worked on". At least not with enough frequency for them to stick out. Some times recruiters will ask about why I'm leaving my current company but that's about it. They usually don't show up in the loops.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hearing "What's your biggest weakness?" from an interviewer should be a strong red flag for a candidate that they don't know what they're doing.

Not only is it a manipulative question, the response is basically meaningless if the candidate knows the game, because you'll get back a scripted answer. Those who don't know the game and answer honestly will only hurt their chances at getting the job.

The only question I think it worse is "what would your former manager say about you?"

<comment><USER11> What's funny is apparently these managers know and want a scripted ("rehearsed") answer. It's a mating dance.

<comment><USER12> In my experience they don't. They want to know if you're a reasonable, self- aware person who can communicate effectively.

Let's say you name a reasonable weakness that can easily be improved upon and that doesn't spell disaster for your ability to do your job. And let's say they reject you.

Either they're a terrible company to work for, or they have a huge mistake in their interview process. In the former case you don't want to work for a terrible company, so great, they just saved you years of pain. In the latter case, hey, mistakes happen. That's out of your control. Life is random sometimes. Besides, it's highly unlikely to be significant enough to tank your entire interview.

<comment><USER13> > _Let 's say you name a reasonable weakness that can easily be improved upon > and that doesn't spell disaster for your ability to do your job._

To the recipient, that is equally likely the rehearsed answer, because from high school on your told to think of one to reply to that question that fits into what your interviewer probably thinks is reasonable.

And there's the entire thing where some people answering truthfully would tell the interviewer things the interviewer isn't legally allowed to ask about, which is always a lovely strategy for running an interview.

<comment><USER12> The stereotypical rehearsed answer is the Michael Scott one, where you dodge the question by actually naming a strength and pretending it's a weakness.

In my experience working at places full of smart, talented, ambitious people looking to fill a role with a similar caliber of person: don't do that.

<comment><USER14> Most people knows that you should give a "real" but insignificant weakness just as you said you wanted in the previous post instead of non-weaknesses. If you don't think that people have practiced such answers and carefully picked their "weakness" then you are ignorant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mostly these aren't really behavioral interview questions.

Behavioral interview questions typically sound something like "tell me about a time when you..."

There's lots of value in a real, well crafted behavioral interview question, but most of these examples are just run-of-the-mill low-value interview questions.

<comment><USER2> Tell me about the time questions still make me think up bullshit answers as I have to adapt my existing stories to the question etc. I also don't have the best memory so I have to think up some details and sometimes I just say something plain wrong by mistake and I have to keep going with it in order to save face. I do feel like a Michael Scott actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish somebody also tells the Giant eCommerce retailer's leadership principles interview. That one is the weirdest interviews I have ever attended to this date and I am confident nothing else can top that.

The HR emphasised a lot on preparing those 12 leadership principles and how it is really important for succeeding there. I walked into a room where a person on the other end of video conferencing started pounding me "tell me about a time" questions and whenever I started answering something genuine, he stopped me and said "No, No, No, you are supposed to answer from one of the 12 points that our dear lord CEO likes".

It honestly felt like a cult.

</comment><comment><USER5> Rather than studying how to be a good doormat (oh, I meant, how to master the behavioral interviews), it's a much better use of time to read the G. Morgan's "Images of Organization".

<comment><USER2> Could you elaborate further about the book and why it is good. Will it help me earn more money?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would roll my eyes if I heard some of these answers

</comment><comment><USER12> There's so much cynicism from a subset of the HN crowd every time something interview-related like this is posted. Some of that cynicism is warranted, sure, but not in this case.

I'll keep it real: These aren't trick questions. They're simple, fair, and easy questions, and as such they're a good way to filter out people who have atrocious communication skills, or who possess mediocre theory of mind abilities, i.e. you can't put yourself in someone else's shoes and empathize with what they're looking for. If you find these questions particularly difficult, consider the strong possibility that you're lacking here.

"What's your biggest weakness?" This one is so simple it hurts: _sincerely and honestly state a reasonable weakness._ For example, "I've spent lots of time working solo, so while I've learned how to wear many hats, I don't have much experience working as part of a team." If you have terrible weaknesses that can't be overcome and would seriously impair your ability to do the job, you probably shouldn't be hired anyway. If you're completely unable to list any of your own shortcomings, then you lack self awareness.

The desire to lie and talk about a fake shortcoming often comes from a scarcity mindset: "I need this job so badly that I'll say anything they want to hear. I need to be perfect!" No, in most cases you don't. And if your interviewer is so unreasonable as to expect you to be flawless, is that someone you really want to work for? There are other jobs in the sea, keep looking.

