We are not sheep - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1029#more-1029

<comment><USER2> Let me rephrase his strategy here: If someone comes to you with an emotional argument antagonize them and eventually they'll start acting rational.

I'm sorry but not only do I think this is a bad idea I'm hereby calling b#llsh#t on the author. There's no way he made sheep noises at a guy who is emotional about gun control and from that changed the guy's mind.

<comment><USER3> You're right, Sam. I am struck by the fact that the guntoter did much the opposite of what this entry's title suggests.

Essentially, it's a post about trollishly winning an argument on IRC by bleeting like a sheep.

A cautionary tale: people utterly convinced of their ideas will stoop to the level of beasts to avoid sensibly answering criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with this, is that ESR may have cowed the guy into submission, but i now think that ESR is an asshole, _and_ that he's not right.

I remain entirely unconvinced as to the correctness of his position. In fact, i am unclear what the full scope and description of his argument is, because he spends so much time trying to convince us that people who disagree with him are not rational.

Way to fail at argument.

In some cases it may be fine/appropriate to needle your interlocutors with non-logical appeals, but doing so does not win your argument. It shuts down the argument.

ESRs interaction there is particularly frustrating, since his actual argument contains no content. Going to a gun club is not a rebuttal to an argument, it's an attempt to indoctrinate others through means other than logic.

Firing a gun, and learning about gun safety isn't going to change my mind that an populace armed with firearms is a solution for... anything really. Besides, if we really wanted to start an armed resistance, or a guerrilla movement, we don't need guns. Al Qaeda didn't cause 9/11 with handguns, and Timothy McVey didn't blow up the Oklahoma City building with bullets.

<comment><USER5> > Firing a gun, and learning about gun safety isn't going to change my mind > that an populace armed with firearms is a solution for... anything really.

You mean aside from the scads of strong evidence such as the frequent mass shootings by terrorists in Israel until citizens were allowed to carry concealed weapons?

<comment><USER4> I don't seem to recall the end to the intifada. :P

Arming everyone doesn't solve problems. It just guarantees someone is going to die. You can say "better them than me", but again, that's not a solution.

Carrying a gun may make you feel safer, but that's all it does. Some people tried to make the claim that the Virginia Tech massacre could have been avoided if students were armed on campus. Except that the shooter, who clearly did not value his own survival, caught everyone off guard.

Unless you are always armed, and always vigilant someone is going to get the drop on you. Fire arms are not going to make you safer. There are always random acts of violence.

Also, don't forget that the "good guys" with guns aren't infallible. They accidentally shoot bystanders or even other good guys by accident too (see the NY plainclothes policeman who was killed last week).

<comment><USER4> Hmm, looks like the intifada did technically peter out[1], but that hasn't stopped palestinian violent resistance.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada#End_of_the_Inti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada#End_of_the_Intifada)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From my reading, the author's epiphany was to shift the debate away from substance towards a contest along the linear social dominance hierarchy by trying to out-alpha his opponent, making him his beta bitch. How shocking that this came from the gun-fetish demographic.

(And I say that as a supporter of the 2nd amendment.)

I feel that this technique is orthogonal to the topic of the debate. A more dominant and rhetorically skilled opponent might have similarly stopped the debate in its tracks by insisting that the author loved guns because he was a chicken.

Then, regardless of the response, reply with "Bock bock bock b'cak!"

This is the author's moment of enlightenment? I don't want people like this on my side of the gun debate.

</comment><comment><USER7> Logos Ethos Pathos

It's not all about the logos, folks. Not knowing that is going to bite you for the rest of your life.

If somebody is venting to you about gun control, abortion, global warming, wolf reintroduction, or whether size matters, they are not going to respond to logic. A minute or two of conversation will tell you if they can be reached that way. Figure that out, and save yourself an ulcer.

This fact is actually one that even a hacker should be able to grasp, as it rests purely in your realm.

</comment><comment><USER8> My favorite part of his technique is that he starts from the premise that arguments like "criminals will use your guns against you" and "the weapons available to citizens are insufficient to repel the police" are "factually and historically ignorant babble". It's a good thing we had people like him "short-stopping communist counter-coups in the Baltic states".

</comment><comment><USER9> Actually, my impression after reading the piece, is that his response is 'we are sheep with guns'.

I've met two types of gun enthusiasts: the ones that like hunting o other sport shooting and are basically nerds who like throwing around statistics and how-to tips, and the ones that believe a Mad Max dystopia is coming _any day now_ , or are possibly convinced it's already here, who strike me as a bunch of paranoid lunatics.

A gun is a perfectly valid home defense option, but the dystopian crowd always seem to be waiting for some kind of reverse rapture in which they'll finally get to show how well-prepared they are. They remind me of the martial-arts types that talk endlessly about what would happen if they were ever to get into a fight, but don't feel comfortable riding public transport.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Oh, you wanted an argument? That's next door. This is abuse."

I have to admit the title did not promise a way to _use logic_ to reply to emotional arguments, as most of us were apparently hoping.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In the interest of gathering more data points, has anyone attempted to use this technique computing debates?

I'm thinking of discussions concerning sexps and significant whitespace in particular.

<comment><USER11> You mean, heavy use of ad hominem attacks followed by a return to the topic? Yes, I'm sure we've all done that.

And I'm sure we all have plenty of experience showing that insulting your interlocutor is not a successful means to convince them of anything whatsoever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly what I mean. While it certainly is not useful in a rational debate, it could be useful (under some circumstances) to short circuit an irrational one.

I'm interested, since many debates are (unfortunately) irrational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There isn't an 'emotional argument masquerading as logic' anywhere in the article or the comments. Unless the suggestion is that every argument is an attempt at logic, in which case 'logical argument' is a tautology.

From the article: _I think, now, that gun owners need to be replying more often to hoplophobes simply by echoing their "Baaa! Baaa! Baaaa!" back at them. Because only that reaches the actual fundamentals of the thinly- rationalized anti-firearms prejudice we so often encounter._

Yeah, because your assumption that those with an anti-firearms stance are by definition 'hoplophobe' and 'prejudiced' isn't a close-minded, arrogant, _emotional_ position at all. The 'fear' argument is easily turned around: you only think you need a gun, because you are afraid of what could happend if you didn't have one.

The proper response to the presented 'arguments' are:

Q: _"Why do you guys think you need firearms?"_

A: That's not an argument

Q: _"Criminals will just take them from you and use them against you."_

A: Criminals have their own guns and don't need ours. There is no evidence that the risk you name outweighs the benefits of owning a gun.

Q: _"They're useless for anything but killing."_

A: Umm, that's the point: they can be used to kill people before they kill you.

Q: _"You can't seriously think they're a deterrent against overreaching governments, the cops will just come for you you first."_

A: If almost everyone has a gun, the cops can't come for 'you' first.

Not only does he present stupid arguments, he is also incapable of defusing these stupid arguments and has to resort to imitating sheep. And this is supposed to be a hacker guru, someone worth imitating. God help us all...

<comment><USER13> For all we know, he may have given all of the same answers you did. Have you ever tried to give intelligent responses to someone who has already decided you are wrong? This is what is meant by an "emotional argument masquerading as logic". Somebody asks seemingly logical questions with the sole intent to bait and knock down the responses no matter how logical and well thought-out they are. The author of the article eventually recognized that this was just a pissing match and tried a different approach which worked better in that particular isolated case. From your "proper response" I have to believe that you would have fallen for the bait.

<comment><USER12> If the guy was baiting, then I concur with SamAtt:

 _There's no way he made sheep noises at a guy who is emotional about gun control and from that changed the guy's mind._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem with this technique is that everyone thinks they're right. You would be amazed and appalled to learn how opponents of, say, evolution think that they are the knowledgable few and you are the "sheep" who has been brainwashed by the scientific "man".

There is little to be gained from this kind of _mano-a-mano_ debate, IMO, and much to be lost in terms of time and emotional energy. The intelligent person of programmatic means would be wise to consider how better he might make use of his time, for example in constructing appropriate systems to enable larger scale, and more effective, destruction and undermining of the ignorance in the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd amend your statement. There is little _information_ to be gained from this kind of debate. You can, however, gain position, status or resources from this kind of debate.

In the real world, it is often necessary to deal with irrational actors. I don't think it is a bad idea to learn how to hack people's irrationality for your own ends. It is evil to short circuit _rational_ debate, but if the debate is already irrational, why not learn how to win it?

