Honu: Syntactic Extension for Algebraic Notation (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/publications/gpce12-rf.pdf <comment><USER2> As a lover of Lisp, I find these sorts of initiatives really depressing and frustrating. They seem to come up over and over again, where someone has the bright idea to make Lisp less Lisp-like, often by getting rid of all the parenthesis and making the language more Algol-like.

But parenthesis are, for me, one of the greatest things about Lisp. They make understanding, reasoning about, editing, and manipulating the code really easy, and add a consistency to the language which I really appreciate when compared to mismash of arbitrary, inconsistent delimiters in other languages.

This leads me to adopt a "you'll have to pry my parenthesis from my cold, dead fingers" attitude when I see suggestions like these. Please, just keep Lisp Lisp.

<comment><USER3> I would agree, I love the structure s-expressions bring, especially using smartparens in Emacs. At the same time I really enjoy some of the deviations from pure s-expressions that Clojure has made (like hash literals, using vectors for function arguments, using position instead of parentheses in binding forms). This suggests to me that there might be a sweet spot between Algol and s-expressions.

I'm quite interested to see where the whole Racket 2 thing goes in that regard. For example, the examples here all look quite clean to me: [https://github.com/mflatt/rhombus- brainstorming/blob/shrubbe...](https://github.com/mflatt/rhombus- brainstorming/blob/shrubbery/shrubbery/0000-shrubbery.md)

<comment><USER4> I feel like Clojure's deviation from S expression still somewhat follows the spirit of Lisp at least; the first-class hashes and vectors still correspond to native data structures and as a result, the syntax reflects that. In some ways, I feel like Clojure's embrace of this almost follows the Lisp formula better than something like, for example, Chicken Scheme, which by default does scheme-style hashes that don't correspond directly to syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare to Scheme sweet-expressions [https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-110/](https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-110/) and curly-infix [https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-105/](https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-105/) ?

</comment><comment><USER6> After seeing this, I know why I prefer Lisp with its conventional non-syntax over this mess.

<comment><USER7> You're not the first. Peter Norvig wrote:

> Python does have access to the abstract syntax tree of programs, but this is > not for the faint of heart. On the plus side, the modules are easy to > understand, and with five minutes and five lines of code I was able to get > this:

>>> parse("2 + 2") ['eval_input', ['testlist', ['test', ['and_test', ['not_test', ['comparison', ['expr', ['xor_expr', ['and_expr', ['shift_expr', ['arith_expr', ['term', ['factor', ['power', ['atom', [2, '2']]]]], [14, '+'], ['term', ['factor', ['power', ['atom', [2, '2']]]]]]]]]]]]]]], [4, ''], [0, '']]

> This was rather a disapointment to me. The Lisp parse of the equivalent > expression is (+ 2 2). It seems that only a real expert would want to > manipulate Python parse trees, whereas Lisp parse trees are simple for > anyone to use.

Honu appears to have a ton of complexity just to be able to support writing "a+b".

[1]: [https://norvig.com/python-lisp.html](https://norvig.com/python- lisp.html)

<comment><USER8> First, it's been nearly two decades since Norvig's examination, and Python grew the `ast` module in the stdlib, which improves things greatly:

        >>> ast.dump(ast.parse('2 + 2'))
        'Module(body=[Expr(value=BinOp(left=Num(n=2), op=Add(), right=Num(n=2)))])'

Not perfect but much improved. There are two reasons why Python ASTs are richer than Lisp/Scheme ASTs. First, Python simply has a richer syntax and semantics. (Too rich IMO!) Second, Python ASTs contain extra annotations, like line information, which are indispensable for production-quality code transformation; I assume that production-quality Lisp parsers do the same thing one way or another.

Honu does indeed have a lot of complexity, but I don't think that it's bad; I think that it's table stakes for offsides-indentation layouts. By merely having its primary goal as a goal, Honu must be complex.

<comment><USER9> > Python simply has a richer syntax and semantics. (Too rich IMO!)

This is the core of the issue. If there were a Zen of Lisp, it might just be two lines extracted from the Zen of Python:

      Simple is better than complex.
      Complex is better than complicated.

