Nobel Prize-winning economist joins blockchain startup to fix smart contracts - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2018/08/01/nobel-prize-winner-joins-blockchain-startup-to-fix-smart-contracts/#5c70dc517cc7 <comment><USER2> Smart contracts are DOA, it's not an economic issue, it's a technical one; the rules of the smart contract can only be enforced on the blockchain, any concerns outside of that must necessarily fall back on the traditional legal system for enforcement thus eliminating any utility the smart contract intends to provide.

edit: I'm not saying there is no value in systems of arbitration outside the traditional legal system, I'm saying that a blockchain is super wasteful and expensive relative to a centralized system that can accomplish the same guarantees because they share the same legal underpinning, i.e. the courts. There is no legal difference between a smart contract and word document.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't write this off so quickly.

The analog is Visa. What would ordinarily be a huge lawsuit is settled by a private commercial arbitration process--namely, a chargeback--in case of dispute.

Courts are tremendously expensive and burdensome. There is real economic value created when someone figures out how to move what would otherwise have to go to court, to a separate arbitration process that's perceived as "fair" by everyone involved. I'm not saying that's the right solution for everyone or everything, only that courts should be a last, not first, resort, in case of dispute.

<comment><USER4> Right so it's done by people, following a set of policies, all of which ultimately are subordinate to written laws. So like what's the alternative you're suggesting?

<comment><USER5> Smart contracts enable this mechanism to be pre-agreed upon and have the authority automatically and securely deferred to the pre-arranged arbiter. This improves transparency, reduces transaction costs, and starts the process of commoditizing oracles/arbitration.

<comment><USER4> So instead of a lawyer or arbitrator we get another kind of arbitrator, or an "oracle" which is at root is a human making decisions and putting them into a digital system of some sort.

Both of which, like every other extant thing, are subject to review by the courts if their actions make people sufficiently unhappy.

And, though now it's confusing, opaque, and unreliable, this system will be cheaper and more transparent because...

<comment><USER5> Because it limits the scope of the arbiters responsibilities and capabilities, and precisely specifies their purpose.

<comment><USER6> Those benefits you're describing are the result of a writing a contract, not of embodying the contract in a digital construct [edited for clarity]

<comment><USER5> Sure. What is your point?

EDIT: I guess i'll respond to your edit with another edit. I understand your point, that you can say the same things using a traditional contract, but they don't have the same force. For example, the smart contract can automate and execute the disbursal of funds based on the attestation of some pre-defined oracle. While it's true that this oracle is not decentralized, it is now isolated and scoped. It's role is proscribed to solely this - attestation, and everything else is actuated around that oracle, in a secure and trustless way. I believe that the ability to circumscribe and scope responsibilities in a computational way has valuable benefits, insofar as it commoditizes and modularizes the processes involved. I think of it like a shipping container. Shipping containers commoditize and modularize shipping. Smart contracts commoditize and modularize adjudication.

<comment><USER7> So what does the smart contract bring that the regular written contract doesn't?

<comment><USER5> All of my responses in this thread have thus far been enumerating them.

<comment><USER7> As yodon explained, those benefits are handled just as well by ordinary contracts. I've still never got a straight answer from anyone about what smart contracts _actually_ bring to the table.

<comment><USER5> See my edited response to yodon. I'll also add, that they free up innovation in a valuable way. Take Augur, for example. If you're not familiar, Augur is a decentralized prediction market. In order for a non-crypto startup to create something like a prediction market, they'd need to develop serious banking relationships with banks. The banks could simply refuse to work with them, charge them exorbitant fees, and otherwise encumber the process.

However, since Augur is built on the Ethereum network, they didn't need to ask anyone's permission, and they don't ever need to have custody of anyone's funds. This is an example of 'permissionless innovation', to use the buzzword of the day. Permissionless innovation is understood to be one of the most important drivers of economic dynamism, and right now any sort of application that touches the financial sector is heavily burdened by the fact that our financial system is predicated on trust. Smart contracts solve that problem. This is a very subtle point, but it is extremely significant, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Eli5: How do smart contracts change anything when their enforcement has to be performed by legacy systems?

In my country, drafting contracts is hardly a problem. But if someone breaches your contract, good luck trying to get the law to act on it quickly enough

<comment><USER5> For one, there are certain classes of contract that can be enforced entirely on-chain. Specifically, those having to do with crypto-assets themselves and, possibly, any asset ownership represented by the crypto-tokens.

For two, smart contracts are code, and as such have to be more formally specified than a traditional english-language contract. This has benefits and also drawbacks, but for certain applications it may be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a senior advisor.

<comment><USER10> Exactly! Does not mean s __*. The old "will you please be an advisor, we will give you some equity" routine.

Hard to not take it with a grain of salt especially with the click bait title.

<comment><USER5> The title doesn't seem like click bait to me. He's being paid to actually work on the problem. He's not just some nebulous advisor - he will be consulting on the architecture of particular contracts. The title seems pretty appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> pretty strange career choice although if his intentions are to impact the way smart contracts shape up in the future it could be a good move. His intentions will certainly be tested by VC intentions to make money for the investors.

<comment><USER12> From a career perspective, I think this fits into the classic "make lots of money before the bubble bursts, by lending my name to a company and doing little work"

<comment><USER11> brand influence for a little compensation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Im highly suspicious of any blockchain startups given the cryptocurrency environment we live in. If this guy was part of the discussion for one of the main cryptocurrencies about governance, I'd be more excited.

</comment><comment><USER14> it would be interesting if contracts(legal ones) had version control.

Here's a base contract 1.0.0 and you can fork it and add/subtract sections, change wording etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is no Nobel Prize in Economics.

<comment><USER16> He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which (as far as I can tell) was established later than the other prizes but is managed together with them with the same foundation and ceremony and so on.

Is the distinction between it and other Nobel prizes useful here?

<comment><USER17> Yes. It is funded by the Swedish Central Bank.

Would you trust a Nobel prize in computing funded by Google?

<comment><USER18> Yes. The closest thing to the Nobel Prize in computing is the Turing Award, which is indeed funded by Google.

<comment><USER19> Although it is not Google who decides on who wins, and the Award would still be reputationally valuable if there were no money attached to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ok just tell me which coin is that and where do I buy it :)

<comment><USER21> > Hart says he doesn't own any cryptocurrencies and is worried that "bitcoin > might be a bubble."

Probably not a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is _no_ Nobel Prize in Economics. There's only the "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences" which was established in 1968 by a donation from Sweden's central bank.

<comment><USER23> And commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics.

<comment><USER21> Usually by people who want to give it credibility it doesn't deserve. There's probably a reason no science felt the need to name their price almost like an existing in the hope of being associated with it.

<comment><USER24> It's referred to as a Nobel Prize by the Nobel Foundation itself, which also selects the winners...

<comment><USER21> The foundation adopted it. Which is kind of my point.

<comment><USER24> No, there was no "X" prize that was adopted by the Nobel Foundation. They were offered a donation to fund the prize in the area of Economics, and they did. The prize itself has always been run by the Nobel Foundation.

It may not have been one of the _original_ Nobel Prizes, but everyone who matters, including the prize-issuing organization itself, considers it to be one of the _current_ Nobel Prizes. This is no different from, say, the Olympics--would you not consider snowboarding, boxing, weightlifting, wrestling, or volleyball (to name some of the most popular current events) to be Olympic events simply because they were not part of the first games in 1896? Conversely, should croquet and tug-of-war be considered Olympic sports even though they haven't been part of the games for over a century?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Master Your Recurring Revenue: Analytics for Stripe, Chargify and Recurly - <AUTHOR> https://chartmogul.com

<comment><AUTHOR> What are people's thoughts on this service?

I like the way it can easily bring all the data into an easy to understand and use dashboard...

Anyone know any similar services?</comment>


Does Stress Impact Technical Interview Performance? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/it_hiring_whiteboard/ <comment><USER2> > He said there's some support in academic literature to indicate the women > have more performance anxiety than men, but he stressed that's a gross > oversimplification because men experience performance anxiety too.

