How to Provide Great Feedback When You're Not in Charge (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://fs.blog/2016/02/provide-feedback/ <comment><USER2> There's sometimes a status/power component associated with feedback. I used to work with someone who tended to make a variety of subtle power plays -- dominating or "guiding" discussions when not the designated leader of the meeting, for example. I noticed that he often gave unsolicited advice, and although it was typically prefaced nicely with "would you mind if I offered some feedback?" I think it tended to also serve as a sort of power/status display. I.e., "I'm an authority on this subject, and in some way superior or more knowledgable than you."

And I had/have quite mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I felt that this person was generally trying to be helpful and improve the situation around them. And feedback/advice can certainly serve that end. Who doesn't want to know how to improve their overall performance, right?

But on the other, to the extent that the power dynamic above was actually in play, unsolicited feedback of this sort only rubbed people the wrong way. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but thinking back to certain times in my past where I've been the advice giver, I do think there are occasions where my motivations were suspect, where, at the time I _thought_ I was genuinely trying to help someone, but which in retrospect were mostly superiority displays.

I don't have any concrete conclusions to draw from this; just something the article stirred up. I welcome your feedback. ;)

<comment><USER3> Sometimes the difference is doing it publicly versus privately.

Hey, I noticed in the meeting, you did this, have you thought about trying this?

As someone in consulting for a long period of time, i find people think I'm more genuine if I provide it privately, that way it doesn't come across as a power play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In German we have a saying that goes "Ratschläge sind auch Schläge", which translates loosely to "advice is also a blow/hit/punch".

The word for advice (Ratschlag) literally contains the word for blow or hit (Schlag).

<comment><USER5> Advice also squeezes like a vice ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not a bad article, but I still want to bring something up that I find problematic with a lot of communication advice.

How to actually act on it in a real situation? How do you remember and apply all these rules when you feel like the timing is off, when you're talking to the person who you know only works here because of weird circumstances and cares more about the opinion of the coworker next to them who always mocks corporate lingo? How do you deliver your delicate feedback in a situation where you both know you own the other guy? This stuff is IMO the thing that seperates the really good talkers from the rest of us - and I was never really able to catch up with such articles who seem to assume a limited number of conditions to adhere to; like an "advice giving robot" to steal their phrase. How do you improve in being an advice giving human?

<comment><USER7> > cares more about the opinion of the coworker next to them who always mocks > corporate lingo

Don't get me wrong here but in my experience the people who haven't drank the koolaid can often see the forest through the trees far more clearly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I try to offer Appreciation when I see something great, or something helped me. I make a point of that.

But I'm reluctant to offer Coaching or Evaluation, and _never_ unsolicited, or on a public forum. I find it difficult to not come across as a dick, and frankly that's how I read anyone else's unsolicited feedback.

<comment><USER9> As an alternative idealistic view: you have all this awesome knowledge that you have built up over a lifetime that you are now hoarding. No one is perfect and some of your advice might be wrong or otherwise unhelpful; but sharing knowledge and advice allows others to achieve great things that they might have struggled with alone.

What is worse: risking someone thinking you are a dick or allowing someone to needlessly suffer through their problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nothing works unless the person on the receiving end thinks you really care about them as a person. If you actually care about the person you are giving feedback to it doesn't matter what you say or do as any approach works (from mere grunting to hours long love-ins). If you don't care then nothing works - that is unless you are one of those rare people who can fake it well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very important topic. If more ppl were aware of how they give feedback we would benefit a lot; both online and in our workplaces.

<comment><USER12> Not nearly as much as if more people were willing to listen to feedback.

I'm never-endingly amazed at the degree people don't want to hear. I greatly value the company of those that do, and return the favour.

<comment><USER13> It might be worth asking why they don't want to hear it. Do they feel attacked? Are they suffering from imposter syndrome, and any feedback sets them down a path of low self-esteem? Do they simply not trust that their team has faith in them and is trying to build up a higher level of skills? Or is it actually a flaw, where they think they are right and everyone else is wrong... so you need to address that before you can hit any other points in your feedback.

Almost all communication, and really almost everything in business, go better when everyone thinks about how people on the receiving end will take it. Which is almost always about empathy for their perspective, and understanding the personal drivers and goals of your team.

<comment><USER12> Let's put aside my own failings of sensitivity and similar. I acknowledge them and that they are a barrier to criticising other people.

If they have rejected what you say then in many cases they don't want to explain why because that gets at the very reason they are rejecting it.

"I wrote it" isn't a valid reason for rejecting an offer of a code review.

"We're using this tech" even though the boss-man mandating it doesn't understand its cost or benefits. He just read an article on XSLT and we have to use it.

"If you run this script every night it'll report those errors in the morning and you can fix them before they hit the customer. Response: "no", and no system was put in place to prevent them.

All real examples. There is no obvious reason for many rejections, and I suspect a lot of the time that's because there is no good reason. If there is, tell me! then I can understand better. But that's rare.

(Another rambly answer I'm afraid)

<comment><USER13> Reasons for human behavior aren't always good reasons... but they are reasons. If you are putting a judgment on their reasons, that in itself is a barrier to good teamwork. Their reasons might be bad, and might stem from their own personality flaws. But they are still the root cause of the problems, so you need to deal with them no matter how silly you may feel they are.

Sometimes people don't even know their own reasons, or don't realize what they are doing. This is where the squishy/warm fuzzy conversations help, as you can talk about what people are really feeling about the team and the work. Analytical folk aren't always good at such conversations, but think of every conversation with your co-workers as if it were a retrospective on your working relationship with them, and it will help.

So let us go through one of your example -- the boss mandates using a tech because he read an article. And you find it to be a bad choice for valid, analytical reasons. So you likely are approaching him with a "I'm right, you're wrong" attitude, and he may be responding with an underlying attitude of "Screw you, I'm your boss.", because he has a strong ego and you challenged it. So you both are annoyed and ungiving. Instead, maybe go in with a different approach of asking to understand why that tech helps the business, and truly listen to the answers, then compare/contrast your preferred tech with the reasons given. Then the conversation isn't about "Tech X is wrong", it is about underlying reasons and business needs. Which will be less likely to trigger defensive reactions from the boss.

Ultimately, you cannot change other people. But you can change your own approach to other people.

<comment><USER12> > But they are still the root cause of the problems, so you need to deal with > them no matter how silly you may feel they are

I simply cannot disagree. I just do not know how.

> Analytical folk aren't always good at such conversations, but think [...] > and it will help

I'll chew over that carefully, thanks.

> So let us go through one of your example...

that was a particularly nasty example for me to give because there was no solution. He would not listen to what I had to say. He thought XSLT was a sort of magic. The cost is still hitting the company years later as they transition away from it. Over that and a related issue, I resigned. Sometimes you must take it on the chin.

I appreciate what you say, and the decent intent behind it and as mentioned will chew it over. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great Article @prostoalex. In our company, we make the Feedback process easily done by using Happierco (www.happierco.com) to keep track of everything than to performance management. And there's always a room to improve the process.

<comment><USER15> I mean great if it works for you, but the happierco website gives me impressions of dystopian micromanagement on the management end, and performative happiness on the receiving end.

Maybe disclose that you work for them, too.</comment></comment>


SoundCloudify – Music streaming extension for Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/soundcloudify/boblphpidkohagaoinepjgecndchlnbk

<comment><AUTHOR> SoundCloudify helps you listen to endless music from Youtube and SoundCloud, right in your Chrome Browser, without the need to open a new tab. It's an extension, a little player with all the power you need.

It's not just only a player, it's a way to discover new music. SoundCloud is a place for sound creator to share their works, while Youtube is just great for everything. Soundcloudify take advantages of both and help you have all the music in one place.

And ... it's free, yaaaay!!!

KEY FEATURES: \- Music Discovery: Top Charts, Search from Youtube & Soundcloud. \- Player: all you playing history will not be cleared until you do it. 'Up Next' feature help you planning your playback without the need to stop the current song. \- Playlist: keep track of your loving music. Make them organized.</comment>


Digg Makes a Play for Relevance, Increases Front Page Speed 75% - <AUTHOR> http://www.jboitnott.com/2011/03/digg-makes-a-play-for-relevance-increases-front-page-speed-75/

<comment><USER2> It doesn't matter how fast it loads or updates if it reads like a bizzaro- world version of the headlines of the magazines at the supermarket checkout.

</comment><comment><USER3> BTW he is talking about the frequency new articles appear - not page load speed.

<comment><USER4> So he's twitterizing Digg? I guess it could work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm probably bias as I really dislike the whole "social media" thing going on with the internet right now (the sort of crap mashable covers) but I see this as proof that "social media" is a fad and that _real communities_ which have been around since the dawn of the internet are where the real growth and stability is.

Reddit is a community, always has been, it took time to grow but it has grown and is now flourishing, Digg is a social media site, where the focus is not on discussion or sharing cool things, it's about driving page views to other sites, the discussion and sharing links became a side part of it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Digg is like that once-cool friend who goes all weird overnight leaving his buddies wondering 'WTF happened?'.