"Tell me about a project you worked on." I couldn't agree more with what the person in the article said. Talk about YOUR contributions. The company is trying to hire YOU. What did YOU do? How did you do it, and why did it matter? Again, this is about communication. If you have a halfway decent theory of mind, it should be obvious what an employer would want to hear from you when you answer this question. Demonstrate your technical depth. Show that you're aware of and care about the impact your role has on the company's higher-level goals. That you can take initiative, drive things to completion, lead, execute quickly, handle complexity, learn over time, and make good decisions.

"Why do you want to leave your company?" People leave jobs. It's a fact of life. If you can't explain why you left, you seem clueless or even dodgy. Obviously if the job was still amazing for you, you'd still be there, so I can't agree with the article's advice to never mention anything negative. Just tell the truth, communicate it effectively, and address potential concerns. For example, if there were interpersonal issues, don't just dwell on those -- compare to other jobs you've had in the past where you've been able to work well with others together, and stress how important it is to you to work in an environment where people can communicate well, have good intentions, and support each other.

These questions just aren't that hard, and unless you have a seriously flawed track record, you don't have to be dishonest to give great answers. More importantly, those answers should be a reflection of YOURSELF. If a company doesn't like you, chances are you wouldn't like them. It's like dating. The goal is not to be a match with 100% of people. Just be your best self.

Corollary: If there's a test that you find particularly hard to pass in life, your knee-jerk reaction will always be to criticize the test. But it's important to consider your own potential shortcomings and ask, "Why is this test so hard for me?" That way lies self improvement.

<comment><USER14> > "I've spent lots of time working solo, so while I've learned how to wear > many hats, I don't have much experience working as part of a team."

That is a carefully rehearsed answer making the weakness look fixable instead of being serious weakness.

> sincerely and honestly state a reasonable weakness.

No, the question was "what's your biggest weakness", the "I haven't practiced doing this kind of work" is not a big weakness, everyone have bigger weaknesses than that due to their personality.

An honest answer would be "I am much slower learning technical things than my peers" or "I am competitive so I often come in conflict with my peers" or "I am afraid of conflict so I have a hard time making decisions" or "I get bored easily so I have a hard time finishing things" or "I constantly wear a mask so people never learn to know the real me" or "I don't like being proven wrong" or "I judge peoples competence by how much I like them rather than what they actually do" etc.

There is not a single person who doesn't have one weakness like that since many of them are a spectrum where no position is good. The "correct" answer is of course like you said, you give an easily fixable weakness like "I don't fully understand how deployment pipelines work since someone else did most of the work where I worked previously". But such answers are so easy to come up with, and are guaranteed not to be their biggest weakness, so you are basically checking whether they are fine with lying or lack self awareness.

<comment><USER12> _> That is a carefully rehearsed answer making the weakness look fixable instead of being serious weakness._

First, there's absolutely nothing wrong with rehearsing your answers to common questions like this. If anything it allows you to present yourself in the best light, which every interviewer wants. Nothing is worse than turning down a good candidate who performed poorly because they didn't take the interview seriously.

Second, I literally thought of that answer off the top of my head in a few seconds. It wasn't actually rehearsed. I don't mean this to sound arrogant. There are many millions of others who can do the same -- think on their feet, take the interviewer's desires into account, and come up with a great answer. Some of these people will be interviewing at the same places as you. It's important to know that there is a wide range of communication abilities, just like there is a wide range of programming abilities.

 _> No, the question was "what's your biggest weakness", the "I haven't practiced doing this kind of work" is not a big weakness, everyone have bigger weaknesses than that due to their personality… such answers are so easy to come up with, and are guaranteed not to be their biggest weakness, so you are basically checking whether they are fine with lying or lack self awareness_

This is splitting hairs. A reasonable person won't expect you riff through all your weaknesses to literally find the _biggest_ one. They just want to hear something that's not too trivial.

I can confident assert that the best communicators would instantly be aware of this when posed the question in an interview. I know a lot of engineers (myself included) who have a higher-than-normal-or-useful tendency to take things as literally as possible, as if every sentence is a spec, which makes us (relatively) poor or at least awkward communicators.

 _> An honest answer would be "I am much slower learning technical things than my peers" or "I am competitive so I often come in conflict with my peers" or "I am afraid of conflict so I have a hard time making decisions" or "I get bored easily so I have a hard time finishing things" or "I constantly wear a mask so people never learn to know the real me" or "I don't like being proven wrong" or "I judge peoples competence by how much I like them rather than what they actually do" etc._

Sure, and you could totally go that route if you want to. And ideally you'd go a step further, demonstrate that whatever trait you list is actually innate in humans, and that it's taken you work to be aware of it and work on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> GMAFIA not FAANG. Why is Netflix in that list?

<comment><USER19> Makes the acronym less offensive.