I (as a man) can absolutely work under stressful conditions such as dealing with a major outage, even if there is a bunch of people looking over my shoulder.

However having a bunch of people looking over my shoulder waiting for me to write on a whiteboard what they have in mind and then judge me, that's going to be a problem for me.

<comment><USER3> Drove 4 hours to an interview. (Drive should have taken 2). Showed up exactly On time but very frazzled. Then had to sit in front of 20+ engineering's and solve various puzzles. First 3 minutes were me staring at screen trying to remember what programming was.

After settling down I proceeded to solve problem after problem effortlessly.

Later in career I got very sick.

I would be doing presentations while having minor strokes (TIAs) I shouldn't have been working, But I had no options if I lost my job. Doctors didn't yet know what cause was.

So literally I had to perform or die.

Yea that is stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think we all agree that there are a lot of improvements that could be made in hiring processes.

At the same time, the idea that "ability to handle stress" isn't important for software engineering seems (to me) a silly one.

So yes, if you're _trying_ to assess technical ability and you're failing at that, it's a problem. But it is not discriminatory (in the bad way) to weed out candidates who can't handle stress in an occupation that can be _very_ stressful. Though it was pointed out in the article that "public" vs "private" settings made a difference, so your hiring process should reflect whichever of those settings is more likely to come up if the candidate is actually hired.

At the end of the day, the goal of an interview should be to assess whether or not that person will be able to do their job, so you want interview conditions to match working conditions as much as possible. Unfortunately every job is different so there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that the kind of stress involved is different. I.e., social stress, as I experience in whiteboard interviews, has nothing to do with the stress of an impending deadline.

<comment><USER4> Well that's what's tough – I would say I've experienced both.

For example, when you're in charge of a production service, and that service goes down, there is a lot of social stress to "just fix it", oftentimes under non-ideal conditions (just like solving a problem on the spot in an interview).

<comment><USER6> > (just like solving a problem on the spot in an interview)

I don't think that's a conclusion you can actually make, it's still a very different kind of stress, especially for someone introverted. When I'm being evaluated, the stress is crippling me - I'm overly nervous and can mess up even the simplest things; even finding correct words can be hard. However, when I'm in a urgent situation where something needs fixing, or deadline is passing, I become focused, assertive (but also easily irritated) and take charge much more easily than usual - and that short-term stress actually helps there. Those are very different situations that make people react differently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is, yet again, a very bad nontechnical journalistic writeup of much more technical research.

"Whiteboard coding interviews" are not what was studied--the terms the actual study uses seem to be "public" versus "private" interviews, and the finding was that public interviews tested ability to handle anxiety (not stress, as some commenters are misidentifying) rather than coding ability. Critically, _both forms of interview studied are whiteboard interviews_.

The Register's writeup is inaccurate worthless crap, demonstrating either incompetence or dishonesty on the part of the authors. Let's try to link to original studies in the future.

<comment><USER8> Whiteboard interviews, in every situation I've seen and heard of, are always performed with someone in the room. As such, an interview where the candidate is working alone on the whiteboard is an artificial construct for the purpose of this study.

<comment><USER7> If I'm understanding correctly, the private interview still entails the candidate presenting their solution once it's complete. I've never interviewed a candidate via this method, but I've been interviewed this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One of the authors of the study wrote a blog post [1] summarizing the findings from the paper [2].

[1] [https://medium.com/@gameweld/the-case-for-the-private- techni...](https://medium.com/@gameweld/the-case-for-the-private-technical- interview-4a92947e1692)

[2] [http://chrisparnin.me/pdf/stress_FSE_20.pdf](http://chrisparnin.me/pdf/stress_FSE_20.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> So, I'm an introvert and in my early 30s. Since middle school, I've forced myself to do public speaking. I'm okay at it. I do pretty well in small scale business presentations and I'm above average in mid scale (50-100 people) professional public speaking events. I can keep people engaged but I'm not the greatest by any stretch.

I've done 2 whiteboard interviews. I bombed them because the questions are incredibly stupid and have zero real world application. And I'm a guy. I know plenty of women that run circles around me when it comes to interviews and public speaking. This paper's weak argument that women are incapable should be shot down.

Stop blaming everyday people. This is diverting from the issue of wannabe clever interview processes. 90% of whiteboard questions are stupid in nature. People with real world experience typically have a hard time with uber abstract questions that never come up in day to day.

In truth, a person that bombs one of these interviews should be immediately hired. It shows they can't accept stupid thoughts. Regardless if they're a man or woman.

<comment><USER8> > This paper's weak argument that women are incapable should be shot down.

The argument is that, in the study: All women in supervised interviews failed the interview. All women in unsupervised interviews passed the interview.

The sample size is too small to draw conclusions, but it definitely opens up further avenues of inquiry that _should_ be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whiteboard coding interviews are a hazing ritual for initiation and not really a filter for programming proficiency. The headline is nonsense, and since they don't try to establish anything intrinsically feminine or masculine that this process is against, it is very misleading.

However, whiteboard architecture interviews for solving certain higher level classes of problems do provide a signal for problem solving ability. Design is a narrative process that you make concrete with diagrams, so it's more suited to an interview situation.

The trial-by-trivia approach of coding interviews creates a culture where you get a company full of people who shared copies of the exam answers with the people they referred in for the hiring bonus. A company succeeds on the quality of its products, which is the effect of the quality of design and architecture thinking, and not on the ability of its staff to perform live optimizations on fizzbuzz.

<comment><USER8> The impact by gender in the original study was: All women in the supervised whiteboard interviews failed. All women in the unsupervised whiteboard interviews passed.

It's too small a group to draw proper conclusions, but it definitely warrants a larger study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who has interviewed dozens of candidates in the past few months, I try not to frame it as a performance by the candidate, but rather as a series of professional conversations with a potential colleague.

In this context, a white-board interview would normally come later in the process, when we already have a rapport with the candidate, and the goal would not be to "catch" a candidate with tricky questions, but rather to see how well a candidate is able to reason through a problem collaboratively in real time, which is something I would expect to happen in the team setting with some regularity. It's even more of a team chemistry evaluation as a problem solving test.

Probably earlier in the process I would ask a candidate to complete an individual assignment in their own time. This would be the opportunity to see what kind of work they are capable of producing.

<comment><USER7> > In this context, a white-board interview would normally come later in the > process, when we already have a rapport with the candidate, and the goal > would not be to "catch" a candidate with tricky questions, but rather to see > how well a candidate is able to reason through a problem collaboratively in > real time, which is something I would expect to happen in the team setting > with some regularity. It's even more of a team chemistry evaluation as a > problem solving test.

If your goal is to see how they reason through a problem collaboratively, then doesn't it make sense to actually _collaborate_ with them? I.e. instead of asking questions, take a problem that _you_ don't know the answer to either, and team up on it.

When I'm solving a problem I sometimes do use a whiteboard, but that depends on the nature of the problem--if it's heavily data structure oriented, for example, then a whiteboard is useful for drawing out the data structures. I don't think I've ever written a line of code or pseudocode on a whiteboard board as part of collaborative problem solving: that's just not useful when you could be writing actual code on a shared screen.

TL;DR: While I agree with your goals here, I don't think the method we're discussing actually achieves those goals.

<comment><USER11> I _would_ approach a whiteboard interview collaboratively. Generally I would leave it up to the candidate to drive the problem solving in this case, but I would expect them to ask questions and get input rather than just sit back and let them sweat. If they were going down the wrong track I might also ask questions to nudge them in the right direction. Seeing how they engage in this kind of process would be precisely what I want to understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every now and then in HN the topic of interviews come up, and usually bashing DS&A interviews.

As someone who failed around 8 interviews (combined phones + onsites) for FAANG/Unicorns I am still a supporter of DS&A interview. I finally now work in one of the FAANG/Unicorns, after solving around 400 Leetcode questions.