</comment><comment><USER7> The front page was pretty fast, but I keep getting a weird error that won't let me proceed to the next page.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/317805/digg.png>

</comment><comment><USER8> is it just me, or after they changed the layout, 90% of the users left for reddit, so it would make much more sense if the speed boost would've been 1000%?

<comment><USER9> At that point they didn't have any users worth keeping anyway. The community had degraded to the point of irrelevance a year or two before the redesign. If anything the shift to reddit just harmed reddit.

<comment><USER10> Happily, subreddits help alleviate this 'content inflation'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did I just miss it or is there no actual link to digg in the article? I expect that crud out of the newspaper sites, but it seems odd there.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, they finally took my advice and changed their layout back! :P

<comment><USER13> Yours and the world's as well.

I don't care how fast they claim to be now-- whether if it's true or not. reddit is down at the moment and I've been reloading like crazy for about 2 hours. I think there's a lesson to learn there.

<comment><USER14> Reddit has always had way more downtime than digg for as long as I can remember. People left digg for reddit because of power users and the last straw of serving as an RSS feed for big name websites.

If they have the brains to go back on these 2 changes and maintain the same uptime, there's absolutely no reason why they would not be able to surpass reddit again. Reddit is not without its share of problems:

      - frequent downtime
      - censorship and squatting of subreddits
      - censorship of random subreddits like atheism
      - shadow banning of random articles

<comment><USER15> What makes you think there's any real censorship? Mods are free to censor whatever they feel like. When people get sick of it, they form a new community. See the /r/marijuana to /r/trees migration that occurred a while back for the most famous example.

Shadowbanning from the site is really only done by hueypriest. If a mod shadowbans you, post elsewhere.

As far as downtime, they have __three engineers __. One programmer, and two sysadmins. Raldi just left for Google. Three engineers for 1.1 billion pageviews. Give them a break.

<comment><USER14> \- What makes you think there's any real censorship?

See the atheism debacle. They tweaked the "algorithm" until it stopped showing up in the top 10 (requirement for frontpage). Try submitting an anti-haskell article in proggit. It will never show up.

\- Shadowbanning from the site is really only done by hueypriest. If a mod shadowbans you, post elsewhere.

Post elsewhere? The difference between the front page and a random unknown subreddit is 20k or 10 viewers. Articles can be "shadowbanned" because of their faulty anti-spam system. The main problem with shadowbanning is that people don't even know it is shadow banned until they start digging, so good stories get stuck in limbo.

\- As far as downtime, they have three engineers. One programmer, and two sysadmins. Raldi just left for Google. Three engineers for 1.1 billion pageviews. Give them a break.

They had uptime problems far before 1.1 billion pageviews. Read the The Mythical Man-Month. 9 women can't make a baby in 1 month. 3 engineers is more than enough for this type of website. If it isn't, then they should've stopped adding features.

<comment><USER15> >3 engineers is more than enough for this type of website.

Sorry, but you lost all credibility right there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love the example Reddit has made with the Digg/Reddit war. Mostly in that it was never a war. I remember hearing their response when they found out about digg was something to the affect of "oh interesting" then continued on.

<comment><USER17> Digg was popular well before Reddit, and I was always given the impression that Reddit was established as an ultimately successful Digg competitor.

However, your statement prompted me to do a little research. Here is Alexis' (reddit) story:

"This is a good chance for me to dispel any rumors. We were living in a veil of ignorance for the first month or so at Reddit. We were working our asses off, my co-founder Steve Huffman and I, building a site that we got online, and then two weeks into the site being online we found out that there was this other site called Digg, that had venture funding and it had been out for quite some time."

Source: [http://mixergy.com/no-reddit-didnt-copy-digg-heres-how-it- wa...](http://mixergy.com/no-reddit-didnt-copy-digg-heres-how-it-was-built- with-alexis-ohanian/)

<comment><USER18> With all due respect, I really don't buy that story. I'm a fan of Digg _and_ Alexis.

Paul Carr said it best: "So at best they did zero research before they launched Reddit into a space that kinda relies on the founders knowing where to find cool new stuff online."

<comment><USER19> Does it really matter in the end? It's not the idea, it's how it's executed right?

<comment><USER17> Well claiming complete non-awareness of the popular competitor just seems a little odd. It would be kind of like Mozilla saying they weren't aware of IE - sure execution is all that matters, but it's curious why you'd say that.

<comment><USER20> Digg wasn't a "popular competitor" at the time. It was an unknown competitor. TechCrunch did a first profile on Digg 5 days before Reddit launched. I'm going to assume reddit took more than 5 days to build.

<http://techcrunch.com/2005/06/18/profile-digg/>

So is it that absurd that they started on Reddit without knowing about Digg? For that matter, TechCrunch wasn't that popular either in 2005.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> who cares ?</comment>


German court rules tell-a-friend functionality to be spam (in German) - <AUTHOR> http://www.absolit-blog.de/rechtslage/don%E2%80%99t-tell-a-friend-in-berlin.html I thought this was interesting, although limited to Germany: a court has ruled against a company offering a "tell a friend" button. They had implemented the tell a friend functionality so that people could enter other people's email address, but then a "x wants to tell you how great we are" mail was send from the companies account.<p>It would have been less likely to be rules as spam if the recommendation mail had been sent from the recommending persons account. Also apparently there should not be incentives to enter as many email addresses as possible (like "invite a friend and you get 10% off your next purchase"). All in all the "tell-a-friend" functionality seems to be a gray area according to that court. <comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was interesting, although limited to Germany: a court has ruled against a company offering a "tell a friend" button. They had implemented the tell a friend functionality so that people could enter other people's email address, but then a "x wants to tell you how great we are" mail was send from the companies account.

It would have been less likely to be ruled as spam if the recommendation mail had been sent from the recommending person's account. Also apparently there should not be incentives to enter as many email addresses as possible (like "invite a friend and you get 10% off your next purchase"). All in all the "tell-a-friend" functionality seems to be a gray area according to that court.

</comment><comment><USER2> Here's a google-translate English version: <http://bit.ly/3zOdn6></comment>


Dropbox is my publish button - <AUTHOR> http://joehewitt.com/2011/10/03/dropbox-is-my-publish-button

<comment><USER2> FFS, it's like you whippersnappers have never heard of rsync or makefiles. Dropbox requires the mouse, and therefore means that you should get off my lawn.

Seriously though, a Makefile in your web directory with a default target that rsyncs your content up to your webserver via ssh solves this problem much more elegantly, without relying on a third party service. Bonus points for you if you render/minify your sass/scss and/or coffeescript as a target dependency.

PS: Put your remote username and remote port (if custom) for a given host in your ~/.ssh/config file, along with any necessary 'ProxyCommand's to allow direct "rsync ./ $hostname:public_html/" or such in your makefile.

<comment><USER3> Besides being better suited to non-technical users (as joehewitt points out on this very thread), it also has an advantage of running in the background, i.e. you don't have to remember to run anything.

Also, there's this webapp called <http://droppages.com/> which makes publishing from DropBox even easier.

Though personally, if I had to help a non-technical friend with setting up a blog, I'd just send him to Wordpress.com.

<comment><USER4> GNOME can actually mount remote folders on startup / on demand using SSH/SCP/FTP/whatever. I had a relatively non-technical friend go for this approach and it worked really well.

It's actually a really kickass feature

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps I didn't stress enough in the blog that this system was designed with non-technical users in mind. My girlfriend uses it on her blog and she is savvy enough to understand Markdown, but if I asked her to run a command-line script every time she wanted to publish something it would be a non-starter.

<comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, are you using this for Up On a Hill now?

<comment><USER5> yep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An odd thing about all these technologies is that they are severely dumbed down versions of unix software that exists for decades. How is it "cooler" to write markdown instead of troff? "Dropbox" instead of <strike>nfs</strike> rsync? Text files instead of a database? Node.js instead of "insert generic server here"?

Maybe people consider that 'hip', but I don't see how any of these 'trends' have any viability for more than, say, 12 months[1]?

[1]: <http://fashion.about.com/od/latesttrends/a/trendover.htm>

<comment><USER8> I agree with where you're coming from, and I'd certainly rather use, say, rsync to move content to a server than Dropbox (which, given their security track-record, is just asking for trouble), but troff doesn't really solve the "perfectly readable formatted plain text even before processing" niche that Markdown does.

Markdown has also been around since 2004, so it's outlived the 12 month "just a trend" horizon by quite a bit.

<comment><USER7> But isn't it by definition impossible to expect that plaintext can replace a markup? (I just wanted to use a strikethrough; can markdown do that?). That's just a niche for developers. Also i believe markdown just started its hype cycle: <http://www.google.com/trends?q=markdown>

<comment><USER8> Markdown isn't a general purpose markup syntax. It's a niche solution to the smaller problem of "I want to format a plain text file or plain text email in a way that is perfectly readable as plain text, but also can be converted into a web page that retains the same basic formatting".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I get a blank page when I click that link, so maybe a better publish button is in order.

<comment><USER10> I get a blank page when I use opera, a blog post when I use chrome, firefox, safari, and ie. Is a better browser in order!?