The reason why s-expressions are so great is because that simplicity makes metaprogramming manageable. I'm curious about how the new Racket syntax works out, but also mildly skeptical. . . I fear that a "lisp" where the ASTs don't look exactly like the text I see in the editor is a lisp that has had its soul amputated.

<comment><USER10> > I'm curious about how the new Racket syntax works out, but also mildly > skeptical. . . I fear that a "lisp" where the ASTs don't look exactly like > the text I see in the editor is a lisp that has had its soul amputated.

FWIW I talked to Matthias Felleisen about this to some degree this past summer. I asked whether he felt homoiconicity is important, and he essentially said that no, it wasn't particularly important so long as whatever system you arrive at has a sufficiently well-considered design. (Though he couldn't/wouldn't tell me which aspects of syntax he felt are important to designing a metaprogramming system as complete as Racket's.)

It's also worth noting that _Racket_ 's syntax is not changing. Matthew has said that he regrets calling his proposed project "Racket 2" because he never really intended it to subsume Racket, but rather to be a sister-project. The new name is Rhombus, and his proposed syntax uses what he calls "shrubbery notation" [0].

[0] [https://github.com/mflatt/rhombus- brainstorming/blob/shrubbe...](https://github.com/mflatt/rhombus- brainstorming/blob/shrubbery/shrubbery/0000-shrubbery.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're interested, I suggest looking at "readable Lisp". Details here: [https://readable.sourceforge.io/](https://readable.sourceforge.io/)

<comment><USER12> i think you may have just broken sourceforge with this link...

> SourceForge project websites are currently experiencing abnormally high > levels of traffic. Our support staff has been notified. Please check back in > a few minutes. We thank you for your patience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fortunately or unfortunately, it seems like Racket is going to move to this new syntax, as Matthew Flatt is a core contributor to Racket. I'll hold judgment until I see it, but I'm skeptical, to say the least.

<comment><USER12> got any links about this? I'm not sure what the right search incantation is. Too much talk in Racket about new / experimental syntax. ;)

<comment><USER13> [https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/thoughts-on- rhombus.htm...](https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/thoughts-on-rhombus.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> LOGO is already Lisp without parentheses and with infix notation. Recently, doing exercises in LOGO with my kid,he asked: can we put some parentheses around the functions for better clearness? I said: my son, you just discovered Lisp!

<comment><USER15> Lisp parentheses are not just for grouping. In Lisp, x is not the same as (x). That confused me a lot at first because it's rarely explicitly stated.

<comment><USER16> Can you elaborate or maybe link to a resource that explains this? This seems to be missing piece of the puzzle for me.

<comment><USER17> When you put parentheses around an atom, lisp sees that as a function call.

Say `x` is a function which adds one to a number.

Say `y` is an atom which is not a function—perhaps a list: `(list 1 2 3)`.

If you write just `x`, no parens, you point to the function without executing it. If you do this at your interpreter it will tell you that the value of `x` is "function something something."

This is important because it's what makes it possible to pass functions as arguments, and write things like `(map x y)`. Here `x` is not evaluated in place; it's called later by the `map` function, once for each element of the list, resulting in `(list 2 3 4)`.

Now if you put parentheses around `x`, lisp will try to execute it on the spot. `(x 1)` is what other languages would call `x(1)`, and will return `2`.

You have to be a little careful about this because it means that if you put parens around `y`, which isn't a function, you'll get an error. This is why lisp has the 'quote' operator, which means "take the next atom as literal data and don't try to execute it." So `(quote (1 2 3))` will return `(1 2 3)`. This can also be written `'(1 2 3)`—which is nice, because this is effectively equivalent to `(list 1 2 3)`, and could have saved me some typing when I defined `y` earlier.

e: typo ; also, sorry for the ugly syntax, I forgot there was no inline code formatting on HN

<comment><USER18> Hold up. X in the above is a symbol. Symbols _may_ be bound to a function or they may not. But x here is always a symbol.