For those who are against DS&A questions, tell me how you as a company that wants to interview candidates, can afford to interview as many as possible as fair as possible as straightforward as possible as little time possible and everyone having equally strong skill set? You can't hire them all. You can only hire few ones but reject the others. Without some x metrics that can be seen easily you'll get into trouble rejecting other candidates.

</comment><comment><USER13> Most interviews (in any field) are broken because they mostly reduce to gut feel of the interviewer. No matter how much we think our intuition is sanctimonious, it is not. It does not matter what your IQ is or how successful you are in the field, your intuition is useless (or lets say will be very biased). Intuition works in very few places with specific conditions (Like chess). Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate, writes about all this(based on his research) in his book "Thinking, fast and slow"

</comment><comment><USER14> Despite the horrible click-bait title, it was actually an interesting read!

</comment><comment><USER15> No

Edit: written when the title was: "whiteboard interviews are anti woman"</comment>


Show HN: Sell anything through instagram - <AUTHOR> http://paytagz.com/about <comment><USER2> I built something very similar earlier this year ([http://thingsy.co](http://thingsy.co)), but pushed the idea even further by posting items to Craigslist/Kijiji/Backpage (using mechanical turk for item recognition).

Unfortunately, this couldn't scale because of classified ad websites limitations.

To this day, I don't know of any classified ad website that allows massive item listing through an open API. This would seal the deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome! I always figured that there had to be a better way of selling things than Craigslist currently offers. The issue is building an audience. I thought I would try and piggy back on instagram to maybe push me ahead.

<comment><USER2> Nobody is going to look for stuff on your website.

You need to:

A. Find a way to automate posting to Craigslist (good luck). B. Build a better marketplace (semantic?) that aggregates/pull content from Instagram, Vine, Twitter, Etsy, etc. If you do that, you'll need a kickass item recognition system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Soldsie also did something similar with Instagram. [http://new.soldsie.com/instagram-selling/](http://new.soldsie.com/instagram- selling/). Looks like social commerce is heating heating up as companies are looking for a way to really get social to contribute to overall ecommerce.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had a friend that was selling about 20 items a week on instagram. This seems like it would make it easy. Good job!

<comment><USER5> What kind of stuff is he/she selling?

<comment><USER4> She lived in Hong Kong and were selling small electronics (USB sticks/Gadgets/Key rings) Nothing major, just more for fun.

EDIT: *was

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chirpify did the same thing.

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/instasale-chirpify-takes- it...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/instasale-chirpify-takes-its-in- stream-commerce-service-to-instagram-as-its-twitter-service-continues-to-fly/)

</comment><comment><USER7> > _Internal Server Error_

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be back up. Sorry about that. I upped the instances which might have caused it.

<comment><USER8> still down (or, down again?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm so sorry about that. It went down again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great job! What do you think about www.depop.com?</comment>


Ask HN:  When to stop helping start ups? - <AUTHOR>

I started a company a couple years ago and we(and all in the company) love working with startups.  We've done everything from early stage to later development.  However over the past two (of three) years, we've been killed twice on large contracts with start ups.  The amount we ended up not getting paid for each of us for the year.
I admit we aren't the regular startup, we're a consulting group.  However, despite all of our mentor recommendations, we've never been big into you missed payment date X, we're halting all development.  Instead we have reworked many contracts to make very favorable payment terms for the startup, and we've given several extensions in good faith.
At this point we are pretty sure just got burned buy another person, and are rethinking our practices.  We have always wanted to help the start up, and have gone above and beyond( Not many teams i know will spend their own money to fly places to help the startup).
However, now we are left in an awkward position, what do we do?  we want to keep working for start ups, but we too need to pay the bills; so what do we do?
We want to see these companies flourish.  We believe in start up culture, and know our risks.
Is it wrong to think we could live on working with start ups?  We want to continue, but how?  We've felt if we just give a few another month or two they could make it, but have also been killed on this.
What do you think?
We just want it to come back to what many of our contracts have, a handshake means it all. <comment><USER2> I love startups. I just don't extend credit to them. If their ability to afford my services is doubtful, I suggest that they read the blog instead.

You know what they call a startup you don't own? A business. Businesses pay their invoices in a timely fashion or they get a polite reminder then cut off at the knees.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it depends on their financial stability. I don't think a consulting company should ever do work for a startup based on equity, the risk is too great. But if they're not financially stable, then equity is all they have to give. You should do due diligence on the startup before you do work for them. If they have financial clout, but no technical clout, then it's a match made in heaven for you. If not, seems to me it'd be like hell.</comment>


CEF 3 for Python - Chromium Embedded Framework: Chrome for your python app - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/cefpython/

<comment><AUTHOR> Tomczak Czarek - author of CEF - got a new project sponsor and in recent days there have been several nice releases.

Don´t know how you feel, but I got thousands of ideas in mind, which don´t have to be solved via Qt4 WebKit anymore.</comment>


Scottish Parliament Backs Independence Vote and Defies U.K - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-28/scottish-parliament-backs-independence-vote-in-defiance-of-u-k <comment><USER2> The entire Brexit fiasco is a colossal balls up, and I genuinely hope that they can secede from the UK and re-join the EU.

It's even more telling when the politician who spearheaded this ill-fated campaign is wanting to immigrate from the UK if Brexit goes ahead.

<comment><USER3> I wonder when it might rejoin the EU?

Also wonder what impact this might have for investment opportunities.

<comment><USER2> London used to be the banking capital of the entire EU. Everyone is now considering other EU capital cities. We'll be seeing huge effects for years, if not decades, to come.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The U.K. government repeated May's mantra that now is the time to pull together rather than take separate paths."

Can't make this up.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, she didn't support Brexit so it's not a personal hypocrisy on her part.</comment></comment>


Scala One Liners - <AUTHOR> http://solog.co/47/10-scala-one-liners-to-impress-your-friends/ <comment><USER2> Quick little transliteration to ruby:

      1. (1 to 10) map { _ * 2 }
         1.upto(10).map { |x| x * 2 }

      2. (1 to 1000).reduceLeft( _ + _ )
         1.upto(1000).inject { |a, x| a + x }

      3. val wordlist = List("scala", "akka", "play framework", "sbt", "typesafe")
         wordlist = ["scala", "akka", "play framework", "sbt", "typesafe"]
         val tweet = "This is an example tweet talking about scala and sbt."
         tweet = "This is an example tweet talking about scala and sbt"
         (words.foldLeft(false)( _ || tweet.contains(_) ))
         wordlist.any? { |w| tweet[w] }

      4. val FileText = io.Source.fromFile("data.txt").mkString
         file_text = File.read 'data.txt'
         val fileLines = io.Source.fromFile("data.txt").getLines.toList
         file_lines = File.read('data.txt').lines
         Or, more typically,
         File.open('data.txt').each { |line| ... }

       5. (1 to 4).map { i => "Happy Birthday " + (if (i == 3) "dear NAME" else "to You") }.foreach { println }
           4.times { |i| puts "Happy Birthday #{i == 2 ? "dear NAME" : "to You"}" }

       6. val (passed, failed) = List(49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90) partition ( _ > 60 )
          passed, failed = [49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90].partition { |x| x > 60 }

       7. val results = XML.load("http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?&q=scala")
          results = Nokogiri::XML open 'http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?&q=scala'

       8. List(14, 35, -7, 46, 98).reduceLeft ( _ min _ )
          [14, 35, -7, 46, 98].min
          [14, 35, -7, 46, 98].inject { |m, i| i > m ? i : m }

I'm impressed! Scala's lambda syntax is obviously bar none. The dual _ + _ was especially pleasing, and completely unexpected. The List() construct is also entirely warranted in place of array literals, given Scala's wide variety of collection types. On the other hand, what is this io.Source.fromFile mess? I don't understand the alternating capitalization, or the need for deep namespacing of an incredibly common type.