<comment><USER5> The server was down initially until I upgraded my EC2 instance from micro to small. Now it's running, but yeah, I didn't test in Opera so I'm not surprised.

<comment><USER10> Opera is better than Chrome on one and only one point: Opera will load multiple pages in multiple tabs swiftly, while Chrome gets bogged down in some known and unfixed race condition.

I find that reading news aggregator content like Google Reader or Hacker News is much easier and faster in Opera than in Chrome.

Apart from that, Opera seems to have many bugs where pages that other browsers load just fine, load incorrectly.

But yeah, even now, Opera won't display your site.

<comment><USER11> Race condition?

<comment><USER10> Well, I can't find the right report now, but yes, if you google thinks like chrome slow multiple tabs, or chrome freezes multiple tabs, you'll find lots of reports that chrome is almost unusable when opening multiple tabs at the same time (like clicking on a series of HN links).

About a month ago, I was researching this, and I found then, (but cannot find now), some threads that said this was a long outstanding problem created by some race condition. Another said it was caused by too much priority given to processing the Chrome spinner in each tab.

I don't know what the case really is.

I do know that Opera does a much better job of opening multiple tabs at the same time as Chrome, so I use Opera when working with feed readers and the like.

All else, I default to Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Git works for publishing content too. No dependencies on external services, and it's very easy to use over SSH.

<comment><USER5> I could never have gotten my non-technical girlfriend to use this system if she had to go to a command line and type "git commit" and "git push" for ever new post. She's become quite prolific with it since there are no tools she has to use to publish, other than a text editor.

<comment><USER13> Obviously this is working for you, but what about an icon that triggers a git shell script? Clicky clicky?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So that means you're working with an unsaved, untitled file until you're completely satisfied with the post? That doesn't seem very safe. Unless you're saving your drafts in another location and copying them into your "site", but if so, how is that any harder than just "git commit -a"?

<comment><USER15> _"Nerve uses Markdown's level-one header to demarcate the posts. It then looks for a bracketed timestamp in the header to distinguish posts that are public from ones that are still drafts. A password-protected drafts page allows me to preview drafts before publishing. Once they are done, I add the timestamp, save the file, and it's published."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't understand why anybody would want to go through all this trouble when you can use something as simple as WordPress and post with ease.

Then again, a lot of people can't understand why I create dancing Christmas lights every year, heh.

<comment><USER17> there's nothing worse, in my opinion, than writing a blog post in a wysiwyg web form when you know how to type and all you want to to is just type up a post. c'mon, it's 2011 and editing text in web forms is an execrable experience, one of the least pleasant things to do in a browser. markdown is a snap to learn and it is such a relief to be writing in your favorite text editor, without the copy-paste rigamole.

<comment><USER18> Who cares? It'sAllText* anyway...

* <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> <http://droppages.com> lets you do this with very little set up. I've been very happy using it on a simple static site that I have less technical people collaborating with me on.

</comment><comment><USER20> > My previous blog used Markdown also, but I had to FTP the files to my former > Dreamhost server. I used ExpanDrive, which made the FTP process relatively > painless, but FTP is still flaky.

Come on. Really? How much transfer are we talking about to publish a blog article? And how often are we publishing. Maybe it's not FTP, but Dreamhost?

The Dropbox-based system is a neat way of doing it, but blaming FTP seems to be false justification for the effort.

If you want to hack, then hack. You don't need a reason to.

</comment><comment><USER21> Snap! Never thought to install Dropbox on my web server! I already have a folder in Dropbox symlinked to my main local web directory. There must be some big gotcha that I'm missing...

<comment><USER22> Security?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Changing horizontal window size breaks the page (no horizontal scroll bar appears and middle mouse scrolling to the right is open ended) in chrome. With IE no scroll bar appears and I can't scroll to the right at all.

This has nothing to do with his publishing technique of course, I just found it strange since he mentions adapting to screen size. Maybe the page should adapt to window size.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very nice looking.

I know that Marco Arment runs his blog off of his PHP version of the same idea, dubbed "SecondCrack" <http://www.marco.org/secondcrack>

I've also been looking at a simple blog updater that can update from anywhere (especially my phone or email), so I'll definitely check it out.

</comment><comment><USER25> Even I have made something like that! Except it's not a blog, and pretty featureless. But it can be combined with sshfs or whatever that lets you poke with the source text files.

<https://github.com/Zash/WikiDav>

</comment><comment><USER26> I think this is a brilliant solution. Seems like a lot of guys here are too geeky to see what is considered easy & frictionless by the masses.

</comment><comment><USER27> Theoretically speaking, one could use Dropbox to publish to, well, anything? I'm interested in the possibilities. Nice article.

</comment><comment><USER28> No offense to Joe, cause I LIKE the effort, I suppose, but it seems like a really long way around to get to where you were headed.

As has been listed, rsync / git / NFS shares etc would have been a really easy way to get your objectives met UNTIL I read your response that this was for your girlfriend, and asking her to do a command line would be hard. Then I read further and saw this:

 _A password-protected drafts page allows me to preview drafts before publishing. Once they are done, I add the timestamp, save the file, and it's published."_

That part seems more complicated to me than just hitting 'publish' on a Wordpress page, but so as to keep from sounding overly negative (cause really, kudos for doing what works) here are my tips to make it even easier.

1) Set up cron to restart the dropbox service every few hours. That should be a no-brainer, and would at least save you having to explain how every now and again you have to SSH into your server to fix your 'super easy' solution.

2) From an end-user perspective, I'm thinking rip off the old email- consumption strategy. Write the code to just check a POP server every couple of hours for unread messages. If there's a message, check to see if it's from your girlfriend's email address (optional). If it's from her, then publish it.

Markdown syntax would still apply, and you've now relegated blog posting to something as easy as just 'sending an email'.

<comment><USER29> Email won't do, you want to e.g fix typos after publishing. I also think that there's something powerful in "all posts in one file" strategy. You might revise drafts more often, read older posts again to expand on them etc. I'm going to try that

<comment><USER30> So on the server, write the emails to a single file in Dropbox. Like .mbox with markdown level 1 instead of headers. Default input by email, revisions or alternate new via dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Internal Server Error". Cache anyone?

</comment><comment><USER32> sweet this is what i use dropbox for!

</comment><comment><USER33> "It's Apache-licensed and hosted on Github, but I'm not recommending that anyone other than me use it at this time. You can learn from it, though."

Wow, patronise much?

<comment><USER30> Author did write world's most popular iOS app. Could be _something_ in there to learn from.

<comment><USER33> Meh, it's just standard JavaScript (not even CoffeeScript!) to build Yet Another Blogging Platform. A well-loved (467 watches, 49 forks) node.js blogging platform already exists, authored by @creationix who is actually _employed_ to build nodey things for WebOS: <https://github.com/creationix/wheat> So I would recommend reading the code of that project first, rather than me-too code from someone who thinks that deploying via DropBox is cool.</comment></comment></comment>


Accessible Tables - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrispastore.com/accessible_tables.php <comment><USER3> Finally someone who understands what and how are tables used for (hint - <USER2> styling). Each element in HTML has its own semantic meaning, that is why I don't like using tables for presentation and styling instead of CSS.</comment>


The samurai principle in coding - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SamuraiPrinciple

<comment><USER2> I think this is a good principle. It's easy to get confused about what a function is/does unless you have a guide. (For experienced developers, experience is that guide.) The samurai principle seems to be what functions were originally for... At least in the OO world.

</comment><comment><USER3> Talking about Samurai and coding. I prefer Wil Shipley's take at [http://www.wilshipley.com/blog/2005/02/free-programming- tips...](http://www.wilshipley.com/blog/2005/02/free-programming-tips-are- worth-every.html).</comment>


A Go Custom Flutter Engine Embedder for Desktop - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Drakirus/go-flutter-desktop-embedder <comment><USER2> One suggestion for improvement: Like so many other web pages for fancy new frameworks and libraries, the github page does not really explain what Flutter is and what problems the Go library can solve.

Can I make a cross-platform GUI with it (a) in the current state, (b) maybe later? If so, what features does it support? How does it compare to Qt, Lazarus, Sciter, Elektron, etc? Does it have internal drag & drop? External drag & drop? Standard file and folder dialogs? Are widgets native or not (I suppose not, but it should be clear from a glance at the page)? Which widgets are supported? Does it have rich text support? Does it have OS-level clipboard support? Does it have transitions or not? Is it themeable? Is it fast? How large are executables built with it? Is it intended for ease of use or somewhat complicated? Do I need to write in other languages (HTML, markup, Javascript) to get things done or can everything be written directly in Go?

All of this is absolutely essential information. Nobody can reasonably decide whether to use this GUI toolkit or not without getting answers to all of the above question. So please, please explain in one sentence what Flutter is and make a section with keyword features.

[Please don't take this wrong, I'm not a naysayer. This is meant as a constructive criticism, not just of this page but of many similar ones. It sure looks like an interesting project.]

<comment><USER3> Very constructive indeed. For cross-platform GUI I have investigated flutter(among others, flutter at the moment is really just mobile only, so does Kivy)

It appears to produce a commercial quality cross-platform GUI, with not-so-bad looking, your only choice is Qt, be it Pyside2 or Qt/C++. For me I decide to use Pyside2.

