US Department of Justice Argues Assange Has No First Amendment Rights - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/24/assa-j24.html <comment><USER2> Horseshit.

The Bill of Rights is descriptive of _some_ of the natural rights of men, not prescriptive. The reason it exists at all was to satisfy people who quite rightly thought that without the extra legal insulation a malicious Congress or government would trample all over them.

Go read the 1st Amendment, it's right here:

> _Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or > prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, > or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to > petition the Government for a redress of grievances._

The first five words are "Congress shall make no law", or basically, this isn't a _grant_ given to the people, this is a restriction on the type of laws Congress is allowed to pass, and if Congress can't pass a law, then a President can't enforce it because it doesn't constitutionally exist!

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but you are wrong. But that's ok, its a common misconception about constitutional law. The first amendment does carry those restrictions, but it is not the only law affecting those rights. Specifically, the "privileges and immunities" clause from the 14th amendment has extended the 1st amendment to apply to the rights of citizens and has been interpreted as such by the Supreme Court in various cases.

JA is not a US Citizen, and I admit I do not know where that lands him constitutionally speaking.

<comment><USER4> But the moment he's tried in a US court or lands in the US presumably he has those rights.

We don't treat tourists under a different Constitution or deny them 1st amendment rights.

<comment><USER3> Does he? This depends on extradition and not necessarily the 1st amendment.

<comment><USER5> The extradition request was for normal federal charges where the first amendment pretty clearly applies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm wondering at what point the Australian Government might actually stand up in the defense of one of it's citizens against potential (and maybe even actual) human rights violations.

Australian politicians very much like to talk about 'protecting Australians' when it comes to ISP data retention and laws against encryption, but they tend to go entirely missing in the kind of situations where they are actually needed on behalf of a citizen that, in this case, needs potentially life- saving protection.

<comment><USER7> Not going to happen. They will bow to the needs of the USA, as Brazil has now done in its prosecution of Greenwald.

Wikileaks is sitting on a ton of info about the ADF's war crimes as well, and the Australian government want nothing more than to prevent the _intense_ scrutiny of its proud fighting force by the worlds' people that would result from such a leak. They are fighting tooth and nail to ensure that Wikileaks is invalidated completely in the minds of the Australian public, who generally have very little temerity when it comes to criticism of their armed forces actions.

EDIT: Besides which, there is Australia's heinous Sedition law, which is being floated as the means by which Assange would be silenced were he to land back in Australias territory.

<comment><USER8> Australian Federal Police is already investigating war crimes committed by the Defence Force:

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-20/afp-travels-to- afghan...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-20/afp-travels-to-afghanistan- to-investigate-alleged-war-crimes/11527426)

The media has had plenty of information about alleged war crimes so I doubt Wikileaks is going to offer anything new.

<comment><USER7> .. and as we can see from this token investigation, the media in Australia is also under attack for its own investigations of ADF war crimes, a situation for which Australia has been lambasted by international journalistic organisations - who are strangely silent on Assange's treatment.

So .. There is more to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> UK govt should be refusing all US extradition requests, and suspending all trials until it is accepted Sacoolas be extradited to the UK.

<comment><USER10> The US, like other countries, do not want to set 'bad' precedents on diplomatic immunity. Afaik she had diplomatic immunity and despite the speeches on both sides the US will never extradite her because of the precedent that would set.

In addition, in her case I suspect they also want to avoid any disclosure of the activities of her husband.

The point actually also (or especially) applies in the UK: If she did have diplomatic immunity then what is the basis to prosecute (or even just sue) her in the UK?

<comment><USER9> Both the Foreign Office and the US State Department appeared to accept that she no longer had diplomatic immunity, and she wasn't a registered diplomat anyway -- she was the _Intelligence officer 's_ wife. Or at least that's what the Foreign Secretary was claiming at the tail end of last year. The surprise is either of them getting immunity for an airbase intelligence role outside London in the first place. I've seen several reports questioning whether the immunity was valid at all.

But having returned to the USA there is no longer any immunity. A crime is still there to be investigated and prosecuted, an extradition could proceed.

Additionally US-UK extradition agreements both under Thatcher and later under Blair have been notable for their imbalance, but that seems rather academic here.

A balanced discussion of the issues underlying: [https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/sacoolas-affair-diplomatic- im...](https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/sacoolas-affair-diplomatic-immunity-or- special-immunity)

<comment><USER11> "airbase intelligence role outside London"

There are lots of US bases outside London that conduct US intelligence gathering - e.g RAF Menwith Hill.

<comment><USER9> Which don't have everyone running on diplomatic plates, or actual diplomats.

For a diplomatic cover, usually something for missions in unfriendly and hostile states, (shades of Cold War le Carré here) it would be for staff at the embassy -- which is in London. So the airbase would have to be considered a branch or part of the London embassy under the Vienna Convention. Yet Menwith Hill and Croughton etc are supposedly RAF bases militarily shared under NATO deals.

Hence all the controversy currently coming out of the woodwork, and numerous articles quoting QCs and ministers disputing the validity at all, or considering it abuse of Vienna, including the exploration piece I linked above. IANAL. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've heard people say the US constitution lays out limits of what the US government can do, as opposed to rights of US citizens.

So, if the US government wants to hold you in detention, they have to tell you why, not because you have that 'right', but because they are bound by law to do so in all circumstances irrespective of what passport you're carrying.

Again, I've only _heard_ this before -- I'm not at all a legal scholar. Can anyone confirm or deny this interpretation and possibly give more reading material around it?

<comment><USER13> The first ten amendments are literally called the "Bill of Rights". It limits what the government can do because doing so would be in opposition to the rights of US citizens.

"Rights of citizens" and "limits of government" are two sides to the same coin.

Edit: should have used "person" rather than "citizen". I was mirroring the verbiage used by the OP and should have been clearer. E.g. non-citizens are still granted Miranda rights

<comment><USER14> "Citizen" is never mentioned in the Bill of Rights. It's all "The Government shall make no law" or "the people" or "the accused" which apply equally to any other person within the United States. Even undocumented immigrants are protected by the Bill of Rights and legal non-citizen residents certainly are.

<comment><USER15> The question is whether the Bill of Rights ends at US border from what I understand.

<comment><USER13> I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I think the issue is whether those rights apply to _non-citizens_ outside the border.

I think it's generally well established that rights travel abroad with citizens. However, it's less clear if they apply abroad (or even to U.S. territories) to non-citizens. E.g. _United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez_ claims it does not apply to non-citizens who do not have a voluntary association with the U.S.

Edit: I'll try to be more clear. The rights of U.S. citizens extend beyond the border _when dealing with the U.S. government._ I was not implying other governments must recognize U.S. Constitutional rights when dealing with U.S. citizens.

<comment><USER16> Interestingly enough, the phrasing in the article implies that the Justice Department is arguing that speech made outside the US is not protected, not simply speech made by non-citizens.

I would be incredibly surprised if that argument held up.

<comment><USER13> See Anwar al-Awlaki for some evidence of how the US applies constitutional rights to citizens abroad when they are considered enemies of the state

<comment><USER16> Was that legally supported? I think it just wasn't challenged

<comment><USER13> ACLU challenged with multiple cases. As far as I know they were dismissed

[https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-obama- constitutional-...](https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-obama- constitutional-challenge-proposed-killing-us-citizen)

[https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta- constitutiona...](https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta- constitutional-challenge-killing-three-us-citizens)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If the US wants to apply US law globally then US constitutional rights should apply to you if the US wants to prosecute you. I imagine if this goes forward it will end up at the US Supreme Court. Also if Assange is on US soil at the time of prosecution then the 1st amendment should apply and it should be retroactive.

<comment><USER18> The US should respect article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or retreat from its signature to it.

Related, the US should respect the UN's ban on wars on aggression (Article 2, 39 of the charter), or otherwise retreat from its membership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "According to WikiLeaks, witness statements submitted to the court by US > prosecutors on Saturday argue that Assange does not enjoy First Amendment > protections because he is not a US citizen and because the amendment > allegedly does not protect speech made outside the United States."

Isn't this another way of saying US legal protections don't apply to people who aren't American, and aren't physically present in America (or under its jurisdiction)? I feel like this would be the case for other countries, too: free speech laws that protect Americans in America wouldn't protect them in China or Australia or Kenya, and Kenyans, Australians and Chinese citizens outside of the US aren't protected by US law, either.

<comment><USER20> If US law doesn't grant protection to Assange because he's neither a US citizen nor physically present in America, then it also shouldn't be possible to prosecute him for things he did while neither a US citizen nor physically present in America.

<comment><USER21> This is something I've always found confusing about the entire situation - Assange is an Australian citizen who did something in Iceland, yet the USA is applying its laws to him. Granted he obtained US intelligence from a US citizen, but how is this his problem? I find it hard to understand how this is possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's bizarre to me that the US constitution's philosophical basis is that it does not create rights but only recognizes natural or God-given rights that people already have, yet the US government doesn't recognize those rights for anyone but its own citizens.