<comment><USER3> "bar none" is a little excessive -- Haskell's syntax is probably even cleaner. Compare:

      1. map (*2) [1..10]

      2. sum [1..1000]
         -- sum = foldl (+) 0

      3. any (`isInfixOf` tweet) wordlist

      4. fileText <- readFile "data.txt"
         fileLines <- lines <$> readFile "data.txt"

      5. mapM_ putStrLn . map (\i -> "Happy Birthday " ++ if i == 3 then "dear NAME" else "to You") $ [1..4]

      6. (passed, failed) = partition (>60) [49,58,76,82,88,90]

      7. -- I avoid XML so I don't know what library you'd use here.

      8. minimum [14, 35, -7, 46, 98]
         -- minimum = foldl1 min

<comment><USER4> _"bar none" is a little excessive -- Haskell's syntax is probably even cleaner. Compare_

And ditto for Io (<http://www.iolanguage.com>):

      1.  1 to(10) map(*2)

      2.  1 to(1000) asList sum

      3.  tweet findSeqs( wordlist )

      4.  fileText  := File with("data.txt") open readLines join
          fileLines := File with("data.txt") open readLines

      5.  4 repeat (i, writeln("Happy Birthday " .. if(i == 2, "dear NAME", "to you")))

      6.  list(49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90) partition(x, x > 60)

      7.  results := SGML URL with("http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?&q=scala")
            fetch asXML

      8.  list(14, 35, -7, 46, 98) min
          list(14, 35, -7, 46, 98) max

_Some notes_ :

i) For 1 & 2 remember to have `Range` loaded first. ii). OK I cheated on 6 because there is no partition currently in the Io core lib. Here is a "simple" way I did it for the example:

        List partition := method (

            returnThis := Object clone do (
                passed := list()
                failed := list()
            )

            argSlot := call message argAt(0)
            cond    := call message argAt(1)

            self foreach (n,
                newSlot(argSlot asString, n)
                if (doMessage(cond),
                    returnThis passed append(n),
                    returnThis failed append(n))
            )

            returnThis
        )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post neatly demonstrates some things I don't like about Scala. Background: I've spent thirty or forty hours programming toy projects in Scala. That's not a whole lot, but it's enough that some things should start making sense . . . and they haven't.

        (1 to 10) map { _ * 2 }
        (1 to 1000).reduceLeft( _ + _ )
        List(49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90) partition ( _ > 60 )

I guess one common syntax for this pattern isn't sufficient. :( To be perfectly clear about my objection, these are the same basic operation: call a function on an iterable with an additional function argument. One is dotfree and uses braces. One uses a dot. And one is dotfree and uses parens. I feel like it would be a lot better if there were only one way to do this.

        (words.foldLeft(false)( _ || tweet.contains(_) ))

|| . . . in every other language that means "logical or". What non-intuitive connotation does it have here?

        val results = XML.load("http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?&q=scala)

Oh man, why can't it be XML.parse(URL.fetch(...)).

        (n: Int) => (2 to n) |> (r =>
            r.foldLeft(r.toSet)((ps, x) => if (ps(x)) ps -- (x * x to n by x) else ps))

This language has a damn operator fetish. This is sort of ok . . . I suppose these operators mean something to someone, but why do they have to also break conventions by doing things like creating a binary --.

Despite these complaints, and many others, I'm still weirdly drawn to this language. I want a smaller version of this. Managed, non-crazy (I'm looking at you, Go), and providing functional features. But I want that in a package that doesn't give me ten million billion different ways to do the same thing.

<comment><USER6> In Scala '||' does mean logical OR.

The example given _is_ using the logical OR to fold across booleans.

Imagine this expression:

        (a || b || c || d || e || f || g || h)

If any of those values are true, the whole expression evaluates as true. It only evaluates as false if all the values are false.

Now consider a simple example in Scala:

        val res1 = List(false, false, false, false, true)
        res1.foldLeft(false) { _ || _ }

Here the foldLeft function is 'accumulating' the value of the boolean by doing an OR comparison with the starting value (false). For all but the last one, it is doing (false || false -> false), then it hits the last one and does (false || true -> true).

It's a neat trick, and useful if you were using a programming language that had foldLeft but not exists.

In Scala, you have exists. So you can do this instead:

        res1.exists(_ == true)

Or for the example given, something like this:

        words.exists(tweet.contains(_))

<comment><USER5> Oh, fail me for that particular point. I should have looked at what function was being called rather than just the syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gosu equivalents:

1) (1..10).map( \ i -> i * 2 )

2) (1..1000).sum()

3) words.hasMatch( \ word -> tweet.contains( word ) )

4) var fileText = new File("data.txt").read()

5) (1..4).map( \ i -> "Happy Birthday " + (i == 3 ? "dear Name" : "to You") ).each( \ l -> print( l ) )

6) var map = {49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90}.partition( \ i -> i > 60 )

Note: partition() in Gosu is not limited to a true/false codomain.

7) var x = XmlElement.parse( new URL("<http://www.yahoo.com/>) )

8) {14, 35, -7, 46, 98}.min() or {14, 35, -7, 46, 98}.max()

9) No equivalent, there is no parallel stuff built into Gosu as of yet.

10) No equivalent, there is no operator overloading in Gosu.

I agree with the comment above pointing out that all of this is available (or easy to mimic) in most high level languages.

However, I think that the different flavor of Gosu and Scala is apparent from this list: Scala tends towards abstraction, reusing .reduceLeft() and the magic underscores to express things, whereas Gosu has distinct functions for common operations and requires named closure arguments. Our take is that this makes Gosu code easier to understand and maintain but, of course, that is subjective.

It's just that we're right.

;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Am I supposed to be impressed? Just about all of these are oneliners in most high level programming languages. The test of a languages expressiveness is much bigger programs.

<comment><USER9> What do you mean by the "test of a languages expressiveness"? (I assume you meant "much bigger problems"?) Could you give us some examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Scala oneliners:

      "Multiply a list by 2"

REBOL oneliners (<http://www.rebol.com/oneliners.html>):

      "Open a GUI, read web page, send it as email"

</comment><comment><USER11> Factor IIRC:

        1) 10 [1,b] [ 2 * ] map
        2) 1000 [1,b] sum
        3) { "scala" "akka" "play framework" "sbt" "typesafe" }
           "This is an example tweet talking about scala and sbt."
           '[ _ subseq? ] map
        4) "data.txt" utf8 file-lines
        5) 4 [1,b] [ 3 = [ "you" print ] [ "dear" print ] if ] each
        6) { 49 58 76 82 88 90 } [ 60 > ] partition
        7) "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?&q=scala" http-get string>xml
        8) 100000 sieve :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Hmm, I wouldn't actually think of Scala to write this demo in (except for its advantageous standard library). Strongly typed languages tend to have some additional boilerplate code that can make them less effective for "code golf"-like contests.

Someone else posted Haskell code (which is what I would have gone for), but I think that all this really shows is that the tasks tended to be optimized for code which lends itself to easy typed high-order functions.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1.

      map (*2) [1..10]

2.

      sum [1..1000]

Haskell, will post all 10 after work unless someone beats me to it.

</comment><comment><USER14> A response: [http://willwhim.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/fsharp-one- liners-t...](http://willwhim.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/fsharp-one-liners-to- impress-your-friends/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Can anyone do the examples in Clojure, please?

<comment><USER16> 1)

        (map #(* % 2) (range 1 10))

2)

        (reduce + (range 1 1000))

3)

        (def string "This is an example tweet talking about scala and sbt.")

        (some #(.contains string %) ["scala", "akka", "play framework", "sbt", "typesafe"])

4)

As a string:

        (slurp "filename")

As a list you could just do:

        (.split (slurp "filename") "\n")

Or if you want a lazy sequence:

        (line-seq (BufferedReader. (InputStreamReader. (FileInputStream. file-path) "UTF-8")))

There are also contrib libraries for this that do it nicer.

5)

        (apply prn (map #(str "Happy birthday" (if (= % 4) " dear NAME" " to you")) (range 1 5)))

6) I'm going to leave this blank for now. It's an easy enough problem, but I can't think of a way of doing it in a nifty one-liner.