<comment> Const-me Depends on the complexity of the GUI you need and on other factors.

QT is OK if your GUI is very complex and you're targeting a desktop OS.

For simple GUI QT is just too big.

For GUIs without a desktop OS (mobile, embedded), QT is not a good fit either, not enough mobile support, and their embedded license can be prohibitively expensive.

I have positive experience building moderately complex commercial quality GUIs on top of this: [https://github.com/memononen/nanovg](https://github.com/memononen/nanovg)

<comment><USER3> Actually QT GUI is pretty popular in embedded space(if you're not using Android that is)

in my case I want to build a file manager and after some research I ended up with Pyside2

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TIL: You can somehow collapse things in GitHub README files. Seriously why do I feel like a Markdown n00b all of a sudden. For those who don't know what I mean, click on any of the OS' listed under the 'How to install' section. I wish more README files on GitHub would sorta do this to some extent, some README's are just so bloated with too much noise, let's say it's nice for a FAQ section.

Anyway, back on topic: this is interesting, has anyone used GLFW for Go? What if I don't have a C or C++ compiler, how does Go handle C / C++ dependencies? Do you need everything required to build those too? I usually try to stick to things Go can compile in native Go as much as possible so I'm not familiar with this.

<comment><USER5> It's done via embedded HTML, which GitHub flavored markdown supports. I didn't know about the HTML details element, though. Pretty handy!

          Click to expand

Hidden until expanded, no JS or CSS required!

<comment><USER6> If it makes you feel better, I _invented_ `<details>` and didn't realize you could do that in markdown...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish Flutter itself has been written in Go.

Actually, I've written an article a few days ago fantasising on how it could look like – "Thought Experiment: Flutter in Go"

[https://divan.github.io/posts/flutter_go/](https://divan.github.io/posts/flutter_go/)

<comment><USER8> Looks cool but it ignores what Dart brings over everything else: Hot reload.

<comment><USER9> Ah that feature I was using during the 90s for GUI development, but apparently was invented by Dart.

<comment><USER10> Anything mainstream with actual jobs attached, or some bizarro language that nobody used except for some research OS or something?

<comment><USER9> Common Lisp and Smalltalk had actual jobs attached during the 90's, and there are still people getting paid to use those systems on enterprise settings.

LispWorks, Allegro, Cincom, GemTalk are still in business.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I thought so.

<comment><USER9> Ah so for you Common Lisp and Smalltalk are bizarre languages, good to know.

Please don't be shy and let us know about all those amazing Flutter/Dart applications in production that outnumber any of those vendors, both in customer base and business value.

Other than Ad Words that is.

I start with a couple,

\- Google's own ITA (CL)

\- Siscog traffic management solutions used across European train networks (CL)

\- JP Morgan financial risk management (Smalltalk)

<comment><USER10> > _Ah so for you Common Lisp and Smalltalk are bizarre languages, good to > know._

I like both of them, and they're historically important languages, but are not mainstream, and weren't mainstream even on their heyday.

I expected you to mean some post-Pascal Wirth-derived language though, or some other such project.

> _Please don 't be shy and let us know about all those amazing Flutter/Dart > applications in production that outnumber any of those vendors, both in > customer base and business value._

Well, Flutter 1.0 was just announced on Dec 2018 (so like a month ago) and the others had a 4+ decade headstart.

Still, some historical CL/Smalltalk apps aside (few enough to be enumerated in "success stories" style posts), in 2-3 years there will be more Flutter/Dart apps than CL and Smalltalk apps combined.

Heck, there are more Go apps in production "that outnumber any of those vendors, both in customer base and business value", and that went 1.0 less than 7 years ago.

If a language can enumerate it's success stories, it has already lost the popularity game. I've read the same "success stories" (and more) in Lisp forums and Smalltalk advocacy posts.

In fact, Dart before Flutter, was in the same boat "yeah, we use it in Google's ad management, and company X uses it for Y". But I have no doubt it will explode in popularity with Flutter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. I think we really need a good cross-platform GUI development story. I wonder if Flutter will turn out to be it.

Does anyone know how Flutter fares when it comes to accessibility?

<comment><USER11> I have made a couple of applications with Flutter. Mainly for Android and iOS. I really think Flutter is great. It's my favourite framework currently. It feels like a modern Android SDK and frankly how the Android SDK should feel like. My "biggest" project currently is an alternative to the official NissanConnect EV app for controlling Nissan electric vehicles. You can find it here if you're interested; [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.kjeldsen.ca...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.kjeldsen.carwingsflutter) It's also open source; [https://gitlab.com/tobiaswkjeldsen/carwingsflutter](https://gitlab.com/tobiaswkjeldsen/carwingsflutter)

I think the Flutter team takes accessibility quite seriously; [https://flutter.io/docs/development/accessibility-and- locali...](https://flutter.io/docs/development/accessibility-and- localization/accessibility)

<comment><USER12> Are Toast and Dialogs using the native variants?

EditTexts feel different, but as a user I don't see much difference..

Great job! and props to you for making it open source

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am confused. The readme says, "Disclaimer: Despite being very similar in the end goal, This project doesn't compete with this awesome one[1]."

But it _is_ competing, isn't it?

[1] [https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop- embedding](https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding)

<comment><USER14> I think the author is just saying that he doesn't care about the other project. He is probably having fun. Let him do his thang.

<comment><USER13> Hey that's cool, and I appreciate him acknowledging the other project. I would suggest being a little more direct with this and say, "Yes this project has the same goals as X, but I'm having fun and it scratches an itch I have, so I'm gonna keep going!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any idea why Flutter uses Dart language which is rather obscure. Wouldn't Java or JavaScript be the better choice in terms of adoption?

<comment><USER16> Flutter sits half-way between those two. It's more structured than JS with static types (and without all the JS oddities). It's also lighter syntax than Java with type inferencing and real first-class functions (and not everything has to be an object). The syntax is _very_ familiar, so picking up the language is easy (Swift is syntactically quite similar).

Dart doesn't have the library issues like JS or the bloat like Java. In addition, Dart is an ECMA spec (like JS), so there are no copyright issues like with Java (other companies can even get committee members if they really wanted to invest in the language).

Dart was designed to prevent all the dynamic coding techniques that make JS slow (you can write very fast JS, but not in a normal style). Dart should be able to perform about as well as Java (it could beat Java on some benchmarks a few years ago).

[https://www.nikolaybotev.com/blog/dart-vs-java-the- deltablue...](https://www.nikolaybotev.com/blog/dart-vs-java-the-deltablue- benchmark/)

When you consider Java is multi-threading while the Dart implementations generally are not, performance is quite similar in the benchmark game too

[https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/faster/dart-java.html)

Off-topic, but for the pidigit test, Java just unloads all the work to a C lib. How is that a Java test? Any language will be "fast" if they are actually just leveraging highly-optimized C libs.

<comment><USER17> Re: Java / C usage: Generally I think this is a valid approach. Most languages use a C/C++ runtime for core data structures and abstractions. Go and Rust are notable exceptions. Ideally as a developer you are able to extend this core functionality in a seamless way. Python, Lua, JavaScript (the v8 implementation at least) and Java (JNI) are good examples where this is easily possible.

<comment><USER16> I agree completely for day-to-day use, but the benchmark game is specifically to test implementations. If you're offloading to C, then you're testing the C implementation and the FFI implementation instead of the language implementation. If you want to test those, then come up with a specific test for that.

<comment><USER18> > … testing the C implementation and the FFI implementation instead of the > language implementation…

No, not "instead-of" but "as-well-as".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> what does a "Custom Flutter Engine Embedder for desktop" mean ? I understand what Flutter does. I understand what an Engine and Desktop is. But I can't easily understand quite get the "". Is it a cross platform GUI toolkit/library using Flutter for golang as @christophilus is hinting ?

<comment><USER20> TL;DR - converts a mobile app written with flutter.io to desktop, including binary packaging.

From what i understand, it allows you to package your flutter application (android/ios framework using dart) as a standalone binary on windows/mac/linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is everyone's take on the future of Flutter for Desktop? It's exciting to think that it could be a viable alternative to Electron or Qt but the fact that this is enabled entirely by third-party projects concerns me. Is Flutter for Desktop something that has a future? Will apps built with these tools be maintainable a year from now? At what point would you say it's safe to invest time building and deploying projects built with it?

<comment><USER22> Google is already experimenting with using flutter for desktop [https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop- embedding](https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding)

<comment><USER9> They also took care to stress multiple times last year, even during Q&A, that only iOS and Android are their main focus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Apologies for the semi-off topic question and it's not directed towards your project specifically, but why do Go projects always emphasise that they are Go projects? I never see announcements like "Foo, a C# library to do Bar". That fact that it's C# (or anythig else) will become apparent to anyone who cares to look at the source. With Go projects it's always emphasized that they are written in it. Am I the only one who noticed this trend?

<comment><USER24> A few reasons off the top of my head...

Go has very simple dependency management. A library written in Go generally needs very little environment management and will often integrate easily with a Go codebase. This is further enhanced with Go's implicit inheritance model.