<comment><USER15> I agree. And, in subtle ways, even rational arguments are often won with appeals to emotion. Learning how to use emotion in an argument is a very powerful tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that by definition, a rational argument cannot be won with appeals to emotion.

The only exception I can think of is revealing to a person that their perceived utility function is different from their actual utility function. (E.g., how happy does owning diamond necklace actually make you?) But in that case, appealing to emotion is more about revealing new information (about emotions) than overriding rational thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Baa baa baa.

I mean:

This guy needs to grow the hell up and read a book on rhetoric.

Appalling.

EDIT: Oh, it's ESR! That explains a lot.</comment>


Ask HN: Knowledge Management Integrated with GSuite? - <AUTHOR> GSuite doesn't work for knowledge management (Google Sites is bad, Keep to basic and Drive is just a drive) in a team setting.<p>What do you use in a work setting that is deeply integrated into GSuite? <comment><USER2> Not affiliated with [https://youneedawiki.com](https://youneedawiki.com) but seems to be trying to do exactly what you asked for.

<comment><USER3> +1

If you already have your content in Google Docs, then YNAW is a great way to organize that content and make it navigable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coda.io has or had a pretty tight connection with GSuite. Might not be prescriptive enough if you want enforced structure but it's a great app.</comment>


Live Coverage of DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) Launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#.VNqLXEfF9_E

<comment><USER2> Launch aborted. High altitude winds at 151% of capability.</comment>


MoviePass keeps plan at $10, but limits subscribers to three movies a month - sahin-boydas https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/06/moviepass-keeps-plan-at-10-but-limits-subscribers-to-three-movies-a-month/ <comment><AUTHOR> I see a lot of people saying that $10 for 3 movies/month still sounds like a pretty good deal. It might be, but there are loads of other issues that make it more expensive and less useable:

\- They recently added surcharges for what they call "peak pricing". When I looked at showtimes a couple Sundays ago, _every_ showing after 10:00am had a $6-$8 surcharge.

\- Some showtimes just aren't available. After seeing all those surcharges, I tried again the next day. There were no extra fees, but the showings between 6pm and 8pm were not shown in the app. And this was for non-blockbusters that have been out for 2-4 weeks.

\- Their CEO has said (in a way that hasn't really been communicated to users) that they're no longer going to offer tickets for new mainstream movies. It's not at all clear which movies will be included.

\- The service has gone down a couple times in the last couple of weeks because they _ran out of money to pay for tickets_. There's no way to know ahead of time if the app will actually work when you get to the theater (and you can't buy tickets before then unless you go to the theater earlier on the same day).

So, it's not $10/month for 3 movies. It's $10/month for 3 movies, excluding new films, with likely surcharges on weekends and many convenient showtimes blacked out. Also, sometimes it doesn't work.

<comment><USER2> The AMC Stubs A-list plan seems better to me in that there is a price cap (no peak pricing), and it works for IMAX and 3D movies:

> See up to 3 movies every week in IMAX®, Dolby Cinema, RealD® 3D, digital and > more for just $19.95/month (+tax).

[https://www.amctheatres.com/amcstubs/alist](https://www.amctheatres.com/amcstubs/alist)

<comment><USER3> Do remember that AMC Stubs, exist because of moviepass. Not because they want to save us money. So we need movie pass to continue to exist so that its too late to put the cat out of the bag.

<comment><USER4> The cat IS out of the bag. If this is a profitable model for AMC, they'll maintain it without considering Moviepass.

<comment><USER5> Also, AMC is in a better position to continue to profit from the service model than Moviepass ever was. While Moviepass experimented with getting a slice of concession sales, they had no way to enforce that, whereas AMC already has control of the concession sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I might be uneducated about the issue as a whole, but I don't really see the negative side to this service.

$10/month for 3 viewings per month. That's 3 movies for the price of 0.76 movies where I'm from (last time I went tickets were $13). Then, after you hit that cap, extra viewings are $5 less per ticket which _has to be_ less than any one movie ticket for any new feature anywhere in America. Am I missing something? Are they just getting hate because they lacked foresight in the beginning? Is it because they gambled with investor money on a ridiculous business model? I have a genuine curiosity around where the hate is coming from.

I don't like going to movie theaters but if I did I would think this was a great deal.

EDIT: to correct the misinformation that each additional ticket was $5

<comment><USER7> It is a great deal. The problem is that MoviePass persisted for so long with a model that made no financial sense whatsoever, and now their customers have gotten used to it. There's no way to sell this as anything other than a giant downgrade.

<comment><USER8> > MoviePass persisted for so long with a model that made no financial sense > whatsoever

You can say that about almost every start up discussed on HN

<comment><USER9> That's not really true. MoviePass is an outlier in its crazy business model that loses money on every customer. Most other start-ups just have high cap ex but make marginal profits per sale.

<comment><USER10> Funny enough I worked at a ecommerce clothing "startup" that had upwards of $75 million in sales but wasn't profitable

<comment><USER11> ...how? What was the game plan? Why would they do this?

<comment><USER12> Happened all the time in the dotcom bubble:

"We lose money on each sale but we'll make it up in volume!"

<comment><USER13> Having started my career at the start of the dot-com boom (and later bust), that was damn near every startup I came across.

Our little agency ended up moving into eTour's space in Atlanta (VaHi) when they departed. Nice movie theatre built into the space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At the moment, Google is displaying MoviePass's parent company's market cap as only $189K [1]. Yahoo Finance is showing an even lower number, $141K [2]. If these numbers are accurate, that's pretty astounding -- if you buy $2000 of shares on the public market, you'd own over 1% of the company!

That said, I can't imagine they're actually correct, given the share volumes changing hands. Finance apps seem to have trouble with stock splits, share buybacks, post-IPO equity offerings and the like... is there no good data source for number of shares outstanding of a company?

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:HMNY](https://www.google.com/search?q=NASDAQ:HMNY)

[2] [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HMNY?p=HMNY](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HMNY?p=HMNY)

<comment><USER15> Its also a fantastic way to lose $2000.

This company is dead, no questions about it.

<comment><USER16> It would be a fantastic gamble. With gambling comes the chance to lose a lot of money, but also a small chance to win a lot of money.

I currently own around 2500 shares of HMNY, and it is a 100% gamble. I'm hoping someone better acquires them, or they bring in a better management team. But I dropped a total of $450 on these shares, so if I make $500, my gamble paid off.

This company isn't invest-able, but it is gamble-able.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One thing I am struggling to understand is why MoviePass is paying theaters full price for tickets, essentially needing to take on the same economics as an insurance company.

If I'm a theater, I'm incentivized to put butts in seats and make my markup on concessions. If MoviePass is helping to put lots of butts in otherwise empty seats, I imagine I'd be willing to provide tickets to MoviePass at a discounted rate. I'm not sure how much that helps MoviePass's bottom line, but my initial guess is that it would be nontrivial.

What don't I understand about the incentives and economics here?

<comment><USER18> I don't know about the US, but I talked with a someone who runs a cinema in Germany and he said that for example Disney dictates the prices, leaving him with small margins. This is also the reason why they _have to_ sell a certain amount of drinks and popcorn (at a high price point) to stay afloat.

<comment><USER19> If they continue like this cinemas will just die out.

My local cinema however is offering a "Sneak Preview" on Mondays. For 5€ you get to see some (unknown on ticket purchase) new movie that people have actually put some effort into (non "block busters", a.k.a. transformers part 500). There I have seen Shape of Water, Hotel Artemis and Searching. I will see another one this evening.

With adaptions like these maybe they'll survive a bit longer. I certainly enjoy the offering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've always used and now plan to stick with Sinemia. Advanced ticketing through any online site like Fandango, works at any theater, works for 3D/4DX/IMAX/premium formats. It's still limited to 3 movies a month but for the price and all these "better" features it's definitely worth it for me and the girlfriend.

Here's the thing though, Sinemia stuck with these features and pricing model from the start so it made sense financially for them and was still a great deal.

At this point MoviePass seems like they're clinging for life and all my peers on their plan express frustration every time these frequent changes occur. I'd like to link my referral code but I think their own signup offerings are better -

<comment><USER21> Sinemia is so much better it's insane!

I feel bad for my friends when we go to movies and they use MoviePass. Seems like they have so many restrictions, whereas I can just buy tix online whenever to _any_ showing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yeah, this service is going to disappear. They might have a few months of runway left, getting picked up by a few investments, but I don't see them surviving this downfall.