<comment><USER18> Well it's not offensive in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> break up these rancid companies</comment>


Quora Is On A Quest For Users With Its New Embeddable Quotes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/quora-embeddable-quotes/

<comment><USER2> Seems like a clever growth feature and could be huge for spreading the Quora brand in a similar way to YouTube, the answers on Quora are invariable excellent too.</comment>


Galileo satellites experience orbital injection anomaly on Soyuz launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.arianespace.com/news-press-release/2014/8-23-2014.asp <comment><USER2> I've heard that eventually most GPS devices, like phones, will be able to also use Galileo and GLONASS (the Russian satellite navigation system). Does anyone know the status of that? There's a list on Wikipedia of GLONASS-compatible phones, but it's not clear if the typical American phone can actually use it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smartphones_using_GLONA...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smartphones_using_GLONASS_Navigation#Samsung)

Also, does anyone know how much more accurate the positioning will be with the 3 systems combined? And whether phones will have access to regional systems like for Japan? The Wikipedia pages are enticing on these ideas, but I haven't seen most of it updated in a while.

<comment><USER3> Why are so many countries/regions building their own positioning systems? Is it just national pride? Paranoia about being denied military use of GPS?

It seems like a massively redundant waste of resources reinventing the wheel.

<comment><USER4> Japan is covered by a single orbit and there system provides significantly higher accuracy (cm vs meter) than GPS so for the fairly low price tag for seven satilites it's probably worth it.

<comment><USER5> QZSS (the Japanese GPS) is not autonomous. It uses GPS and use the additional satellite to improve precision. (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi- Zenith_Satellite_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi- Zenith_Satellite_System) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNSS_augmentation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNSS_augmentation))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This source seems to indicate that it was a software error that guided the stage into the wrong orbit.

[http://en.ria.ru/world/20140828/192413515/Galileo- Satellites...](http://en.ria.ru/world/20140828/192413515/Galileo-Satellites- Incident-Likely-Result-of-Software-Errors.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> How big this orbit difference is? Would adjusting the orbit be an option at all? Does anyone know? Just curious.

<comment><USER8> The 5 degree inclination change would likely burn through most, if not all, of the maneuvering fuel onboard the satellites. That's not accounting for the peri/apoapsis adjustments.

If they do get them to a usable orbit, they won't have enough fuel to last long.

<comment><USER9> And refueling is not an option? There are also people on the ISS for example, when the crew refreshes they could do that "on the way there"... yeah I don't know anything about space, just an idea.

<comment><USER10> How? Space is not like driving a car. To go higher you've got to burn fuel to gain velocity and altitude, do go lower you've got to burn fuel to slow down. If you're going the wrong direction or angle, you've got to burn a ton of fuel to change that (i.e. if at 90deg to ISS, you've got no velocity vector in common). And that's just my armchair assessment that ignores the myriad complications of spaceflight.

This is a common misconception, however. For example, people want to know why Columbia didn't just buzz over and hook up with the ISS rather than burning up. They were at a different altitude from ISS and could not have made the jump with available fuel.

<comment><USER9> > How? Space is not like driving a car.

Isn't it? You drive, you burn fuel. You take more fuel with you, it costs more fuel to get going. Some vehicles (spacecraft or car) require more fuel to drive the same distance than others.

Sure, space flights are much, much more expensive, but I don't see how it's so different. If it's not worth it to spend the extra fuel to get there, refuel, and continue to the original destination, then just say so.

<comment><USER10> > Isn't it. You drive, you burn fuel.

I'd refer you to the Rocket Equation [1].

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And this is why microsats make a ton of sense. Google did the right thing in buying Skybox. Instead of 3-4 beastly (and expensive) sats, send up a dozen much smaller ones and have them use software smarts to talk to eachother. I think that is a much more viable approach longer term for anything such as this in space.

<comment><USER12> How exactly could you divide a GNSS satellite in that way? Surely you need to transmit the time signal at a particular power level that would required a certain class of antenna and power system. Each of those satellites would need separate control systems so instead of having one fuel tank and thruster you would need several fuel tanks and thrusters.

Frankly the new entrants into the remote sensing market (like Skybox) have yet to make much impact in changing the market. Having a more innovative platform makes little difference to the end user without significant scale (which is currently lacking).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could they not just stay in this orbit and still provide a useful service? Hopefully it's not like they are completely useless now?

<comment><USER14> This based on ksp knowledge, so take it with a grain of salt. Typically when you launch a constellation of satellites you want them to all have the same SMA so that they have the same period. Since this one is significantly off it's going to drift relative to the rest of the constellation and isn't likely to provide a useful signal.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I am just wondering if there is any way this can be compensated for in software, either in the receivers or in the satellite itself.