<comment><USER23> It is largely an untested theory. The USG asserts that his 1A protections do not apply because he is not a USC and speech was outside the US. That begs the question of whether the court then has jurisdiction. It is a good rule of thumb that if you are being tried in the US, the constitution applies to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well, that certainly undermines the credibility of the Dept. of Justice's previous claims that Assange would receive a fair trial. If Assange doesn't have first amendment rights, what other inalienable, constitutional human rights doesn't he have?

</comment><comment><USER25> > witness statements submitted to the court by US prosecutors on Saturday > argue that Assange does not enjoy First Amendment protections because he is > not a US citizen and because the amendment allegedly does not protect speech > made outside the United States.

Wouldn't this logic extend to all the other amendments as well? Meaning Assange has _no_ rights, at which points, why even bother with a trial? Just execute him as soon as he touches US soil.

Of course, this logic could be applied to _all_ foreign nationals then.

My only question is, if US rights don't apply to foreign nationals, how come legal restrictions _do_ apply? Can the executive branch just arbitrarily decide which laws apply to a foreign national?

</comment><comment><USER26> I mean... he's also not a U.S. citizen, and wasn't / isn't under the jurisdiction of the U.S...

so sure if they argue he has no first amendment rights, then how do they argue they have jurisdiction?

<comment><USER27> Isn't this a slippery slope? Could the argument be made that anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen isn't protected by the constitution then? Not a citizen, you can't say what you want when you want. Not a citizen you don't get the right to due process. Etc.

<comment> non-entity The US just assassinated a high ranking military official of a nation we arent at war with openly without even attempting it covertly. It would seem that they are already well invested in carrying out justice against foreign nationals as they see fit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I truly hope there will be more leaks in the future. So far, we're seeing the tip of the ice-berg - but I predict that if Assange dies without justice, there are going to be repercussions. There are a _lot_ of angry people out there, sitting on a goldmine of information, just waiting to see how this proceeds. I can't imagine a scenario where Wikileaks is pounded into the ground, and the rest of the world goes quiet - sure, mainstream mind control being what it is, we may forget Assange soon enough.

But the truth wants to be free, and when crimes against humanity are committed at such scale as the Coalition is capable, there has to be more on the horizon.

One wonders what the AirWars folks are thinking about all of this. I sure hope groups like these, as well as Wikileaks, is going to survive this onslaught of injustice.

The truth will come out. There'll be more leaks.

</comment><comment><USER28> Having dealt with this issue while overseas and having done some previous searching, the question of whether the Constitution applies to Non-Citizens residing outside of the US is unclear in law.

Note, the distinction here: Someone who is residing outside of the US.

"Assange does not enjoy First Amendment protections because he is not a US citizen and because the amendment allegedly does not protect speech made outside the United States"

Julian Assange is an Australian Citizen who was residing in the United Kingdom and was not being held by agents of the US Government. It's unclear under what precedent he would enjoy protections under the US Constitution.

<comment><USER29> There's a strong Constitutional construction argument that argues the Constitution applies to all people regardless of citizenship if the government intends to put legal binding upon them and we are not in a state of war.

But I believe the US executive branch has not ascribed to that legal philosophy since at least George W. Bush's presidency.

<comment><USER28> I think that's a good argument, but I'm not a lawyer, I just know that the Rules Of Engagement for military members extended the spirit of the constitution, to how we were supposed to interact with the local population in Iraq.

In Assange's case though I don't see how the First Amendment will help here, as the charge is "Conspiracy to commit Computer Intrusion." I don't think the district court is making a case about whether Assange has the right to publish data freely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Between December 19 and January 13, lawyers had just two hours to brief Assange and take instruction. They were granted one more hour to confer on January 13, when Assange last appeared in court."

IANAL, but that doesn't sound normal to me, particularly for such a case.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wait, hold on a minute here, I was assured that the one thing Assange should have done years ago was turn himself over to the authorities and let justice take his course. Can someone explain to me how things could have diverged so badly from the expected path?

<comment><USER32> If Assange had gone to Sweden in 2010, _and been found guilty and gone to prison_ , he might have finished his sentence before the USA officially decided to try him with their 2017 (?) indictment.

Even if he was still in prison, Sweden is at least as capable of resisting USA extradition requests as the UK.

Even if he wasn't in prison/an embassy (either not guilty or guilty and released after doing time), the indictment would've happened anyway, and led to another extradition attempt anyway wherever he was — including, I recon, if he went straight from Sweden to Ecuador, given that Ecuador did remove his asylum.

Either way, his conditions would've been better between them and now, but also the situation right now would be the same (except for the time spent in a UK prison for breach of bail, and held by the authorities while waiting for an extradition hearing, and the loss of bail bond money from his supporters) except that _either_ he would be exonerated from sexual assault charges _or_ a dangerous narcissistic rapist would've been punished with a prison sentence rather than allowed to present themselves as a victim [delete as appropriate].

<comment><USER33> If he had been tried in Sweden in 2010, and there were no political machinations, he'd have been out probably by 2013-2015. Sentences in Sweden are short across the board - you can find even convictions for violent rapes in Sweden that results in sentences no longer than that.

But that rests on a lot of assumptions, such as that there wouldn't have been an earlier US indictment if he'd been conveniently accessible.

And of course it rests on the assumption that Sweden would have been as "capable of resisting" extradition. Which is a big question - one of the results of "Cablegate" was that we know that _years_ after the Swedish government found out Swedish police was complicit in blatantly illegal rendition of two political asylum seekers who were afterwards tortured after being handed over to the government they were fleeing, the US was chastised secretly by the Swedish government after Swedish military intelligence caught Swedes assisting illegal rendition flights via Sweden. Nobody were ever tried for either incident. So it's not clear whether or not Sweden is even capable of stopping the US from unilaterally doing as it pleases, before even consider whether Sweden would want to.

I'm inclined to think the oddities in the Swedish case was down to domestic Swedish issues rather than US involvement, but at the same time I know for my part if I had feared US prosecution, I'd much rather stay in the UK than go to Sweden.

<comment><USER32> Hm. Well, I view the current extradition process as evidence the UK isn't going to try very hard to stop him going to the USA: If the UK authorities did have that intent, I would've expected them to inform Sweden about the end of Assange's asylum and given them a chance to reopen their case before the USA got to start a new one, but the complainants were reportedly surprised by the events.

Then again, I left the UK because I no longer trust the UK government to do good, so naturally I must be _unusual_ in my belief about the UK…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As someone whose legal arguments have been drastically misunderstood by papers of much higher reputation (looking at you, WaPo), I'm skeptical of the accuracy of the claim.

</comment><comment><USER35> No judge will support that, not even cronies put in by Trump. The only way they would get anything even close is to have him declared an enemy combatant and that's not going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER15> So the same justification for gitmo. Nothing new.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is not a credible source. Has there been any reporting from a major paper?

<comment><USER37> I'm not sure why people are downvoting you. The website even admits to being controlled by a communist organization: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Committee_of_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Committee_of_the_Fourth_International)

<comment><USER38> What about communism makes a source untrustworthy?</comment></comment></comment>


Google secretly monitors millions of schoolkids, lawsuit alleges - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-education-spies-on-collects-data-on-millions-of-kids-alleges-lawsuit-new-mexico-attorney-general/ <comment><USER2> >"G Suite for Education allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary,"

Money quote from Google, it's a good headline but a weak case. Still sad imo though. Teens have grotesquely little data agency considering how commonly they get hyped as the most tech literate group in American media dialogues. The real problem though is parents, American parents love products that let you be your own nsa so the majority will never advocate policies that might jeopordize this new status quo.

<comment><AUTHOR> And what if the parents said no? Their kids get left out of lessons and activities and tests?

Also, what if the parents, like most of the population, are technically illiterate and aren't aware of the consequences of allowing Google to have this data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > We do not use personal information from users in primary and secondary > schools to target ads.

Assuming that Google is being honest here, that's still not very reassuring. It's a narrow disclaimer that leaves open the use of that data for other purposes by Google.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google is a spyware company with spyware apps and services.

So of course they spy on school kids. It's what the company does.</comment>


Scientific evidence of popular health supplements  - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/

<comment><USER2> I love that potassium is down in the none area, given the fact that I had it shot into my arm at the hospital with the doctor looking at me saying I don't know how you walked through the front door. Many people don't get a balances amount of electrolytes and a supplement can guarantee that you at least get the RDA. I would say it is worth it, given the lack of it almost killed me.

</comment><comment><USER3> B vitamins are useful for vegetarians and alcohol drinkers but here they are below "worth it line".</comment>


Pros/Cons of Machine Learning Algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://coggle.it/diagram/WHeBqDIrJRk-kDDY/t/categories-of-algorithms-non-exhaustive <comment><USER2> I wouldn't pay attention to these groupings. They are artificially grouping on arbitrary factors and paying attention to the pros/cons could lead you astray.

For example: Regression shouldn't be it's own group because regression is commonly used in many decision tree algorithms. This group would be more apt to be described as 'linear models'. There are many different types of dimensionality reduction algorithms that are very different from LDA or PCA. The ensemble group are mostly decision tree algorithms and while technically they are ensembles, that is not what is thought of by most DS. AND, the NN categories show some of the elements of an algorithm (back-prop for example) as being an _actual_ algorithm. I could go on...

<comment><USER3> I don't think linear regression should be in decision tree. Maybe logistic regression.