Go compiles to a static linked binary. A library written in Go usually can be static linked as well with no system dependencies.

Go has excellent cross platform support. Unless a library makes system calls (and sometimes even then), it will also be cross platform.

Go has a clean, simple, style. The lack of features like generics, operator overloading, and constructors means you can look at the code and instantly understand what it does. There is no spooky action at a distance because a variable declaration turns out to be a complex function call. This makes it much easier to understand the overall system impact of using libraries written in Go.

Applications and libraries written in Go build very quickly. My experience with other languages is that trying a substantial new package is a go-make-a- sandwich level of inconvenience. Go libraries usually are ready to use as soon as git clone finishes.

<comment><USER9> > Go compiles to a static linked binary.

By default. Go has supported dynamic linking for a while now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Didn't manage to get it running. Binaries crashed. Building from source was successful but the result crashed during runtime too.</comment>


The Solar System is a Helical Vortex - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/0jHsq36_NTU

<comment><USER2> It's a cool animation, but it overstates the incorrectness of the heliocentric model.

There is no absolute reference frame, so the heliocentric model is perfectly valid if we take the Sun as the reference. This model is (closer to) correct if we take the galactic core as the reference.

There are two remaining issues:

1) The planets do not rotate exactly in the plane normal to the sun's movement through the galaxy (I think it's closer to a plane bisected by the sun's path but I can't remember).

2) What makes the galactic core an appropriate reference? We could also take the movement of our local galactic cluster, which, by the same bigger-is- better logic, is more correct. As far as this animation is concerned though, it would be roughly the same result, just different speeds, I guess.

Neat animation though.</comment>


What the CEO of Kickstarter Said to Creators About Firing Union Organizers - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a35jpg/heres-what-the-ceo-of-kickstarter-said-to-creators-about-firing-union-organizers <comment><USER2> A union at one of the bigger tech startups is bound to happen sooner or later. As much as the management wants to keep it from happening.</comment>


Twitter Employee Who Deleted Trumps Account Being Hailed Hero - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/twitter-employee-who-deleted-trumps-account-being-hailed-hero-700633 <comment><USER2> This was a very futile and stupid gesture on that employee's part.

The important aspect of this story that we should be talking about is the incredibly bad idea it is for the POTUS to use Twitter has is primary communications platform. Twitter is not a defense contractor, they haven't been contracted by the government at all. The only have to operate by their own user agreement, which is wholly insufficient for the role they are playing.

An unknown number of employees with unknown backgrounds have the ability to put words into Trump's mouth, and that doesn't include anyone who manages to hack into a company that doesn't have to conform to government security regulations. They could crash the stock market on a whim. They could destabilize world peace. The potential damage is almost incalculable.

And the person at fault is Trump. Twitter isn't obligated to take care of this guy. He shouldn't be using it in the first place. He just doesn't care.

<comment><USER3> "This was a very futile and stupid gesture on that employee's part."

I think thats how most non-violent activism / movements starts. As a futile effort. If his actions starts the dialog on how dangerous it is for the POTUS to tweet from unreliable communication medium than its not futile at all.

<comment><USER4> They didn't do it because they thought that tweeter is too dangerous for official communication they did it because they disagree with the current POTUS.

If they had the ability to shutdown whitehouse.gov they would've done so just as well.

<comment><USER5> You sound so certain!

<comment><USER4> About as certain as on can be in the current climate. As much as I dislike trump the left has gone off the rails I wonder what would've happened if some country singer would've released an album with a lynched Obama on the cover or if Anne Coulter would've posted a picture holding his decapitated head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since we're on the topic, I'd like to point out that DT routinely breaks Twitters TOS with respect to abusive behavior [0] but twitter won't kill the goose that lays the golden publicity eggs. Now we find out that they were trying to sell massive amounts of ads to RT [1]. Remember kids, social media is not your friend.

[0]: [https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311](https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311) [1]: [https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/01/twitter-offered- russian-...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/01/twitter-offered-russian-tv- outlet-15-percent-of-election-ads/)

<comment><USER7> Do you think that they should ban his account? I'm personally pretty pleased that the most powerful person in the world has an open channel that clearly nobody is able to control (otherwise half of the shit he writes wouldn't be approved, clearly).

Coalesced power is the greatest threat to those without it, and there is no greater than the executive branch of the US. As asinine as most of his posts are, I much prefer insight from my enemies than my friends.

<comment><USER6> I do actually. He's a troll - plain and simple. Make that a __hole go to Gab where he belongs.

Think about that for a second. The president of the USA is a twitter troll. You really can't make this stuff up.

<comment><USER8> I don't think he's a troll, at least not in the sense of the word I understand, which implies intent.

DT doesn't tweet things he doesn't really believe in or care about just to rile people up: he says what he really means and he has no idea of the consequences (and doesn't care).

It's literally the opposite of a troll.

Which, of course, is terrifying when it's the president of the US.

<comment><USER6> Trolling is all about creating a stink. There's different kinds of trolling, that come from different places. Some of it is because the troll really believes what he/she is saying. Some of it is saying whatever gets a rise out of your target, regardless of what you believe. In all cases a troll is a troll.

There are DT is, in the literal sense of the phrase, king troll.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h If trolling is really about "creating a stink", regardless of intent/belief, then doesn't that kill it as a negative term? Are muckrakers trolls?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is super off-topic, but it's really depressing to see the performance, usability, and intention of a website like Newsweek's. I turned off my ad blocker and cleared my cache and found:

\- The site auto-plays a video with nothing but music in it, and continues to load further consecutive videos after the first is finished. \- The site downloads about 20mb of content by the end of the first video. I paused at the midpoint of the second, and my browser is still climbing (I killed the tab past 60 MB) \- There were over 1300 requests made by the end of the first video. \- The console showed 15 errors and 10 warnings, plus a handful of what looks like debug logs. \- The ads on the screen literally push all of the text of the article past the fold. \- Firefox slowed to a crawl across all tabs (this post became hard to type) and my computer kicked the fans on high (I have a pretty high-spec'd macbook pro with little else running).

I don't see how either advertisers or content producers benefit from a relationship like this — they're both trying to get me to interact with Newsweek.com, yet it's incredibly hard to do so.

</comment><comment><USER10> President Trump's use of Twitter, a new communications technology, to communicate with the general public and world is no different than Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)'s use of the then new technology radio -- weekly addresses to the nation and press conferences -- to communicate with the nation and as it happens bypass the almost uniformly hostile newspapers of the 1930s.

Trump is no more using Twitter to communicate policy directives to US government agencies than FDR was using radio. He still has to formulate and sign executive orders and go through the legally proscribed channels as the successful legal challenges to the original Muslim ban show.

Rather than try to censor the President of the United States his critics should rationally and clearly critique his actual policies and actions.

<comment><USER11> >>his critics should rationally and clearly critique his actual policies and actions.

I agree in sentiment, but that isn't really how it works anymore (maybe it never did?). It's just a never-ending barrage of soundbites and 'outrages' because that's what moves joe public.

<comment><USER10> Trump is not the first President to use Twitter. Barack Obama had at least three twitter accounts:

[http://time.com/3882715/president-obama-now-has-his-own- twit...](http://time.com/3882715/president-obama-now-has-his-own-twitter- account/)

Obama in fact tweeted about various controversial topics, producing outrage among generally conservative Republicans:

[https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/16/president- ob...](https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/16/president-obama-tweets- muslim-boy-whose-homemade-clock-was-mistaken-for-bomb)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://twitter.com/en/tos](https://twitter.com/en/tos):

"You understand and agree that the Services are provided to you on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis."

and

"The Twitter Entities make no warranty or representation and disclaim all responsibility and liability for: (i) the completeness, accuracy, availability, timeliness, security or reliability of the Services or any Content;"

Doesn't feel like something you should be conducting international diplomacy with...

<comment><USER13> Well there's no risk of it being used for diplomacy

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What the guy did just sheds more light on twitters double standard with @realdonaldtrump account. They are just treating him with kid gloves.

</comment><comment><USER15> I bet this will get the employee plenty of high-fives and maybe a few paid-for drinks at the bar, but it won't help him replace that job. Any employer would have to ask themselves whether they'd do something similar to one of their high-profile customers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe this will spur Trump to create his own Twitter-like stream on Whitehouse.gov. That would be better for politicians, a separate political stream for them, that Twitter can API into.</comment>


Chinese and Indian Entrepreneurs Are Eating America's Lunch - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/28/chinese_and_indian_entrepreneurs_are_eating_americas_lunch

<comment><USER2> Surprise! Making every technical job available for outsourcing means that nobody enters technical job markets if they can help it! Getting an engineering degree is no longer a way out of the mines, the farm or the factories! Lots and lots of laws, especially "intellectual property" laws are a tax on innovation! Declaring all surprises as "terrorism" leads people away from doing surprising things! Surprise! All of this adds up to zero entreprenuerialship!

</comment><comment><USER3> They're cheap, I admit that. But they are challenged interfacing with US clients. We've found that by giving business away (matching their rates) and delivering a few small jobs, US customers will keep coming back.

