How to avoid getting stuck with the middle seat on a Ryanair flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.nathancunn.com/2018-04-20-ryanair-seats/ <comment><USER2> I've taken a number of Ryanair flights this year. Assigning the middle seats to non-paying passengers backfires sometimes.

I booked tickets with my girlfriend. Almost 50% of the seats were still available (this was a month before the flight), but all the middle seats were taken. We wanted to pay for seats beside each other, but that wasn't possible, because they gave away all the middle seats. When there are three seats on each side of the aisle, that means no two seats are available beside each other. So, we didn't pay, we just took the random seats, and then asked people to switch after we boarded. We probably could have paid for a window and aisle seat, then asked the middle person to happily switch, but if we're paying for seats, we shouldn't have to do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article assumes that Ryanair always gives middle seats to the first passengers who check in and don't pay for middle seats. The eventual conclusion is that you should check in later to avoid getting the middle seat. I don't see why the R analysis and pretty visualizations are necessary for that.

Sadly the article lacks evidence that this is the algorithm Ryanair uses. They could equally well hold back the middle seats and offer them to the passengers most likely to pay for an upgrade. In fact, since on a full flight the hypothesized algorithm (give middle seats to the first passengers to check in) should not improve Ryanair's outcome over the old algorithm (give middle seats to the last passengers to check in) I'd guess they are indeed doing something like that.

<comment><USER4> The article specifically says that there is statistical evidence showing that Ryanair does, in fact, preferentially allocate base-fare paying users to middle seats. Though the article does not explicitly say that the evidence supports a particular variant of the algorithm, your particular alternative does not seem to alter the underlying reasoning here, which is that if you check in late enough, all the middle seats have been allocated. Once that happens, you are not going to be allocated a middle seat, regardless of how the airline allocates the remainder. (This could, however, change your odds of getting a middle seat earlier in the process, and whether a later check-in leaves you more prone to being bumped (which I assume Ryanair does unless it is forbidden by law) is another issue to consider.)

Update: I see that Ryanair does not overbook, which puts some perspective on the complaints about it - I don't care about meals but I do about the risk of being bumped.

Update 2: I overlooked one part of the alternative algorithm, but I think that it actually makes it less likely: if they are holding back middle seats on the chance of upselling to later arrivals, where are they going to put those people? It seems that they are likely to end up with a bunch of middle seats with no chance of upselling even to passengers who would have done so, or possibly having (even more) disgruntled passengers who paid to choose but got a middle seat anyway, depending on exactly how this scheme works.

<comment> vertex-four Interestingly, Ryanair claim that they do not overbook their flights, and claim to be the only airline in Europe which don't. See section 9 here: [https://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/passenger- charter/](https://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/passenger-charter/)

<comment><USER4> Yes - this seems to support that claim: [https://conversation.which.co.uk/travel-leisure/flight- airli...](https://conversation.which.co.uk/travel-leisure/flight-airline- overbooking-bumped-compensation-benefits-easyjet-virgin/) This also mentions that EasyJet claims to limit its overbooking to about 1%. You are probably aware that overbooking has become a problem in the US - I don't know whether European airlines are allowed to do it to the same extent.

<comment><USER5> The compensation for being bumped is defined in consumer law in the EU, and it's very punitive - ~300 euros minimum.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, thanks to 261/2004 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Compensation_Regulation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Compensation_Regulation_261/2004)) airlines generally have incentive to make sure people get to their destination ASAP. Although it's kind of a prisoner's dilemma at the gate when they ask for volunteers to take a later flight, if someone agrees to compensation which is less than the regulated amount the airline will of course take that.

<comment><USER4> At least if someone volunteers for less, no-one can claim to have been unfairly treated. I would argue that this is so even if the volunteer was unaware that the regulated amount was higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ryanair is a horrible airline. If you add up random costs you are confronted with during the whole process of flying with them they aren't even that much cheaper. With which I mean expensive meals/drinks, costs for suitcases, costs for checking in at the airport when you didn't have access to internet, etc. Leg space and general facilities are crappy and their handling of cancelled flights, etc is very poor. Whenever possible I don't fly with them en instead choose a more 'expensive' option.

<comment><USER8> > Ryanair is a horrible airline. If you add up random costs you are confronted > with during the whole process of flying with them they aren't even that much > cheaper. Withwhich I mean expensive meals/drinks, costs for suitcases, costs > for checking in at the airport when you didn't have access to internet, etc.

Complete BS. Cost of expensive meals and cost for suitcases aren't "random costs". They are entirely predictable and you have to make your decisions based on that. The people who can't do that end up paying for the ones that do.

<comment><USER9> I think he means arbitrary and unconventional, not random.

<comment><USER10> They're not arbitrary, they are well know and well documented, to the point of being really, really annoying for those of us who knows we don't want them. They were perhaps a bit unconventional ten years ago, but perfectly middle of the road today, even for legacy carriers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand the issue with paying to choose your seat on the budget airlines. My wife and I recently flew Spirit to and Southwest from our destination in the US. Even after adding bags and seat (we even paid for their big front seats) it was still cheaper than Southwest.

<comment><USER12> From my experience, people in the UK see the charge for a designated seat as scam, they don't understand the budget flight business model.

Ryanair (not a UK company btw) have been a pioneer in this area with aggressive discounting of basic level airfares but with lots of 'upgrade' options.

<comment><USER13> > they don't understand the budget flight business model.

Does letting you choose your seat increase their costs? If not, then I can see why people see it as a scam.

<comment><AUTHOR> they may be offsetting a cost elsewhere by doing this. If they wanted to make the same money but allow people to choose their seats they could raise ticket prices for everybody (which wouldn't be fair on those who really don't care about their seat allocation).

<comment><USER13> Yeah I get what they're doing (and I'm sure other people do too); I'm just saying I see why people feel it's a rip-off nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Little trick that I do when travelling as a couple: Get one randomly allocated seat, and then pay for the other one next to it (or as close by as possible).

<comment><USER12> You can't do that with some airlines though since random seats are allocated at check-in, not when you book.

It seems like an obvious loophole I would have expected other airlines to have spotted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Step 1: Don't fly on Ryanair. Just don't.

<comment><USER16> Flights I had on Ryanair are merely 1 or max 2 hours long, (not taking the driving up and down the runways in account) and for this period of time some discomfort is perfectly fine.

<comment><USER17> the driving up and down the runways can be a significant factor. Ryanair think nothing of keeping their passengers on the tarmac for hours on end.

<comment><USER18> Ryanair actually care a lot about keeping people on the tarmac - it costs them money. Their financial model only works if the plane is in the air as much as possible.

<comment><USER17> That is not true, as numerous documented cases will attest.

They get charged for using the gate, once they are on the tarmac "waiting for a window" they don't suffer additional costs.

It's not that they decide to "park the plane on the tarmac" it's that the interaction of various airport operational procedures make this the chepest option in certain scenarios, which is what they'll choose every time. Passengers bedamned.

In fairness though, I think though they've decided not to pursue this particular type of "cost saving" more recently.

<comment><USER19> _once they are on the tarmac "waiting for a window" they don't suffer additional costs._

Nonsense, the crew has limited flying hours, and sitting there will burn them up. I can assure you they don't want to have to cancel or delay a flight because the crew can't fly anymore.

<comment><USER17> Like I say, this is subject to operational restrictions but they'll throw the customer under the bus if and wherever it suits them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Isn't aisle seat at least as annoying as middle seat? People walking through the aisle bump into your shoulder all the time, and the stream of people walking through it almost never stops. It's not like you can use it as leg space.

Middle is worst of both worlds, except at least you don't get a constant stream of moving people right next to you

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say Window > Aisle > Middle. Middle definitely to be avoided.

<comment><USER15> People are generally ignorant of seat etiquette. Window seat gets the window, obviously. Aisle seat gets the better legroom. Middle seat gets _both_ arm rests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Afaik Wizz does the same randomization logic, it's a new "feature" though :(

</comment><comment><USER22> You say you fly a lot with Ryanair, be great to add some real data to support your plausible hypothesis.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure when this change came into play but I reckon I've had the middle seat once, after flying Ryanair on average fortnightly for the last two years. I don't get boarding passes emailed to me so I don't have access to them any more, so can't give actual data unfortunately.</comment></comment>


Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents (Scribd acquisition to follow shortly) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/30/google-now-indexes-scanned-documents/ <comment><USER2> I am a mathematics student and sometimes need to look up papers. A lot of these papers are in journals not available online and have references to more of such papers. This can sometimes make even understanding a relatively simple proof that could be explain in a book in a few pages a gruesome all-day ordeal where 3/4th of the time is spent looking up references.