The grouping on a high level is good and I kind of like it to send it to my business team for them to make sense of the whole ml situation. Just my 2 cents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Regression" shouldn't be a separate category of algorithms given that the other categories are learning algorithms like ANNs, SVMs etc which are also used for regression. Also, it mentions Bayesian algorithms are fast - that's not true except for some specific ones.</comment>


How Citus Executes Distributed Transactions on Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2017/11/22/how-citus-executes-distributed-transactions/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know why they use deadlock detection rather than deadlock avoidance (the simplest avoidance algorithm being simply to always acquire locks in the same order)? I can't find a good reference right now, but I was under the impression that deadlock detection, especially distributed detection, is extremely costly and basically precludes high contention workloads, but maybe I'm confused here.

The only two reasons I could think of were 1. You can't know all the locks you want in advance (because the postgres api doesn't require it), or 2. Citus doesn't expect customers to have high contention workloads where deadlocks are likely (or at least they thing they can be reduced primarily to single node deadlocks).

Am I overestimating the cost of deadlock detection?

<comment><USER3> It's actually both of these reasons, with reason (1) being the primary one.

PostgreSQL allows interactive transaction blocks (meaning you don't have to submit all commands within a transaction block upfront). Citus extends Postgres and needs to provide the same semantics.

That said, we regularly evaluate different techniques on distributed deadlock detection and avoidance. We have an FAQ that discusses deadlock avoidance methods in the context of Postgres. In the link below, the last question on "How can a distributed database prevent distributed deadlocks?" provides more detail:

[https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2017/08/31/databases-and- dist...](https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2017/08/31/databases-and-distributed- deadlocks-a-faq/)

<comment><USER4> Does (can?) Citus optimize the case where the whole batch is visible up front?

<comment><USER5> Not practically, except when it is a single-statement transaction.

Where deadlock prevention becomes useful/necessary is single UPDATE/DELETE statements that span across multiple nodes. When those are executed in parallel they could deadlock against each other due to non-deterministic execution order.

Citus currently uses predicate locks to avoid these deadlocks, but there's probably some room for improvement there. On the other hand, for Citus use cases UPDATE and DELETE across shards are mainly batch operations (e.g., delete old data), so there's not a strong need for it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TiDB and CockroachDB also support distributed transactions. The transaction model in TiDB ([https://github.com/pingcap/tidb](https://github.com/pingcap/tidb)) is inspired by Google Percolator, It's mainly a two-phase commit protocol with some optimizations. More info on the blog: [https://github.com/pingcap/blog/blob/master/_posts/2016-10-1...](https://github.com/pingcap/blog/blob/master/_posts/2016-10-17-how- we-build-tidb.md#transaction)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like they're using the idea described in this Jim Gray, Lamport paper: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.159...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.159.6749&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Azure SQL DB has had the same HA coordinator built in for a couple of years now in their distributed transactions. And so has Spanner.

<comment><USER8> and so has MarkLogic, I think since 2003 (may be a bit later)

\---

[http://cdn.marklogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ACID- Tra...](http://cdn.marklogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ACID-Transactions- Datasheet.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So Citus is now ACID compliant? Do you guys have a whitepaper where you describe how you proved ACID compliance?

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER10> Are you guys hiring? Wondering what kind of experience you require. I am a backend engineer with experience using these tools but not much building them but would love to work on such things.

<comment><USER3> Yes, we certainly are: [https://www.citusdata.com/jobs](https://www.citusdata.com/jobs)

When you're sharing your resume, please feel free to mention this thread.</comment></comment>


Optical Computing: A 60-Year Adventure (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.hindawi.com/journals/aot/2010/372652/ <comment><USER2> I'm firmly convinced that analog photonic computing is going to be a thing in the next 10 years.

<comment><USER3> I think it's already starting to become a thing; I was impressed with the presentation these guys did at a local meetup: [https://www.lucedaphotonics.com/en](https://www.lucedaphotonics.com/en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [2010]

<comment><USER5> Fixed, thanks.</comment></comment>


The Eyeballing Game - <AUTHOR> https://woodgears.ca/eyeball/index.html <comment><USER2> 4.35 on my phone!

It's difficult because it advances to the next round as soon as you lift your finger and it tends to shift around at that point so your hard work gets messed up. I tried pressing too far up on the page and dragged down to accidentally refresh as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Score: 9.27 Time: 144.6

Fun game! But I wish there were more varied examples.</comment>


Ask HN: Why not voluntarily start UBI on a small scale? - <AUTHOR> Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for/supporting UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor person (or several), and start transferring them a portion of their income every month, in exchange for periodic check-ups on how they are doing. The collected data could be beneficial for studying the impact of UBI on people's behavior.<p>If anything, a small number of people will start to benefit from UBI right away. That number will grow as more people join the effort. Who knows - voluntary UBI might be enough to the point where we do not need any government action for a pretty good approximation to "Universal" in UBI. <comment><USER2> I'm not sure that really approximates UBI. You're only giving money to some of the people involved, and there's a definite transfer from a specific person to another specific person involved. For a closer approximation, you'd need everyone to join a group, periodically funded by those members of the group who can afford to do so at the time funding is needed, almost like a kind of insurance.

Let's say you have 20 people in a group. At a given point in time, you might have ten people each funding one "share" in the system, two more people funding two shares each, two more funding three shares each, and six who cannot fund any shares. When the time comes to pay out, all 20 people get one share each: the ten "neutrals" get back essentially what they paid in, the four "over-funders" get less than what they paid in but still get a share each, and the six "under-funders" get more.

The following month (or whatever pay period you use), one of the people who had been funding three shares loses a lucrative job and can no longer fund any shares, but three of the former under-funders find jobs and can now fund a share each. The group still has funding for 20 shares, so everyone still gets a share when the time comes. It also demonstrates the importance of neutrals in the system: several people going neutral can make up for an over-funder who finds themselves in a bad spot.

</comment><comment><USER3> where is money coming from if its all voluntary. Not sure I follow what you are suggesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where any UBI funds would have to come from - from individuals with high incomes. But instead of enforcing it through law, supporters of UBI (many of who on HN certainly would fall into the high-income category) start voluntarily supporting individuals that they think would benefit from BI most. The benefits are:

1\. This starts creating positive effects of BI right away, just not for all.

2\. It gives a practical example of the beneficial effects BI might have.

<comment><USER3> > from individuals with high incomes.

So basically like recurrent charity? Interesting idea.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Every Man Should Be Strong - <AUTHOR> http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/08/13/why-every-man-should-be-strong/

<comment><USER2> This does not belong on HN.

While it is probably true that the site's demographic is primarily men, articles appealing exclusively to men are just that, exclusionary, and they don't belong on a site for all hackers regardless of gender.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for your feedback. I debated with myself about posting this article on HN. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that, this article shouldn't be seen as appealing exclusively to men but rather this article contributes to the knowledge and self-awareness of individuals and their society. I read content which deals with information that applies to many things that don't apply to me -- e.g. struggles in other countries, womens health issues, K-12 school issues and more --- not for the sake of gaining practical knowledge to implement in my life, but just because I'm curious. I think your statement, "appealing exclusively to men", does not describe every persons personal interests. Sorry if this post offends you.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for responding. I guess I had a sort of a knee-jerk reaction of, "Seriously? HN is just openly about male-specific issues, now?"

If we think that's not actually what's going on here, then no, not offended at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Exercise recommended: read a WW II memoir, for example _With the Old Breed_ or _Crossing the Line_. Consider the constant dangers these guys faced and lived through, in combat or simply working on a flight deck. Then look at the bodies. The men are fit, with low body fat and good muscle tone. They are not "ripped". They do not have biceps like cantaloupes.

So excuse me if I'm not impressed with the arguments at AoM.

</comment><comment><USER4> Jeebus. What a load of shite.

<comment><USER5> There is a certain stigma associated with lifting weights. The trope of "jocks v. nerds" is far from dead. I will agree though that its a shame that the voice of dissent has to be "artofmanliness.com".</comment></comment>


Microsoft is scheming to take over the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.apfn.org/apfn/scheming.htm <comment><USER2> Last updated 08/07/2010</comment>


Catch.com: Terminating service next month - <AUTHOR> https://catch.com/ <comment><USER2> Yet another example as to why having "millions of users" does not mean success...

But what does that say bout hte business leaders? Serious Question:

How is it that seemingly many 'businesses' can be started to scale to "millions" \-- yet fail in finding ANY way to cover OpEx?

<comment><USER3> Yes, this makes me humbly proud of my achievements: few customers, profitable can can continue to invest in R&D beyond the operational aspects of the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know what happened? I found catch to be quite preferable to evernote (simpler, less permissions, cleaner interface on mobile).

</comment><comment><USER5> I was one of their happy users.

Clean interface, working sharing etc.

I also have an everyone account but preferred catch.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have been using Catch on Android for years now, I am going to try Google Keep but what other similar alternatives are there?

<comment><USER7> Likewise. Anyone figured out a nice way to import the CSV export from Catch into Keep ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://wri.pe](https://wri.pe) will support to import from catch.com, it's simple note note taking app.

wri.pe has less features than Catch.com. Probably wri.pe will import just texts.