<comment><USER15> The problem is more severe than it may seem. Satellites in the wrong orbit tend to fall to earth sooner (higher partial pressure at lower altitudes). Also, because of the satellites' purpose, they have to reach their design altitude to be of any use at all, for two reasons:

1\. Their orbital velocity must agree with the design criteria, so the Special Relativity adjustment in their clock rates will correspond to reality.

2\. Their altitude must agree with the General Relativity adjustment made to their clocks, same reason.

If they end up at the wrong altitude, both their velocity and altitude are wrong, and all this deep thinking unravels (and it's not likely that this error can be adjusted for after a launch), as well as the fact that orbital erosion becomes a limiting factor in their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems like a nearly content free article. Aside from the planned and actual orbits and the dates involved there doesn't seem to be much actual information here.

TL;DR: Something got screwed up during the deployment of the satellites, they're in the wrong orbits but stable, no danger to public, no clue what got screwed up.

<comment><USER17> It's a press release, not a post-mortem. Its only purpose is to inform the public of what they know with confidence.

<comment><USER18> While dispelling any possible notion of "blame" or "responsibility". Instead, some out-of-this-world power caused the satellites to "experience" an "orbital injection anomaly".

<comment><USER16> I think that's the part that annoyed me most about the whole thing. It's pretty obvious someone screwed up somewhere even if we don't know exactly where yet. Whitewashing the whole thing by saying there was an "anomaly" during deployment seems pretty weak. I would rather they be more upfront about it and say there was a failure of unknown origin that they're still investigating. Calling it an "anomaly" strongly implies that there was some sort of unexpected natural phenomena to blame, which although that _might_ be the case is so incredibly unlikely as to not even be worth considering.

<comment><USER19> No, it's just the normal language you use for those things. Anomaly means exactly "the failure of unknown origin".

<comment><USER20> Anomaly means an event (failure, in this case) that should be expected only once given a relatively large number of repetitions. To brand it an anomaly does indeed act to dispel notions of poor design because the suggested assumption that goes into it is that if they repeated the launch everything would be hunky dory, which would not be the case if there is a design flaw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why is the ESA still using Russian rockets? After the recent showing of the Russian Proton-M blowing up all the time (including taking out Europe's AM4R sat) its asinine they keep using Russian designs to do this.

They have alternatives with their own Ariane rocket and US rockets. Maybe its time they started not using the lowest bidder and went for quality instead. How many man hours were lost just now? Just incredible.

Also, I wouldn't put it past the Putin regime to do a black-ops on these Soyuz designs to weaken Galileo to give their GLONASS system a huge competitive advantage.

<comment><USER19> You're forgetting that it's Russian rockets that constantly refuel and resupply ISS, without any problems. It's just a selection bias.

> _Also, I wouldn 't put it past the Putin regime to do a black-ops on these > Soyuz designs to weaken Galileo to give their GLONASS system a huge > competitive advantage._

I wouldn't put it past him anymore that I would put it past Obama. The US would have exactly the same reasons. Believe it or not, Putin is not some sort of evil monster from hell the western propaganda tries to paint him recently, and the US is not some white knight following superior morality. One could actually reasonably argue that the US is more evil than Russia on the international scale. Anyway, the most probable explanation is still "space is hard".

<comment><USER21> >. Anyway, the most probable explanation is still "space is hard".

I never said it wasn't, I was just exploring the possibility. My point is that a lot of international relations, and this includes spaceflight, works on trust. When one country is habitually lying to the world and receiving sanctions from its partners, that trust is lost. Especially since we know Russian leadership has no problem with politicizing space, namely, its sudden turn-about on RD-180 and early retirement of its part of the ISS. So we know they are willing to be petty in the world of spaceflight for completely unrelated reasons (Ukraine).

Thanks for the downvotes and putting words in my mouth though.

<comment><USER19> > _When one country is habitually lying to the world and receiving sanctions > from its partners, that trust is lost._

Well, the magnitude of this is still debatable, once you move outside the america-centric western propaganda bubble. But still, since we're comparing those two nations, I'd like to remind you that United States Government keeps lying to everyone 'both foreign and domestic', so we have exactly equal reasons to trust the US and the Russians.

Fortunately space is usually free of politics, but since you brought that up... did you know that it was NASA who first said (or likely was forced to) to Russians: "hey, we don't like what you're doing with Ukraine, so from now on, we're not going to space together"? The "sudden turn-about on" military engines and ISS prolongation on the part of Russians was merely a reaction to a completely asinine politicization of space by the US Government.

So to fix your sentence, what we know is that "the United States leadership has no problem with politicizing space".

But hell, of course it's the Russia's fault, Holy Freedom Loving America never does anything wrong, or stupid.