Edit: Ahh thought of it now. group-by does it nicely:

        (group-by #(> % 60) [49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90])

which returns a map with the elements keyed to the result of the anonymous function. In this case:

        {false [49 58], true [76 82 88 90]}

7) Something like

        (xml-seq (clojure.xml/parse the-xml))

probably.

8)

        (apply max [14, 35, -7, 46, 98])

        (apply min [14, 35, -7, 46, 98])

9) Clojure has pmap, which is used just like map is, work is just done in parallel. Also Clojure is known for its concurrency features, which I won't go over here.

10) I'm sure this can be done in a similar amount of code in Clojure, though I am not going to try.

Any comments/corrections are welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For Python:

1) Here we note that Python's range() is not RH-inclusive.

      [i * 2 for i in range(1, 11)]

2) Ugh, reduce().

      reduce(operator.add, range(1, 1001))

3) any() is awesome.

      wordlist= ["scala", "akka", "play framework", "sbt", "typesafe"]
      tweet = "This is an example tweet talking about scala and sbt."
      any(word in tweet for word in wordList)

4) These are not very idiomatic in Python, but that's alright.

      fileText = open("data.txt").read()
      fileLines = open("data.txt").readlines()

5) Hm, interesting. To make it print correctly, I used a newline join.

      print "\n".join("Happy Birthday %s" % ("dear NAME" if i == 3 else "to You") for i in range(1, 5))

6) Ah, this is where it becomes apparent that Python is not a functional language. On the other hand, this version doesn't hide the actual expense of list allocation, so I guess it evens out. Can somebody come up with a better answer here?

      passed = []; failed = []; [passed.append(i) if i > 60 else failed.append(i) for i in [49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90]]

7) Not gonna bother. Use lxml.

8) Oh, this is easy.

      min([14, 35, -7, 46, 98])
      max([14, 35, -7, 46, 98])

9) Entire books have been written on this. Python does have multiprocessing.Pool.map(), though it takes a bit of setup.

10) Whew, this took me a second. You'll want to import some of these from itertools, and it needs to be redefined each time, since lambdas can't really define local stuff easily. On the plus side, it's _shorter_ than the Scala flavor, and relies on standard stuff. :3

      g = lambda l=[2]: ifilter(lambda x: (all(x % i for i in l) and (l.append(x) or True)), count(3))

That was fun!

<comment><USER18> I often wonder why people would use anything other than Python for doing real work. Such a fantastic language! I admit I am somewhat of a fanboy but I feel like it's for a good reason. The language is so easy to read, like reading a sentence. I cannot recall who said this (I want to say Steve Jobs) but its something on the lines of "something is only perfect when there is nothing left to take away" .. The fact that Python is missing so many of the crazy symbols and reads more like natural language while still being able to do so much gives me reason to believe it's one of tue greatest scripting languages around, and certainly clowns on Scala for these examples. I really wonder why people continue to write web apps in PHP for example.

<comment><USER19> > I cannot recall who said this (I want to say Steve Jobs)

Antoine de Saint-Exupery. _Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher._ "It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove."

But don't let that stop you say "Steve Jobs" if you happen to enjoy saying it :-).</comment></comment></comment>


In Hong Kong, Which Side Is Technology On? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/hong-kong-protests-digital-technology/ <comment><USER2> It reminds me of a joke - "Don't anthropomorphize computers - they hate that."

Technology as it exists now lacks any agency so calling it on a side in the first place is a mistake. It may make one approach feasible or unfeasible and the design may in fact be deliberately biased (see the French Boulevard design to not be urban fighting defensible). It may sound pendantic but the nuance is inportant even when dealing with the most pathological cases like leaded gasoline.</comment>


Supreme Court rules that all Americans have fundamental right to bear arms - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/28/AR2010062802134_pf.html

<comment><USER2> _NO_ "cities have laws as restrictive as those in Chicago [and one of its suburban towns] and Washington [, D.C.]", which have/had full, absolute and total bans on handgun possession by ordinary citizens (maybe with some grandfathering). Therefore the immediate and direct result will be limited (although it should be noted that 3 other Chicago suburbs including the infamous Morton Grove dropped their bans rather than fight (Chicago offered to pay the legal costs of the one remaining suburb)).

As it is, some lower courts have already been writing decisions assuming _Heller_ would be incorporated and there are two cases in California have been on hold while waiting for this decision.

WRT Breyer's dissent WRT "democratic decision-making", Alito slammed him pretty hard:

" _First, we have never held that a provision of the Bill of Rights applies to the States only if there is a "popular consensus" that the right is fundamental, and we see no basis for such a rule. But in this case, as it turns out, there is evidence of such a consensus. An amicus brief submitted by 58 Members of the Senate and 251 Members of the House of Representatives urges us to hold that the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental.

[...]

Third, JUSTICE BREYER is correct that incorporation of the Second Amendment right will to some extent limit the legislative freedom of the States, but this is always true when a Bill of Rights provision is incorporated. Incorporation always restricts experimentation and local variations, but that has not stopped the Court from incorporating virtually every other provision of the Bill of Rights._"

<comment><USER3> Right now I'm reading Scalia's opinion, in which he's tearing Stevens apart. For example:

 _That JUSTICE STEVENS is not applying any version of Palko is clear from comparing, on the one hand, the rights he believes are covered, with, on the other hand, his conclusion that the right to keep and bear arms is not covered._

I've never read a set of opinions in which one member of the court so clearly slams the opinion of another (although IANAL, let alone a SCOTUS expert). Does this signal anything about the future of the court, or about the Chief Justice's leadership?

<comment><USER2> Don't know, but today is Stevens last day on the Supreme Court....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how this will effect the provisions of the Brady bill such as background checks, waiting periods, bans on felons buying weapons, etc. I'm all for gun rights but these seem like common sense restrictions. If it invalidates these provisions an escaped convict could walk into a gun store and buy guns. A guy with a bunch of priors for beating his wife can walk in a buy a gun. By the strictest sense of the law it probably raises doubts on age limitations too. Why can't a 10 year old buy a gun? The second amendment doesn't set any restrictions.

<comment><USER5> It wont.

This ruling (as I understand it) mainly has the effect of incorporating[1] the 2nd amendment onto state and local governments, and doesn't deal much with with actual interpretations of the amendment itself.

In fact according to the article

 _Alito said government can restrict gun ownership in certain instances but did not elaborate on what those would be. That will be determined in future litigation._

 _Alito said the court had made clear in its 2008 decision that it was not casting doubt on such long-standing measures as keeping felons and the mentally ill from possessing guns or keeping guns out of "sensitive places" such as schools and government buildings._

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Ri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights)

(Edited for formatting)

<comment><USER6> Yea but the anti-gunners say that a whole lot of new cases will inundate our courts for the next 10 years...as if that's a bad thing. California passed AB 962 which bans ordering ammunition online, and requires a thumb print and ID when purchasing ammo in person. I hope that gets fought.

<comment><USER2> Well, states and municipalities could decide to observe the Constitution and preemptively fix their laws; 4 Chicago suburbs with total handgun bans including the notorious leader Morton Grove were defendants in the original lawsuits and 3 gave up rather than fight.

And who knows, the really bad states are also in the worst financial shape by and large (strange, that...), they're going to be under new management sooner or later (already are in NJ, the other big ones would be NY, MA, IL and CA).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> NYT now also has an article about this:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29scotus.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> i dunno, i thought i would share this: [http://current.com/shows/vanguard/89716716_fully- automatic-a...](http://current.com/shows/vanguard/89716716_fully-automatic- america.htm)

<comment><USER2> I haven't watched this, but I'll note two facts:

There are about 100,000 full auto weapons legally owned by civilians in the US.

There are 3 known crimes that have been committed using a legally owned one, but two don't exactly count: one was by a cop and the most recent was that insane case of criminal negligence where a pre-teen was handed a Micro-Uzi and allowed to fire it without an adult helping.