<comment><USER9> I'm currently a user of catch.com, I'm planning to try wri.pe but what I'd really like to see is a self-hosted alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What... did they do?

<comment><USER11> from this URL that is still live, I gather it is kind of like Evernote: [https://catch.com/learn-more/why/](https://catch.com/learn-more/why/)

<comment><USER10> Good find, it looks like you're right, essentially another collaborative to-do app (note, visit the link yourself, I am grossly oversimplifying)

I really wonder why they are shutting down. This kind of service doesn't seem like it would take a lot to run, and even less so if they didn't have enough users

<comment><USER12> I think they tried starting a company, not a charity.

For something that _costs_ money of each user, every user is a user too many. You need customers, and I don't think they had any (the service seems to have been free)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had no idea what they did (had never heard of them) but the domain is impressive. Probably worth half a million. Domain market isn't what it used to be.

<comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, could you elaborate a bit more on what's causing downward pressure in the Domain market?

Is it the proliferation of new TLDs?

<comment><USER13> This is from a reputable domain broker I spoke to, as I was trying to sell a decent domain I own. She said that keyword domains and short single word domains even were all lowering in value recently. This was due to google search eliminating people's need to remember a domain, more TLDs (.co, etc) and people using social to find things too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any alternatives? Evernote is way too much for our organization's users. Google Keep looks great, but without folders it doesn't work for us :(

</comment><comment><USER16> no!!! i loved their service :O

</comment><comment><USER17> Plan B: sell the domain to a dating site to pay the investors back something?

</comment><comment><USER18> I have an idea for a note taking app...

<comment><USER19> I'm curious to hear it. Also, are you a programmer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Miss you.</comment>


Transemployment: creating jobs out of thin air - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2014/09/03/transemployment-creating-jobs-out-of-thin-air/

<comment><USER2> Most jobs that would fit in this category, I think, represent a form of economic liquidity. It makes it easier to move money from one area of the economy to another by creating these new jobs.

It's harmful to businesses that don't care about it and beneficial to ones that do. The platform involved usually benefits from increased participation and weaknesses are discovered by benign rather than malevolent actors.</comment>


How Xerox Helped Win the Cold War - <AUTHOR> http://www.editinternational.com/read.php?id=47ddf19823b89

<comment><USER2> > Mr. Zoppoth designed what he called a 'slit camera' and received a secret US > patent on it.

A "secret US patent"???

The idea behind the patent system (whether or not you think it works well) is for the government to grant a limited-time monopoly in exchange for _publicizing_ an idea. A "secret patent" defeats the whole purpose.

Secondly, how would anyone determine whether they were infringing such a patent? How could it be enforced?

And finally, if an idea is to remain secret for a time, then, even if the patent can somehow be kept secret, why would you patent it at all? That starts a clock ticking toward the expiration of the patent. You would want to start that clock as late as possible, I would think. Why not wait until the idea is publicized?

<comment><USER3> I was intrigued by the concept, Googled "Secret Patent" and found this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Patent...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Patents)

<comment><USER2> Wow. And they don't expire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To paraphrase Lenin, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang ourselves."

</comment><comment><USER5> For "Everything the Soviet embassy staff routinely copied on their new photocopier was of vital intelligence value to the United States." read "The CIA wanted everything the staff copied." No doubt prodigies of inference can be achieved from routine data, but you can bet that there were a lot of expense reports and dinner menus copied.

</comment><comment><USER6> Was a Xerox machine really so inscrutable that they couldn't have a Soviet engineer take the thing apart and reverse engineer it? I can't imagine being dependent upon enemy citizens having unrestricted access to equipment you don't understand in your own embassy.</comment>


Apple Shitcans the Xserve - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/11/05/xserve

<comment><USER2> Shitcan is a funny word and all, but this news has been on HN four times already today!

</comment><comment><USER3> No surprise here. Xserve is competitive/heavy/archaic to their impending cloud service offerings.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there anything that Xserve does that would be difficult to do on a Linux box? Could they, perhaps, lend assistance to the netatalk project to assure present and future compatibility with the AFP protocol? Same for Bonjour? And the open-source HFS+ driver?

<comment><USER5> All of what you mention already exists - MDNS is quite common, Linux can read/write HFS+, and netatalk supports the current versions of AFP.

OS X Server is basically a custom set of packages over OS X client that provide the various server functionalities, and tweak the kernel for server use.

What Linux and most other open source products lack is the smooth integration of all those server bits - in most cases the biggest directory (LDAP) integration by default. While you can do that integration on your own, it takes much more effort.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I know it already exists. I run them all at my company. But these projects are often playing catchup to the latest protocol changes. Thus my question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gruber writes: _You don't think Apple is filling that North Carolina data center with Xserves, do you?_

What hardware and OS/distro _does_ Apple run in its large service-oriented datacenters?

<comment><USER5> If I had to guess, software is probably a custom build of OS X that can run on 3rd party hardware, or the normal version and custom EFI firmware for the hardware.

For hardware they probably buy off the shelf parts, although a custom design ala Google's wouldn't surprise me.</comment></comment>


The American coal industry is collapsing - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/142473/the-american-coal-industry-is-collapsing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=/feed/

<comment><USER2> Recent article that goes into this issue in depth:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9618072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9618072)</comment>


What is YouTube? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/clickclackclunk/taking-a-moment-to-ask-what-is-youtube-a94f0ab8b982 <comment><USER2> That was fascinating. Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Show HN: Command-Line Tools to Manipulate the Windows Credential Manager - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/frutiger/credutils

<comment><USER2> Cool! I had to try to automate creating/reading credentials for a project using PowerShell a few years ago, and this would have been very useful. Trying to use the API and drudge through the Microsoft documentation was torture.</comment>


Ask YC: Where can I find list of AOL startups acquisitions in the last decade - <AUTHOR>

Thinking of several startups I remember acquired by AOL, I get an impression that AOL is a startups graveyard company.<p>If I'll have a full list of it, I might get a better picture, based on figures. <comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_AOL>

After googling "AOL acquisitions".

Hope this helps!

</comment><comment><USER3> CrunchBase has (what seems to be) a pretty complete list: <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/aol></comment>


Ask HN: Can we talk about AWS vs. GCP? - <AUTHOR> From your personal experience, how does GCP compare to AWS why would you choose one and not another ? <comment><USER2> In my opinion: GCP for Kubernetes, AWS for everything else.

It's probably due to years of AWS usage, but I find it hard to think about resources and patterns on any other cloud provider due to habit. They all do things in slightly different ways to make it infuriating.

<comment><USER3> This.

Every other provider uses weird names for their resources. I think that from the start AWS made sense to me. It just felt natural and organized.

Azure is in the opposite side. I find that all their namings makes no sense and nothing is where one would expect it to be.

And the funny thing is that when you can't grasp the mental model of how things are organized you don't want to use it no matter how good the service can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Both great.

AWS is great to the tune of $15,000 [https://aws.amazon.com/activate/](https://aws.amazon.com/activate/)

GCE is great to the tune of $100,000 [https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/](https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/)

I'd recommend doing both options. Burn through your credits on both platforms first, then make a decision about which one you like best... or choose none of the above!

</comment><comment><USER5> Have a ton more experience with aws, but one large project has moved to GCE recently and everyone involved is beyond pleased.

The tooling and features are almost on par, and the ux is just better. Things like more powerful configuration of load balancing puts GCE over the top.

Considering how much cheaper GCE is for many projects aws is losing its appeal without some price breaks.

Also GCE is faster to launch instances by a measurable margin.</comment>


SyntaxNet: Neural Models of Syntax - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/syntaxnet <comment><USER2> HN discussion 3 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11686029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11686029)

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone is interested in understanding NLP, starting with little knowledge, I found that the NLTK book was quite helpful: [http://www.nltk.org/book/](http://www.nltk.org/book/)

<comment><USER4> this (SyntaxNet) is also about natural language understanding (NLU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.06042](http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.06042)

this is the paper.

the idea is based on the incredible incremental perceptron coupled with beam search for having different hypotheses at the same time trying to find a policy which will build them and select the best one

[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1218970](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1218970)

The approach to structured prediction that was the fastest at the time was that incremental perceptron and the implementation extremely simple.

Some other approaches includes conditional random fields, hidden markov models, maximum margin markov networks, maximum entropy markov model and the approach they cite called SEARN (learning to search method - DAgger (Ross et al., 2011) and AggreVaTe (Ross & Bagnell, 2014) and LOLS (Chang et al., 2015)).

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.02206](http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.02206)

Although, the syntaxnet team incorrectly dismisses SEARN (implying it suffers from label bias) but it isn't justified.

Their approach approximates 0/1 (hamming) loss with log-loss and works only on problems where the output decomposes over a sequence of decisions where each decision can have that incremental loss.

LOLS can work on arbitrary loss functions. For example, lets say you are translating a text from english to chinese, how can you say what the loss is when you've translated half a document? It's hard if not impossible to decompose the loss over decisions. (It's easy for part-of-speech tagging, the tag is either correct or not, or for dependency parsing, either the parent word is correct or not)

LOLS is a much superior method. It can also be combined with any binary classifier - SVM with any kernel, perceptron, logistic regression, to guide the decisions.