Disclaimer: I'm not pro-Russian. I'm anti-stupid-prowestern-propaganda and the usual assuming that America is Good, Russia is Bad. I think we're mature enough to not base our thinking on cold war-era action movies.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The corporate "buckets of money" problem - <AUTHOR> http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/02/10/buckets/ <comment><USER2> Nice term. I've always noticed the problem, where a minor to mediocre win for one team massively inconveniences the entire firm by a little bit.

I briefly worked at a bank once where email searching was disabled in Outlook and would not be re-enabled no matter how many times you phoned them up. This must have been a huge win for the tech guys and their support burden or security concerns, but in the meantime, I couldn't find shit. I was seriously hobbled in my day to day activities, If I didn't find an important email and flag/archive it immediately upon receipt, it would get lost in the daily deluge and I'd have to ask someone to forward it to me a week down the road.

It was a fucking debacle. I seriously hope whoever made that decision got fired, there is no excuse for that level of incompetence.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty standard economics. Large command-and-control organisations develop remarkable pathologies because it's basically impossible to have a single set of objectives for any reasonably complex system of interacting agents.

But so long as the "transaction cost" remains lower in the command structure than in dealing with the market, stuff is done inhouse.

Then mix in the oddities which come from how budgeting works and you get situations like these. Nobody really has a good fix. There are _better_ ways of doing things (or at least, _different_ ways with different mixes of drawbacks), but not necessarily an optimal solution.</comment>


Show HN: Lua in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/scoder/lupa <comment><USER2> > _when raw speed is required and the edit-compile-run cycle of binary > extension modules is too heavy_

This is a compelling pitch in my opinion, but can anybody explain to me where Lua would be better than, say, Numpy, or Numba for that matter, for computationally expensive tasks?

What are the use cases for this that well-known and really fast Python extensions do not already cater for?

<comment><USER3> Those libraries are for doing fast matrix operations. Lua is a fast general purpose language.

<comment><USER4> Numpy, is that, but Numba is a general purpose JIT:

> Numba works by generating optimized machine code using the LLVM compiler > infrastructure at import time, runtime, or statically (using the included > pycc tool). Numba supports compilation of Python to run on either CPU or GPU > hardware

[http://numba.pydata.org/](http://numba.pydata.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just looking at lupa the other week for implementing a rule set interpreter in Python. Similar to how cloudflare uses lua for their WAS.</comment>


A Near Catastrophe: Within Feet of Becoming the Worst Air Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://aviationweek.com/business-aviation/near-catastrophe-within-feet-becoming-worst-air-disaster <comment><AUTHOR> Registration-free article text link [https://pastebin.com/eVtqqBn7](https://pastebin.com/eVtqqBn7)</comment>


Raising taxes boosts innovation says Billionaire VC Nick Hanauer - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/11/republican-tax-cut-for-rich-economy-215696 <comment><USER2> Beware of wealthy people telling you taxes should be higher and "they" should pay more.

It's already entirely possible for them to pay more without a change in tax rates, just don't take any deductions.

The reality is that they want to pretend to pay more, but the tax he's specifically calling for isn't on the wealthy, is on the high earners. Those are two different things.

The wealthy make their income through dividends, which is taxed at 20%. While he briefly mentions this, he carefully doesn't prescribe a change to it.

This isn't a pro-trump's tax cuts comment, I'm just trying to point out the hypocrisy of this article.</comment>


EFF Wins DMCA Exemption Petitions for Tinkering and Repair - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-dmca-exemption-petitions-tinkering-echos-and-repairing-appliances-new <comment><USER2> Another version of this story discussed 3 days ago (1053 points/343 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18303560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18303560)

</comment><comment><USER3> > "But New Circumvention Rules Still Too Narrow To Benefit Most Technology > Users"

:(

(tl;dr: the short whitelist of devices that users are allowed to repair grew a little bit longer; but "users can't repair their own devices if the manufacturer doesn't want them to" is still the default)</comment>


Google Ventures: Your Design Team Needs A War Room. Here's How To Set One Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028471/google-ventures-your-design-team-needs-a-war-room-heres-how-to-set-one-up

<comment><USER2> Slightly off-topic, but can anyone explain how they're using the <video> tag in #page-jumbotron?

I presume it's somehow being used to smooth the GIF animation.</comment>


IPhone Terms & Conditions: 3 Times As Long As The US Constitution - <AUTHOR> http://daggle.com/iphone-terms-conditions-3-times-long-constitution-2015

<comment><USER2> Isn't that pretty much the world in which we live? Nothing unusual, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> Sensationalist title is sensational.</comment>


Slack now has 2.3MM daily active users, 675K paid seats, and 280 apps - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/12/slack-now-has-2-3-million-daily-active-users-675000-paid-seats-and-280-apps-in-its-directory/ <comment><AUTHOR> This really tells me how little I understand the startup ecosystem. Chat is arguably THE oldest thing on the Internet and I would have never dreamed to re-pitch that idea in the last few years, much less think yet another iteration could be such a wild success.