<comment><USER23> For sure, you can't slash your offering by 90% while keeping the price the same and survive.

A business always needs to keep in mind exactly what it is that they are offering their customers. MoviePass offered their customers the ability to not have to _think_ about budgeting for movies.

Now that that's gone, what is this service, exactly? A discounted pre-payment for 3 movies? MoviePass is now a coupon.

<comment><USER24> If I pay $10 a month and see 3 movies that are normally $11 apiece (local tickets are $10.75), that's a pretty clear value proposition. How can you ask what the service is with a straight face? Are you honestly implying that if I have to think at all, a 200% return on my money isn't good enough?

I don't really understand anyone who would even care that much about this change. I can barely find time to go to the theater 3 times a month let alone more. The changes that limit the most popular movies were much worse, honestly.

I don't think they are going to last, because even with this reduced offering I don't see how an outlay of $33 for a $10 subscription works. As long as I see at least one movie a month using the service I more than break even though, so I'll stay subscribed month to month until they go under.

<comment><USER25> When you pull the old "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." routine every few weeks, just being a moderately good deal isn't good enough because you can't trust that you will actually get the deal that they say they are offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> While it was a great deal, I don't like to use services that change the rules every 24 hours, so I canceled my subscription.

<comment><USER27> I don't get it. It's still a great deal, unless the deal is a net negative to you why do you care? You must see that the initial deal was too generous and unsustainable right?

<comment><USER28> Some days it's a great deal. Some days they don't let you see the movie you wanted, or you have to pay 8 extra dollars, or they run out of money and half of the methods of buying tickets stop working. Each with less than 24 hours notice.

Yeah it's unsustainable and I was planning to unsubscribe when they raised their prices. Instead I cancelled when they started jerking users around. Well, after the 3rd or 4th time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I switched from MoviePass last week to AMC's MoviePass rebuttal, called AMC A-List. The AMC program is $20/month, for three movies a week, in any format, with online advanced-booking. With this change, I don't see why MoviePass subscribers would not just switch to A-List if their main theatre is an AMC.

<comment><USER30> Perhaps because it's twice the price.

<comment><USER31> Twice the price for four times as many movies, without blackouts, but only from one theater chain.

And there's a better chance that the rules won't change next week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't understand why they did not also raise the cost to something like $15 a month. $10 was too low in my opinion. I assumed they might increase it to $15 sometime later, which is still a good deal for consumers, if you consider the average cost to be $9

<comment><USER33> Where do you live that the average cost of a movie ticket is only $9? I've seen tickets fully twice that expensive at AMCs in San Francisco.

<comment><USER34> I hope you know San Francisco is an expensive place

<comment><USER35> But Movie Pass charges the same amount no matter where you live so you'd expect it to be much more popular in expensive places. It would be challenging to come up with a worse business model than Movie Pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > "Because only 15 percent of MoviePass members see four or more movies a > month, we expect that the new subscription model will have no impact > whatsoever on over 85 percent of our subscribers."

Is it the same 15% seeing 4 movies a month? I suspect not.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't understand why MoviePass doesn't just close up shop. Their popularity stemmed from selling a dollar for 50 cents. There is no business here, they should quit while they are behind.

<comment><USER38> Arrogance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> In the threads about privacy, it is common to read some comments that propose to exchange your information for some benefit. MoviePass indicates that this is not as easy as it seems.

</comment><comment><USER40> I cancelled this weekend: surcharge for a two-week old not-exactly-blockbuster was annoying, but meh.

On Saturday, the app listed a theater showing something I wanted to see, I drove there, and then... couldn't check in and was no longer listed when I refreshed the theater.

I'd expect them to keep playing this kind of game.

</comment><comment><USER41> The price seems fine, I'd be happy with it. The problem I have is the amount of tracking they're apparently doing. That's the bit that makes me not use the service (not that I can in my country, but my point still stands).

</comment><comment><USER42> This is fine. There's barely 3 good movies released per month .

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't watch movies, so i don't demand characteristics, but why not have several tiers at diff price points?

<comment><USER44> If their business model relies on people paying but not going (a business model some gyms use) they want the low-attending people on the most expensive plan possible.

Offering cheaper tiers would prevent that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I bought a yearly 70ish dollar package from them and I feel like I've been robbed of the product that I paid upfront for. However I've seen 25ish movies with my movie pass so I guess I've made my money back but it's still very frustrating. Their CS is so poor too.

<comment><USER16> You feel robbed that you saw around 25 movies for less than $3 each?

<comment><USER45> I felt robbed that I paid for a product and then the product I received was different than what I paid for. A lot of the 25 movies I wouldnt actually have seen if I had to pay full price.

If I went to a restaurant and ordered a BLT, paid, and then a two slices of bread with bacon came out. I'd be disappointed even though I like bacon... I didnt receive what I paid upfront for. Even if I got something I will still feel like I was taken advantage of. Adding on the fast that when I would ask the waiter/waitress why I didnt receive what I paid for and a refund I'd be ignored...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Weird, it's almost like theaters were charging what they charge for actual reasons rather than "corporate greed".

<comment><USER47> Er... the actual cost of someone going to the theater is irrelevant here. The only cost that matters is what the theaters are charging since that is what MoviePass has to cover. If they can't cover that, they can't provide their service. It doesn't matter if the theater is charging $3 or $30 per ticket; if MoviePass cannot, at a bare minimum, cover that cost, they cannot continue their service. Which is what happened two weekends ago when their service was briefly shut down due to failed payments until they took out an emergency $5M loan to cover things.

<comment><USER46> > the actual cost of someone going to the theater is irrelevant here. The only > cost that matters is what the theaters are charging since that is what > MoviePass has to cover.

These two things _are_ tied. A theater is not going to give a discount it can't give. The theaters will not sell a ticket at a loss just because MoviePass is asking for 100 tickets at a time.

MoviePass thought they could leverage being the source of a lot of sales into getting discounts from theater chains. But theaters are simply telling MoviePass that the prices are what they are. They make money elsewhere.

Investing more into MoviePass really seems like throwing good money after bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It was a horrible service in the beginning and it still is. It won't matter how much it changes hands. You cannot ask a customer to pay money, commit to a contract (they required this in the early days), and then limit their use in various ways.

In the beginning, you could see one movie per day which was great, but you couldn't share the account with your spouse, you couldn't use multiple devices, and you couldn't see the same movie twice if I am remembering correctly. And that was when it was $30/month (albeit a cheap price if able to take true advantage of the movie-watching).

And now they're changing the terms, seemingly on a weekly basis.

It has been a complete failure throughout its run. It's time for MoviePass to go away.

<comment><USER49> I find your message hilarious. Do you have better alternatives if you're calling this horrible?

<comment><USER38> Just about every other way of buying a ticket (either AMC A-List, Sinema, or even just buying a normal movie ticket the old fashioned way) offers a much better, and much more consistent experience.

<comment><USER49> Well MoviePass was competing on price, not on experience. Is that why people flock to MoviePass?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Female Producers in Saudi Arabia: "Did you have to wear the black thing?" - <AUTHOR> http://no-reservations-crew-blog.travelchannel.com/read/under-the-abbaya-female-producers-in-saudi-arabia

<comment><USER2>
      And you know how all of them responded to women in charge? Great. Actually, they were a lot more than great.
      They were about the most warm, wonderful, welcoming group of people that you could possibly imagine.

I've heard the opposite..not about Saudi Arabians, though. My mother was the boss of an Iranian immigrant, and he was apparently completely unable to respect instructions given by a woman. And we are not talking about burger- flipping here, but pharmaceutical production.

This is an anecdote answered with an anecdote, but let's not put this whole cultural difference under a chair. Women _aren't_ regarded as the professional equals of men in all parts of the world. I'm not starting a gender debate here; in some ways it is a pretty interesting difference. Especially if you see that those Arabian cultures that are even more "different" (polygamy, for instance) actually have a lot of similarities to promiscuous life in the West..at least from the male's point of view. There are a lot of facts about morale and life in these societies that doesn't come to light in any politically correct discussion.

I wish I had a better skill for languages so I could go over there and see these things first-hand...

<comment><USER3> I've experienced a bit of muslim culture first-hand and it's not even close to the cutesy image you get from this article. The author sees herself as a culturally sensitive critical thinker ("before you think I drank the koolaid...") but she is far from it. Take her cliched argument about the advantages of abbaya. If completely covering one's face and body is so desirable, why are women, and only women, forced into it under the threat of extreme corporal punishment and imprisonment? And how could she miss the fact that not speaking unless spoken to and making sure to always look down (to name just a couple things) is an integral part of wearing the garment?