It would be __really freaking cool __if Google (Scholar?) could scan these articles into PDFs, then attempt to OCR the references and see if Google has indexed those, then embed hyperlinks to the references. This is technically feasible, and I imagine it would really make a lot of researchers very happy.

</comment><comment><USER3> >> Scribd acquisition to follow shortly

Really.</comment>


The Perfect Desktop - PC-BSD 1.5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-pc-bsd-1.5 <comment><USER2> I used PC-BSD under VM-ware when I was forced to use a Windows computer, and when I wanted to use some very old hardware. It is very lite-weight and easy to use. But now I am on Ubuntu because it is touch to beat being able to apt- get almost anything on a debian system. I will have to take another look when they upgrade to FreeBSD 7.0

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh my god, the revolutionary 83-step install process!

It'll make every newbie's life much easier.

</comment><comment><USER4> Debian & Ubuntu for the win :) Nothin' beats apt-get!</comment>


California Promises No Sales Tax To Keep Amazon/Overstock Affiliates Happy - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20090706/0354255459.shtml <comment><USER2> Worth knowing if you are a large online buyer, that CA still charges a use tax - that is, you're expected to declare out-of-state purchases for use in CA and pay the same rate as sales tax, and it would matter if you got audited. So if you spend many thousands online in the belief that you're saving yourself sales tax, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise. That said, I've never heard of any regular person getting audited for state taxes.

This goes back to the 1930s, incidentally; it's not some anti-internet thing.</comment>


Health Care Incubator Starts Up - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/rockhealth-opens-incubator-to-get-the-web-2-0-generation-into-healthcare/

<comment><USER2> Personally i thonk this is great, healthcare has a lot of complex factora weighing in on the success of a startup due to regulation, the market, technology (legacy amd otherwise) as well as the fact that the ultimate customer is the patient.

I think this space merits some specific focus as its not quite the same to lump consumer internet startups and healthcare startups together. Their barriers to entry/success are different planets.

<comment><USER2> Grr... posting from my phone does not a well spelled comment make. And I hate how the edit function is not available seemingly arbitrarily.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Select Star from Movies - <AUTHOR> http://selectstarfrommovies.com <comment><USER2> Cool site! Couple of things

\- You should probably hardcode a limit somewhere for queries without one. Far better practice than relying on user's good behavior.

\- I tried 'drop table movies;' and it didn't drop the table, which is good, but it did return an error message about the read only nature of the table. You might just want to have it return a generic error message saying 'drop' statements are obviously not executed.

\- the table movie_genre does not exist

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Thanks for the feedback. The movie_genre table is actually movies_genre. I just fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting. I'm trying to think about real life applications for this. Where do you get the data? Are you thinking of making it as a public API? :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I actually liked this concept very much! I bookmarked it.

Would be nice to have an overview of what tables there is and their relations.</comment>


What Does Hacker News Think about Oracle Apex? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Oracle lock in is never worth it.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I increase discoverability on my blog without it looking spammy? - <AUTHOR> Currently each article on my blog is a full-page 'reader view' style document with only a basic site-wide header and footer.
There is nothing to draw visitors' attention to other articles on my site, which I imagine results in a high bounce rate for people who come from Google, etc.
I've tried having 'Next Post' and 'Previous Post' buttons at the bottom of each article but it looked far too spammy and forced in my opinion.
What other solutions could I be missing? <comment><USER2> I personally actually really like the old-fashioned sidebar with a box or multiple with "recent articles" and/or "popular articles", "articles from the same category", ... as a reader

Prev/next or "3 similar posts" at the bottom IMHO is also totally fine. It's _your_ content, on _your_ site, not some random external clickbait.</comment>


Show HN: Look ma, no ethernet! 8-core Cluster Over USB/OTG with Raspberry Pis - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/alexellisuk/status/764518552154042369 <comment><AUTHOR> It's an 8-core Raspberry Pi Swarm running Docker with a single power plug and ethernet connection to the internet. Four additional Raspberry Pi Zeros join as workers with a Pi2 or Pi3 over a USB cable which acts like an umbilical cord for power and data.

There's already a great image showing the setup and a fair amount of momentum behind this on Twitter so I'm linking to it.</comment>


Microsoft Office file encryption flaws - <AUTHOR>

From http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=653484 :
"If you're encrypting a file, then the obvious, elegant thing to do is to use position in the file as your counter. But then the moment you encrypt two files using the same key, you're screwed: you've just committed the equivalent of reusing a one-time pad."
"If "don't overfill a buffer" is an easy prescription that cost industry $4+bn USD, it's hard to imagine how unlikely it is people can avoid screwing up "don't reuse anything"."
For example, Office binary formats' RC4 encryption did almost everything right (ok, they did reuse the salt/IV on saves, but that is an implementation problem easily fixed and has been in Office 2007), except that they decided to use it block by block starting RC4 over each time. They did mix in a block number into the key, but here is the major mistake they made in the Word/Excel version: They decided to always start it at zero at the beginning of each stream, and did not mix in the name of the stream! Can you say keystream reuse?
I got all this by just reading the public Office file format docs. For example:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd946845%28v=office.12%29.aspx
Challenge: Reading the docs, can you find all the places where the block number is reset to zero causing keystream reuse (even PowerPoint have them!)? <comment><USER2> This is interesting. Have you contacted them with your findings? How prevalent are multi-stream docs?

Also, they don't discuss discarding any of the initial keystream, which means that combined with the block number, this could lead to related-key attacks just as with WEP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I forgot to mention that they did use a hash to generate the key, which means that it is not vulnerable to the related-key attacks.

"This is interesting. Have you contacted them with your findings? "

Yes, I did. I began with David LeBlanc's blog's contact page, and ended up starting an email thread about it. I know they know about it even long before.

"How prevalent are multi-stream docs?"

Pretty much all encrypted docs are multi-stream. And it is easy to read the streams on Windows, just use the OLE compound storage API.

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW, not all data are encrypted in an Office file. Usually only three or four entire streams are encrypted in Word/Excel.</comment></comment></comment>


How to remove your Last name from Facebook – Updated 8th September 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://cornel.co/article/privacy/how-to-remove-your-last-name-from-facebook <comment><AUTHOR> You might think _can I not just remove my last name?_ , the answer is no you can not!

I'm not the author of the blogpost, but I'm very excited I managed to find a hack for this. If someone now can explain me why this works I'd be interested to hear! - Have a nice day HN</comment>


Ask HN: Why Did WebEx Lose? - <AUTHOR> With COVID-19, it seems like all of America is talking about zoom.
Yet, when you read the search snippets for Zoom and WebEx, they both claim to be the "leading Enterprise solution" for video conferencing.
However, it seems clear that Zoom is the real winner.
And WebEx is at best a irrelevant second. The Bing to Zoom's Google.
But, when I was in college from '99-'03 WebEx was the first mover and clear leader.
I don't remember WebEx being terrible.
And from my memory they work almost the same.
Any take on what happened? And lessons for entrepreneurs? <comment><USER2> Webex did not lose. They just serve a different audience (mostly B2B I would say). Zoom has done a good job at going after the usual B2C customers so they are more popular but webex is a beast and is not going anywhere yet.

Situations like these, zoom is easier and cheaper to start with and hence barrier to entry is low. They also have done a better job at advertising to the consumers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anecdotal evidence - I work for a very large enterprise company and have a lot of meetings with customers and partners. The company I work for sells software to a lot of software and non-software companies. Most of these customers are large (5000+ employees) established companies.

Over the last two years: Vast majority of conferences with Skype and WebEx. Maybe one or two of our small partners use Zoom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I see. This helps.

I haven't looked at market share numbers.

Just observing mindshare.

But this is good to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where are you getting your data from?