SyntaxNet uses a non-recurrent network to find the best parsing policy and the same network can be used on the LOLS approach.

Problem of structured prediction is incredible and extremely interesting. For example, doing POS tagging and dependency parsing at the same time can increase the performance on both task, same would be accomplished if one recognizes the named entities and at the same time tries to extract relationship between them.

It's very nice to see past insights applied with heavier machinery. Exciting times!</comment>


BorgBackup (short: Borg) is a deduplicating backup program - <AUTHOR> https://borgbackup.readthedocs.org <comment><AUTHOR> This fork of [https://attic-backup.org/](https://attic-backup.org/) was never submitted as an independent submission (though it has been mentioned in comments a couple of times). I decided to submit it and hopefully it will generate some insights/review/discussion, especially when compared to its parent attic (which has been talked about a lot here). ( _disclaimer_ : I am not a dev of either project, just a user)

For some context: the discussion thread (issue # 217[1]) that (probably) led to this fork.

[1] [https://github.com/jborg/attic/issues/217](https://github.com/jborg/attic/issues/217)</comment>


Show HN: Weekend project to help me remember to update my boss every day - <AUTHOR> http://whatwedid.today/

<comment><USER2> A lightweight alternate to this would be a script that emails you via mutt or another command-line email program in cron every day with the reply-to set to your bosses address:

mutt -s 'Daily status.' -e 'my_hdr Reply-To: bosses-address' your-address

Though some problems with this approach are: 1\. Your emails would be prefixed with 'Re:' 2\. Configuring mutt or other command-line email programs require some setup. 3\. Your computer needs to be running when the cron job is set to execute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, great walk through. The lightweight alternative I started with was a recurring calendar event with a mailto link :-) But I wanted something a little more formal, and it was a fun app to build!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A bit nit picky but you got a double "so" in:

"We store your responses so so it's clear what you've been working on."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So. Like Idonethis? [https://idonethis.com/](https://idonethis.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny you brought this up. It's a little different from iDoneThis in that it's about updating your boss, not about storing your "dones". I actually built a team version of this, but that _is_ identical to weDoneThis, and being friends with Walter from iDoneThis, I don't want to just copy their hard work. So offering this for free for now. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi, looks great! When you say "weekend project", did you really build it in two days?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now I've got about 27 hours into it. So not technically at this point :-) But the initial feature set took about 8 hours. I've just been fiddling with it a lot since I built it - logo, design, slightly improved onboarding, making it responsive, etc.</comment></comment>


A Web Troll's Toll on the Clinton Campaign - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119845369610047739.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today <comment><USER2> This guy should start his own blog, people are not interested in thoughtful conversation they do not have the IQ for it.</comment>


2018 was the fourth warmest year on record - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/01/24/was-fourth-warmest-year-record-more-evidence-new-normal-scientist-group-reports <comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps more salient than '4th' is that it looks like we may be persistently at 1C above preindustrial global temps.</comment>


Merkel's call to Obama: are you bugging my phone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/23/us-monitored-angela-merkel-german

<comment><USER2> And thus, the NSA scandal returns to the spotlight. Here in Germany this is a big deal, since the government not only has been very apathetic, but also publically declared that the scandal was now "over" a few weeks ago.

I wondered what it would take to get some criticism out of them.</comment>


Trying to build a website - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to build my first website from scratch, where I will create a online business. I have all the basic ideas of what I want on there etc: However I've never created a website before..Should I use a website hosting company and pay yearly? If so which one..? Do I learn to code? I also aim to add adsense, what are your opinions? <comment><USER2> Those are some really broad questions there bud.

I've been building websites professionally for the last 10 years and learning for the last 14. I never build a website from "scratch" anymore. I start with Twitter Bootstrap, a previous website, etc...

Step 1: learn HTML. You can open any text editor of your choice, start writing some HTML, save it as index.html and open it in a web browser. Done. Add a few more pages and you have a "website"

Step 2: get a host. I like 1and1.com - their basic Linux server is super cheap. Based on customer needs now a-days it's a toss between digitalocean.com or rackspace.com based on their needs.

Step 3: if you want your website to do more then just present some images and text, you'll need to learn some programming. Javascript is a scripting language - that'll get you some pretty stuff like form submission without page reloading, fading elements in and out, drop down menus (doable in pure css also), etc...

For an actual programming language, PHP is widely used; a lot of people like Ruby, Perl, etc... It's a matter of what your needs are and what you get comfortable with.

Adding AdSense will be done using Javascript. If you've never built a website, I'd say thats the least of your concerns right now.

Good luck. I've been "practicing" web development for 14 years now; it's a constant learning experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen websites promoting sites where you can just edit templates without ever actually doing the coding yourself, are they worth it if I'm just looking for a simple website presenting a few images and text, and thanks for the quick reply, really appreciate it.

<comment><USER2> Those are for sure an option that's available to you. When a customer asks me about sites like those I tell them, if they feel that will accomplish their needs, then by all means, go a head and use them, but those are not the kinds of websites I build.

[http://beta.p22.com](http://beta.p22.com) will be going live in a week or 2. This was over 10 months in development for me. You could not build this site with one of those services.

I kinda gleaned over one of your points - you said "an online business" \- if you intend to take people's credit card information, you must be experienced in how to protect that data.

Maybe you should start with wordpress.org - as much as i despise wordpress websites, there are many plugins available that will probably accomplish what you need to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I've seen a few wordpress websites, I'd just like a proper .com that looks professional. I'm thinking I should use those templated websites. Also, i'm going to use a Paypal account as it will be more secure. I've just browsed your site, its brilliant!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a more basic question to ask yourself.

What is your motivation? (1) to build a business; or (2) to build websites?

If it's (1), then you'd get there faster and with a higher quality result by contracting out the work. If it's (2) then go down the learning path. You might not get a viable business up for a while. Building a quality website, which will capture customers' interest and money is a lot harder than people claim. That's why good web designers / programmers are able to earn good money. They get paid for the value and results they create.

Re-read lsiunsuex's answer ... 4 years of learning before going pro. That confirms Galdwell's observation that it takes 10,000 hours to become competent at anything worthwhile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm hoping to create multiple websites as I doubt one will be enough in the long run. One thing I really don't understand is where will the majority of traffic come from - if I have zero marketing? Search Engines?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use WordPress pre-designed Theme It will same a lots of your time. Get a hosting and Use WordPress Plugins (Here are some famous WordPress plugins might be useful for you: [http://www.cloudways.com/blog/9-wordpress-plugins- favored-by...](http://www.cloudways.com/blog/9-wordpress-plugins-favored-by- developers-and-agencies/) )

You will learn the codes when you start working on it. If you're using Adsense make sure you're targeting a niche market it will help you in long run!

</comment><comment><USER5> Start Here.

Step 1) open a text editor.

Step 2) paste in the following code.

<!doctype html>

        <title>my first website</title>

hello world

Step 3) save the file as index.html

Step 4) open the file in your internet browser.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're curious about HTML, CSS, etc. then by all means, go ahead and learn the basics and build a simple site. (The other comments give some pointers.)

If you just want a simple business website, then you don't need to learn any of that; just sign up with one of the hosting + CMS all-in-one services like Squarespace, Weebly, or Drupal Gardens.

</comment><comment><USER5> I recommend starting with a text editor and a browser. May I recommend Sublime Text and Google Chrome. Then, you will want to learn HTML + CSS. After you are comfortable with html and css, move on to Javascript... Before using a website hosting company, test your site locally with an AMP local development server.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd download xampp and run the website first on your computer. When it's ready to release, then start paying for hosting somewhere.

First code the HTML, then do the Javascript and backend.

</comment><comment><USER8> you can host a basic site on [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/) for free!

Learn HTML, CSS and Javascript (in that order), perhaps using [http://www.codecademy.com/](http://www.codecademy.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll check it out, and will follow that order too hopefully.

<comment><USER9> Codeacademy is great if you actually want to learn to code. You should be aware (and I'm sure you are) that you'll probably have at least a year of learning before you create something from scratch that's good enough to be visible to others. I'm all for learning for the sake of learning, but if you want to get something quick and professional up, you'd be better using drupal/wordpress with a theme and ecommerce plugin, finding a service that will create an online store for you, or hiring someone/finding a partner.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's going on with my karma? - <AUTHOR> For years my karma was -1. I posted some comments and now it is -6. An on these comments I got -2 points and I don't know why. They were normal comments. Can anybody explain this? Thanks! <comment><USER2> I checked your comments out. I think people are down voting your comments. I occasionally say stuff that gets down voted but I have lots of up voted comments to. It's alright to have an opinion but more people need to agree with you than not. ;)

But if you want to get upvoted you need pretty useful comments with advice. and links don't hurt either. you can check out my comments by clicking on my username and get a feel for things the community found useful. I hope this didn't come off condescending. I struggled with it for a while.