Congrats to Slack. Well played.

</comment><comment><USER2> So roughly 5m-10m/mo in gross revenue?</comment>


Show HN: Google Analytics for your personal location - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/saunter-share-your-day/id1322101759 <comment><AUTHOR> Been working on this for about a year. Basically my first real 'startup' since I launched Tinychat nearly a decade ago. Essentially, this is google analytics for where you have been. It makes use of a local database on the phone itself so you have control over your data. The only external calls it makes are anonymous ones to either google or foursquare to get names of places if you stay there for more than 15 minutes.

This app was created to answer questions that are not possible to easily answer now, like "What are my top 10 restaurants in miami" or "when was the last time I was at the dentist". While perhaps the audience for such data isnt as large as social platforms, I believe that there is enough utility in this for it to succeed.

The app itself is built in react (so android version coming in next few weeks) and makes use of custom geofence zones to accurately (in testing, more accurate than any other app in the ios app store) get your location and track your path with minimal battery drain of about 3-5% per day. All this done in the background.

Right now, the analytics options are just getting started but we are building out a full suite of detailed 'drill downs' for people to explore their data, even with the ability for you to write your own queries if you choose.

Id appreciate any comments or criticisms, be as harsh as you want- This app was a huge undertaking and if there are shortcomings I want to hear them.

<comment><USER2> It does seem like an interesting idea. The big problem I have is one of privacy as I would be uncomfortable with submitting my location data (even if anonymized) to an offsite entity.

I would hope that you have an easily accessible "kill" switch to turn off tracking.

Coincidently, I was just considering what would be involved in creating such an app for myself. My curiosity was piqued when I cam across the Super Day app.

[https://superday.toggl.com/automatic-productivity- logging/](https://superday.toggl.com/automatic-productivity-logging/)</comment></comment>


Escherization - <AUTHOR> http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/projects/escherization/

<comment><USER3> People forget that much of Escher's work were prints done by woodblock - <USER2> he would do is not draw on paper, but carve wood, which of course means working in the "negative" of the image. Looking at the woodblocks is simply mindblowing - a real mind hack.

They are not often on tour, so Escher fans in Europe should hop onto a cheap easyJet flight to Greece to see this:

[http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=3219...](http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=32192)

I saw an earlier installment of that exhibition series and it was well worth a trip.

[Edit: Looks like some woodblocks will be in the US early next year: [http://www.pbpulse.com/arts-and-culture/art- museums/2009/05/...](http://www.pbpulse.com/arts-and-culture/art- museums/2009/05/20/the-boca-museums-new-season-elvis-escher/) ]

<comment><USER4> They exist in the US, just not on display.

I got the chance to examine the (US) National Gallery's collection of Escher prints; they aren't on display, but stored in the library, and you can see them on request. There are hundreds of prints, many of which are artist's proofs, and have penciled notes in the margins. It was those that impressed me more than anything else; as a printmaker, I hold his work in the highest regard --- and to see the amount of work he had to go to in order to accomplish the effects that he did did nothing to decrease my admiration.

It's worth looking at his straight forward woodcuts and lithographs, also, in addition to his famous tessellations and spatial warps; they are the epitome of good printmaking.

<comment><USER3> I believe one of the reason the prints are rarely on display is that the paper he used was not of archival quality and has really suffered with the passage of time. The woodblocks are simply very rare - some recycled by the artist even IIRC to make more blocks.

<comment><USER4> Also, his _prints_ are simply rare. There are less than 500 images in his entire body of work, as I recall. Only some of those used blocks (he also made lithographs, mezzotints, aquatints...), and only some of those survive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also <http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/> for (what I find) a more interesting kind of Escherization.

(The UWaterloo one is about taking an arbitrary shape and tweaking it to make a plane tessellation, and some generalizations of that. The Leiden one is about the sort of nonlinear self-containment found in (e.g.) Escher's "Print Gallery".)

[EDITED to fix an error -- gjm]</comment>


Telegram gives up on the Telegram Open Network - <AUTHOR> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/05/14/telegram-gives-up-on-the-telegram-open-network/ <comment><USER2> I felt like TON was unnecessary in the first place but am open to hearing other opinions on this. Feels more like yet another company that tried to jump on the blockchain hype.

Side note: I was not at all a fan of those Lady Gaga lyrics being used as headings.

<comment><AUTHOR> You think it's bad, I've still got "Telephone" stuck in my head every time I hear about the Telegram blockchain. But you know what they say: a pain shared is a pain doubled!