That said, there are a few good ones out there so we should keep on our toes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thank goodness, the world needs more innovation.</comment>


Interview with Kasper Hulthin, co-founder of Podio - <AUTHOR> http://www.founderly.com/2011/05/kasper-hulthin-podio-1-of-2/ <comment><AUTHOR> Podio is a great app. A build-your-own-app Tool is usually not that great, but they really worked out a good way to do it. The variety of apps you can create out of the small pool of functions they provide is much bigger than you'd expect.</comment>


Illusion of Motion - <AUTHOR> http://paulbakaus.com/tutorials/performance/the-illusion-of-motion/

<comment><USER2> What an interesting rabbit hole that was to fall into. Especially the linked[1] experiment and all the others available there. Makes it obvious that G-Sync and Freesync tech can't come soon enough.

[1] [http://www.testufo.com/#test=eyetracking](http://www.testufo.com/#test=eyetracking)</comment>


Communication and Collaboration -- The Big Upgrade - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2008/12/communication-and-collaboration-big.html

<comment><USER2> Responding to the disqus comments by DaniFong...

 _That's a beautiful way to phrase it, Adam. But I am tentative; I'm not sure just how far the analogy extends. I think that modeling civilization as a 'human-like' intelligence or deity is probably a pretty loose approximation. For one thing, both humans and deities (as usually conceived) have that ability to hold their attention on something.

Indeed, in many meditation disciplines, practitioners are called upon to focus their attention on a single thought or object. This is supposed to heighten awareness of the world and one's self -- it is thought to be one of the most fundamental aspects of intelligence. And though it may seem like society can focus its attention on a single event, its interpretations are so diverse, and its focus so fleeting and diffuse, that it seems that the attention of a society and the attention of a person could be fundamentally, irreducibly, different.

I just read your post 'Elephants all the way up.' To cop an analogy from physics, there are many situations where the behavior of a collection of particles becomes sharply different as the scale or energy or number or density changes. We would call these 'phase transitions.' It seems to me that though large groups have many of the elements of a human-like sentient being, either in scale, type, or connectivity._

Or perhaps the lack of attention is an inescapable flaw as long as the rate of communication is so slow. Perhaps our collective attention will improve as our communication tools become more instantaneous and pervasive. Or perhaps focused attention is NOT a characteristic of the "greater-brain" - after all, it is fundamentally different, like the anthill is different to the ant.

I certainly think that tools like Friendfeed bring us in that direction (though I can't seem to be bothered to actually use it yet... twitter works fine for my purposes). Although, I do think that we'll have to wait until Friendfeed version 20 before we get to the "super-mind" stage (on the good side, with the current rate of innovation, that shouldn't take more than a few years!).

</comment><comment><USER3> the appeal of this idea is as old as the web itself - early browsers were as much for editing content as displaying content. [1] this is an important idea to keep in mind when thinking about the growth of a new medium - having the tools to manipulate that medium widely accessible gives the medium a better chance of encouraging interesting content. [2] the central argument against all this mind melding is that the most interesting content isn't necessarily the smartest content[3]. Which isn't to say that it can't be[4].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb>

[2] The merits of impressionism aside, it would have been an improbable development without (relatively cheap) tubed oil paints. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_paint>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias>

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism>

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the whole idea of editing blog posts leads to a rehash of wikipedia. Why would I want to meaningfully edit someone else's opinions (pg's corrections aside) ? And if the person is stating facts that can be collaboratively edited, then you get a wiki article.

<comment><USER5> I've pondered the idea of a moderated Wiki, where edits come in more-or-less as patchsets which the owner can apply or not apply. This was a while ago, and I'd say my idea is totally trumped by hosting Wikis on git, such that changes really _are_ patchsets, complete with a massive infrastructure to support dealing with patchsets. Wrap a decent web UI around the basic idea, enhancing the git workflow to better support the idea of "submitting" a patch out of the blue, and you _might_ have something powerful. I believe such projects are in progress.

(For git, substitute your choice of DVCS.)

The point of this being that if you pick and choose patches deliberately, with of course the opportunity to modify them as you go, then you can end up with something collaborative that still has a strong editorial voice. That might be something new. It'd have to be very open and easy to use to work at all, but it might.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have a link? I've been looking for something like this.

<comment><USER6> pbwiki.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> More specifically I was interested in a hosted interface that uses git as the backend.

<comment><USER6> <http://github.com/blog/272-github-pages>

You can create a repository to collaborate a post with your friends. Whenever you want to publish the post, just push it to the <http://yourname.github.com> repository.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Obama says patent trolls "hijack" and "extort;" So do something, Mr. President - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/02/16/obama-says-patent-trolls-hijack-and-extort-so-do-something-mr-president/ <comment><USER2> Patent trolls operate in the legal and judicial branches. He could have some influence in congress but this is literally not his job. If you want someone to do something, look at the congressmen not the executive branch.

<comment><USER3> The article gives a specific example of what the executive could do. Two, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Presidents aren't dictators. All Obama can do is encourage public support for change, which is exactly what he's doing. The rest of the process is up to us, for example by demanding that congress write new laws.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've long since stopped paying attention to his words. I look instead to what he and his Administration are doing -- and not doing.

I was enthusiastic, to start. I've since stopped listening to the rhetoric and PR.</comment>


AirPods Pro Become Hearing Aids in iOS 14 - <AUTHOR> https://www.hearingtracker.com/news/airpods-pro-become-hearing-aids-with-ios-14 <comment><USER2> I am watching this space carefully, and pretty excited about Apple getting involved. Apple sold 58.7 million AirPods in 2019, so if anyone can bring better hearing (for less $) to the masses, it's Apple. There is a longterm accessibility issue when it comes to hearing aids (mostly due to cost), and purchasing a brand new iPhone and AirPods would actually be substantially cheaper than buying new hearing aids. Hopefully Google gets in the game too with their pixel buds.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it legal for a software license to have terms based on race and sex? - <AUTHOR>

The license that prompts me to ask this question is http://nonwhiteheterosexualmalelicense.org/. I found out about it through this HN story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9862362. At least one project appears to use it seriously rather than as a troll.<p>Could you run into legal trouble by having software with this license at work or sharing it with your coworkers? <comment><USER2> It seems that it would be rather trivial to circumvent this:

1\. Ask a friend who is not {male,white,hetero} to fork it on github

2\. They make a small change

3\. They change the license from this to MIT/BSD/GPL/whatever

Regardless of the legal status of the license, it only (ostensibly) has any effect on straight, white males who know only straight, white males.

(Also I find it mildly disapointing that it makes no mention of trans people, as a straight white trans man would also be "excluded" by this license)

<comment><USER3> You can't change the license terms of code that isn't yours. That's why relicensing efforts similar to those undertaken by VNC a while ago was such a big deal. The VNC people had to contact every contribute and obtain their permission to change the license of a core library to (IIRC) LGPL. Normally, when projects make licensing changes, it is only allowed because they have some kind of legal authorization (e.g., copyright assignments in contributor agreements).

<comment><USER2> It states that (for non-white-hetero-males) there is no requirement to keep the license. I was under the impression that re-licensing is not such a big deal when the current license specifically allows it (such as this one does)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the UK at least, you are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of colour, creed or sexual preference.

However one must demonstrate that said party has been disadvantaged.

For example if you say that women must use red font, and men must use blue. It is arguable that you are choosing a different _path_ for each gender, but not causing more work for either side.

in the case of the nonwhite _etcetcetc_ license, you are allowing one group to potentially profit more from derivative works than the other. (one group is allowed to represent the work as their own, potentially allowing greater profits.)

However you'll have to prove it, which requires examples, or brilliant lawyers.

##Supplemental##

My personal feeling is that any discrimination, that is the deliberate act of choosing one type of person over an other, on the grounds of anything other talent for the position in question is wrong.

Having been parachuted into a position, not because of talent, but because of social engineering, allowed my peers to legitimately mark me out as not belonging. Ultimately did nothing to tackle the root cause, and possible re- enforced on both sides that someone like me is not meant to be in that position.

Social hacks are just that, nasty. tackle the cause not the symptom.

<comment><USER5> > However you'll have to prove it, which requires examples, or brilliant > lawyers.

So this is awkward, because white heterosexual males have much better than average access to brilliant lawyers.

>the deliberate act of choosing one type of person over an other, on the grounds of anything other talent for the position in question is wrong.

If you seek to be neutral in this way, _even if you are successful_ , then you are allowing advantages from other sources to carry over. You are deliberately allowing white, heterosexual males to retain their existing advantages. You are not accounting for hidden, quiet, long-standing social engineering that is in favour of existing power structures. That is not neutrality.

<comment><USER6> _If you seek to be neutral in this way, even if you are successful, then you are allowing advantages from other sources to carry over._

If you're hiring, other sources are none of your business. You have limited information and limited scope of responsibility. The only alternative to what KaiserPro described is subverting your position as an employer/interviewer to try to "correct" some general issues of your choosing by "reverse" discrimination. There are many self-evident problems with this.