Others may have better advice on finding good stories/news that get 100s of karma.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your reply! It is very informative and useful. Somewhere in back of my head I presumed all of this. But I didn't know that comments can be also down-voted. Anyways thank you for all of these details!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's probably better to ask the moderators using the |contact| link at the bottom of the page.</comment>


A Visualization of Amazon Acquisitions - <AUTHOR> http://www.meettheboss.com/Images/amazon-acquisitions.png

<comment><USER2> In what way is this a visualization? It's more like a picture.</comment>


Ask HN: Firefox users, how do you backup your stuff? - <AUTHOR> I just added a new device and learnt, (surprised that I didn't know this earlier) that Firefox Sync doesn't backup any stuff- it only transfers from one device to another. I'm not too keen on losing all my precious bookmarks so I wonder how everybody here deals with this? Where do you backup your stuff? <comment><USER2> The same way you backup your non-firefox stuff, with some form of backup program/system.

I've been using rsnapshot ([https://rsnapshot.org/](https://rsnapshot.org/)) for a number of years now, and I'm slowing migrating into restic ([https://restic.net/](https://restic.net/)).</comment>


Ask HN: Why someone would use a nocode tool vs. a cloud CMS? - <AUTHOR> With the rise of the nocode movement we see a lot of services that allow anyone to build a website on top of Airtable, Notion or Google sheet. (almost a new service a day just on PH).
However non-techies have already countless of solutions to build their portfolio, their website or  their e-commerce (think Wix,SquareSpace, Shopify or even Google Site). These solutions are extremely easy to setup (usually just blocks to add or remove) and at a very accessible price. Cherry on the cake: they have millions of templates and customisation possibilities that no-techie love.
So why should someone pick a no code tool for her website? <comment><USER2> Every solution has its pros and cons. Based on what people actually need, they choose the most proper tools:

-If you're really not into code, Wix or SquareSpace are good choices. But they have very limited capabilities beyond static pages.

\- For dynamic pages or a full control on your website's functionality, Wordpress is an excellent choice. But it's hard to implement without any coding skill! You can have a lot of functionalities but you can't customize them if you are not a developer.

\- Airtable or Notion gives you a lot of customization without any coding skills. So can make a nice dynamic page based on them with the help of an external no-code tool. Their problems? Very functional but without a decent UI!

It was my experience and I could be wrong. But as a no-techie, I think my experience could be relevant!

</comment><comment><USER3> To me, it comes down to value for money. Non-techies pay for something that they can't accomplish otherwise.

As a techie, I can do it myself. Between the tools I am familiar with vs learning a new UI that I am not familiar with, I would choose the former for zero cost.

</comment><comment><USER4> All sorts of reasons:

Prototyping

Speed

Time to Market

Non-techies shouldn't need to care about the HTML/CSS/JS/Whatever of the website, the site just needs to _look good_ for them to use it.

A no-code site (Wix, SquareSpace, Shopify, etc.) may just be enough for them just to get to market without looking too deep into the code.

Just get/buy a template, customise it further (if you've got the skills) and you're ready to go.</comment>


Best Buy and Solar City - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestbuysolarcity.com/

<comment><USER2> They just need to outfit a house near MacGregor, TX, park a Tesla in front of it, and take a picture with SpaceX doing a rocket flight test in the background.</comment>


Ask HN: Why HN logo not in SVG? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Probably because it's so small that the benefits of making it an SVG would be almost nil. I mean, look at this thing:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.gif](https://news.ycombinator.com/y18.gif)

It's 0.1KB. It's so small that any SVG version of it would actually be a larger file (seriously, I tested it with an SVG converter script online, and the SVG came back at 0.6KB).

There's no practical reason to convert it, at least not as far as file size is concerned.

<comment><USER3> The benefits of keeping it a gif would seem to be practically nil as well.

<comment><USER4> Yea, but changing it takes work and leaving it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being a hacker is about knowing when something is good enough.

It's about focusing on interesting content rather than pixel perfection.

It's about shipping on Tuesday rather than shipping on Friday.

It's about optimising the things that are important.

I like it, even if it's a big pixel-y on hi def displays, it's a reminder that done is better than perfect

<comment><USER3> I don't recall reading any of that in the Hacker Manifesto...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because 99.9% of users don't care and have or never will pay any attention to it. Just like most other logos, or design aesthetics - they are more perceived than actively thought about by consumers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Because it's not about optimizing every little thing. It's about getting it good enough. And even when something sounds better in theory, it might not be that way in practice.

</comment><comment><USER8> Make a business case for it

<comment><USER9> It could get re-used as part of the logo on the main y-combinator site, and the same logo could be cached ;)

But then again, HN itself is already easily fast enough, and you don't optimize when you don't have to.

But probably not worth the effort - the extra CSS might mess up the equation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What would improve for the end user, when it was in SVG?

</comment><comment><USER11> It could be in .svg for a sharper look on smartphones

</comment><comment><USER12> Explain the performance benefits

<comment><USER13> Probably smaller file size and will look better on hi dpi displays?</comment></comment>


Are There Problems with the Boeing 737Max? 2nd Deadly Crash Raises New Questions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/africa/boeing-737-max-8-crash.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19353059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19353059)

</comment><comment><USER3> Relevant anti-stall SW problem on initial ascent, which they explain as documentation problem:

"In that case, investigations by the Indonesian and American aviation authorities determined that the Lion Air plane's abrupt nose dive might have been caused by updated Boeing software that was meant to prevent a stall but that can send the plane into a fatal descent if the altitude and angle information being fed into the computer system is incorrect.

The change in the flight control system, which can override manual motions in the Max model, was not explained to pilots, according to some pilots' unions."

</comment><comment><USER4> 0.6% of 737 MAX aircraft delivered have been lost in unsurvivable accidents... similar numbers to orbital rockets. yikes.

<comment><USER5> It's an unfair calculation. Most orbital rocket are used only once.

Another unfair calculation: 40% of the Space Shuttle have been lost in unsurvivable accidents.

It's better to compare the number of accident divided by the number of flight. For the Space Shuttle, it's 2/135 = 1.4% of the flights. For the manned Soyuz, it's 2/165 = 1.2% of the flight (but both are in very old models).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know reporters will say they don't want to us to draw conclusions but honestly, I'll be avoiding the 737Max until this is figured out.

</comment><comment><USER7> A very big tech company releases software updates that contain bugs for their devices with fruit on them. One would think that they could produce software without major problems, but it happens. One would also think that a very big aerospace company could produce products without significant bugs, but it seems that it unfortunately happens too. Talk about a fatal error.

Thinking about a solution to make their QC more robust brings me back to an article from 11 days ago on fuzzing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19265377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19265377)

<comment><USER8> I think Airbus does a lot of formal proving / verification of their flight software. There was a great article about it which I can't find anymore, but Google is full of academic papers on it.</comment></comment>


Humans: Why They Triumphed (May 2010) - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703691804575254533386933138.html

<comment><AUTHOR> opening paragraphs:

Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years--the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success-- tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language--seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened.

The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. Even as it explains very old patterns in prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead

<comment><USER2> _The Rational Optimist_ expounds this theme at length. A summary is: produce narrowly, consume widely.

Surprisingly, it benefits everyone to produce what they are best at and trade for the rest, _even when you trade for something that you are better at producing (i.e you are even better at producing something else)_. Thus, people can optimize locally.

 _EDIT_ uh, article is by the same guy. Great book though he gets a bit rabid at the end. There's an especially striking story of skill loss in Tasmanian native Australians, due to being cut off from the mainland and having too small a population for the requisite collection intelligence to maintain those skills (doesn't prove it of course). Just now, I'm reminded of what someone said of MS: because millions of people use it, it's worth it to work on little details - so you can have a menu specialist. IIRC, collective intelligence isn't so much about how many people put their intelligence into it, but how many people need it (i.e. the market). The collectivity comes in in that other people similarly specialize in something else.

<comment><USER3> Could one also get away with the inverse of this idea?

Produce Widely, and Consume Narrowly?

At least, at first. Dip your toe in a couple of pools before choosing which ones to dive in to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We win because we ran: [http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes- Greatest...](http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes- Greatest/dp/0307266303)

</comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps trade is the carrot humans needed to go 'have sex' on a social level.

<comment><USER6> I've just finished <http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html> \- it's pretty convincing that money is really what differentiates us from the other primate competing species (like neanderthals).

<comment><USER5> That's very interesting, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Web 2.0 is the consolidation of this process... get ready for singularity</comment>


Bobber Interactive and "The Spouse Test" - <AUTHOR> http://founderdating.com/bobber-interactive/ "You're not going to succeed on your own. The set of what you don't know, that you don't know, is a fuck-ton bigger than you think it is." The Story of how Bobber Interactive co-founders found each other and why it was so important. <comment><USER2> great article, thanks! :)</comment>


Log Wizard – a Log Viewer that is easy and fun to use – v1.9 added Snoop Around - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jtorjo/logwizard/wiki/Snoop <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

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

Curious if this was built to scratch your own itch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll look at showhn link!

I built the first version to solve a problem that none of existing Log Viewers dealt with (namely, having several views of the same log + persistence of settings from the get-go).

After that, I improved quite a bit on filtering, based on some of my ideas, feedback I received privately, or via issues on github.