Gender apartheid is just as cruel and ugly as race apartheid. Extolling the virtues of full body cover for women is quite like saying that working cotton fields is really good for blacks, what with all that fresh air and exercise. Ignorant at best.

<comment><USER4> I often feel the same way when I here these sorts of arguments. But I think you're off the mark.

 _Extolling the virtues of full body cover for women is quite like saying that working cotton fields is really good for blacks, what with all that fresh air and exercise._

You didn't get the majority of blacks to stand up & say that they feel cotton fields are liberating & dignified. That is a major difference. In fact, women in places where hijab is discouraged actively defend it. You can't respond with the cliché brainwash argument either. Culture is always brainwash.

I think it's important to step back & draw the distinction between religious conservatives demanding that the sun orbits the earth and some other completely arbitrary cultural things.

Think about dress codes (especially for women) wherever you happen to be: Dress in at least this much fabric. Cover up at least these areas. You _can_ do this. But it's inappropriate at the office, if you want to be taken seriously. Some rules are relaxed in some places, like the minimum fabric requirement at the beach. Some, like 'cover these areas are enforced by law.

I'm not saying that I agree with Saudi conventions or law. I am saying we need to be careful of what we are criticising. A lot of cultural norms are always arbitrary.

<comment><USER3> Ugh. Proponents of status quo always invoke tradition and use some attractively pastoral but highly marginal examples to paint a white-washed picture that's quite far from reality.

In reality, it's not about the clothes. Muslim men base forcing women to cover up on "hard" facts of _exactly_ the "sun orbits the earth" variety. If you did not think western, you would know that these men think of women as being both naturally disabled (mentally _and_ physically) and inferior in the eyes of Allah (intellectually _and_ morally). This goes far beyond mere decorum and is not at all comparable to office wear vs. bikinis.

Case in point, a few years back I spent a month at an all-women resort in one of the more liberal muslim countries. Once, I happened to swim in front of a local man. To say that he was stunned would be an understatement. His eyes bugged out, he lost his breath, and when he finally managed to speak, he was stuttering. Turns out he quite literally thought that women are physically unable to swim. It was as though he witnessed pigs fly.

What I am saying is, it's easy to take the cultural relativism position until you consider where it leads. As just one example, this is what happens in Saudi Arabia today during rape hearings. A man's testimony is considered fact unless proven otherwise, similar to Western law. A woman's testimony however is considered a presumption, based on these "facts" as loosely quoted from actual Saudi law: women are emotional and as such incapable of sound judgement, women do not participate in public life and as such incapable of understanding what they merely observe, women are forgetful and as such their words are unreliable, and finally, men are by God's will superior and therefore dominate women by default.

So what do you think happens to rape victims when you frame it in those "cultural" terms? By the way, if you think you know where I am going with this, you are wrong - rape victims get sent to jail for the crime of being in the company of a male non-relative in the first place. When you get down to actual lives of actual people, it's not quite as conveniently multi-culti anymore, is it?

So let's _not_ be careful of what we are criticizing. When a tradition is practiced by a whole people, it's cultural norm. When it's forced on a minority that's unable to defend itself - even if said minority has been slowly beaten or acculturated into docile agreement - it's perfectly ok to say it's asinine and just plain wrong.

<comment><USER5> I call BS too. I've been to the Middle East several times. Uhm, "Women can swim!?" is about like one of those stories Europeans like to tell about Americans not knowing if Europeans have refrigerators. I'm also assuming you're referring to the Middle East from the tone, but let's not forget that the countries with the largest Muslim populations are Indonesia and the countries of the Indian subcontinent.

The views of women within various Islamic cultures varies widely and in some cases are quite disturbing, but the four countries with the largest Muslim populations (Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) have all had female presidents / prime ministers. There are other odd data points like women's suffrage having reached Iran a decade before Switzerland (1963 vs. 1973).

<comment><USER3> Nothing is as dangerous as half truths so let's look at what really happened as far your example of female leadership in Muslim countries.

Yes, at first glance 3 of the 4 countries in your example (Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh) have "elected" a female as president/prime minister. However, without exception these women were the daughters or widows of the previous heads of state. Their appointments represent the feudal tradition of inheriting power by family relation rather than popular vote as you are implying.

The 4th country, India, is an even worse example. Not only muslims are a minority in India (a quick lookup tells me between 15% and 20%), prior to the elections the muslim-indian leadership demanded that the female candidate be disqualified because she made some sort of a statement against veils.

<comment><USER5> Given that the US has frequently, and recently, elected children of previous presidents, and that the only serious contender for a female president was the wife of a former one, I think it hardly fair to discount other countries elected leaders on those grounds alone.

As for feudal traditions, all of those countries had been European colonies for about a century prior to organizing under their current systems. In the case of Indonesia, their first female president began 34 years after her father left office and after three other presidents were in office. She then lost the elections after three years in office. That hardly sounds "feudal".

And yes, Muslims are a minority in India. I assumed anyone reading this thread was aware of that.

My point is this: if these countries are one way or another electing female leadership, then it indicates that the issue of the views on women in those societies is more multidimensional than you're painting it. At the very least it's not consistent across the range from Western Africa to Eastern Asia. The problems are real, but they're best addressed when approached through examining the situations in their complexity, rather than trying to reduce them to a single wacky-sane spectrum.

This thread typifies why I think politics should be kept off of HN. It just degenerates into this sort of stuff where everyone's regurgitating what they already believe and on the whole the net amount of respect for one another goes down.

<comment><USER6> "We can't criticize them b/c we do something loosely similar" is a bad argument to make. Really, we should criticize both cultures.

Also, topics that are traditionally hard to discuss online should be discussed more here. It is mostly on HN where I've seen people make an effort to understand both sides.

<comment><USER4> I do not think this thread is a good example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something from the article worth quoting: "It's saving that kind of intimacy for those that are close to you, your friends and family, who have earned the privilege. For the first time, I saw that the abbaya may have a role in protecting women, and not as something simply designed to control them."

Once upon a time, the same sort of idea existed in the West, in the lost art of modesty (buried alongside chivalry nowadays). The idea that not everyone need be exposed to everything. That some things are better saved and not sold.

How many times in the United States do men look at women not as persons but as objects? Seeing not the woman as she is, but merely as she appears -- not respecting her as a person but instead consuming her as a visual image.

Whether in Saudi Arabia or in the United States, the first principle to keep in mind involves respect for the human person as such -- man or woman.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great episode of No Reservations, and I was thrilled to see this behind-the- scenes look at the team behind the cameras.

</comment><comment><USER9> why is this on HN?

<comment><USER10> _The focus of Hacker News is going to be anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

<comment><USER11> I've always found the above troubling.

It seems obvious to me _anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity_ will quickly transform the site into interesting news, but not _hacker_ news.

Perhaps if it was _a hacker's_ instead of _one's_?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps, but I think that in general, people who search for things that satisfy their intellectual curiosity are very much overlapped with those who are hackers (even if their hacking is not necessarily applied to technology).

As long as the content is interesting and the discussion is respectful and intellectual (which it currently is), then I think it's fine. If the quality of the site begins to degrade with popularity, then it can always be made more restrictive.

<comment><USER12> I would agree with this. I wouldn't call myself a hacker in the traditional sense of the word. I dabble in HTML and CSS but other than that I'm not much of a programmer. I am here, however, because the articles that come up are interesting and the discourse that happens in the comments section is always high minded and interesting.

Coming to visit Hacker News exclusively over a place like Reddit has been a breath of fresh air. I hope things like this article keep coming up alongside posts about hacking more specifically.

<comment><USER13> "things like this article" are exactly why reddit is no longer the way it once was. You will destroy HN with your wish.

<comment><USER14> Not true. This article could easily have been on Reddit in the first year.

What ruined Reddit was (a) an influx of 14 year olds, who (b) were allowed to continue to behave as they had on Digg or wherever else they came from.

<comment><USER11> But wasn't the influx of 14 year olds driven by general interest articles, which very slowly got less interesting and more general?

How could that slow boil be prevented?

<comment><USER14> I think the 14 year olds were attracted by a sense of lawlessness, most visible in the long, highly editorialized titles and the trollish comments.