The software is just another DPOS blockchain with smart contracts - it doesn't do anything much better than the multiple other such pseudo-decentralised blockchains. The only point was to support a token offering.</comment></comment>


Foreign students targeted by UK anti-migrant policies - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/foreign-students-targeted-uk-anti-migrant-policies-161102130654314.html <comment><USER2> So not one source from the gov't. Just a one sided article. It may be an unfair policy but with out any context its hard to take it at face value.

</comment><comment><USER3> I expected this to be about the fraudulent universities that were more common a few years ago, where someone would register a college in a single room and grant visas to hundreds of students, who didn't need to attend anything. I think most have been shut down.

The students in the article appear to be genuine, and it's worrying that in the government's desperation to reduce immigration figures, they're being targetted.

<comment><USER4> As a UK citizen someone who has recently graduated from a UK university: the situation is pretty bad for foreign students (excepting EU students, until we leave). It's alright while you're studying here, but as soon as you're finished you have to leave (even before graduation ceremonies in some cases) unless you already have a visa-sponsoring job lined up.

There is absolutely no economic justification for this, it's just Theresa May (when she was Home Secretary) being necessarily draconian to the detriment of everyone.

<comment><USER2> College graduate is a broad classification. There are graduates who would be a huge benefit to any country but there are some who would not be. It is very clear before they get to UK there is not a right to stay past graduation.

<comment><USER3> In the past, immigration policy has changed within the duration of a typical university course.

Of course, that's a risk the student takes. But it's ridiculous that Britain has people willing to pay many tens of thousands of pounds towards their education, but is not willing to employ them after they graduate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Blog Converter (Google's tool to move blog data between services) - <AUTHOR> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/01/google-blog-converters-10-released.html

<comment><USER2> What other data will they "liberate"? For example, will they let you take your search history to another search engine?

</comment><comment><USER3> i use a lot of google's services, including gmail and google docs. it's nice to see that they care (in some cases) about a user's freedom with respect to his or her own data.

i know some people get upset wwhen open source and open data are confused, but the principles at heart are really quite similar, and very awesome to see a company respect that and not treat users like idiot consumers.

<comment><USER4> The article says "the Data Liberation team would like to announce". I am curious, is the Data Liberation team real? It seems quite possible that Googlers would form such a intergrouplet (a Googley word for a cross-group team of volunteer collaborators). There are already intergrouplets for testing, code reuse, code readability, accessibility, and much more. If these data liberators are organized, maybe we'll see a lot more announcements like this one.</comment></comment>


Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers (1959) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.368.2254&rep=rep1&type=pdf

<comment><USER2> Yes, Samuels' checkers program. First big success in machine learning. The basic concepts are all there. And then, as with most optimization-based systems, it hit a local optimum and got stuck.

Much of machine learning today works somewhat similarly, but has about 6 orders of magnitude more compute power behind it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is actually from 1959, not 1969 as the title indicates. Amazingly early successful work.

<comment><USER4> Remarkable. Thanks; fixed.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who regrets uploading their pgp key to keyservers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not me.

Why should anyone regret this?

Unrelated, but I have a friend that used to say that having your phone key on a keyserver and having signatures to such key on the same keyserver was a weakness because that reveals your web of trust.

If that is the argument coming up, I want to say the following: anyone believing that has completely missed the point of gpg, key signatures and web of trust.

First: trust level is not how much you trust someone. It is how much you trust that key actually belonging to the person claiming to be the owner.

Second: the web of trust is not about your friends circle. Is about finding a path from a key you trust to a key you are examining. To do the gpg/pgp thing right, you should really acquire as many signatures as possible.

All this is clearly explained in the GNU privacy manual and I really recommend anyone to read it. It's not very long and it's super useful.

\</comment><comment>-

One last thing: I am not regretting uploading my key to a keyserver because the gnu privacy manual has explained me how to handle my keys. In particular, I do not have multiple keys in my name laying around. My old key has been revoked and it clear what key should be used to speak privately with me.

<comment><AUTHOR> might be worth reading this and a ton of other articles that make so many good points why WoT is bad

[https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor- talk/2013-Septemb...](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor- talk/2013-September/030235.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I do for an old key. It revealed my connections and allowed people to construct a network that could have been used against me. Like when I negotiate, if they can see I know XX it may get me not so good terms.

Online, I suggest for opsec to be keeping identities separate. And add some randomization, things that are obviously wrong with some basic googling about you. Demographic details for example

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah i agree, if you use the key servers be careful with what info you use, you dont have to add email addresses either.</comment></comment>


Smalltalk to get a second crack at the whip - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@richardeng/smalltalk-to-get-a-second-crack-at-the-whip-ecaeb8a94533 <comment><USER2> Smalltalk is the second most loved programming language, according to the 2017 StackOverflow survey. (Rust is most loved.) If any language deserves a second chance, it's Smalltalk.