I wouldn't fire a Micro-Uzi without slowing working up to the point where I was sure I could handle it. One parent on a gun politics mailing list that I'm on who owns full auto weapons and who let his kids fire them emphasizes how he makes sure he has a "death grip" on the weapon to ensure it stays under control.

That said, the large number of people who've fired rented or borrowed full auto weapons at events like Knob Creek without incident shows it's not terribly dangerous.

<comment><USER3> I agree with the point you're trying to make, but I don't think it's a fair argument to discount the negligent pre-teen. The fact that you and other responsible adults would never allow this to happen really doesn't change the fact that someone did allow it, so it's an honest data point.

Even so, 2 out of 100,000 compares quite favorably to the proportion of automobiles that have been used in violation of the law, or 1040 forms that have been used similarly.

<comment><USER2> I discount it as a "true crime", it wasn't someone using his weapon to shoot someone with malice, it was a criminally negligent accident. E.g. if you bundled someone of the same age into a running car and let them have at it on your own property we wouldn't say that had anything to do with driver's licenses, if the vehicle was properly registered with up to date license plates/tags, etc.

Heck, a Micro-Uzi is essentially a big handgun, you should never give a handgun to someone that young without intense training and supervision. I started shooting long guns in kindergarten but was a teen before my father started me on handguns (other more handgun oriented parents have started their children on handguns earlier; Massad Ayoob's daughter was winning competitions as some insane age like 7 or 9).

And that's 100,000 over decades; the law dates back to FDR's first year or so in power and the number was frozen by another law in 1986.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure science has progressed to the point where we can successfully graft bear arms onto the human body, but it's nice to see the Supreme Court thinking ahead.

<comment><USER6> Oh come on, upvote this man for the awesome reference! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgCceg042w></comment></comment>


Tesla owners try to make sense of Elon Musk's 'Red Pill' moment - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/technology/elon-musk-tesla-red-pill.html <comment><USER2> I think the move by Mconnell and Trump to end foodstamps and unemployment programs in the middle of the worst economy in us history makes his red pill comment even worse. Do you want to buy a car made by workers treated as slaves owned by a ceo who endorses mass starvation of those who are unable to find new jobs ?

<comment><USER3> For the sake of argument, can you provide evidence supporting your 2 claims as I have understood them?

1\. Tesla workers are treated as slaves.

2\. Elon Musk endorses mass starvation of the recently jobless.</comment></comment>


Disqus2012 Launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/06/disqus2012-launches.html

<comment><USER2> I noticed Disqus was down on a couple of different sites today. Anyone know what gives?</comment>


How We Landed Our Webapp's First Customer - A look back 10 years later - <AUTHOR> http://faso.com/code618/34149/how-we-landed-our-webapps-first-customer-a-look-back-10-years-later

<comment><USER2> Goes to show that it's not necessary to build a hugely publicized, larger than life, startup to be an entrepreneur and add value. Seems like these days people don't think it's that cool to build a business that's big enough to replace your day job, but in the end that may be the most important step your startup can take. Once your business sustains itself, it frees up your time to build and make it big. Good read Clint; it's great to get that kind of insight into the reality of the early stages of a startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice story, but especially beautiful painting!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think I got the better end of the deal :-)</comment></comment>


Google Explains The 'Hotpot' Name: "It's About Community" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/29/google-hotpot-hotpotato/

<comment><USER2> Hotpot is cool. I just took 5 minutes to invite all my friends who live in the same small tourist-rich town that I live in (Sedona Arizona) and also rated some restaurants.</comment>


Show HN: Joy – a privacy-first, ad-free nutrition tracker for pragmatic types - <AUTHOR> 1. https://www.joyapp.com
2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joyapp.android
3. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/joy-health-tracker/id955172784?ls=1&mt=8o
Background
As an amateur powerlifter on constant cut/bulk cycles, I found existing diet trackers way too slow and clunky. A food tracker should get out of the way; otherwise — in the heat of the moment — you'll decide not to log things. Existing trackers also lacked flexibility for those times you dine out, skip meals, or need a break.
Privacy and focus
Thanks to HN, I've learned to value my attention and focus. So I rewrote Joy with that in mind. That means eliminating distractions, starting with ads.
You are not the product here. The app is. The business model is simple: if you like using it, you give us money. In return, we provide you with a service you find valuable.
Benefits
- No ads whatsoever. We value your attention span, so should you.
- We don't sell your data. Your privacy is important.
- Barcode scanning in the — optional — native apps. Don't need them? Don't use them.
- Trend lines. Once you enter enough measurements, you can see trend lines. Weight jumps up and down every day. But a trend line shows real progress.
- Speed. Once you learn the ropes, it's an order of magnitude faster to add entries than anything out there. A bold claim, but give it a shot. It was designed to be opened for as little as possible each day.
- Repetition, a cornerstone of a good diet, is especially easy. You can copy meals or entire days. You can even auto-repeat them.
- No community-entered foods. This is a feature in most cases. Food is from a professionally curated database (Nutritionix) or custom foods you enter. Most community entered-food in other apps is flat out wrong. Once I figure out a proper ranking / vetting mechanism, I may introduce a comparable feature. <comment><AUTHOR> Tech Stack (We're on HN after all)

\- React, both for the app itself and the static pages.

\- Django for all server logic.

\- Heavy use of Redux for the application areas

\- Server-side rendered React templates with Django. Seamless with [https://github.com/silviogutierrez/reactivated](https://github.com/silviogutierrez/reactivated) .

\- PostgreSQL

\- TypeScript for all React code

\- Mypy for some Python code, and type generation to interact with TypeScript

Disclosures

\- I do use Google Analytics, but only on the marketing pages. Not in the app.

\- Mixpanel is used for my own analytics.

\- I'm working on a clearer privacy policy. Right now, I'm using the one Automattic gracefully open sourced.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is this open source?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not, it's a service. However, I'm actively open sourcing parts of the stack at [http://github.com/silviogutierrez/reactivated](http://github.com/silviogutierrez/reactivated)

Mainly, rendering Django + React seamlessly without having to build a SPA.</comment></comment>


Edward Snowden appears at Moscow airport and renews asylum claim - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/12/edward-snowden-to-meet-amnesty-and-human-rights-watch-at-moscow-airport-live-coverag

<comment><USER2> So, lavabit.com just got a whole load more customers.

<comment><USER3> >Lavabit will only release private information if legally compelled by the courts in accordance with the United States Constitution.

Strange that Snowden decided to choose this one.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious if his PGP signature was redacted from the email with the cell phone number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BO- PPaVCEAAlIKH.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BO-PPaVCEAAlIKH.jpg:large)

Picture from the airport 15 min ago. Is Snowden in the middle?

</comment><comment><USER6> I find it disconcerting that a significant portion of those invited are simply "too busy" to attend. Wouldn't you WANT human rights activists to stir trouble instead of avoiding it?

<comment><USER7> I also find it a bit strange than a Human Right Activist would just put the letter on her frigging facebook wall

<comment><USER8> With his email, thank you, now commence the spamming by NSA.

What is this 1999, when 99% of the people seem to be computer illiterate? On her _facebook_ wall she posts his email and letter in full!? Well, seems we are at the point of frictionless sharing, let the hacking begin people - nothing is secret, no respect for anyones privacy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's cool the airport is letting him stay there. I wonder how his conditions are. Good food, a bed?

<comment> k-mcgrady I don't think they have much choice. He can't leave with out a passport and technically has entered Russia.

<comment><USER9> Would he need a passport for a flight on a private jet? If so, couldn't Venezuala grant him one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has to be fake. An email "allegedly" from Snowden with no PGP signature?