It wasn't so much general interest articles that signalled the decline of Reddit as partisan political ones. I.e. articles that didn't merely involve politics, but were instances of it.

<comment><USER14> BTW, let me add that by "14 year olds" I mean people who behave like 14 year olds. Actual 14 year olds are welcome here so long as we can't tell.

<comment><USER15> For the record, I was 15 when I started reading Slashdot.

It's easy to say that the ideas and hackerdom I found there significantly changed the course of my life.

Here's to today's 14- and 15-year olds!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What makes you loose credibility on a web resource? - <AUTHOR> What makes you close a site immediately (like a GitHub project, a landing page, a HN posts, a blog post)? <comment><USER2> Modal window asking me to subscribe.

Low contrast between text and background, bonus points if the font is really thin.

Highlighting text does anything other than highlighting text (e.g. opening a menu to share quote on twitter)

Scrollbar highjacking

Clicking on background takes you away from the article (TechCrunch used to do this)

Scrolling down takes you to another article (some news sites do this)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank You, That's quite helpful to have in mind building my landing pages :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (1) The article is on medium

(2) Pop-over windows (e.g. sign up to our email newsletter)

(3) Ads out of control; not "ads cover content" but "ads cover ads". Many sites like anandtech are designed now so that the pages jitter on mobile in such a way that you try to scroll and somehow an ad gets positioned under your finger and KA-CHING!

(4) Taboolah, Outbrain, anything like that.

(5) "Hiring is Broken", "Does your API need a content marketing strategy?" and other fake memes that are promoted on a pay-for-play basis by Triplebyte, Mulesoft and other information polluters.

</comment><comment><USER4> Full page takeover popup asking me to sign up for a newsletter. Closed with fist pounding emphasis if I just clicked through on a link from the very newsletter the site wants me to sign up for.

<comment><USER4> Dishonorable mentions: asking me to accept notifications from the site, or the full page "YOU SEEM TO BE BLOCKING ADVERTISING" from getadmiral.com (I don't block ads, I don't have an ad blocker, I do block tracking cookies/scripts).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sites with community moderation and community driven content but advertise as open and free, in which the content and moderation is clearly swayed ideologically.

</comment><comment><USER6> Asking for payment, e.g. $3/month for a small service, but hiding company details. E.g. in which country the website is operating. Online (e.g. Stripe) payments are simple but I need to know whom I create a contract with.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I get my first job as a developer? - <AUTHOR> I graduated last month with a bachelor's degree in computer science, and now I'm looking for a job. I've had some experience with Java and Android(and some other technologies as well), but I really have no idea about how professionals work on their projects. How should I hunt a job for the position of a software developer, and what should I be expecting from my first job? How difficult will it be for me to get a job as someone who doesn't have any professional experience. <comment><USER2> > How should I hunt a job for the position of a software developer Check > online job sites for companies that are looking for developers and apply. > Just apply to every position and ad that sounds interesting. As long as you > don't lie about your experience level you shouldn't have too much problems. > Make sure your cv and cover letter look nice and are relevant for the > position you're applying for.

> How difficult will it be for me to get a job as someone who doesn't have any > professional experience.

Depending on where in the world you are it may be super easy or it may be very hard. It's all about local supply and demand.

Lastly, most of us didn't have much of an idea about how professionals work before we became professionals.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)</comment></comment>


Stack Exchange is down - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/

<comment><USER2> More info here: [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/111194/runtime- error...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/111194/runtime-error-on-all- stack-exchange-sites)</comment>


Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/12/dishwashers_dem.html <comment><USER2> I don't see anyone addressing the question of whether good content actually _exists_ for certain keyword searches. How can you blame Google for giving you bad results when they are the _only_ results?

For example, if you search for "digital camera reviews", the first hit is dpreview.com, a fantastic site. Is there an equivalent site for appliances?

The real message here is that keyword optimized sites are addressing a real need, but doing it poorly, which suggests that there might be big opportunities for people who can beat them by producing better quality content.

</comment><comment><USER3> The top search results for "Dishwasher" are EnergyStar and ConsumerSearch, followed by major manufacturers and retailers (ie Best Buy), followed by How Stuff Works.

The top search result for "washing machine" is ConsumerSearch. The second and third results are spam. The fourth is Wikipedia.

The top search results for "dryer" are the same as "dishwasher", but in a slightly different order.

The top search results for "refrigerator" are the same as "dryer", but in a slightly more vendor-friendly order. Again, no spam.

No spam on the first SERP for "microwave oven", either.

<comment><USER4> But as soon as you search for a specific model, the spam gets out of control. Try to find a review on a particular model, or whether it's comparatively good, and you'll get very little material but tons of price shopper sites and other spammy reviews sites.

<comment><USER3> "Long-tail" SEO is definitely a weakness in Google quality control. It is remarkably easy to get yourself into the first search result page by autogenerating specific pages for specific models, a trick I learned recently from patio11, and for which I surely owe him a drink (my mom, a teacher, already has enough bingo cards).

<comment><USER5> The 45 second explanation of this: Fat head SEO is dominated by the link graph, which is (by design) difficult to influence in a scalable algorithmic fashion. Long tail SEO is dominated by on-page factors, domain authority, and information architecture [+]. If you have a reasonably trusted domain name and a way of generating hundreds or thousands of pages of more than minimal value, you'll tend to rank for those subjects by default.

This doesn't have to harm the user experience, incidentally. I am fairly upfront about what I'm doing: there are about 700 pages on my website which cost me about $3 each to write, and they are all designed to rank highly for a single search term or small basket of search terms. Probably 95% of them deserve the #1 ranking on Google because they are the best content for that search term on the Internet. (Better than 80% of them are the _only_ content for that search term on the Internet.)

Similarly, the context the discussion I had with Thomas was also about creating user value out of a resource he already possessed but wasn't surfacing in a manner optimal to either searchers or his business interests.

[+] Edited to add information architecture, which I forgot to mention because I haven't worked on improving it in a while. Effective content siloing and interlinking is a major factor in why my site works as well as it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see the problem as Google having reached a large enough scale for them to affect the web in the same way that you affect the price of a stock if your trade order is large enough.

When Google first wrote their search algorithm, they tailored it to the web in order to produce good results. Now we're in the opposite situation where everyone tailors the web to fit the algorithm. I believe this is a worse world. I would rather see site creators focus on creating the best experience for visitors to the site instead of trying to play the SEO game, either white or black hat.

In addition, it probably creates a feedback loop that stifles innovation in search algorithms. Google issues recommendations on how to do SEO, so sites follow those guidelines, which in turn leads to the web conforming to what Google's algorithm wants the web to look like.

A concrete example: Newspaper editors used to pride themselves on writing witty and clever headlines for their stories. But SEO guidelines dictate putting lots of search keywords in the headline and page title, leading to bland and boring headlines. Google could change their algorithm to accomodate the way headlines are written instead of the reverse.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a bit (way) overblown. To me it sounds like a rant looking for a place to happen. I will freely acknowledge that people are creating content that provides little value to the searcher but rank highly in result-listings and picking up the ad money. But even if you get to a good appliance site, manufacturers are _also_ gaming the review process so that you're unlikely to be able to tell the difference between somebody who really liked a product and some shill from corporation X.

Simply because sites appear in the listing that you don't like doesn't mean they are spammy. People are also writing good content for the same reason. If folks are searching for material and you can provide something unique and valuable (which is really only determined by the consumer), there is a role for additional content providers in any area. Heck, there was a HN article a week or two ago about a company that is making huge bucks providing random video instruction. Remember these guys? <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/>

Finally there is existing content that is gaming Google's system to gain ranking where it probably doesn't deserve it as well, keying off of strategic partnerships and other things that just make them look better.

Once again, boys and girls, Google is an algorithm, not a way of life. Whenever you put an algorithm at the center of your company people are going to manipulate it. Google doesn't get to have the "magic" or right algorithm that is somehow non-game-able any more than Microsoft or anybody else does. This is an evolutionary process and we've got to expect change and adaptation. Seeing a lot of spammy sites in your results just means that the system is gearing up for the next evolutionary leap. Can't wait to see what it is.

As a personal story, I have a massage chair that gave me fits when I bought it a few years ago. So I put the name and model in my blog.

To this day I get about a comment a month with somebody asking questions about the chair and somebody else responding. Was that a spam article? Would it have been a spam article if I had purposely targeted that particular chair's keywords?