Thus, there's no reason why Smalltalk can't be widely adopted, whether it's in the enterprise or elsewhere (teaching, hobbyist, research, machine learning, natural language processing, IoT, virtual reality, etc.).

Teaching: [https://medium.com/p/an-open-letter-to-all-universities- ad98...](https://medium.com/p/an-open-letter-to-all-universities-ad98af4a96b3)

Machine learning: [https://biosmalltalk.github.io/web/](https://biosmalltalk.github.io/web/)

IoT: [https://medium.com/concerning-pharo/pharo- pi-9eef257b6a21](https://medium.com/concerning-pharo/pharo-pi-9eef257b6a21)

Virtual reality: [http://www.opencobalt.net](http://www.opencobalt.net) and [http://www.3dicc.com](http://www.3dicc.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's too bad this targeted a language that's actually useful, as opposed to something like brainfuck. For me the joke fell flat because of it. I would've loved to see this kind of investment – alas, such are the follies of this day.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully they introduce namespaces (like matriona) and the type system of strongtalk with gradual typing.

edit: just realized this was an april fools :(

<comment><USER5> I've a lot of Pharo (ex Squeak) since a few years. Even done a MOOC which was very interesting. I could have believed this blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A tear for the old skool.

Never again shall the sun of youth shine again

nor my code wander tended glades with wonder plain

and vigor unbound, exposed, unashamed, all in one

world

<comment><USER7> that's just what I was thinking

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So is Smalltalk a joke language now?

<comment><USER9> No the author Richard Eng has been doing a ton of short marketing blog posts trying to get more attention for the language and appears to have an April Fool's sense of humor. He's also been talking about Go a lot which is very different than Smalltalk in all but the simplicity aspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Month aside, it would be a great thing to actually happen...

Instead of e.g. Google investing tens of millions on BS like Dart.

<comment><USER11> What's so bad about Dart, if you disregard the "Google is trying to subvert the web" angst from people who have invested heavily in the javascript world? I quite like the optional typing in the language, for instance.

I just wish there was more serverside-development happening in Dart - it seems 95% client-side focused at the moment (dart2js and flutter).

<comment><USER10> > _What 's so bad about Dart, if you disregard the "Google is trying to > subvert the web" angst? I quite like the optional typing in the language, > for instance._

A new language that doesn't solve anything better than Smalltalk did.

<comment><USER11> It does provide the feature of optional typing, as I just said. I spent my formative years developing in a language with optional typing and really grew to like it. I think it's a great concept that has missed the mainstream somehow.

Besides from that the syntax is completely different, being inherited from C.

<comment><USER9> Is optional typing the same thing as gradual typing in Perl6 as in you can specify types, but don't have to?

<comment><USER11> I don't know much about Perl, but this describes Dart's approach to optional typing:

[https://www.dartlang.org/articles/language/optional- types](https://www.dartlang.org/articles/language/optional-types)

(But meh, it's not really innovative/new as this page says, just not popular.)

Basically, it's a language that allows you to choose the level of type checking. You can be super strict all the time, or only when it matters. Or not at all.

Like all other modern languages it naturally has the basic collection data types built in so that you don't have to reinvent them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish this wasn't a joke.

</comment><comment><USER9> Lol, I assumed a joke immediately due to the figure and subject, but forgot the date for a second :)

Edit: I don't think Smalltalk is a joke, just that HP wouldn't think this a worthy investment.

<comment><USER13> I think "Sun Microsystems marketing muscle" was what made me raise an eyebrow

<comment><USER9> They did spend a fortune marketing Java when Smalltalk was poised to be THE new enterprise language.

<comment><USER13> I remember all too well. Sun had mindshare at the time too, in a way that the far bigger IBM didn't. I'm just glad none of the 4GLs won

<comment><USER9> I'll cede my past reading of internet blog articles describing a time I was pooping in diapers to your actual real-world experience :)

2 questions..why did the smaller Sun have more mindshare and what were the 4GLs? I might not be familiar with the term.

<comment><USER13> The Fourth Generation Languages where supposed to take over from the Third Generation Languages (C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, COBOL etc.) for higher level work (like business computing)

Many have been successful within niches, but Java was a brand new 3GL at a time when a lot of industry focus was on 4GLs.

I think sun had mindshare because they understood the nascent internet much better. From my perspective it was the first time I had seen a marketing effort of that scale behind a programming language.

Sun also supported SunSITE which was pretty much the best place to find FOSS at the time

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth- generation_programming_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth- generation_programming_language)

<comment><USER9> Interesting thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>