Best, John</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does your Facebook Page bring good traffic? - <AUTHOR> I have a FB Page that have 500 likes. I shared a link to the page 6 hours ago and now it shows only "9 people reached". <comment><USER2> I have a facebook page that has over 30,000 likes. Each post I put up has around ~500-700 likes, 20+ shares, etc. However, whenever I share a link that brings people outside of facebook, google analytics shows my site gets <10 hits. (I also use bit.ly to track links that are not my own and same results). Funny enough when I tweet something on Twitter (with an account that has ~100 followers) I get roughly 20 hits

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing the info. External link gets <10 hits from a 30,000 likes FB Page is really surprising. I'm spending dollars to get likes to my Page, seems I need to stop it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Twitter brings in traffic. FB is worse than snail mail for what you want. Probably because it focuses on internal traffic.</comment>


Warn HN: How to accidentally, irreversibly nuke your Facebook account - <AUTHOR>

I had decided to set up a test account for an app I'm developing, so I googled "Facebook test account" and found this blog entry at position #1:
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/35/
I skimmed it for a link and clicked. The page loaded, I clicked the big button in the middle that said something like "Make [Your Name] a Test Account"...
...and my Facebook account was made unable to interact with friends and apps.
My real Facebook account. The one I use (well, formerly used) to admin multiple apps. The one I formerly used to keep in touch with hundreds of friends.
Instead of making a test account for me, it had made a test account out of me.
I contacted Facebook support, but other developers on the forum have done so with no luck. This is sickening. Who in their right mind creates a button labeled "create test account" that irreversibly destroys the account of the person using the system?
And who, having committed such an atrocity of design, doesn't even help the people who accidentally click it? It is incomprehensible.
[Edit: It gets WORSE, if that is possible. The method that blog post talks about is outdated. It shouldn't be used any  more. There is a much cleaner way to manage test users through official apis. They could at least edit that post to point to the up-to-date information. ] <comment><USER2> To be safe, I browsed with "links."

"To make a test account, register on Facebook as you normally would. Then, when logged in to the test account, go to this URL: <http://www.facebook.com/developers/become_test_account.php>

Personally from reading only to this point I would assume that it makes a new account, rather than make the current account become a test account. Even though that description is embedded in the URL, it isn't in the English text.

The warnings come afterwards, starting "A few important things to note". I think the description is ambiguous, and don't get the impression that it will trash your personal FB account.

This is such a nasty security problem it's not even funny. I haven't (and daren't) try. But if people start putting that URL on lots of public sites, and people click on it, then it will make a lot of people angry with FB. That suggests a solution - post the direct link to HN and other sites and get enough people to click on it that FB has to respond. Not a nice solution though.

Even worse, it looks like it's a regular GET request, which isn't supposed to have these sorts of side effects. (Again, I haven't tried.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That URL itself doesn't perform the action -- that page has a button that, when clicked, submits a form with POST. _That_ is when the action happens. In addition, it appears that they have taken steps to prevent CSRF.

So no, it probably isn't a security issue. Just a flamingly idiotic interface issue that is causing some developers to lose their apps and waste massive amounts of time.

[Edit: Haha, finding and exploiting a security vulnerability would be an effective way to get attention, but it would definitely not be nice to all the people who would get messed up by it. I figure a HN post is a more constructive method. ]

<comment><USER3> also it does say " _WARNING: Test accounts CANNOT be converted back to normal accounts and they are not allowed to access the Developer App._ " in bold above the button. not excusing them, but they did seem to make some effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are completely right. I admit that I wasn't paying a lot of attention. I was in a mode of scanning-documentation-trying-to-figure-something-out. I didn't think that poking around the developer center could destroy my account.

Obviously I was wrong, and I'm kicking myself now. But still, it is absolutely _stupid_ to make it that easy to wreck your account.

 _Because much of the time, users won't pay attention to paragraphs of text you put around prominent links and buttons._

[Edit] Also, the button says "Make Your Name a Test Account." I thought it was going to make a test account _for_ me, not _from me._

<comment><USER4> While I would also be quite irate if I was in your position, it does not sound like this can be blamed entirely on FB. My first parsing of "Make <your name> a Test Account" is that it means "the FB account with <your name> will be converted from a real account in to a test account".

Also,

> "To make a test account, register on Facebook as you normally would. Then, > when logged in to the test account, go to this URL"

That also seems quite clear to me: Create a test account Log in to the test account Click "Make <your name> a Test Account"

That being said, I do agree - this _should_ have required more confirmation. This could have been avoided with a simple message box saying "Hold up, are you sure? <Your name> will no longer be a normal FB user. All <Your name's> friends will be deleted, and you will not be able to admin any apps. If you want a test account in addition to your normal account, you need to..."

<comment><USER5> While I'm sympathetic to that being your first parsing, it certainly seems a bit off to me.

For example, if you pressed a button saying "Make myran a Cake" you probably would expect it to give you a cake.

If it made you INTO a cake, you'd probably be in tiers. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure your example works because one would not normally expect a person to be turned into a cake, so the "give you a cake" reading is going to seem much more plausible.

If the button said "Make myran a genius", what would you expect to happen?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> EDIT: I just confirmed this no longer works. =(

I think all you need to do is disassociate your account from the Developer Test Accounts network via your profile settings page: <http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?networks>

That should revert it to a regular account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for pointing that out, but I tried that and it didn't work. The network simply doesn't appear in my list of networks. Other developers haven't been able to get this to work, either.

Thanks though!

<comment><USER7> Sorry, you're right, I just confirmed that it no longer works. I'm pretty sure that method worked just a few weeks ago though. =\ The changes are probably related to the test user overhaul that Facebook has been working on for the past few months. <https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/429>

<comment><AUTHOR> I bet you're right.

I'm glad they made the new system -- it looks really clean and useful. I just wish they hadn't left the old system halfway operating, so you can fall into it but not climb out.

And they really, really need to edit that blog post to point people to the new system. It is in the top place of the google results for "Facebook test account," and I'm sure it is misleading a lot of people. At the least into using the clumsy old system, and at the worst into destroying their accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does Firesheep still work with Facebook? How many times do you have one teenager at another teenager's house, with access to the computer? It just takes a minute and the damage is done.

Why on Earth would they have a misfeature like this?

</comment><comment><USER9> Lucky. It took me about half an hour to figure out how to delete my account. On purpose.

<comment><USER10> I'm getting ready to have a 1 year birthday on deleting mine.

<comment><USER11> If only there were some way to post an event invitation to all your friends in a medium they check regularly :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this relevant?

<http://www.skybondsor.com/blog/undo-test-account-on-facebook>

If so, the lesson here is that Google is your friend...

<comment><AUTHOR> It is highly relevant, but it is also broken. The method stopped working recently (according to my experience and comments that are scattered around blog posts and the developer forum). Thank you though, for pointing it out! I wish it worked. :(

> If so, the lesson here is that Google is your friend...

Google and I have been working very hard trying to solve this problem. Ironically, though, right now I'm feeling a little afraid of all the big internet companies that my working life depends on, including my good friend Google.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got my account back! Someone at Facebook evidently saw this, and (1) updated the blog post and (2) brought my account back to life. Thank you!

However, unless this was a general fix, it looks like other developers are still stranded:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2258827>

</comment><comment><USER13> Glad to hear you're unstuck jpadvo (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2258827>). If anyone else's real account is stuck in the Facebook Test Account network, please write in to us at <http://www.facebook.com/devhelp> and we'll help get you out. We've updated the old blog post you reference with a link to our new test account architecture (<http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/429>) which you should use exclusively for creating and managing test accounts going forwards. Sorry for the confusion.

<comment><USER14> hello, can you please help me get out of test account?> I am in real trouble. i have writen to the link given above and nobody replied. please help me to get out of this.. thanks

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR This is why I never use my real Facebook account when developing apps. I have a special John Doe account from which I manage all my apps. I think this is the only solution to their incompetences.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've considered that. The problem is that if they ever find out that the account is not a "real" account, they will disable it. And, unless you have other people as admins, _all your apps will also be deleted._

<comment><USER15> Sharecropping is pretty rough, isn't it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know at least a few of you thought it... what would happen if people were tricked into clicking that link and button. Kind of an a-hole thing to do.

However, it does make me wonder how fast they might find a fix for it if it were to happen to enough people to make it a priority. Or even, how many people it would take to make it a priority.

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like they've updated the post:

"UPDATE 2/23/2011: See the latest test user documentation."

</comment><comment><USER18> You say there was a button that said "Make [Your Name] a Test Account". I think it's pretty clear what that button does. If it were actually labeled "create test account" it might be different.

<comment><USER19> No, that sentence is ambiguous. Consider the phrase 'make me a sandwich', which has an identical structure and is understood the same way the OP understood 'Make [Your Name] a Test Account'.

<comment><USER20> And, if pressing a button labelled "Make Chad A Sandwich" turned you (irreversibly) into a sandwich, I can only imagine that you wouldn't be happy about the semantic ambiguity. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You should ask this question on Quora.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. If the issue doesn't get resolved quickly I will. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I just submitted it as a question here:

[http://www.quora.com/I-accidentally-changed-my-Facebook- acco...](http://www.quora.com/I-accidentally-changed-my-Facebook-account-into- a-test-account-How-do-I-undo-this)

<comment><USER21> While it's still a good idea, you may have missed the original intention of my post.