I think it's just content, and I think the rest is just content, and I think people write content for all kinds of reasons. If you incentivize it, people are going to do more of it. Search-by-keyword incentivizes creating content.

<comment><USER8> _Once again, boys and girls, Google is an algorithm, not a way of life._

It seems obvious yet profound at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "...churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you're done. On the web, no- one knows you're a content-grinder."

Spoken by someone who has never run an active content-based advertising revenue business. What you don't see behind that site with crappy content are 100's if not thousands of links pointing to that site. And THAT my friend is the real problem with Google search. Simply cranking out content is only a small part of the equation and will get you no where.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have never understood why google doesn't have a down vote button next to each link. If a domain gets too many down votes (from valid Gmail users) it is marked as spam. -- at the very least allow users to block the bad domain from coming up in their own personal future searches.

Any google search employees have an answer?

My only guess is that google seems to be anti crowd source and pro algorithm?

<comment><USER11> Don't you pretty much get this in the [comment] [promote] [delete] links after the cache link if you're logged in with a google account when you search?

(I haven't got time to go looking to see what the button class="w5" does, but I'll be good money Google records everytime you click one of those buttons)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail_

What the heck is this supposed to mean?

Is it just a catchy title or is there some unintuitive but turns out really appropriate metaphor going on here that I missed?

<comment><USER9> Is there a reason why you can't read the article? It's pretty clear what the author means.

<comment><USER12> What indicated that I didn't read the article?

I understand there are content grinders out there that are made to rank high for Google (but see, they are _not_ made _by Google_ nor are they _Google itself_ ). It sounds a lot more like giving a snake what it likes to eat--say rats--rather than a snake eatings its own tail, but since you say it's clear, please do enlighten me because I honestly don't get how the metaphor is supposed to work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. This guy obviously read the TechCrunch piece along the same lines and then wrote some idiotic blog post about a problem that doesn't exist.

<comment><USER14> The problem is very definitely real. "Helpful" comparison and review sites come up far too often, filled to the brim with affiliate links and, if you're lucky, excerpts from and links to reviews only tangentially related to the product at hand, when you go searching for a product that doesn't have dominant niche sites.

And I don't see how Kedrosky is a black pot in this case. He is not a search engine, nor is he a spammer, nor a purveyor of affiliate-linking review sites.

<comment><USER13> "Find some popular keywords that lead to traffic and transactions, wrap some anodyne and regularly-changing content around the keywords so Google doesn't kick you out of search results, and watch the dollars roll in"

Is he not doing exactly what he describes? He is writing about a topic popularized earlier in the day by TechCrunch. There are no objective measurements of the assertion that searching for dishwashers produces spam. As comments here note, searches for "dish washer" product pretty good results. Face it, it's the HN equivalent of Google spam.</comment></comment></comment>


Eight Months with a Hackintosh Netbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/eight-months-with-a-hackintosh-netbook-conclusion-fantastic/

<comment><USER2> I have a Dell Mini 9 I've hacked to run OS X. It's not going to replace my MacBook Pro anytime soon, but it's the perfect kick-around town/living room computer.

The install, while not yet one-click, is fairly simple to do and works with a standard Leopard DVD. I've certainly gone through worse Linux installs. And when you're done, it might as well _be_ a Mac - Airport, webcam, Quartz Extreme/Core Image, scrolling touchpad, even the special function keys work. Hell, the thing wakes faster than my MBP, too, and does the same creepy pulsating-sleep-light as well.

The only downside with the Mini 9 specifically is the bizarre keyboard - there's a really thick border around the edges , which cramps the keyboard and forces it to use odd-sized keys, pack them too close together, and arrange them with apparently little thought - keys like the apostrophe/quotation mark are down by the left arrow key. You can get used to it, but if you want to run a Terminal session you're going to swear a lot.

Some of the other netbooks do have better keyboards, but none of them have the near-100% compatibility with OS X the Dell has - there's always at least one piece of hardware that's non-functional.

Overall, I'm really impressed. I'd heard OS X was easy to install and runs well, but it was still fairly mind-blowing to actually see it run as well as it does. If the netbook concept intrigues, a Dell Mini 9 running OS X seems to be as good a choice as any. (Excepting that damn keyboard.)

<comment><USER3> Can you update it without it breaking? One of the biggest problems I had with Hackintoshes (albeit over 2 years ago) was the fact that pretty much any update that required a restart (including, but not limited to OSX point releases) would completely brick the machine and require a complete reinstall. How much has this changed?

<comment><USER4> I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I think most of the newer install methods will put the extra (non-Apple) drivers on an EFI support partition that isn't touched during system upgrades, to keep the install as pristine as possible. This also allows you to install from a real OS X disc.

In my personal experience, the Mini 9 didn't have any trouble with the 10.5.7 upgrade. I had to boot into safe mode and run the driver installer again, because the new update apparently affected the video card driver, but that was it.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the heads up. I'm on 10.5.6 and haven't updated to .7 yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My last Mac laptop was a 17" Powerbook from the G4 days. I sold it years ago. Recently at work, I needed to do some testing on OS X (I usually use Windows at work), and so I borrowed a Macbook with 10.4 and a Macbook Pro with 10.5. I was startled at how cheap the Macbook felt, while the Macbook Pro felt just like my old Powerbook (which I'd really liked). So if this thing feels even cheaper, I'm not sure I'd be able to stand it. :)

<comment><USER7> Was the MacBook one of the newer ones with the aluminum unibody frame? (Probably not if it only had 10.4) apparently they feel more solid now. I could tell the difference between my old 17" MBP and a newer unibody 17" MBP.

<comment><USER8> I have one of the new Unibody MacBooks and it's as well built, sturdy and polished as any laptop I've ever seen. Particularly what strikes me is it's strength and structural rigidity. You can hold it by the corner and there is no flex whatsoever. The same cannot be said for previous gen MacBook Pro's and Powerbook's etc.

As another poster mentioned though, the white MacBook is a replacement for the iBook and built to a lower quality therefore.

<comment><USER9> Ditto, I've never typed on a more solid, flex-free laptop keyboard. It's really a joy to use - the whole thing feels sturdy, solid, and durable.

A far cry from the flimsy sheet metal feeling of the PowerBooks and MacBook Pros of old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it possible to install OS X on say, my Dell desktop? How can I find out?

<comment><USER8> I believe it would be, though it will involve some work. The reason why so many people install OS X on netbooks such as the Dell Mini 9 is that people have gone to the trouble of ensuring there are working drivers etc. You will be alone most likely with your desktop. Look here:

<http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page> <http://www.hackint0sh.org/></comment></comment>


Wayland and LVGL on PinePhone with Ubuntu Touch - <AUTHOR> https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust-mynewt/articles/wayland <comment><USER3> Like other people here have mentioned Ubuntu touch/UBports is probably not the most Linuxy thing you can run on this phone, and there's a wide choice of distros to choose from. It's almost like _real_ Linux! ;)

That said I love seeing the momentum and attention the PinePhone is attracting. Can't wait until my order arrives.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Learn about Wayland and Ubuntu Touch on PinePhone... And how we build PinePhone Apps with LVGL

</comment><comment><USER4> > _Do we really have to code LVGL Apps for PinePhone in C? Rust is supported > too!_

Fortunately, C++ works. Modern C++ coding is very fun, and gets more fun with each new Standard.

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, that post triggered me. I've had really horrible experiences using LVGL on low powered devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you mind sharing why? We are adopting LVGL for PineTime Smart Watch, hope we won't fall into a trap. Thanks!

<comment><USER5> I was using it here[1] because the TTGO libraries were using it and it looked like a solid GUI. Unfortunately I took the TTGO samples and extended them instead of doing things from scratch and tbh the code for AWatch is an embarrasing mess that just happens to function enough to pass as working.

However... When I was doing all this, TTGO used LVGLv6. LVGL had just released 7, changed everything on their site and all their support. Documentation were pointing to a mix of v6 and v7 items, and there are breaking changes.

When I say breaking changes I mean the entire freaking toolkit is different in the way styles and widgets are handled. I have to rewrite everything by hand to go from 6 to 7.

Lilygo updated to v7 recently but I haven't had a chance to update the AWatch code for it, nor am I inclined to. For a do-over. I get that LVGL is good for say, Arm project size stuff but on ESP32 in the Arduino IDE it's no fun, a sentiment well expressed here in the current docs[2].