Why should you as an interviewer act like some ultimate judge of privilege? How do you know it will help to solve the general issue? Why should the particular person you're interviewing be affected by what's effectively a stereotype? Not to mention that "reverse" discrimination is still just a form of discrimination, so you're effectively supporting it. If you're allowed to discriminate in the way of your choosing, how can you demand others to not to do the same?

 _That is not neutrality._

You're simply redefining the word to mean nothing and then using that to attack the concept it _used to_ refer to.

<comment><USER5> > That is not neutrality. You're simply redefining the word.

The first definition of neutrality found on the internet is

 _Not aligned with, supporting, or favoring either side in a war, dispute, or contest._

I'm using that definition. By claiming that this is none of your business and you have limited scope of responsibility, you are very clearly favouring one side.

You do have responsibility for who you choose to hire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kraemer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kraemer)

Strongly implies such a license is unenforceable.

<comment><USER8> Sex and race are protected classes. What if the license were just no-heteros?

<comment><USER9> Some states have included sexual orientation as a protected class. Not sure how that would work with a software license though. But if state law says a customer walking into a store can't be discriminated against based on sexual orientation, I would think it would transfer to a software license in some way. If not I am sure there is some attorney somewhere looking to make a name for themselves that would be happy to make an attempt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) was a Supreme Court case that held that racially restrictive covenants (i.e. deed provisions that forbid transferring the property to a black person) were unenforceable as a matter of constitutional law. Similar logic would probably apply here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

[http://nonwhiteheterosexualmalelicense.org/](http://nonwhiteheterosexualmalelicense.org/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9862362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9862362)

</comment><comment><USER11> A license is simply a contract establishing the rules under which you can use, modify, distribute, etc so logically, it seems like you could put whatever terms you wanted. The Beerware license comes to mind in this regard - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware)

Of course, since the non-white-hetero-etc license adds extra requirements beyond those in the GPL, it will not be accepted by the FSF as GPL-compatible. The Beerware license isn't either.

But what it really comes down to is enforcement. To fight misuse legally, you'd need a) a lawyer that'd take the case and b) a judge not to laugh you out of the room. But the Twitter mobs may be the preferred form of enforcement here anyway.

In a professional atmosphere, more and more companies have pre-approved licenses that are okay by default. By going with something non-standard, it means you'll need to get special permission which usually means legal review. I'd wager that most lawyers would discourage you from using this one.. just because it is ambiguous in enforcement, etc.

Further, if you tried to enforce this one within your company, someone would have to ask each of your employees their ethnicity and sexual orientation.. which opens up some HR issues. Imagine your boss saying "don't worry about this, you're gay so you can use it."

<comment><USER12> There are lots of things you can't put as terms in a contract. This is why we have contact law.

<comment><USER13> Just to be clear, you can put whatever you want into a contract. Whether it's enforceable, or would be immediately discarded as "not a valid contract clause," is the question.

The severability clauses are all about that--if some part of a contract is deemed unenforceable, the rest still holds, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On a related note, I find it rather awkward that software, and online services are allowed to discriminate by applying automated classifiers to datasets.

For instance, an insurance company could deduce from the fact that a person likes black music, that he is 2x more likely to be involved in an incident of some kind.

To me, it seems that this is a form of prejudice and discrimination, that, in real life, would not be accepted. So why do we accept it from these big companies?

And here comes the main point: this should apply even if "black music" is replaced by some trait that doesn't touch upon racism, and the company is not an insurance company but, for instance, an advertisement agency.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well, basically, the license is open source for "minorities", free software to white hetero male. Which is better? :)

</comment><comment><USER16> _Could you run into legal trouble_

Talk to an attorney. Since laws vary, a local attorney is probably a good choice.

</comment><comment><USER17> How exactly is this different than putting a "Juden Verboten" or "Whites Only" sign on a shop?

</comment><comment><USER18> The real questions are how white, hetero and male are defined ? Is white defined using the pantone matching system, etc.</comment>


I For One Welcome Our New Robot Vocal Cords: Radical Computer Music - <AUTHOR> http://thequietus.com/articles/14405-black-midi-algorave <comment><USER2> While not directly related to the article, but more related to the headline -- I was just catching up on some of what Beardyman's been up to lately:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPBM69nThkM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPBM69nThkM)

Now, that's one example of what _human_ vocal cords (with various degrees computer augmentation) are capable of. While the things discussed in the article may be interesting... the reference to vocal cords seems somewhat misplaced?

[edit: I should perhaps clarify/highlight that the above video does _not_ feature drum machines etc -- "only" sampling, looping and "warping". Easier to follow, is this video I like to call "I was hip-hop before ducks":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39n4wow8fWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39n4wow8fWE) ]

<comment><USER2> Well, not quite _no_ other effects, according to an article on his new setup:

"Helping him drive it are three iPads, two of which control the Beardytron and one that uses apps for extra noises. He also has keyboards, Native Instruments Guitar Rig, and Rob Papen's delay as part of the setup."

[http://www.djtechtools.com/2012/12/12/the- beardytron-5000-mk...](http://www.djtechtools.com/2012/12/12/the- beardytron-5000-mkii-building-beardymans-ultimate-live-production-system/)

[edit2: Although according to his TED talk, it _only_ reuses noises he puts in, so I guess it's an open question if he's moved to include "external" samples or not...

[http://www.ted.com/talks/beardyman_the_polyphonic_me.html](http://www.ted.com/talks/beardyman_the_polyphonic_me.html) ]

[edit: apparently that article wasn't submitted to hn, as I'm guessing it's a good fit, now it is:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195664](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195664) ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Somehow, digging in deeper on this subject led me to another video (which I just shared - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195652)) of a player piano emulating human speech by reproducing the part of the spectral fingerprint within it's range. Eerie

</comment><comment><USER4> I found this article very difficult to read, and while it talks a lot about procedural music, I don't think that any of the people it covers are making any _except_ the "Birthday Song Crew", who are clearly geniuses.

It did, however, introduce me to [http://yaxu.org/tidal/](http://yaxu.org/tidal/) which is going to force me to finally learn Haskell.

<comment><USER5> I had trouble reading this too. I mean, all the words made sense, but it didn't feel like it was making any specific points? It sounds like a dictation of a stream of thoughts loosely related to experimental electronic music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> TFA asks if a machine can sing, and doesn't mention Vocaloid?

<comment><USER7> Vocaloid still relies on human vocal samples, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love music and experimentation but I find those pieces portrayed there quite devoid of emotional content.

I like the idea of procedural music being created automatically, but I believe that the end result still need to inspire and transport the listener. I have no doubts that we will be able to make some pretty convincing stuff in the future, and it probably won't be a lot worse than what's already playing in the charts.

<comment><USER9> Genetic algorithms could eventually produce music that triggered a emotional response in humans. Your "fitness test" would need to be having real people listen to procedurally generated scores and rating the emotional impact (if any) of each sample. Perhaps a task for mechanical turk?

In the end though, I think we seek out music or art that puts us in the mindset or emotional state of the artist. Forging a connection of shared experience.

If the music tugged at all the right heartstrings, but you knew it wasn't made by a human, could you feel that depth of connection?

<comment><USER10> > If the music tugged at all the right heartstrings, but you knew it wasn't > made by a human, could you feel that depth of connection?

I do think this is a false dichotomy of sorts. (Right turn of phrase?) The music may have been made by a machine, but humans made the machine. What ultimately is the difference between music "made" by a violin being directly played, verses a synthesizer reconstructing songs based on what a programmer did beforehand? It's just a matter of degree. It might be more productive in discussions to look at the "artist" verses "committee" angle instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those talking about the lack of emotional content, I found that this video -- for Holly Herndon's "Movement" \-- helped some of this work make more sense. Of course, Herndon's music isn't really "automatically generated" and features a lot of human vocal samples.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kanNN4RPrOf](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kanNN4RPrOf) (NSFW, in most workplaces -- two dancers in underwear.)

<comment><USER12> That video is unavailable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> About just as interesting as automatically generated novels. A machine has no intention. It doesn't "want" to turn itself on or off and play some music.

<comment><USER14> Not yet.

<comment><USER15> Unless AI just "happens" by itself, it will always be a result of human effort and ultimately an expression of human intent (if you ignore the pesky issue of free will, that is). But we generally love creating things and then worshipping them, so I'm pretty sure that will be quite lost on us when AI comes.

<comment><USER16> "it will always be a result of human effort and ultimately an expression of human intent"

Like babies? (Well, most of the time.)

<comment><USER15> We don't painstakingly plan and build babies, so no, not quite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone translate this article into layspeak please?

</comment><comment><USER18> I feel like this article is procedurally generated.</comment>


New Economy, New Wealth - <AUTHOR> http://prezi.com/xmzld_-wayho/new-economy-new-wealth/

<comment><USER3> Yawn. All a bit 1998 if you ask me. Look, I found most of it terribly visually impressing in a rock-video type of way.

When I can eat or live in a piece of information, then I'll start buying new paradigms with my ears pinned back.

All this talk about new economy is a bit old. While I'm impressed about the presentation - that's a very impressive way of showing things - and I agree that command-and-control architecture is done and dusted by sharing and open information models - this whole thing about information being more important than factories is a bit far-fetched.