(edit): And this is suggestive:

firstname.lastname@example.com -- someone associated this address to some PGP key in 2010

email@example.com -- no results

<comment><USER5> Who says that is the only letter. It is just one of the many. Also other means of communication/confirmation were possible.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's this best LIVE BLOG of the breaking news in the Moscow airport --

[http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_07_12/Snowden-meets-human- rights...](http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_07_12/Snowden-meets-human-rights- activists-and-lawyers-at-Sheremetyevo-4029/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's The Guardian's LIVE BLOG of the Snowden human rights meeting, and subsequent press conference. (excellent)

[http://guardiannews.com/world/2013/jul/12/edward-snowden- to-...](http://guardiannews.com/world/2013/jul/12/edward-snowden-to-meet- amnesty-and-human-rights-watch-at-moscow-airport-live-coverag?CMP=twt_gu)

<comment><USER11> Thanks, that was useful. Interesting that he is asking for asylum again in Russia, stating that he intends no harm to the USA. "No actions I take or plan are meant to harm the US ... I want the US to succeed."

Just my personal opinion, but I believe that Snowden did a good service to citizens of my country (USA). The fact that he probably destroyed his own life doing what he thought was necessary is a mitigating factor in breaking the law. I hope he does not get screwed over too badly and eventually has a normal life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Hacker News is censoring me, limiting me to 1-2 posts a day, and quickly flagging all my posts. (This post was flagged also).

Notice my comment "posted about" the Guardian LIVE BLOG two hours ago, and yet the LIVE BLOG is only now reaching HN a few minutes ago, by another HN user. That's because HN disallowed my submitting it two hours ago.

Keep in mind, I work/research fighting Chinese censorship.

<comment><USER12> rate limiting != censorship

<comment><AUTHOR> To discern the subtle censorship HN is doing, just divide upvotes/minutes on the HN homepage. HN may have decided that "Snowden news" is not hacker news. Definitely, articles are getting flagged.

<comment><USER13> Which is fair -- do we really need 4+ front page stories about this same event?

<comment><USER14> When something of value to this community I dare to say yes.

For instance [http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsmw5vkyxT1qba239.png](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsmw5vkyxT1qba239.png)

<comment><USER13> But most of them link to essentially the same thing, not different perspectives on the same event. It just fragments the discussion.

<comment><USER14> Yep you're right. In this case we should mainly ignore other sources than those picked by Snowden himself. At least for the sake of keeping the discussions concentrated under trusted posts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube Founders AVOS Acquire Tap11 Analytics Firm - <AUTHOR> http://www.avos.com/youtube-founders-acquire-tap11/

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, these guys been pretty busy, on the hunt to get something together using a portfolio of services obviously. Good news for some startups, or in Delicious' case, some left-to-die orhpans</comment>


Ask HN: How would YOU hack Chromium's Omnibar? - <AUTHOR>

An interesting issue. Chrome/Chromium allows practically any search site to be the default for the Omnibar. However, going through the normal routine of tools>>preferences>>manage search engines, and attempting to put in https://encrypted.google.com, results in a search option added that is not allowed as a default search engine. How would you hack it? <comment><AUTHOR> The power of Google: [http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=2bb3...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=2bb320ad0f84ec93&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER2> Put in <https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%s>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Why do you suppose this is required for encrypted.google, but not for, say, JSTOR.com?

<comment><USER2> JSTOR uses OpenSearch (there is a <link rel="search"> on their pages). This gives browsers information about their search engine.

If you look through the list of search engines that got automatically added to Chrome, you'll notice that some of those sites to not have the autodiscovery link. Chrome will try to autodetect search engines (probably by looking for a form field named "search"), but this doesn't always work.</comment></comment></comment>


The Great Plague of Marseille - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plague_of_Marseille <comment><USER2> "Powerful city merchants wanted the silk and cotton cargo of the ship for the great medieval fair at Beaucaire and pressured authorities to lift the quarantine"

So they also struggled with wealthy people bending the rules to their will even back then. The same is true today with large parts of the forces behind the "reopen" movement in the US.

<comment><USER3> And the wealthy class of Wuhan had to have their New Year banquet.

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049173/coro...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049173/coronavirus-10-new- cases-confirmed-30-more-suspected-wuhan-after)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should read the French article if you can read French. It contains a lot more information.

[https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peste_de_Marseille_(1720)](https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peste_de_Marseille_\(1720\))

</comment><comment><USER5> This kind of comparison strikes me as generally unproductive and toxic to the discourse. What useful parallels are there between a disease with 1% mortality that we aim to control through public health measures, and a disease with 50% mortality that could not be controlled through public health measures?

<comment><USER6> You're not wrong but... A disease with 50% mortality in an age with a 50% child death rate compared to a disease with 1%ish mortality in an age with (here at least) 0.01% child mortality. Sort of comparable...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 100,000 deaths from the Bubonic Plague in Marseille.

100,000 deaths from COVID-19 in America today.

Of course, the two have vastly different populations, so 100k in Marseille speaks to a much larger fatality rate than covid19 (obviously, it's the plague!). But it really shines a light on how poorly the US has done/is doing about COVID19. And the President golfs.

Most poignant part about the article:

" While economic activity took only a few years to recover, as trade expanded to the West Indies and Latin America, it was not until 1765 that the population returned to its pre-1720 level."

<comment><USER8> > But it really shines a light on how poorly the US has done/is doing about > COVID19

How, exactly, does a plague that killed 55% of the population of a city "shine a light" on how poorly the USA specifically is handling a disease that has killed (currently) <0.1% of its population?

Also, the bit about the president golfing seems like flamebait. I bet if you went digging you could find instances of Obama taking a vacation or otherwise relaxing following Hurricane Katrina.

<comment><USER9> > I bet if you went digging you could find instances of Obama taking a > vacation or otherwise relaxing following Hurricane Katrina.

Kind of surprised this needs to be said, but Hurricane Katrina occurred in 2005; Bush was still president then, not Obama.

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

<comment><USER8> My mistake.

<insert disaster/crisis> then, it doesn't matter. You can always criticize the president for <golfing/taking a vacation/relaxing> when you think they should be doing something else.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What metrics do you track? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Overall conformance to Goodhart's law.

<comment><AUTHOR> Goodhart's Law was originally proposed to explain metrics in economic policy context. Can you explain how you use this law in startup context?

<comment><USER3> I was going to ask initially for more information. I hardly knew what you meant, what context. If you'd written a few sentences explaining what you meant, what field exactly, maybe which ones you track, you'd have more chance of getting decent answers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://2700chess.com/](https://2700chess.com/)

(Current rating and rank of top few dozen chess players in the world, all-time highest ratings etc.)</comment>


Lack of "Security" May Hinder Future Google Adoption - <AUTHOR> http://tech.navarr.me/2011/08/lack-of-security-may-hinder-future-google-adoption.html

<comment><USER2> Availibility is not all of security.</comment>


Apple and NFC — why it's not there - <AUTHOR> http://www.chuqui.com/2012/09/apple-and-nfc-why-its-not-there/

<comment><USER2> While that's probably the only way to get an NFC launch really going, there is no way Apple will announce a hardware update like that three months before the rest of the hardware is announced. And there's no way they will announce hardware several months ahead of a launch (anymore), and it seems unlikely they switch back to July hardware launches. So there doesn't seem to be a good way for them to announce NFC months ahead. They might spill it to key partners like Visa et al, but not the developer peons.</comment>


Wikipedia Times Out in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes <comment><USER2> Using [https://www.uptrends.com/tools/uptime](https://www.uptrends.com/tools/uptime) I only see timeouts from Frankfurt.</comment>


MIT: Software finds the best way to stick a Mars landing - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2018/software-finds-best-mars-landing-0926 <comment><USER2> Very cool!

<comment><USER3> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? In principle, empty positive comments aren't a problem ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)). But they shouldn't be all that you're posting!

<comment><USER4> It's interesting that his comments were consistently substantial as of 32 weeks ago and then suddenly changed to nothing but shallow one-liners. Almost like he sold the account or started using a bot on it.</comment></comment></comment>


Data Structures for Text Sequences (1998) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.unm.edu/~crowley/papers/sds.pdf

<comment><USER2> I don't know if the first line of the abstract is the most ironic typo, or a joke.

'to' is out of sequence

"The data structure used ot maintain the sequence of characters is an important part of a text editor."