This [1] would suggest that the Google/Bing analogy is a little off.

My, anecdotal, experience is that some large corporations, who would like to use Zoom, can't until the major security issues are resolved.

I think it's very possible that Zoom will end up as the dominant player but I see no evidence that it's there yet.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/870061/united-states- top...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/870061/united-states-top-web- conferencing-technologies-market-share/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. I'm going more off of mindshare during this whole Coronavirus pandemic.

I only hear zoom mentioned in the media and in social media.

Organizations that are just now adopting seem to be defaulting to Zoom. All anecdata, I admit.

But, at the same time, it seems there are enough data points across the media outlets and social channels, to see a trend.

I'm surprised at the shift in mindshare. Given that I remember a time when WebEx was videoconferencing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or in Webex's perspective this is probably a huge boom compared to normal.

Zoom is the cool new kid on the block - and actually managed to jettison itself above Google Hangouts. Like how Slack disrupted Hipchat and Linq.

I think where Webex lost its edge is that it became too enterprise-y and reluctant to innovate the product and user experience in favor of maintaining predictability for IT admins and being grandfathered through SaaS initiatives at big companies that would rather pay up for what has worked than change everything for something better.

<comment><USER6> It's probably synonymous with enterprise video conferencing. A startup or your kid's teacher isn't going to reach for WebEx. It's totally still around in large companies. It mostly does the job but fails about 3% of the time for no good reason. Screen sharing mostly sucks, but I haven't used Zoom, so can't compare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> WebEx fell way behind in usability. I consistently had problems getting audio to work as recently as a year ago. Regardless of whether I used the browser experience or their installed app, the only reliable way was to join the conference by computer and then use a phone to separately join the audio stream.

A very large corp I know still uses WebEx, but generally only uses it for screen sharing and has a completely different phone conferencing system they use for side-channel audio.

That's not how you win a market.

</comment><comment><USER8> The cool kid on the block is [https://jitsi.org/jitsi- meet/](https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/) . At least they don't share their user data with facebook like Zoom: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22708233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22708233)

</comment><comment><USER9> Cisco happened. They really suck and bought the product to slow adoption.

They prioritized integration with Cisco VoIP and $25k TVs with Cisco stickers and cameras over features that people give a hoot about.

Why? It's pretty obvious that a well executed solution like Zoom or even Google leads to a conclusion — you don't need video equipment that costs as much as your car or phones that cost more than an iPad!

</comment><comment><USER10> If I had to guess? WebEx is used by every big company, so Cisco rested on their laurels.

</comment><comment><USER11> Check your numbers first, "talking about" is not the same as actually being more used. The big enterprise I work for, and a couple I know of, use Skype/Teams and discourage the use of Zoom and other free alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER12> We use webex at work, they probably pay a lot of money for the service, and it has been reliable enough.

Meanwhile, Zoom has a lot of press, and a lot of freeloaders. We shall see how that turns into profit in the future.</comment>


How to Stop Co-Workers From Emailing You On Vacation - <AUTHOR> http://icantbelieveyoureemailingmeonvacation.com/

<comment><USER2> How about having them keep including you in conversations while you're on vacation, so that when you get back you can get caught up with what you've missed by reading them?

Here's another approach: Set your smartphone to stop checking your work email while you're on vacation. Set up an "away" message that responds to new messages by explaining that you're on vacation and not reading your email.* And, if necessary, give one or two select colleagues your cell phone number or personal email address for use in hair-on-fire screaming emergencies.

This approach has two key advantages over sending hyperlinks to snarky webpages: First, it doesn't try to force email to act like a synchronous communication medium. Second, it actually does something that could plausibly accomplish the desired goal of preventing you from having to deal with work email while you're on vacation.

*Ideally this should only send a message the first time someone sends you an email. If it autoreplies to every single message you're encouraging everyone to drop you from the CC list. Which cuts you out of the loop.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Maybe mine is broken because all I can see is a mildly obnoxious page. I don't understand how this will stop people from emailing me while on vacation.</comment>


For one quake survivor, self-help in the face of seeming helplessness - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-quake-scuba-20110317,0,7192950.story

<comment><USER2> Hacker News style seems to be more verbose than this content, either post your link with an non-sensational headline or post a comment asking the community to live to a certain standard. IE: you used a caption to illustrate your point while the target of the link has nothing to do with the caption. This feels like a reddit type post, which I do not prefer IE: "if you do this, I hate you".

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not an "if you do this, I hate you" post, it's a "I'm sick and tired of Western media focusing on only the nuclear plant when there are so many other things that they could write about, like this amazing story of a man who saved lives" post. That's a bit verbose for a headline, though.

I wouldn't know what reddit's like since I've barely ever been there.

I don't see where the verbosity of the content linked has anything to do with anything on HN. For example, in the last 10 hours, I've seen: "programming motherfucker," which was a large meme, a page with nothing but three or four bar charts and no analysis, several short blog/opinion posts... So I don't know why HN should be focused on the length of a post or how many words are used in it rather than the content.

Finally, there are plenty of sensational headlines on HN. Off the top of my head, I remember "Bag of Hurt," "Rip-Off Express," "Are Happy People Dumb," "Limitless Brain Power Possible," and I'm sure there are thousands of others that I don't actually remember. I do remember just yesterday, I was sitting here thinking that some headlines seemed really sensational just to get people to click.

I think it was even James Altucher, who is often linked here, that admitted in a blog post that he makes sensational headlines that have nothing to do with his actual content, and those are often linked here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In order to read more like this you have to read the other 9 that are like that of the complaint--- more so now than when Ted Sturgeon coined his aphorism...[see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_Law>]

<comment><USER4> _"... In order to read more like this you have to read the other 9 that are like that of the complaint ..."_

Or choose a better source?</comment></comment>


Hayekian communism - <AUTHOR> http://glineq.blogspot.com/2018/09/hayekian-communism.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> I'm starting to think many of you have never read Hayek in any serious manner, including the author. The mere existence of the Hayekian information problem, which is the core tenant of Hayek's ideology, refutes the fairly loose framing of what this post tries to convey.

<comment><USER3> It's fascinating that, to draw crude boundaries, "conservative" thinking is pro-capitalist/free-markets, which is largely justified by the theory of distributed local knowledge, but also strongly in favor of centralized authority on social/moral/scientific/religious/artistic matters.

<comment><USER4> There is actually an interesting parallel between the idea of prices in a free market as information (distributed knowledge as you put it) and the conservative notion (originally from Burke I believe) of traditions as information (from one generation to the next).

I don't see conservatism as inherently advocating centralization in the matters you mentioned, just a desire of not throwing away hard-earned good things, due to the realization that they're much harder to build than to destroy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great article. What's happening in China is not so different than in the US and Europe, with management of the economy shifting from democratically elected leaders to central bankers, etc. Hayek was an enemy of democracy (just skim LLL if you don't believe me), so recent trends are in accord with his vision.

<comment><USER6> Your conflating two unrelated issues:

(1) Liking or disliking democracy

(2) Liking or disliking certain policies that may be taken under democracy, or under an authoritarian regime.

A country could democratically ban the use of cars, that doesn't mean that everyone who is against democracy loves using cars.

<comment><USER7> _A country could democratically ban the use of cars_

It depends on how this is done. If this is done in a way which tightens centralized control of the populace, then it could be quite anti-democratic.

<comment><USER8> That's the only way it can be done. Otherwise, how do you enforce it?

<comment><USER3> If 51% of the population destroy the 49%'s cars, that's a crude form of democracy. (or at least "majority rule", whichmost people misuse as the definition of 'democracy')

<comment><USER7> This is why the US system is constructed as a republic. It's explicitly designed to also curb the totalitarianism of the majority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is simple identifiable reason for the economic success of Chinese communist regime.

It was Deng Xiaoping and the revolutionary but simple change he made to the standard Marxist thinking:

> Socialism means eliminating poverty. Pauperism is not socialism, still less > communism. [1]

Traditionally Marxists justified the poor conditions in the socialist countries as necessary step on the road to full communism. Alternatively they blamed capitalists outside the country or some inside forces. Deng abandoned this excuse and introduced very pragmatic economic approach.

Principles like "One country, two systems" or the cat's color theory: "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." helped to push this idea trough.