When you write (x) in the Lisp REPL, Lisp will assume you intend to call a function bound to x because x appears first in the list. If you instead wrote (y x), Lisp would never assume x was a function. If the first thing in a list is _not_ bound to a function, Lisp will throw an error.

When you write '(x) [note leading quotation mark], Lisp will simply construct a list that contains the symbol x as its only element.

In my explanation above, I didn't make the distinction about the quotation mark because I assumed the questioner was asking about data structures. Lisp will print "the list containing x" without the quotation mark. But if that's what you mean when you type it, you have to explicitly type the quotation mark.

<comment><USER17> Yes, this is a good clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> After using Clojure for awhile, I think the only syntax I would prefer it is Ruby's.

<comment><USER20> Smalltalk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Haven't taken a deep look, but the first examples look surprisingly clean.

</comment><comment><USER22> Related (by not mentioned?): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression)

<comment><USER23> It's not mentioned because the paper isn't actually about Lisp with Algol Syntax. It's about how to add syntax-case to a language with Algol Syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This reminds me rather a lot of Magpie: [https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2011/02/13/extending- synt...](https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2011/02/13/extending-syntax-from- within-a-language/)

</comment><comment><USER25> It looks like javascript syntax.

<comment><USER26> This is a reasonable observation, JavaScript uses a syntax derived from Algol, via C, with some language features derived from Scheme.

I understand some of the upthread scepticism of the role that this may play in racket moving forward, but while people may have reservations about some of the Wut features in JavaScript, it has undeniably been a very successful language

<comment><USER12> it's been a successful language because the web is effing amazing and it's literally your only choice if you want any functionality in a web page.

If the original Scheme-like plan for JS had of been used then you'd be saying exactly the same thing about a Scheme.

JS didn't succeed because it was "good" in _any_ way. It succeeded because it was not horrendous and it was/is _the only choice_.

<comment><USER26> I mostly agree with you. I think however that it was "the only choice" because it was good enough. It's worth remembering that there was a non trivial time period in which there was a single dominant browser platform which supported alternatives: VBScript was supported through IE10, and is still available in IE11; ActiveX could be used to allow just about any scripting language.

Even now it's fairly straightforward to have JavaScript be the output of a toolchain, but not necessarily the input</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Best Programming Font: M+ - <AUTHOR> http://www.macwright.org/2014/07/09/mplus.html <comment><USER2> > "The best monospace font for programmers is M+."

Seems there's a bit of a grammar issue here, I've fixed it for you:

"My favourite monospace font for programming is M+."

<comment><USER3> It's considered good writing style to write the first sentence, the second is implied.

Unless you're presenting historical facts or figures, If every sentence in an article had the author qualify himself with 'imo', 'that's why I think that', etc... it would be a pain to read, and the argument would be a lot weaker.

<comment><USER4> I don't know, I strongly prefer the explicit "IMO" where correct. Most people _do_ mix up, in their writing, statements of opinion and statements of fact. It's really annoying to leave the burden on the reader to figure out which is meant.

<comment><USER5> I don't know, I strongly prefer the explicit "IMO" where correct. IMO most people do mix up, in their writing, statements of opinion and statements of fact. IMO it's really annoying to leave the burden on the reader to figure out which is meant.

<comment><USER6> well played

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmmmm. When teaching basic physics, I sometimes have trouble illustrating the difference between energy and work for my students. But this solves it! Post something with a title of "The best x for programmers is y", and you can watch the expenditure of an enormous amount of energy - yet, zero work.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Retina Displays"

So I guess it looks bad on high resolution screens that aren't on apple devices? Why do people even use this term when not referencing magical apple lingo?

<comment><USER9> Because it has better branding, and fewer syllables? You didn't have any trouble understanding what was meant, and I'd guess no one else reading the article did either.

<comment><USER10> Because UHD is hard to say/write?

<comment><USER9> What do you dislike about "retina"?

Edit: UHD is really ambiguous, it could refer to anything with the initials UHD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've yet to find a font that I like more than DejaVu Sans Mono. It strikes the perfect balance between being monospaced and looking good IMO. Plus it's open source easily installable everywhere.

I've tried almost every other "programmer" font but there's always something that rubs me the wrong way. In the case of M+, it just looks thin and silly.