If you look at the facebook blog post you mention (<http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/35/> ), the person who posted it was Charlie Cheever, the co-founder of Quora.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, wow I get it now. Thank you! I just requested that he answer my question on Quora. Long shot that anything would come of it, I know, but worth trying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has this happened to anyone else? Does anybody here work at Facebook and know something about this?

<comment><USER22> I logged in with a former FB account and after clicking to the link, my account became a test account -all contacts became unclickable, no interactions I could make after that point.

Maybe they could pay more attention to warn users but the link itself named "become_test_account.php". I hope your account got fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> ...and even better, they could also provide some way to undo it. I still can't believe such a drastic action is irreversible.

> I hope your account got fixed.

Thanks, it hasn't yet but I hope it will too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Finally a way to totally nuke a facebook account. I thought that it was impossible.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it's interesting that the idea of deleting an account on a web service is "incomprehensible" (a bit out of context, but still relevant). It's kind of funny how reliant we've become on a few companies and services.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think that a simple prompt for user's password before doing this would be an amazingly effective solution.

</comment><comment><USER26> Finally, a way to delete your facebook account without that impossible to pass 2-week grace period.

</comment><comment><USER27> That's why you'd use browser A (say Chrome) for browsing and browser B (say Firefox) for anything to do with development.

<comment><USER28> But it's silly to have to tie one particular browser to one application in this way. You might conceivably want to switch browsers for some other purpose, _especially_ if you're developing and testing an online application.

Mozilla profiles (do they still _have_ those?) might work, though.

<comment><USER29> Yes, mozilla profiles still work, I use them regularly, exactly because of this kind of stuff, to put up a cookie barrier. For example, it's handy if you want to log into sites with multiple accounts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This could be useful someday..

</comment><comment><USER31> Looks like they have put some warning before using the test account.

</comment><comment><USER32> Cool we can nuke facebook accounts! Quick lets get people to click there!

Sarcasm aside..doesn't this sound like an MS adventure?</comment>


Calendar 2013 (in hex) - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/4mhnx.png

<comment><USER2> That's some good old fashioned geeky fun.

It might be nice to see this further entrenched in esoteric geekdom by making it look like a hex dump from a .core file, and less like a standard calendar.</comment>


Towards a theory of software development expertise - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/12/21/towards-a-theory-of-software-development-expertise/ <comment><USER2> > In other news physicists are learning about the universe by sending out > questionnaires to people with lots of experience living in the universe. > [https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/12/21/towards-a-theory-of- > soft...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/12/21/towards-a-theory-of-software- > development-expertise/#comment-38653)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the most important sentence in this article is:

> The most frequently cited tasks that an expert should be good at were > designing software architecture, writing source code, and analysing and > understanding requirements.

But I think this is also missing verification of the requirements, which is writing tests and being able to ship reliable code. Step 1 is to make sure you understand the requirements, step 2 is writing good code, step 3 is shipping the code after verifying that all the requirements are met, and the quality of the product is good</comment>


Ask HN: Are you happy? - <AUTHOR> Just wondering how many folks on HN are truly happy and how they find/define happiness? With so many interesting distractions, hyper knowledge growth and the ability to build anything digital I find a state of increasing or sustaining happiness the most challenging to achieve. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> From wikipedia: "Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being which can be defined by, among others, positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy." There's your definition.

Am I happy? Sometimes I am, but mostly not. Overall, I wouldn't consider myself a "happy" person. But I'm working on changing that. Working on becoming a better/happier person, oddly enough, seems to be one of the few things that bring me happiness.

</comment><comment><USER3> for the moment yes, but the eyes are always bigger than the stomach

</comment><comment><USER4> YES!</comment>


Microsoft to kids with Chromebooks: no 2019 Minecraft Hour of Code for you - <AUTHOR> https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/11/17/1625235/microsoft-to-kids-with-chromebooks-no-2019-minecraft-hour-of-code-for-you <comment><USER2> The new, not evil, Microsoft™.

It's only a matter of time before Linux itself becomes a victim.</comment>


Perfectly round shape on the moon. - <AUTHOR>

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llbj9trfTx1qzt1kzo1_500.jpg
I just took this photo. Although the picture is pretty mundane, I observed something I have never seen before: The perfectly round circle on the bottom of the moon (bottom right hand corner).
At first I thought it was a crater, but it looks too perfect. What could it be?
What are the shiny dots all over the moon? <comment><USER2> Nice photo. All the things you ask about are craters. The large one is Tycho.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_(crater)>

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, it's so perfectly round. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can also zoom and pan in

www.google.com/moon

A view with Tycho centered is:

[http://www.google.com/moon/#lat=-43.802818&lon=-14.16687...](http://www.google.com/moon/#lat=-43.802818&lon=-14.166870&apollo=)

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickable version: [http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llbj9trfTx1qzt1kzo1_500.jp...](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llbj9trfTx1qzt1kzo1_500.jpg)</comment>


A Compositional Framework for Reaction Networks - <AUTHOR> https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2017/07/a_compositional_framework_for_2.html <comment><USER2> Revealing quote from Baez in this article: "I'm ... eager to dig deeper into open reaction networks. They're a small but nontrivial step toward my dream of a mathematics of living systems. My working hypothesis is that living systems seem 'messy' to physicists because they operate at a higher level of abstraction. That's what I'm trying to explore."

<comment><USER3> What do you think it reveals?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really appreciate this research program. Mathematics and physics have had such a fruitful relationship and this won't be any different. A common language, the ability to make precise analogies. Modern science is much like the tower of Babel, scattering the tribes with their disparate languages. Fundamental mathematical research like this is the only chance to bring them together.</comment>


Show HN: DDay - <AUTHOR> http://dday.parkq.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> Counting down to Apple Event <http://DDay.ParkQ.net/2012/9/12/Apple%20Event>

How many days since New Year? <http://DDay.ParkQ.net/2012/1/1/New%20Year></comment>


Apple's Plan for MobileMe: Think Facebook, Foursquare & uStream - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/more-detail-on-apples-plans-for-mobileme-think-foursquare-ustream-and-h2g2-exclusive/80147

<comment><USER2> Friendships don't normally form on the basis of shared mobile platforms. I hope they're thinking outside the Apple campus. Even if MobileMe is brilliantly integrated with iOS, it'll be mostly useless if it only works among people with iOS devices.</comment>


Bat cave solves mystery of SARS virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 <comment><USER2> "...the researchers spent five years monitoring the bats that lived there, collecting fresh guano and taking anal swabs."

That my friends is dedication. Would make a great dirty jobs episode. Best wishes for their work to save some lives and prevent a future wider outbreak from occurring.

<comment><USER3> The very first episode had similar charm [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1272617/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1272617/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> """Although many markets selling animals in China have already been closed or restricted following outbreaks of SARS and other infectious diseases, Yuen agrees that the latest results suggest the risk is still present. "It reinforces the notion that we should not disturb wildlife habitats and never put wild animals into markets," says Yuen. Respecting nature, he argues, "is the way to stay away from the harm of emerging infections"."""

This is a totally foreign notion to me, wild animals into the food market, what sort of examples can be found in such markets? Interesting thought to consider wild vs domestic food sources and the tradeoffs between the two. Domestic could have negative consequences too though like farmed fish with bad farming practices vs wild fish.

<comment><USER4> They do this in the western world too. It's just called venison.

<comment><USER5> There are deer farms in Australia.

Another good example, from Australia, of wild-harvest meat is Kangaroo and Wallaby.

<comment><USER6> And bush pigs, I believe, although I'm not sure if they're for human consumption or just used in pet meat.

<comment><USER5> One of my siblings live in Norther Queensland, they hunt pig for pest control and dog food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have they ever discovered how the SARS virus was transmitted, despite the best efforts of Toronto hospital staff to take the highest precautions? That was the scariest part to me, that in continued to infect hospital staff in Toronto, Canada, a modern 1st world city, despite all the precautions they took.

</comment><comment><USER8> To be clear after reading the article[0] this means "probably came from horseshoe bats" not "probably came from this particular cave which happens to be in Yunnan" or even "probably came from Yunnan". You can see from the phylogenetic tree (figure 6) that they have heavily sampled Yunnan and Hong Kong but there is only one sample from Guizhou and there are none from other nearby locations. There are thousands of caves over this entire region, owing to the dominant limestone and karst topography on this edge of the Himalayas.

Less scientifically, Yunnan is a long way from Guangdong and has zero popular history of eating or handling bats. People from remote parts of Yunnan where bats live do not often travel to Guangdong. While bats are known to harbour different viruses, I am calling bullshit on Yunnan as the source of SARS. There are many populations of bats in caves _far_ closer to Guangdong such as far northeast Vietnam, Guangxi, Guizhou and probably Hunan and Fujian provinces which would be preferable choices for source populations of trapped wild bats.

[0] [http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/jo...](http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698)

</comment><comment><USER9> Are bats responsible for any deadly diseases other than Ebola, Marburg, MERS (camels?) and SARS?

<comment><USER10> In Australia, lyssaviruses, which are deadly. Also Hendra virus, also deadly.

<comment><USER11> They are really just odd versions of rabies though

<comment><USER12> Rabies is deadly: [https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/index.html)

<comment><USER11> True, I was just highlighting that they aren't really separate diseases to add to the count.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>