Basically Chinese first moved towards Socialist market economy with limits to private ownership, but the process has taken over and it's impossible to think that private ownership would be reduced again. I don't think that new generation of leaders really want to do that. They don't believe in communist ideology anymore. They want China be like Singapore or South Korea without the democracy part.

[1]: Deng Xiaoping, BUILD SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS, June 30, 1984 [http://academics.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/Deng/Buildin...](http://academics.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/Deng/Building.htm)

<comment><USER10> This comment contributes to the discussion, I don't understand why it's being downvoted.

<comment><USER11> Please don't break the guidelines by going on about downvoting. Instead, if you see an unfairly downvoted comment, simply give it a corrective upvote and move on. Other users will typically do so too—but comments like this one linger on, orphaned and meaningless.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER10> Fair enough, I just get irrationally annoyed when I see thoughtful comments be downvoted but you're right, I won't do it again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Paul Krugman provides a contrary perspective here:

[https://www.pairault.fr/documents/lecture3s2009.pdf](https://www.pairault.fr/documents/lecture3s2009.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't a key tenet of communism that workers own the means of production? That doesn't seem to be the case in China.

Isn't a fundamental motivator or justification for moving towards communism a reduction in inequalities? That doesn't seem to be the case in China.

China is certainly remarkable, but I think a more apt description is: authoritarian with market-oriented policies. I don't see much evidence for communism as originally envisioned. China's recent rise has largely been the story of a strong state enabling markets to function, but I wonder if the state's growing desire to involve itself in business will lead to sclerosis, similar to what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

<comment><USER14> China's government isn't involved in business in anything like the way the USSR's was. China probably has some room before it hits those particular problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> China isn't communist. It's state capitalist, and on an economic level (NOT philosophically) much more similar to the German Fascist model where private enterprise is welcomed, but always subservient to the whims of the state, without limitation.

If you disagree with this, then ask yourself if there is a court or any recourse in China for a private enterprise to challenge an action by the government. There isn't, and we all know it.

In the US, when the government wants to block a merger, they have to do so in court, where they frequently lose (the recent TimeWarner/AT&T merger being a prime example).

<comment><USER14> There's also this element of nationalism in China. The Nazis were _national_ socialists, distinct from the communists, who were _international_ ("workers of the world, unite").

<comment><USER16> You're painting communists with a wide brush. The differences in thought between Stalin and Trotsky ultimately boiled down to if the revolution should be seen as international or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hayek is best known for his book The Road to Serfdom which sounded the alarm on socialism/communism so... no! Hayek won't feel "right at home" in the surveillance state of China that's implementing 1984-esque "social score" and other policies that if not Serfdom I don't know what they are.

<comment><USER18> Social scores are bad.

Credit scores are good.

I'm not exactly clear on the difference, but I'm sure it's very important.

<comment><USER19> The only thing a credit score is, is a judge on your likelyhood to pay your bills.

The social credit score, on the other hand, is a measure of society/government approval. And it effects your ability to get on trains.

It seems fair that if you stop paying your bills, then people might not want to loan you money anymore.

It does not seem fair that if you criticise the government, or are friends with people who criticize the government, that you won't be allowed to travel anymore.

<comment><USER18> Criticize the government the wrong way in America, you wind up in jail, and aren't allowed to travel anymore. We're talking differences of degree, not kind.

<comment><USER19> We do not have any laws in America that do this.

If you are talking about how a police officer can just make something up and arrest you, well I guess, but that is something that can happen anywhere in the world.

And as bad as the news has been about unaccountable police officers, I can assure you that the US is way ahead of most countries, in terms of things like corruption.

If by "criticizeing the wrong way", you meant civil disobedience, well yes that's true. You usually do get arrested if you infringe on other people's property rights.

I wouldn't call this bad though, as it has nothing to do with your criticism of the government. Its the infringement on other people's property rights that you are arrested for.

<comment><USER18> I narrowly dodged being arrested simply for being on the street during the 2008 GOP convention. The only reason I wasn't arrested was that they weren't arresting EVERYONE the first day. (I did have to sit for hours, not allowed to leave, next to two people who were just trying to get home to their apartment.) After that, anyone unfortunate enough to be caught on the streets in a kettling zone got arrested, whether or not they were even protesters. A friend's co-worker got arrested when he went outside for a smoke break.

Yes, it could be worse, and it is in many other countries. But my point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not sure what part of China is supposed to be communist these days, except in name and maybe totalitarianism (if you take that to be a tenet of communism). As the author says, actual communist groups have been forcibly disbanded in universities and -- afaik -- nothing is really communally or democratically owned/controlled. Seems vastly more Hayek than Marx to me.

<comment><USER7> _Not sure what part of China is supposed to be communist these days_

There are parts of China where one can be pretty free in one's personal life, so long as one keeps their heads down and one isn't rich or famous. If one becomes rich or famous, one is inevitably drawn into politics, which can have high stakes consequences.

 _Not sure what part of China is supposed to be communist these days, except in name and maybe totalitarianism_

Communism isn't what's bad about Communism. It's the resulting totalitarianism that's the bad part. If it were possible to and stable to reorganize the world into 450 person communes, there would be something utopian about that. It's very possible to seek out and find such communal experiences. The problem is that such organization isn't stable for Homo sapiens.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487)

Here's what we know about democracy. It's short term stable, even when pitted against other forms of government. It often changes from within and becomes totalitarianism, however.

<comment><USER20> I don't think I disagree with anything you're saying, it just doesn't seem like what China is doing right now has much to do with the goals of communism. So the article seems weird to me. Obviously, given the downvotes, people disagree.</comment></comment></comment>


Can Social Media Be Saved? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/technology/social-media-privacy.html <comment><USER2> Read this earlier today. I was struck by the idea of "unionizing" users to help them take action against corporate interests who ultimately control user data. This makes particular sense when you think about data as a new form of labor that is produced by the many (users) but controlled by a few in power (the people who work at technology companies).

This idea has been around for a while [1], yet no "unions" for users of social networks seem to currently exists. Ironically, organizing a union seems like something that could easily be done via social media [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hacker_Manifesto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hacker_Manifesto) [2] [https://www.facebook.com/Internet-User- Union-128319670511322...](https://www.facebook.com/Internet-User- Union-1283196705113225/)</comment>


How we continuously test all API releases - <AUTHOR> https://assertible.com/blog/test-every-single-api-deployment <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this post to explain how we automate post-deploy tests to validate all deployments of our API to staging and production branches.

The cool bit is that we use GitHub status checks to get tests results directly on our apps pull requests: [https://s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/assertible/blog/assertibl...](https://s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/assertible/blog/assertible-github-status-check.png)</comment>


Ask HN: why use tmux if iterm2 provides tabbed windows - <AUTHOR>

It's personally more intuitive to navigate tabs using iterm and tmux just makes the screen space so limited. If I don't do pair programming is it recommended to just use iterm? <comment><USER2> I like tmux because I can do everything without my hands leaving the keyboard. I vaguely recall trying iterm2.

Also, tmux is much like GNU screen. I can run a remote tmux session on a server, detach it, then ssh back in and get right back into that same session later (tmux && C-b D then tmux attach)

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that makes sense. Been trying to revamp my coding environment, and decided to go with drbunsen's text triumvirate.

<http://www.drbunsen.org/text-triumvirate.html>

For now since I'm just working on a RoR app as a personal project, I don't really have a server and tmux's capabilities are limited on my end. So I might give tmux a go first and familiarise with it first, so i'd be more up to speed when it's capabilities can come to play fully :D

Thanks (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> tmux really shines for me when starting or switching between projects. I can fire up a rails app with a single command and have all the tabs I like ready to go. Check out prag prog's tmux book for a quick intro: <http://pragprog.com/book/bhtmux/tmux>

Also, tmuxinator is a nice addition if you do start using tmux. <https://github.com/aziz/tmuxinator>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow tmuxinator seems like real time-saver. Thanks for the tip!</comment></comment>


Over 500,000 Users Impacted by Four Malicious Chrome Extensions - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-500-000-users-impacted-by-four-malicious-chrome-extensions/ <comment><AUTHOR> Full report [https://www.icebrg.io/blog/malicious-chrome-extensions- enabl...](https://www.icebrg.io/blog/malicious-chrome-extensions-enable- criminals-to-impact-over-half-a-million-users-and-global-businesses)</comment>


[Show HN] Pica for iPad - A Facebook client - <AUTHOR> http://picaapp.com

<comment><USER2> Is there a reason it's named after an eating disorder characterized by a compulsion to consume indigestible objects? Maybe I'm missing a reference.