<comment><USER12> I looked it up in gedit, and it turns out Dejavu sans mono and Ubuntu mono are practically identical. Really minute details. I prefer Ubuntu because it's less fuzzy on my non-retina screen, though. For fun, try Tex Gyre Chorus Medium and show it to a programmer and say it's your favorite programming font.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a professional programmer. I know quite a bit about computers. I don't claim to be the smartest guy in the room but I'm no dummy.

And I have no idea how to install a font. I download the zip and open it and there are 43 (43!) ttf files. I can install them by double clicking the file and selecting Install Font.

But then what? I now have 43 new fonts, but how do I know which one to use in my editor? Can someone explain this for a dummy?

<comment><USER14> What editor are you using?

In Emacs, put this in the .emacs file to set up the default font at startup.

(set-face-attribute 'default nil :family "Source Code Pro" :height 110)

<comment><USER13> I use Vim, but my question is which of the 43 fonts do I want to use?

<comment><USER15> You will probably have to set the terminal font and not Vim's.

In any case, usually when there are various ttf files for a single font, they all belong to a Font and then have variations (Medium, Medium Italic, Condensed, etc) Depending on the software, it maybe presented with 43 different fonts, or one single font, with variations (On mac, if you open Font Book, you get the font name, then you can expand to the variation, don't remember how it works on Windows)

<comment><USER13> So which variation do I want? I use MacVim which gives me a font selector that you select the variation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In defense of the design of this project, tall and thin is in. Oregon Speed Limit signs now use a taller and thinner font that is much easier to read at distance. Also the NHL used new fonts to number their jerseys for the Stadium Series so that the fonts could be seen at greater distances.

[http://www.markyville.com/aaroads/SpeedLimit- OR.png](http://www.markyville.com/aaroads/SpeedLimit-OR.png)

[http://icethetics.squarespace.com/storage/blog13/1213-pit14s...](http://icethetics.squarespace.com/storage/blog13/1213-pit14ss- back.png?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1387001395641)

PS: Go Pens.

</comment><comment><USER17> A little too thin for my tastes. I quite like Consolas or good old Courier New. To me the font width isn't all that important compared to the font height as I am not pressed for width but an extra couple of lines visible vertically is almost always wanted. Consolas is a nice balance at 11pt.

</comment><comment><USER18> False. The best programming font is Consolas.

<comment><USER19> I just tried Consolas again, inspired by this article[1]. I like how it is short and shows a lot of vertical lines. And it looks good. But after comparing it side-by-side with Monospace (default on Linux Mint), I'm sticking with it. I just like more how it looks, it seems clearer to my eyes.[2]

[1] [http://hivelogic.com/articles/top-10-programming- fonts](http://hivelogic.com/articles/top-10-programming-fonts)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/1FRVhWh.png](http://i.imgur.com/1FRVhWh.png)

<comment><USER20> You probably need to do the illegal-in-the-US cleartype font patches to get non-half-assed linux font rendering.

<comment><USER21> I think it's completely legal by now, since the patents expired a couple of years ago (or something like that).

<comment><USER22> As I understand it, the patents on bytecode hinting have expired. I wouldn't be surprised if subpixel antialiasing was still patented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's more condensed horizontally, but has a greater line height. As a result, I can see less lines at a time with this font.

<comment><USER23> In many/most editors you can adjust line height (although in TextMate it is surprisingly hard to perform such a thing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24>
      mplus-fonts-common.noarch : Mplus, common files (documentation…)
      mplus-1c-fonts.noarch : M+ C is optimized to be proportioned and has two variations
      mplus-1m-fonts.noarch : M+ M emphasize the balance of natural letterform and high legibility
      mplus-1mn-fonts.noarch : M+ M emphasize the balance of natural letterform and high legibility
      mplus-1p-fonts.noarch : M+ P is aimed as sophisticated and relaxed design
      mplus-2c-fonts.noarch : M+ C is optimized to be proportioned and has two variations
      mplus-2m-fonts.noarch : M+ M emphasize the balance of natural letterform and high legibility
      mplus-2p-fonts.noarch : M+ P is aimed as sophisticated and relaxed design

Looks like Fedora users have a lot of choice. Which of these is the author talking about?