One other pitfall I found was that I wanted to be able to dynamically draw items on the screen so I could create a decent Protracker VU-meter for AWatch and possibly a little finger note thing. I ended up falling down a Canvas[3] rabbit hole. Do not touch Canvas if you can avoid it, especially on a low memory platform like ESP32. I had massive memory problems with it. Again, this was 6, not 7 so YMMV but it's put me off for life.

I'm looking for something simpler with limited inheritence. I don't forsee a need for something as complex as LVGL on a simpler watch like the TTGO T-Watch series.

[1] - [https://github.com/stevelord/AWatch](https://github.com/stevelord/AWatch)

[2] - [https://docs.lvgl.io/latest/en/html/get- started/espressif.ht...](https://docs.lvgl.io/latest/en/html/get- started/espressif.html)

[3] - [https://docs.lvgl.io/latest/en/html/widgets/canvas.html](https://docs.lvgl.io/latest/en/html/widgets/canvas.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, this page reliably crashes Firefox on my phone. This is immediately after Firefox decided on its own to "upgrade", and erased all my tabs.

Hoping my PinePhone arrives soon.

<comment> ben-schaaf Odd, it's working fine on my android phone using firefox (as well as desktop firefox). I've also never had an upgrade lose any tabs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have just resized my images. Thanks for reading :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Hopefully someday we'll move on to newer, simpler app frameworks (like LVGL > and Flutter) as we discard our Old Underwear: X11, SDL, GTK, Qt, ...

Ummmm what?

SDL is basically timeless as it's just a layer that abstracts various platforms (Wayland, X11, Mac, Windows, game consoles…) to offer one single API for just making a window with a GPU context, receiving input and stuff.

GTK is a really solid toolkit with a strong, consistent UI design philosophy. The upcoming GTK 4 transitions everything to GPU-based rendering _without_ reinventing the whole toolkit from scratch (unlike Qt with QML, Windows with WPF and UWP…). GTK suffers from lack of funding sadly, so it's a slow project, but the current state of GTK4 is already pretty impressive.

Qt is a monster framework with corporate interests working on it, but it's also really solid and QML/QtQuick was basically Flutter years before Flutter (so actual Flutter is just Google NIH syndrome…).

"Simple" UI libraries like LVGL are always bound to make your life not simple. They usually don't support accessibility, lack support for various platforms (you've just had to port that one to Wayland), have various limitations and so on.

Flutter is not even simple.. it needs the whole Dart VM or compiler whatever monstrosity to run.

<comment><USER7> > so actual Flutter is just Google NIH syndrome…

So true.

If Google can't control it, they build a competitor. If Google can't figure it out, or if it is not 100% what they need, they will build a competitor.

This has caused tons of problems for both the industry and consumers. For example, Android updates would be much less of a mess if Google had used linus' LTS kernel...

<comment><USER8> How does sticking to an LTS solve the lack of stable driver ABI? That's what project Treble from Google was about - providing a stable ABI driver authors/vendors can target so that an OS update can build and function correctly.

Also I don't know how closely you followed the ARM tree of the Linux kerne but pre-Google the authors were resistant to the board config approach because you don't have that on x86 because there isn't an SoC that bundles a lot of the functionality. It wasn't until Android that the Linux tree started taking ARM more seriously (which arguably it wasn't really before anyway)

<comment><USER7> Well, for one thing you have only one ABI to consider if you go with the LTS instead of hundreds we have today.

Treble is Google's attempt to fix a problem they - at least mostly - <USER2> themselves thanks to their NIH attitude.

Not sure I would attribute use of device trees to Google. I think the ARM- fication of the kernel happened a few years before Android.

<comment><USER8> You may want to brush up on your history: [https://elinux.org/Device_tree_history](https://elinux.org/Device_tree_history)

Russell King as recently as 2009 was against it. It got merged around ~2013 so it took about 4 years. The first Android phone was supposed to be 2009 but IIRC it got delayed to 2010 because of the iPhone (announced 2008). I think my characterization of this is fair and accurate.

> Well, for one thing you have only one ABI to consider if you go with the LTS > instead of hundreds we have today.

I don't follow. You have 1 Android release per year. There is a new LTS kernel every year. I don't see how sticking to LTS solves the problem. You have to actively hold off on Linux kernel releases to get any advantage of this process. For something like Android this means they'd be forking LTS & it would be even more work to move to a new kernel (all the out-of-tree development + all your driver vendors switching kernels). So now you'd be complaining why Android is using such an ancient Android kernel. Treble solves a real problem and has nothing to do with NIH unless you just define all kernel development happening at Google as NIH (which would be strange considering how many Linux kernel developers and maintainers they employ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder why one would chose a phone with Ubuntu Touch over some non-linux phone.

With Ubuntu Touch, you can not install anything on the phone. It has a read- only root filesystem that gets updated over the air.

So just like with the locked down phones (iOS, Android), to gain control over the filesystem, you would have to root it. But then your changes would get wiped with the next update.

This seems just as far from a "Linux Phone" as Android to me.

I am looking forward to one day having a phone that runs Linux. But then I want the same freedom I have on my laptop. To install whatever I want from the Debian repos via apt-get and update via apt-update / apt-upgrade.

<comment><USER10> > It has a read-only root filesystem that gets updated over the air. ... you > would have to root it. But then your changes would get wiped with the next > update.

No, given root access you can simply overlay a separate read-write filesystem over the readonly system partition. It can be as "Linux" as any Live distribution with persistence.

<comment><USER9> What are the "easy" steps to "overlay a separate read-write filesystem over the readonly system partition"? I would not even know where to start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a simple line :-)

sudo mount -o remount,rw /

Then we can sudo apt install anything...

sudo apt install gcc gdb git make libgles2-mesa-dev

<comment><USER11> This is re-mounting R/W the root, not mounting an overlay. What you install this way will be wiped out on next update.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Another clever game mechanic:  Quantum Minigolf - <AUTHOR> http://quantumminigolf.sourceforge.net/

<comment><USER2> This seems like a neat idea to get a hang of quantum weirdness. I suppose one would have to get use to the idea of hitting balls through slits and tunneling.

What I'd also like to play is an Electromagnetic minigolf. Though I've had my share of E&M courses, I don't think I really have a good intuitive feel for how radio waves propagate in a room or outdoors--whether they go through walls or around corners. Though no one has to adjust rabbit ears anymore, it seems like getting a cell phone signal is a crapshoot otherwise.</comment>


RJS leaking vulnerability in multiple Rails applications - <AUTHOR> http://homakov.blogspot.com/2013/11/rjs-leaking-vulnerability-in-multiple.html <comment><USER2> Here's a quick summary:

There's a Rails design pattern where you send an AJAX request to your controller, and it returns a bunch of Javascript that gets eval'd by the page you're on. This is used for say, infinite scroll. You'll click the 'load more' button, the server will render a partial containing your new records, and return something like:

        $('#itemsList').append('
My new item

another new item
')

So guess what? This is susceptible to XSS-ish attacks.

Let's imagine that instead of a simple list item, this request was returning some sensitive information or a CSRF token. (Egor points to various examples of this.) Normally, executing a GET request from an unauthorized domain will not be allowed because of CORS. This is what prevents me from instructing the users of my website to make an AJAX request to gmail.com, allowing me to see all of their emails.

But "wait", you say, "the content type of this request is application/javascript."

So open developer tools and type this: (using jQuery for conciseness)

        $.ajax({
          url: 'https://basecamp.com/[BASECAMP_PROJECT_ID]/progress.js',
          dataType: 'jsonp'
        })

And boom, you have a bunch of sensitive information about your Basecamp project, accessible via JSONP request from any domain.

<comment><USER3> Isn't this solved by just requiring the CSRF token on any JS get requests? (In fact, isn't this just a cross-site request forgery with a different verb than we're used to?)

I know it's only generally checked on posts, but turning it on for any xhr calls seems like it would solve any potential data leakage.

<comment><USER2> Seems to me like this solution, or checking for `request.xhr?` are the best suggestions so far.

<comment> why-el This one was mentioned by Homakov on Twitter I think. Though I would love to have it wrap the responder instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The key to this exploit is that JavaScript that is designed to be fetched via XHR and then eval()d can be used by another site to "steal" data by linking to it in a script tag.

An obvious fix would be to send that JavaScript with a content type other than "application/javascript" or "text/javascript"... but considering some browsers execute JS sent with the wrong content type I wouldn't trust that to actually work.