<comment><USER3> No it's not related

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

huytoan_pc and I made this app. Here's some code if you want to try it out:

A6FRFK3NXFRY LEEHRFKY7K37 NX3WYEXAFP7F L9YE6T464Y63 H796J3TP9FFY 39P7EFMN9LNH JRKNRP3AEKEX W4XFM3FA446J Y9999Y9KE7X6 77LHYF33M66R

Please reply and tell which code you got so other people know =).

<comment><USER4> Hi, got Y9999Y9KE7X6 :) Will be in Singapore next week, want to meet up?

<comment><USER3> We are in sf for wwdc, will be back by end of June. Send me an email @ firstname.lastname@example.com?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bought the app. It's a lot bettter than the official one. Keep up the great work.

<comment><USER3> Thank you :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> no SALT?</comment>


The Brain as Computer: Bad at Math, Good at Everything Else - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/the-brain-as-computer-bad-at-math-good-at-everything-else <comment><USER2> Think we need to distinguish between math as "performing pre-defined calculations rapidly", and math as "figuring out solutions to problems, often novel, sometimes new, that have a mathematical underpining and an ability to be represented in mathematical terms."

In short, computers are good at rapidly performing the calculations of a solved problem, or implementation of the algorithm. Humans are good at coming up with the algorithm. A good, general purpose algorithm generator is probably ai-complete, although i could see "evolution" as a plausible answer to such an algorithm generator too, though maybe only in its capacity to generate beter generators. Or maybe I'm talking out my excretorial orifice, I'm often not sure.

<comment><USER3> My dad always described this as mathematics vs. arithmetic.

Ultimately computers are just doing lots of arithmetic.

<comment><USER4> The brain is obviously perfectly capable of doing lots arithmetics very quickly, otherwise it couldn't process vision and audio signals.

<comment><USER5> Is it? Is there any evidence that it's converting the signals to symbols and performing arithemtic on the symbols? Or is the signal processing being performed "directly", through the essentially analogue operation of the neurons?

Otherwise you're asserting "doing arithmetic" as a property of any analogue system, and would say that a falling ball needs to understand calculus in order to make an arc.

<comment><USER6> An operational amplifier performs arithmetic.

<comment><USER5> Not _symbolic_ arithmetic though, and the answer is not precise.

If people are going to argue that inanimate objects perform arithmetic, they will need to define arithmetic. Digital or analog calculators do it symbolically, subject to interpretation of the symbols by a human.

If a human is using a calculator or an abacus or blackboard to perform arithmetic, would we also say that the abacus or blackboard performs arithmetic? (Great, now we have to define "performs")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The brain is actually really good at math - the best example I've heard of this (I think from the book 'Blink') is catching a flyball - in an instant someone is able to calculate the trajectory, wind speed, spin and coordinate with it's own body to run at the right speed to be in the right place when it lands. Now of course that takes experience but it's not just pattern matching since training allows people to adapt to new and unseen conditions. But anytime you have a 'gut' feeling, it's usually because of some behind the scenes calculations.

Translating maths into a mess of symbols and deconstructing it consciously is of course a laborious process - but AFAIK no computer is good at that either.

My own personal metaphor is the conscious mind as programmer and the unconscious mind as computer. If I correctly program my unconscious mind I can spontaneously realize the right answer far faster than I can understand why.

<comment><USER8> I don't agree with that description of what the brain does when you catch a ball, or with the principle it's proposing. I don't think the brain does any kind of calculations to figure out how to catch the ball; I think it's effectively muscle memory. If you've never caught anything before, your brain will have no clue what to do. As you practice running to catch things, I think a better description of your subconscious process is something like: "The ball (or whatever) looks like it's growing bigger in my visual field at a certain rate. A previous time when it grew bigger at a rate kind of like that, I applied about _x_ force in the legs, and I didn't get there in time. Another time when it was growing at about this rate, I put applied a larger amount of force _y_ , and the ball landed behind me. This time I'll try to apply a little more than _x_ force, but less than _y_ force, and see how that works."

This is a substantial oversimplification of course (there are many more factors involved than how fast the ball is growing in the visual field), but I think the point is clear enough. I doubt there's any trigonometry happening in the brain's circuitry; it seems much more plausible to me that the brain is really good at remembering how it felt in previous circumstances, recognizing how those remembered circumstances relate to the current one, and trying to adjust.

As I understand it, this is actually a significant debate in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and related fields. One prominent proponent of a view like the one I've expressed here, that the brain doesn't require or use heavy math to do things like catch flying objects but rather acquires the ability over time through experience, is John Searle. He is known for using the example of his dog's ability to catch a ball that's bounced off a wall when discussing and arguing against theories of mind that propose that all unconscious processes must be following algorithms or rules (like running through computations to figure out how to catch a ball). Here's a quote of his from the BBC program _Horizons_ (quote found in "New Technologies in Language Learning and Teaching", issue 532, on page 37 [1]):

      If my dog can catch a ball that's bounced off the wall, that may be
      just a skill he's acquired. The alternative view (the pro-AI view)
      would say: "Look, if the dog can catch the ball it can only be
      because he knows the rule: go to the point where the angle of
      incidence equals equals the angle of reflection in a plane where the
      flatness of the trajectory is a function of the impact velocity
      divided by the coefficient of friction" - or something like that.
      Now, it seems to me unreasonable to think that my dog really *knows*
      that. It seems to me more reasonable to suppose he just learns how
      to look for where the ball is going and jumps *there*. And a lot of
      our behavior is like that as well. We've acquired a lot of skills,
      but we don't have to suppose that, in order to acquire these skills,
      the skills have got to be based on our mastery of some complex
      intellectual structure. For an awful lot of things, we just *do* it.

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=fWQhj0HVCbUC&pg=PA37&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=fWQhj0HVCbUC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=john+searle+dog+catches+ball&source=bl&ots=7M1GnrUP5a&sig=7fNe54CBmwhR2hvnXb-t4f3HWpU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQrJ-w1PLUAhXJHD4KHbhaAHwQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=john%20searle%20if%20my%20dog%20can%20catch%20a%20ball&f=false)

<comment><USER7> Sure, it might not be trig, but in your description there is still calculation (the ball is growing larger at x rate, so adjust my legs accordingly), just not of the self-aware conscious variety. There are really two definitions of 'calculation' that are used interchangabley - one is a) the act of deconstructing into symbols and picking apart, and the other is b) the execution of algorithm.

My point is that 'feeling' or 'muscle memory' is the execution of (super hacky, ad hoc and efficient) algorithm, the big difference between computer calculation and brain calculation being that the brain is far more plastic than the computer. Presumably in an insects mind the 'muscle memory' is hardcoded (deliberately reductionist here), whereas we have a conscious mind that can train and 'program' our unconscious mind.

In your quote, 'we just _do_ it' is ignoring the great complexity of the human mind that can perform complex interconnected tasks with seemingly no effort at all, if it has been trained properly. Replace training with programming, and the parallels are there - graphics programming for instance is a huge collection of hacks and rules of thumb to get something that looks like perspective and light. Like our brain, it's results orientated so it truly doesn't matter if it's not 'correct'.

Now of course the brain and computers are different, but it's incorrect to say the brain doesn't calculate - it just is a lot more unwieldy to program than a computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The brain is incredibly good at math, just the APIs are not exposed.

<comment><USER10> To expand on that point, the brain is not good at simple products of large numbers, but is fantastic at doing things like triangulation. Or calculating how much muscle to contract to keep your balance going into a turn whilst running. Or eyeballing quantities - we notice when we get it wrong, but the vast majority of the time, we're pretty good at getting estimates correct about the human-scale world around us.

<comment><USER11> Have you seen that fellow that calls himself a mathemagician, Arthur Benjamin?

I believe he would argue it's a matter of training.