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this "general model of sequence data structures" encompasses the enfilade:

[http://xanadu.com/tech/](http://xanadu.com/tech/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's in a large part a discussion of the data structure underlying the text editor appearing in another HN story today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8826689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8826689)

Interesting to see how that structure relates to some alternatives. Clearly written from what I've read so far.</comment>


When Japan Collapses - <AUTHOR> http://seekingalpha.com/article/225460-when-japan-collapses

<comment><USER2> Assume all of Greece's debt is external, then the external debts of Greece and Japan are not too different:

              External  Debt     GDP   =  Net
      Greece:    100% * 120% * $ 355bn = $426bn
      Japan:       5% * 200% * $4900bn = $490bn

If Japan defaults, the main effect will be that the Japanese people will be a lot poorer. There will also be some external effects on bond holders, investors in the stock market, and exporters to the Japanese market. I suspect the stoical Japanese have already written off all the govt debt they hold - the default won't exactly be a surprise when it happens.

<comment><USER3> _I suspect the stoical Japanese have already written off all the govt debt they hold_

Oh, you suspect wrongly.

<comment><USER4> Especially since---please correct me if what I've read or remember is wrong--- the Postal Agency's Bank, which has most? of the people's savings (that's old info, could be different now that there are more options) has _way_ too much exposure to Japanese government debt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone interesting in learning more about the scale of river-paving and publicly-funded construction projects that Japan undertook in the 80s and 90s, then take a look at Alex Kerr's excellent book, _Dogs and Demons_.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd really like to see a breakdown of the structure of Japanese government debt. Since it is almost entirely owed to the Japanese people, what form is that in? Bonds? Does the figure include the balance of people's normal postal- savings accounts? Looking up the figures, the total government debt is roughly equal to the total national savings, so am I right in reading that the government has simply burned the entire nation's savings on building roads and bridges? Banzai! At least they got a spiffy looking country out of the deal. Zero the books and kick out the bureaucrats, and pray that Nintendo keeps selling Wiis.

</comment><comment><USER7> On the plus side, perhaps Japan's crisis will finally end any shred of belief in the ridiculous Keynesian notion that a country can spend its way out of a recession.

<comment><USER8> Well, the UK is currently testing the opposite ridiculous notion - that by laying off lots of government workers (when there already lots of people looking for jobs), reducing benefits to everyone (which hits the poor far harder, of course), and cutting funding to education and research, you'll somehow help the country recover from a recession faster and better.

<comment><USER9> Laying off people who weren't and aren't contributing anything productive, because the country has run up gigantic debts.

There's not any easy answer to this problem (except not to have run up the debts in the first place).

<comment><USER10> Public sector spending and working practices had been out of control for years - it was clear to anyone with any knowledge of how the public sector worked that it couldn't go on for ever and when it stopped things would be ugly.

There is no doubt that there are a lot of people in the public sector who deliver a lot of value. However, there are also a lot of organisations and people who clearly aren't - a tidy out was long overdue.

<comment><USER11> You assume that this tidy out will get rid of more of the latter (the unproductive ones) than the former (the value-producing ones).

<comment><USER10> Indeed, a politically astute friend point out that the first reaction of managers would be to cut productive first line services _first_. The so called "Washington Monument Syndrome":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome>

Of course, managers who act this way should be the first ones kicked out...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagon

</comment><comment><USER13> For the record, the complaint most "ivy league nobel prize economists" have with Japan's behavior is not the quantity of spending, but the type -- they didn't force banks to recognize losses, instead allowing them to renegotiate loans on much more favorable terms, ignore nonperforming loans, etc -- anything to avoid having to bring the losses on books, take the hit, and start over. This causes a lack of loan availability for more than a decade.

Perhaps next time this, err, nobody ("James Quinn is a senior director of strategic planning for a major university") feels like trashing world class economists, he could discuss their actual opinion?

<comment><USER14> "World class economists" disagree a lot more on economics than world class physicists disagree about inclined planes. For every Krugman there is a Becker, a Hayek, a Friedman. So argument from authority just plain doesn't work in this area.

<comment><USER15> wow! you really think 2 dead people disagree much with Paul Krugman?

<comment><USER15> you can downvote me all you want, comparing Krugman to Hayek and Friedman is just plain idiotic.

While these two (together, or shall I say in opposition with Keynes) helped lay an important parts of foundation of modern economics, their ideas are just about as relevant nowadays as Newton mechanics to building an interstellar spaceship.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


After Dark in CSS - <AUTHOR> https://www.bryanbraun.com/after-dark-css/ <comment><USER3> Very nice! I have many fond memories of the After Dark screen savers - <USER2> favorite was from the "Twisted" collection had featured a silhouette of a big city apartment building with crazy stuff happening in the windows. There was an old lady that would bank on the ceiling with a broom, a guy spanking a monkey, lovers that would chase each other, a crazy guy with a shot gun trying to down a UFO, and ton of other stuff. I also liked the Twisted version of the fish tank which featured that maffioso that would fall to the bottom wearing cement shoes and eventually die after holding his breath for a few minutes. After Dark was about the only software I ever paid for. If I remember right they were bought by Sierra, whom I believe was more interested in their You Don't Know Jack video games, which promptly killed all their screen saver products.</comment>


FinTech 101: How financial technology affects everyday life [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fintech-videoexplainer-idUSKBN19X2ZK <comment><USER2> Can we change the link to point to the full video[0]?

[0]: [http://www.reuters.com/video/2017/07/12/fintech?videoId=3720...](http://www.reuters.com/video/2017/07/12/fintech?videoId=372088194)

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is fintech, traditional banks don't have to worry much.

The real tech is something that replicates every day things like paying for something, checking bank account, transfering to other accounts or friends, making saving plans, analysing how a loan for a car or house or investment would fit into the current situation.

What AI can do on top is making assumptions about the future, e.g., based on the last 3 years spending and the current loan you consider taking out, how will your bank account look like in 10 years and why?

What AI can do is give risk/opportunity assessments for certain scenarios based on anonymized data from all the users, e.g., getting a raise, moving to another town, losing your job, getting divorced, having a baby.

What AI can do is figure out based on activity patterns (like a computer virus scanner) when you get an offer that tries to cheat you, when you don't have enough info to make a decision, or when someone hacks your account, stole your credit card or similar. And last but not least it can tell you if you forgot to pay the utility bill yesterday, because yesterday was the 1st and you usually pay that on the 1st.

What AI, at least in its current form, is probably not able to do is talk to you like a human.

<comment><USER4> Can confirm. Just this past week I observed mortgage loan officers taking inbound calls from prospective customers. The nuances involved in answering the huge spectrum of questions and complex answers around home loans (for instance) won't be replicated by machines for quite some time. In general, when people are making big financial decisions they will be more comfortable talking to another person than AI until there truly is no detectable difference anymore (20+ years away)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I enjoyed the overview about what fintech is.

But the middle of the video, the startup guy makes some bold claims about their AI - essentially that it has human-level understanding of natural spoken language.

<comment><USER6> >a start up that builds an artificial intelligence platform for financial services.

I didn't even started watching after reading this sentence. That's like saying "System using Applied Mathematics in Financial Service"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Adblock, adblock Plus and ghostery all together blocked 13 things. That's after what Pi-Hole blocked.</comment>


On tour of UW station, Inslee backs $15B tax plan for more light rail - <AUTHOR> http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/inslee-touts-need-for-light-rail-backs-15-billion-to-expand-line/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is very _Zero to One_ :

 _"A bridge, or a light-rail system, is a monument to optimism," he said. "Traffic congestion is bad and can only get worse. I am confident we can solve the problem."_

I wonder if Inslee has read the book.

<comment><USER2> I don't think anyone who has not read Thiel's book will understand what you mean. Can you clarify?</comment></comment>


Composable programs scale linearly: is FP the silver bullet? - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/116635422485042503270/posts/2gkRWqGeBpy

<comment><AUTHOR> for something so obvious, it took me months of study to distil it this to it's essence.

<comment><USER2> Yes but, whole /systems/ aren't composable - it can't scale forever.</comment></comment>