A technique that definitely does work is to have the first line of the JS prevent execution in some way. When the code is fetched by XHR this line can be stripped out before calling eval(). This cannot be done by a malicious page that includes the code using a script tag.

I seem to remember seeing Google use "while(true);" for this exact purpose in the past.

<comment><AUTHOR> >An obvious fix would be to send that JavaScript with a content type other than "application/javascript" or "text/javascript"... but considering some browsers execute JS sent with the wrong content type I wouldn't trust that to actually work.

I believe _all browsers_ will try to execute. Sniffers

>I seem to remember seeing Google use "while(true);" for this exact purpose in the past.

Not this exact, but relevant. That one was JSON-leaking via redefining Array prototype.

<comment><USER5> But would this same solution work with this vulnerability? The server sets the first line of the response js to `while (true) ;` and the js handler that does the eval just deletes the first line like so:

         eval( responseJS.replace(/.*\n/, "") )

<comment><USER4> The exploit occurs when an evil third party site links to your script from a script tag - they can't modify the returned code before it is evaluated. Your own code running on the same domain (which fetches the code using XHR) can make the modification and hence execute the script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it interesting that DHH dismissed this out-of-hand given Egor's history with Rails. In his tweets he highlights some pretty large Rails projects that impact a lot of users/sites.

I know a few of my own are affected by this.

<comment><AUTHOR> He dismisses removal of it. He just wants to find a painless way to fix security concern. I don't know such way

<comment><USER7> It's clear that the author is frustrated though. Maybe it's just me but I feel like a framework's core team should treat security vulnerabilities (or even common design patterns that lead to them) as stop-the-world events until they are resolved.

It's not up to the issue reporter to come up with a fix that satisfies the core team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha i practised pull request fixing zero days for a while. Ppl asked me to stop

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> JSON and clientside templating, folks. It's a wee bit more work, but it's a lot more pure, and that purity pays off in multiple regards, including security.

<comment><USER9> "wee" is subjective...

I have existing templates that exist server side. I don't want to recreate them client side. Rails JS responses to the rescue.. It's quite elegant and works well with the existing Rails workflow.

<comment><USER10> Nothing that relies on JS eval() is elegant, by any definition of the word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is sad, and this is being flagged too, so fast, seriously people? This is a genuine security issue which needs to be alerted to everyone out there. And Homakov has also gone so as far as to make some pull requests and he has been asked to stop (WTF?!). Really I see this more of like arrogance from the project maintainers' end.

I'm thankful that I don't depend/use on any of these features for my project though.

Thanks Homakov!!

</comment><comment><USER12> This is why `request.xhr?` exists. It will be false when the action is called with JSONP.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 [https://twitter.com/homakov/status/406466616897986560](https://twitter.com/homakov/status/406466616897986560)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This type of attack is also relevant: [http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/20/anatomy-of-a-subtle- js...](http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/20/anatomy-of-a-subtle-json- vulnerability.aspx)

<comment><AUTHOR> Relevant, but out of date. It was a bug in browsers, not in the apps anyway

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Always hated RJS. Too much toggling my brain.

Switching to jQuery made life so much easier. Once a feature is completed, I feel happy. With RJS, I was just glad that it was over. And, no, I do not want to touch it again :-)

<comment><USER15> How will jQuery solve this, if still using JSONP ?

<comment><USER14> Not sure I know what you mean.

I can say is that with jQuery you just get the JSON or HTML you need. And then you either process it or put it where its supposed to go. The server just creates the JSON or HTML.

An RJS file is a template for generating javascript on the server side with your data. Writing code with a tempting language is more of a pain than just writing that processes JSON or moves HTML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I get redirected to a login page when attempting to access a spree /admin/products/new.js ... where's the leak or did I need to first have access to the users session?

<comment><AUTHOR> someone with admin session must visit this page. Are you admin? you check it on demo spree installation

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Quick fix for your Rails app: [https://gist.github.com/javan/7725255](https://gist.github.com/javan/7725255)

</comment><comment><USER18> you have to be logged in for the request to work right?. if you are not logged in / don't have the cookie / session it won't work. so whats the problem? when your logged in you see all that stuff anyway why does it matter which flavor its in?

as long as your session is secured how will this work?

<comment><AUTHOR> you make logged in user to visit specially crafted page, where you attack him with cross site


Stack Exchange Online Store - <AUTHOR> http://store.stackexchange.com/ <comment><USER2> Tip: Get really attractive people to wear them, first.</comment>


"Google bought my first startup today. I learned to make stuff here on proggit." - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dopkt/google_bought_my_first_startup_today_i_went_to/ <comment><USER2> From now on whenever I read a 'google bought my startup' and there is neither mention of the amount nor of the products projected path post acquisition I'm going to assume it's a talent acquisition, possibly with a signing bonus masquerading as a buy-out.

Anything over a few hundred K deserves the benefit of the doubt.

If your service gets shut down after the acquisition that's not a good indicator that they bought the startup, that's an indicator that they bought you.

In a proper acquisition the team _and_ the product matter, and the product will not normally be discarded after taking over (there are some exceptions to that, but this is not one of those by the looks of it).

In this case, the acquisition was for an undisclosed amount, the TC article guesses $6M but why is not detailed.

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/08/google-confirms- acquisition...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/08/google-confirms-acquisition- of-everything-is-the-best-plannr/)

So, I'm curious if plannr will be shut down or will be allowed to continue and develop.

The fact that "Having met at Stanford, Eidelson will be Product Manager and Prado will be Software Engineer of a new project they declined to mention at Google." does not bode well for plannr, after all with the two founders working on other stuff it might not survive for long.

Possibly a team of googlers will take over the running of the site or maybe it will be integrated in to other google services.

<comment><USER3> "Thank you for using Plannr. We've greatly enjoyed building Plannr and working with you to improve it over the last few months. However, we have decided to put our time and efforts elsewhere and have closed down Plannr. "

<http://www.useplannr.com>

<comment><USER4> Chalk that one up to talent acquisition. Nobody buys a company and then closes it if what they want is to develop the product; they buy it and close it when what they want is the talent solely focused on their own, in-house projects.

Which is fine. It just begs the question:

How much would someone have to pay you to drown X months of development work and your entire userbase in the Deadpool?

It's an interesting question. For how many people is a buyout, a 9 - 5 job, and some 0s in the bank account a desirable, worthwhile exit strategy? How many 0s does it take to make an option that's viable into one that's desirable?

<comment><USER5> > _How much would someone have to pay you to drown X months of development > work and your entire userbase in the Deadpool?_

Destruction is so much easier than creation. They don't have to pay you, they just need to send the in-house destruction team.

> _How many 0s does it take to make an option that's viable into one that's > desirable?_

How much does it take to fix a "man barely alive" into something that is "better, stronger, faster"? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoLs0V8T5AA>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All those acquisitions for talent made me think that a good business model would be to simply develop a clone of such a purchased-but-discontinued product (and of course keep developing it).

After all if you believe Lean Startup ideas, the biggest problem that a startup faces is an idea that has not been vetted by costumers.

I assume that even though those startups don't have products that are interesting enough for Google to keep working on them, in order to get noticed (and eventually bought) those startups had to show solid traction numbers so those ideas are already vetted by costumers. The biggest startup risk has been removed.

All that's left is good execution. It might not be a good business for Google, but could be a good business for a small team.

<comment><USER7> Foursquare agrees with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's some serious sour grapes in that thread. I'm disappointed in you, reddit.

<comment><USER9> I agree, a very hateful thread when the guy was just thanking the community for the help and ideas/motivation they gave him.

With that said, I think I agree with the less hateful comments that Google bought the programmers behind the startup, not the product itself (though that was a bonus). Kind of like PG and others focus on the founders themselves as much if not more than their current product idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> that post is severely lacking in information

all you learn about, is the founder's age, location and a short description of what the site did. For a reddit post, I was expecting details on how they got the deal, traffic numbers etc.</comment>


Stack Overflow puts a new spin on resumes for developers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/11/stack-overflow-puts-a-new-spin-on-resumes-for-developers/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12685700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12685700).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is blogspam of the recently submitted and also on the front page [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12685700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12685700)

<comment><USER4> Techcrunch spams HN quite a bit.

<comment><USER5> The submitter seems like a reasonable standard poster with no indication of a TC connection.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the benefit of the doubt. I have no TC connection.

<comment><USER3> I didn't mean to accuse you of spamming, so I apologize if that was the implication.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I didn't take it personally. I only responded to be helpful and clarify.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>