<comment><USER10> Well, yes, but that's not a very useful distinction. You train computers as well by programming them. In meatspace, there was a famous experiment in the '60s where kittens had their heads locked into position so that they only saw vertical lines - their nascent neuroplastic brains then trained that way, and as they matured, they simply couldn't see horizontal lines (eg: would walk into horizontal bars).

In the Nature vs Nurture debate, the purists on either side tend to use tortured, hair-splitting definitions to make their arguments, and it's usually those somewhere in the middle that sound the sanest.

<comment><USER11> In which case, computers, as in microprocessors, are extraordinarily bad at math.

Without the appropriate programming they can't do anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe math is a less efficient way of describing the world? Maybe the brain has a better system?

<comment><USER13> Good point- specially when we have holes in our understanding math has its problems where as humans can come up with a solution...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Bad at Calculating, Good at Everything Else" <\- correct title IMHO

It will be a long, long time until computers spit out something like the prove of Fermat's Last Theorem (which requires being good at math and not calculating).

<comment><USER9> Btw, automated theorem proving is a thing and many non-trivial results have come from that field (i.e. theorems humans couldn't prove before).

<comment><USER14> If this not only verification but generates genuine new proofs, then I might be wrong and have to remove one 'long'. Even then, I am convinced, it will still be a long time until computers can come up with such a complicated proof, involving so many different fields of mathematics, like Fermat's Last Theorem.

<comment><USER15> Furthermore, math is not just about proving things. Mathematicians invent the consistent formalisms in which the process of proving takes place, and spot isomorphisms between apparently different ones. They also have a knack for choosing to follow paths that will be fruitful, rather than than lose themselves in a maze of pointless symbol manipulation. AFAIK, no computer has ever taken it upon itself to find a proof of some nontrivial issue in mathematics, let alone do any of the less formal things in mathematics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Natural language provides a huge amount of overhead for doing math. If computers did math in terms of natural language it would be a lot slower for them too.

</comment><comment><USER17> It'll be interesting to see what changes occur in the human brain as we develop neural-computer interfaces. The human brain appears to be very good at performing instantaneous approximate calculations (catching or dodging a thrown ball). Interestingly, humans don't appear to be as good at memorising sequences as monkeys (1). It'll be awesome if someday we can see the difference between how the monkey and human brain behaves while carrying out this task.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAIGVT3N7B0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAIGVT3N7B0)

</comment><comment><USER18> The brain is doing math all the time.

Just making your eyes converge at a focal point so you can read this involves math, and that's probably some of the most trivial stuff. The inverse kinematics involved in moving your limbs also do involve plenty of math, try to do it in a robot arm and see what I am talking about.

The problem is that our way of doing arithmetic has a lot of overhead. The algorithm we learn in school is not that good in terms of efficiency. However imagining an abacus (not a 10 bead one) and exploiting muscle memory seems to be probably faster: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_hvzYS3_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_hvzYS3_Y)

<comment><USER19> Does math exist independent of human (and perhaps alien) minds?

What makes a the physical devices we call computers computational, other than the symbolic meaning we give their behavior?

<comment><USER18> Since all definitions of mathematics are controversial when subject to philosophical rigor, and the foundation of mathematics themselves are axioms (which by definition cannot be proven), and sometimes these axiomatizations are either incomplete and inconsistent with each other, I will just say it's an open question.

What we do however know is that mathematical principles so far hold up well and have been of vital importance to understand nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh, the brain wetware is good at arithmetic; just unfortunately not in a way that is available to conscious thought.

Just like there are computer languages in which there is little or no arithmetic support, even though the machine does nothing but arithmetic when evoking their meaning.

Just like we can apply silly abstraction inversions to bring about arithmetic in a system that doesn't expose it (e.g. Church numerals in a lambda calculus), the brain implements conscious arithmetic in a very inefficient way.

</comment><comment><USER20> The human mind can grasp platonic/Aristotelian forms, which are at least potentially infinite in ways of being instantiated. Computers can only deal with finite things, such as arithmetic. That's the fundamental difference between the two. Hence Gödel's second theorem that no axiomatic system can know truth, whereas we can know his theorem is true.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility) != [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility)

</comment><comment><USER22> There are ways to solve math problems that don't involve math.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here is a question for all the "brain as computer" proponents. Given the molecular level activity of a bunch of neurons over time can you figure out what "maths" happened there? If not, then please stop this "brain as computer" advertisement and come back when you have the answer to the above question.

<comment><USER23> People who downvote without any comments know how wrong they are and how easily their arguments can be teared apart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> By some pedestrian definition of math.

</comment><comment><USER25> The phrase "bad at math" should be banned.

<comment><USER26> The phrase "bad at X should be banned " should be banned.</comment></comment>


Why I No Longer Like or Use C++ - <AUTHOR> http://prophipsi.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-i-no-longer-like-or-use-c.html

<comment><USER2> C++ is a systems programming language first, and an application programming language second. There was a time when there was little difference between the two areas.

System resources are not as precious as they used to be, so the distinction has become more apparent. Hence, people who use C++ for non-systems programming encounter friction when performance goals are at odds with productivity goals. They then move to languages which take the opposite approach and sacrifice performance for productivity.

I use and like using C++. Yet I don't see any reason to argue when he says C++ is not for him any longer - he's probably right. I think the domain where C++ is appropriate has shrunk and continue to do so, and that's fine.

(For the record, rvalue references are a means to eliminate copying objects. This is, indeed, a performance optimization that most people don't care about.)

<comment><USER3> Do you have any examples where C++ has been used as a systems programming language? I thought C held that role.

<comment><USER4> Symbian os is coded in c++

<comment><USER5> Another example is (was ?) NuMega's DriverStudio framework for developing Windows drivers in C++. Both examples are more of an exception rather than a rule though.

Here's a lovely discussion from few years back: [http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/27/21102...](http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/27/2110228)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First comment on the article's own page pretty much nails it. C++ is flexible enough to be used as beefed up C - templates instead of macros, abstract classes and 'this' instead of callbacks and their arguments, operator overloading to produce more compact the code, etc. Noone is _forced_ to use multiple inheritance, virtual base classes, template specialization and other ++ wonders.

The guy also claims that "every single aspect of C++ being designed around higher performance instead of my productivity". This is false. The fact that it allows writing high-performance code does not mean it was one of the primary design goals. It simply was not, this aspect of the language was inherited from C .. which is one of the languages the author declares to be "going back" to. Kind of ironic if you think about it.

<http://www.dmk.com/c++/stroustrup_1986_10.html>

<comment><USER2> Err, if you read Stroustrup's Design & Evolution of C++, performance clearly was one of the primary design goals. Goals 2 and 3 in the statement you linked to spell that out. If a feature could not be implemented without effecting the efficiency of programs that did not use it, the feature was rejected. One of the points that Stroustrup stresses in D&E is that he wanted no languages below C++.

There are many features that do have a runtime or space cost, but you only pay for it if you use it. And I think that in many cases, what you end up implementing yourself would pay the same performance costs, if not more.

<comment><USER5> You didn't quite follow what I said or I phrased it badly. C++ performance requirements are inherited from "be like C" requirement. So when the guy says that he's going back to C, because C++ is "all about performance and not usability", it just does not make any sense.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I understand what you meant now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used VC++ in my first job, using Microsoft's ATL to extend the functionality of an ActiveX based Web app from Mercury Interactive (TestDirector, for those that are interested). It was utterly horrible, but I wasn't aware of it at the time.

I basically agree with the author of the post. I've never understood the use of virtual and template classes. However, I like what Anonymous says in the comments:

>Here's the secret to good use of C++: Never use STL. Never use any template libraries. Furthermore, never use templates.

>Pretend that it's C, with some nifty object-oriented features and operator overloading. Nothing more.

<comment><USER7> STL does blow. Templates are fine if used sparingly (i.e. non-STL container classes). Virtuals shouldn't be optional (a la Java). I'd add to the list that references in C++ are silliness (const reference usage should be a detail handled by the compiler automatically, non-const references just lead to ambiguous APIs).

The problem really seems to be that there are still some niches where you need something with relatively fine grained control and raw horsepower of C++, but there's not been anything to come along to fill that niche.