Perhaps for some growth areas of the economy a completely information-based perspective is not only vital, but valid. Maybe more millionaires and billionaires will be minted by clever use of information and digital data. But the majority of the worlds production and income will still be found in digging things around.

However, the 'old economy' business of digging things up out of the ground, planting plants and harvesting them, and melting down base minerals to make things from is not going to change. You can layer all types of fancy new diagrams on top of this, but it's not going to change the base.

The big indicator should be that the 3 foundations of the current system, as described in the presentation - can all be exchanged for each other. Land for Captial, Capital for Labour, Labour for Land. Try exchanging information for any of these, you won't have much luck, unless we're talking trade secrets or blackmail. Try exchanging open information for a piece of land and see how you get on.

Even an iPad has to be made out of stuff dug out of the ground and refined in some way, then shipped across the ocean in an ancient old bit of technology called a ship. That's where the real story in the world economy is, that's where it will remain. Moving information around is just playing with the surplus production given to us by efficient manufacturing and agriculture.

If you want the real story on where things are headed, you'd best study things like the baltic dry index, the yield curve and old economy indicators like that. Measuring things in terms of eyeballs, mindshare and information flow is as terminally ridiculous now as it was 10 years ago when this was discredited the first time around.

<comment><USER4> "The big indicator should be that the 3 foundations of the current system, as described in the presentation - can all be exchanged for each other. Land for Captial, Capital for Labour, Labour for Land. Try exchanging information for any of these, you won't have much luck, unless we're talking trade secrets or blackmail. Try exchanging open information for a piece of land and see how you get on."

Governments give literally acres of land and tax breaks and concessions and fall all over themselves when some techie company or other opens a call center. That is literally trading little old information for all three. I give you my domain knowledge and you give me labor (call center workers), land (um, land), and capital (tax incentives/breaks/concessions, whatever you wanna call it... cash).

Microsoft, aside from outsourced Flextronics-made XBox 360s and Zunes, make information.

"Moving information around is just playing with the surplus production given to us by efficient manufacturing and agriculture"

Moving information around is how you can use your Idaho bank card in Bangalore. It doesn't make your bank worth less than Juanito the beet farmer in Brazil.

<comment><USER3> >Moving information around is how you can use your Idaho bank card in Bangalore. It doesn't make your bank worth less than Juanito the beet farmer in Brazil.

Thank you for proving my point. Without Juanito the beet farmer, and the stereotypical mid-western farmer or Texan oil-man being efficient and extracting a profit from their activities, there is no surplus. Without the beets (and wheat,and beef, etc) none of us get fed. Without piles of invested long-term capital from capital markets you don't have trans-ocean cables, and without that you don't have any way of talking from Bangalore to Idaho. Without the mines to dig up the minerals you don't have planes, and without oil wells you don't have fuel, without pilots and baggage handlers you don't get to go to Bangalore. So you wouldn't need your bankcard.

The whole reason we can actually get to Bangalore to use our bank card is because those in primary production do it efficiently enough that not all of us are involved in doing it. That's the surplus production (and thus, wealth) that allows us to do these things.

Look, I'm not anti-tech in the slightest - this is how I make my living. I'm just imploring tech people not to lose touch with that the industry really is, not to let your fee lose touch with the ground and the real economy that we're all here to support and improve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "new" economy is actually one we already had, which has simply become more powerful with the advent of the internet, and should have been present in the slides at each step along economic progression. It's a gift economy where capital is based on reputation and ability to share.

This is the same economy you use in local situations - with neighbors, friends, co-workers - to exchange favors. It has the power to get you a job, or to make a deal, or to elect a president, or any number of other things that determine how the work is done and how the goods are dealt out. The agricultural through industrial economies downplayed this form of economic activity because property, ownership and employment proved more suitable for creating an efficient market, but sharing has always been present and has always been taught as a moral ideal. If we didn't participate in that economy, we'd be quite a stand-offish, non-collaborative bunch. Nobody would trust each other.

What we have now is the ability to make gift economies based on information global in scale. The capital and labor necessary to start your (scarcity economy oriented) startup are potentially sitting right here on HN, if you know what to say and who to say it to. And PG and co. aren't making money off of the site, but I'm sure they've benefited from it. It's this kind of value that is really what's at stake in a successful info-business venture - <USER2> ability of companies to monetize on top of the info or info infrastructures ultimately isn't as important to the economy as the benefits accruing to all of society from just having it around and operating smoothly; finding a reasonable doorway from abundance currency to scarcity currency is what has led to the variety of monetization concepts tried over the last decade(ads, freemium, subscription, paywall, patronage...). This problem of monetization is pervasive throughout information products and is at the root of the whole IP debate: If there weren't money in trading information, would the incentives to create still be there?

But the question that isn't answered by these slides is the big one: how to balance ownership-based markets with gift-based ones. While the gift economy is endlessly abundant, how will we distribute the work for the older markets as they grow more efficient? Are there enough jobs to go around now, or do we need to rearrange ourselves to sustain heightened unemployment? How do we make everyone materially wealthy enough to be happy, and not destroy the planet in doing so?

</comment><comment><USER6> Metacurrency? The work is already done and it's called bitcoins.

Bitcoin is a decentralized crypto-currency system with a very vibrant community and several enterprises. It's also a system in which nodes trust no one and verify all transaction in the network. <http://bitcoin.org>

Austrian school and other economic models are not obsolete at all. Their tools just need to be shifted to analyze the information realm. In fact, Austro- libertarians in general already reject intellectual property.

Indeed, the system paradigram is beginning to replace the old system of nation states and coercion and replace them with anarchistic law system meditated by computers. Computer code will be law.

The world is starting to look more like the _Diamond Age_ , everyday.

<comment><USER7> Wait a minute. From looking over the bitcoin site, the process for currency creation is based upon CPU processing power? The argument given for limiting wealth creation is that, once bitcoin was used enough to have real value, the expense for electricity to perform the calculation approaches a higher amount than would be profitable by doing something else... First, not all computers will utilize electricity uniformly to perform the "calculations". Some computers are just horribly inefficient. Also, it's certainly possible to construct more power efficient computing devices, and do so without even talking about upcoming nano-technology and processing at the atomic scale which would make electricity costs at a macro scale negligible for even the most hard core computing. So right off the bat the bitcoin market does skew its participants with non-uniformity, and a thesis that almost certainly won't hold up within 50 years.

<comment><USER6> It is certainly possible to have more efficient computing devices, but then it will only increase the difficulty of the problems. The network adjust.

More efficient computers will mine more bitcoins in the short run, but not any more in the long run.

Even if it is extremely efficient, it is probably a lot easier to just trade for bitcoins.

<comment><USER7> But wouldn't the more efficient computers _always_ have an advantage over less capable computers? In other words, for this system to be fair, even assuming the electricity cost argument held up which I don't think it could, wouldn't everyone participating need access to the same kind of computer? The required calculation would be the same for every computer in the network, right?

<comment><USER6> What would you propose to make the system more "fair" without destroying the value of bitcoin?

beside, the point of bitcoin is _not_ generating bitcoins. In fact, generating bitcoins does nothing to create any value. Bitcoins become more valuable when you can trade goods for it.

Some guys get more chance at making the correct calculation that get him new bitcoins. Big deal. He get to buy 50 bitcoins worth of stuff. That's not a lot considering the exchange rate. Maybe it's 4 dollars at most. Don't forget that it won't be 50 bitcoins forever everytime you solve a problem. It will eventually be reduced to half and then half until nothingness years later. 21 million bitcoin limit. No more can be generated.

Maybe it will be more rewarding to generate bitcoins when bitcoins are in extremely high use, but that mean more competition for mining bitcoins. All that does is increase the difficulty to the point of becoming unprofitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think what's really going on is now that there is such an enormous amount of slack in the system we have to find new ways to self-actualize. For instance, because of all the cheap labor in China, manufacturing is now turning into an esoteric geek hobby in the U.S with Maker Faire, etc. I see Unemployed people on food stamps spending thousands of hours of their life in WOW and Farmville pretending they have a job because the real economy doesn't need them.

Maybe I'm too cynical.. Any idealists want to cheer me up?

</comment><comment><USER9> That was good - I bookmarked it to run through again. I really like the part of this not being a recession, but the end of an old economy and the transition to something new where 1/4 of what runs the economy (information) can actually become more valuable as it is shared - not necessarily a scarce resource.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Something seems to be wrong here, and tells us APP_ERROR. prezi.com/support might help."

Or not. Adobe flash player 10 under Fedora 12. Should I try from a Windows box at work in the morning?

<comment><USER11> Prezi notoriously does not work on Linux.

They didn't fix this since over a year now.

<comment><USER12> Hm, seems to work for me on Ubuntu 10.4 (Flash 10,1,82,76)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Provocative, but too breezy to be convincing.

<comment><USER14> Same reaction here. In particular, it doesn't explain why _this_ is a turning point. We've been hearing about the "information economy" for 30 years now. Why is 2010 suddenly its long-awaited triumph? The 1980s' argument was the advent of the widely accessible personal computer, and the 1990s' argument was the rollout of the internet to the general public. What's the 2010s' argument?</comment></comment>