A simplified C++ standard would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately it seems that the standard is moving in the opposite direction.

For what it's worth, I find programming with Qt pretty close to "C++ as it should be".

<comment><USER2> I make extensive use of the STL, so I'm curious to hear why you don't like it.

<comment><USER7> I use it on a daily basis, so my ranting is coming from a different angle than the author's. The main problems that I see about the STL is that I find it more of a demo library for showing off how far you can push the generic programming metaphor than a pragmatically designed toolkit.

Here are a few points:

\- Heavy template usage makes debugging hard. The Intel compiler does the best job I've seen of reporting sane errors, but it's still ugly.

\- Heavy template usage makes the symbol count and binary size explode. Bigger binaries mean more cache pressure, so this slows things down, makes for bigger downloads, etc. (For a project at work recently I had to refactor some of our template based code to be OO instead as heavy template usage and associated expansion was quite literally adding 20 MB to our application's size.)

\- The API is fugly.

<comment><USER8> I can see why you're saying what you're saying, but I didn't find debugging particularly hard, and binary size explosion is probably your particular compiler's problem: MSVC 7.1 works very nice with templates, generating code only when absolutely needed, and sharing generated method/function instances across multiple template instantiations when types allow.

Moreover, STL is beautiful. It was originally designed for Smalltalk if I remember correctly, and it's "ugliness" is nothing more than a bad implementation. Separating alogrithms away from the data types they operate on is a novel idea. Granted, you get it for free in dynamic languages, but STL goes as far as you can get in a rigid world of stone types.

I have been facsinated by C++, by its ugliness, its sheer size, hidden powers and fast code it generates. My interest in it has faded away as CPUs got faster.

In my opinion the biggest issue with C++ is the lack of any kind of modules, and the author of the original post correctly recognizes that. Those endless includes multiplied by need for templates, produce ridiculous build times and make it impossible to hide implementation details (everythin g is still exposed via hpp-files).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use C++ for image processing. Would I like to use Ruby? Of course. Do I know that if I do so I cannot process 30 frames a second? Yes. You take what liberties the problem at hand extends to you and save the dogma for the preisthood.</comment>


Cornell researchers say in-person semester for university safer than online one - <AUTHOR> https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/01/cornell-researchers-say-person-semester-university-safer-online-one <comment><USER2> From the paper: "To provide context, we also model what would happen if we did not open Cornell for a residential fall semester and did full virtual instruction instead. Our nominal parameters assume that 9000 students would remain in Ithaca but outside the control of the University in off-campus apartments"

I didn't dig deep enough to see how this assumption affected their "virtual instruction" danger rating, but it seems weird to me to assume that 9000 students would move back to Ithaca to live off campus for a fully online semester?</comment>


How to Talk to Your Parents About Encryption7 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-to-talk-to-your-parents-about-encryption/ <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10790861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10790861)</comment>


Vim Galore: everything you need to know about Vim - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mhinz/vim-galore <comment><USER2> All of the invisible buffers/registers/marks/etc makes me wish for a "Vim learner's IDE" \-- something to expose the hidden things while you're learning.

</comment><comment><USER3> Will this tell me why changing the version number of my terminal stops the mouse from working correctly in Vim? Oh "If you can still reproduce it now, it's most likeley a bug in Vim itself! Report it to the vim_dev mailing list." That didn't work out very well when I did it.

<comment><USER4> You could try Neovim ([https://neovim.io/](https://neovim.io/)), the tracker and development is super-active and it's been decently usable for a while now.

<comment><USER5> > Q: Will Neovim deprecate Vimscript?

> A: No.

Aww.

<comment><USER6> Ideally, cleaner versions of plugins will be written over time without vimscript

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      xnoremap <  <gv
      xnoremap >  >gv

This is amazing, thank you.

Great compendium, congratulations on the work.

<comment><USER8> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> great documentation proposal. Is there any objective to keep it simple?

<comment><USER8> "simple" as in?

My intention is not only to show how to use Vim, but also list other programs often used in combination with Vim, explaining typical issues people encounter, historical facts, internal details, easter eggs, and so on.

So, yes, "all things Vim". :-)

It will keep growing, but I'll split it up so each section gets its own file.</comment></comment>


Eleven Straight Days of Tornadoes Have U.S. Approaching 'Uncharted Territory' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/us/tornadoes-usa.html <comment><USER2> I am as democratic/left as it gets on most issues but I'd argue that its time to defund FEMA Insurance programs and let the private sector free market factor in the cost of impending destruction because of climate change. IMO that would put a hard dollar figure on the 'cost of doing nothing'. Which will (hopefully) translate into some kind or carbon taxes.

Or another alternative would be fund insurance through carbon tax dollars and return the rest as refund.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that vulnerable populations would be hurt the worst. It's an ugly issue that will be hard to deal with, and I think we need to start looking at more widespread preparedness regulation as well as systems for moving people out of at-risk areas.

<comment><USER4> Not speaking of tornado zones, but most of the FEMA insurance goes to homes that make of beach/water front property.

I'd love to see the hordes of poor people that live on the beach.

<comment><USER5> > _FEMA's research found that low-income households are less likely to > purchase flood insurance than higher-income households, even though low- > income families are more likely to live in high-risk flood zones._

[1] - [https://www.nrdc.org/experts/joel-scata/flood-insurance- subs...](https://www.nrdc.org/experts/joel-scata/flood-insurance-subsidies- must-include-actions-lower-risk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe in human-induced climate change.

I am also incredibly tired of people banging the climate change drum every time there is a weather anomaly (or even a marginally notable event). In a dynamical system "anomalies" are normal.

There is a difference between a philosophy of reason and discovery driving your view of the world and interjecting your chosen "science issues" at every opportunity with zeal.

In more general terms I am sick of the top ten political issues being the only thing of substance anybody seems to care about because I believe the people in power want those discussions to happen as they benefit from the discord and distraction.

<comment><USER7> No one single instance of an extreme can be used to pinpoint "climate change" , but the absurd statistical deviation from the norm over the last 10 yrs or so is notable and clearly present.

[https://www.pnas.org/content/108/44/17905](https://www.pnas.org/content/108/44/17905)

But sure, lets play devil's advocate.

<comment><USER8> Your linked paper does not discuss natural disasters at all. How is this an answer to the parent comment's concerns?

<comment><USER7> parent comment

>I am also incredibly tired of people banging the climate change drum every time there is a weather anomaly (or even a marginally notable event). In a dynamical system "anomalies" are normal.

linked paper (first sentence)

>We develop a theoretical approach to quantify the effect of long-term trends on the expected number of extremes in generic time series, using analytical solutions and Monte Carlo simulations

"weather anomaly/marginally notable event" signified by the "expected number of extremes"

In this paper, focused on the extreme heat wave in Moscow and linked to other anomolies in recent news [https://www.pnas.org/content/108/44/17905#ref-2](https://www.pnas.org/content/108/44/17905#ref-2)

The google scholar link/search seems broken, but I remember reading this when it came out in 2011 and covered a wide range of global heat waves in disparate parts of countries, extreme drought, extreme flooding, wild fires, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Considering there were over 1000 tornados last year (and it was a low year), I'd say they are sensationalizing.

As I type this, there is a 1 mile wide one just 20 miles from here.

<comment> King-Aaron Is it the storm cell, or the tornado itself that's a mile wide?

<comment><USER10> The storm cells are typically many miles wide. Tornadoes not infrequently will cut a swath a mile wide. I could repeat many stories from family and friends who have witnessed such things, but after a bit they all start to sound the same to me after living most of my life in tornado alley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those curious about the connection between climate change and the observed trends in tornado behavior (stable year-over-year total count, and stable average intensity, but increased 'clumping' and variability), I would recommend this talk Harold Brooks gave last week: [https://youtu.be/Z_1PiixPX3o?t=275](https://youtu.be/Z_1PiixPX3o?t=275)

</comment><comment><USER12> Really great to hear these phone alerts are working as intended and saving lives. When I grew up in Tornado Alley you pretty much listened for the wind and hoped the sirens didn't get knocked over.

<comment><USER13> Same here. We learned to read the clouds because you were lucky to be in range of a siren (especially since storms and tractors are noisy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Tuesday was the 12th consecutive day with at least eight tornado reports, > breaking the record

Is there a list of tornado records? How many consecutive days with four tornados? 16 tornados? Longest stretch of at least one tornado but less than 8?

</comment><comment><USER15> Who'd have thought that increasing the system energy of a chaotic system near its critical value would lead to an increase in unusual events?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use an Ad/Content blockers? - <AUTHOR> I am curious of the results from a (typically) technically minded group.<p>http://www.strawpoll.me/20444819 <comment><USER2> I personally find the web without ublock origin to be unbearable. Especially youtube and newspapers make use of ads that really disrupt the user experience.

<comment><USER3> Same here, every time I use a browser without an ad blocker I am shocked by the amount and the content of ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ads are a distraction, a waste of bandwidth and CPU (and memory, and battery —- and energy and thus harmful to the environment), a privacy nightmare, and worst of all a malware vector.

Ad blocking is the first thing I install on a new device.

<comment><USER5> You're only looking at it from your own perspective.

It's a revenue source for the content creators.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and if the price of their revenue is exposing their users to malware, they need to find another revenue source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, and I feel like the internet is no longer a place I can visit without some form of protection. Things got so bad recently, that I had to switch from GNOME Web to Firefox, because I simply needed more protection than the default GNOME Web blocker could offer.

Right now I run a Pi-Hole[1] for my entire network, and on Firefox I use Clear URL[2], Decentraleyes[3], HTTPS Everywhere[4], Old Reddit Redirect[5], Privacy Redirect[6], and uBlock Origin[7], configured to block third-party fonts, and JS as well — which I whitelist when needed.

When I just want to read something, without having any form of interaction with the page, and I know it works well, I usually just use w3m[8] on the terminal, which I found out because of aerc[9]. Pretty cool browser for the terminal.

Am I super duper secure because of all these hoops I jump through? No. But it does not get in my way, and make me enjoy browsing the internet again, so why not?

[1] I have it set up on a dedicated server with Hetzner, with the server itself being the DNS provider for Pi-Hole using DNSCrypt.

[2] [https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls](https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls)

[3] [https://decentraleyes.org/](https://decentraleyes.org/)

[4] [https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere](https://www.eff.org/https- everywhere)

[5] [https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit- redirect](https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect) — not really privacy, or blocker related, but I find the new Reddit interface a dumpster fire

[6] [https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy- redirect](https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect)

[7] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

[8] [https://github.com/tats/w3m](https://github.com/tats/w3m)

[9] [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc)

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes. In theory ads could be a good thing, in practice they are obnoxious and only advertise bad products (perhaps because we have stopped inventing new good things, or perhaps because they don't need advertising).

I tend to use a javascript block as well, because I can't stand websites that are slow or take a up a lot of computer resources. Those do kill some of the ads but not all.

I don't really do it for privacy reasons, I use Temporary Containers in Firefox for that.

</comment><comment><USER8> I set up a pi-hole and just use that to block at the DNS level. I don't use any browser addons or extensions for blocking ad/content.

<comment><USER9> Me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's completely unbearable without one. I have thousands of manually added domains as malicious ad providers and invasive, abusive scripts try to bypass adblock too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Definitely. The internet is almost unusable without it nowadays, especially when it comes to large and more corporate sites and media outlets.

On a related note, this makes me wonder how many people both run ads on their own sites and use adblockers at the same time. I'm certainly guilty of that one, and I wouldn't be surprised if the people running these media sites and social networks were in the same situation.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't use any of the described blockers, but I do block them in other ways, such as disabling JavaScripts, blocking specific requests in certain domains, redirecting certain requests in certain domains, and applying custom CSS to hide things and change other stuff. This tends to have the effect of blocking ads too, even though I do not actually have a ad blocker installed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Unfiltered internet is too annoying to use. Got a Pi-hole equivalent for whole network filtering, and uBlock Origin for the browser.

</comment><comment><USER14> Absolutely.

I have had very restrictive quotas while travelling (2 gig per month, = 60 megabytes per day!) and to have a large proportion of your daily allowance being taken up with megabyte after megabyte of unnecessary downloads is a pain.

And that's apart from the clutter of unwanted crap that's scattered all over your browser screen.

</comment><comment><USER15> Definitely. When I browse the web without blocking for 10 minutes I already go insane because of the inane and intrusive ads for bullshit I don't want and need. To not speak of the immoral tracking.

I use NextDNS + AdGuard, which filters out a good 99.5% of shit.

</comment><comment><USER16> I use wipr on safari and nextdns at the OS level, uBlock Origin on other browsers. When i have to turn one off to unbreak a site and then proceed to the rest of the web I'm seriously appalled.</comment>


Biggest IPO Flops in History - <AUTHOR> http://money.howstuffworks.com/10-biggest-ipo-flops.htm

<comment><USER2> Article doesn't give the company valuations - just the share price - at IPO. Share price doesn't tell you much.</comment>


Code Walkthrough of Bert with PyTorch for a Multilabel Classification in NLP - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.wootric.com/when-bert-meets-pytorch <comment><USER2> For fine tuning BERT onto a specific domain, what amount of text data would you recommend to train on?

<comment><USER3> Since the training is done on the tasks of masked word prediction and contiguous sentence prediction, I'd suggest about a million sentences (from the same domain), with an average token length of 7 per sentence. Longer sentences would definitely help, as BERT uses the transformer encoder architecture which has multi head attention. This would enable the model to do better contextual representation learning for the embedding layer.</comment></comment>


Introduction to Literate Programming Using Org Mode - <AUTHOR> http://howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-programming-tutorial.html <comment><USER2> I also really like this video of his: [https://youtu.be/dljNabciEGg](https://youtu.be/dljNabciEGg)</comment>


Spiri - Autonomous Quadcopter on Kickstarter - Innovation or Scam? - <AUTHOR>

I stumbled upon this browsing kickstarter, and I was pretty excited, and then I read this techcrunch article with a kind of - weird comment - and - anyway I just wonder if HN has any strong opinions on this particular company / product idea:
Kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/914887915/spiri
Techcrunch article with nasty comment: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/spiri-kickstarter/ <comment><USER2> I think there is a need for more platforms that isolate the 'mission systems' parts from the flight controls systems. There are tons of applications that should not require developers to become a controls engineer to implement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree. That's a large part of why I found this particular quadcopter project attractive. I am interested in a fairly specific project that is much more about how the quadcopter is used than about the science of keeping it stable, aloft, and responsive.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was pretty close to contributing to this kickstarter, and the comment is at odds with what I could find about the guy whose company it is (a Canadian guy who seems pretty interesting), following his personal links, etc. That comment on techcrunch really bothered me, though.

The guy's name is Patrick Edwards-Daughtery and this is his personal site:

[http://secretvespers.com/](http://secretvespers.com/)</comment>


Notes on CPSC 465/565: Theory of Distributed Systems [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/classes/465/notes.pdf <comment><USER2> Jim Aspnes also teaches a Randomized Algorithms course, with similarly detailed and well organized notes available: [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/classes/469/notes.pdf](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/classes/469/notes.pdf)

He's a fantastic and engaging lecturer as well. I highly recommend taking a course with him if you have the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks interesting. I've been searching for a modern book which explains the algorithms behind many of the building blocks of modern distributed software such as zookeeper, consul, etcd, mesos, etc.

With a bit of a background in the theory, the tools mentioned above and their alternative add up to a bewildering number of projects, all seemingly doing very similar things.

Just a couple of hours ago I asked a relevant question on SO (unfortunately, it looks like it will be closed soon): [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37843295/book- recommendat...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37843295/book- recommendation-for-distributed-algorithms-to-understand-zookeeper-consul)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, until now I found it discouraging that most freely available material in distributed systems consisted of either reading lists or terse slides. I've seen people compare to the field to the humanities in that reading the primary sources is the main way people learn, but I've never found that easy going.

edit:

And it looks like a similar question has been asked at [http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/4793/start-learning- ab...](http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/4793/start-learning-about-theory- of-distributed-systems/), with some other recommendations I wasn't aware of.

<comment><USER5> It's a bit like learning to work on a bicycle by reading physics textbooks.</comment></comment></comment>