<comment><USER25> M+ M are the monospaced fonts

<comment><USER24>
      mplus-1m-fonts.noarch : M+ M emphasize the balance of natural letterform and high legibility
      mplus-1mn-fonts.noarch : M+ M emphasize the balance of natural letterform and high legibility

Apologies, I am not sure which one of these you are talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but no programming font comes close to Monaco in terms of clarity and character balance and spacing (vertically and horizontally).

Ultimately it comes down to being able to patterns quickly in the code. You can train yourself to do this with any font.

</comment><comment><USER27> I personally prefer to use Times New Roman.

<comment><USER28> Using a serif font face for programming? You are a brave man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Bitstream Vera Sans Mono occupies a nice middle-ground on Linux for programming, almost like Monaco but a little clearer, if more boring. Have preferred compared to others so far.

I couldn't get Monaco, a little more eccentric but sometimes nicer to look at, to render correctly on Linux. Wierd line heights and hinting problems.

</comment><comment><USER16> The 0 should always be slightly more oblong than the character O, even if you are using a slashing it.

Other than that, this is a decent retina font, but so are Anonymous Pro, Inconsolata-dz, Consolas, and Source Code Pro; and those all also come with options for Powerline.

<comment><USER30> Not forget Hermit font

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've tried different programming fonts, and finally settled on the old Source Code Pro font. I don't like overly narrow font. It's just a personal preference. There's no "best" in subjective personal taste.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm a huge inconsolata fan myself.

<comment><USER32> I just compared Inconsolata and Consolas side by side and couldn't believe how similar they actually are. Whenever I just swap between the two, it's hard to compare, since Consolas seems to run about a point bigger looking than Inconsolata, so I have to scale it back a bit to give a real comparison.

Not surprising considering the author of Inconsolata cites Consolas as his primary inspiration, but I'd never noticed exactly how close they are. Both great monospace fonts. Very nice characters, but what really makes them stand out to me is that they both manage their kerning very well, especially around thin characters. Many other monospace fonts, including M+, end up with awkward gaps that approach a full space width and give the text a slinky-like compression/decompression effect, making reading and determining word breaks at a glance difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> One of the best designed and most complete programming fonts is PragmataPro.

[http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm](http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm)

</comment><comment><USER34> Fonts are quite the subjective thing. M+ looks a little on the thin side to me. I greatly prefer Menlo (regular, which happens to be the default for Sublime Text on OS X) or Consolas.

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure that font choices are entirely subjective. Legibility matters, and it's not impossible that better legibility means fewer bugs and less eye/brain strain.

It would be cool if there was objective research into this. (I don't know of any, but I haven't tried searching very hard.)

I can't look at M+ without seeing M+. With other fonts - I'm old-fashioned and like Menlo, but I've tried many others - all I see is code.

<comment><USER34> Of course they aren't entirely subjective! There are objective ways that fonts can be assessed for sure. In fact, there's an entire documentary on Netflix about Helvetica (and titled the same).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's surprising to me with the advent of retina screens that there are so few narrow options (M+ is the only one I've seen). Aesthetics aside (although M+ is quite pleasing to the eye), I think the narrowness functionally =is= better.

However the line height is quite tall which I'm not sure is an attribute of the font or text editors. TextMate still inexplicably has terrible line height management (you have to mess around with 2 terminal command settings).

</comment><comment><USER36> Is this a new kind of holy war? First we warred on what platform to run, then what we run on the platform, and finally how we display what we run on these platforms?

</comment><comment><USER37> I can see the value in a legible monospace font that's compressed horizontally. That said, I'm pretty happy with Inconsolata these days.

</comment><comment><USER38> I thought every font looked good on retina displays, since my problem is always to find fonts that are well hinted and look sharp in small sizes.

<comment><USER22> Both of those were prime motivations for me when I created my Luculent font [0]. If you haven't seen it already it might be worth a try.

[0] [http://www.eastfarthing.com/luculent/](http://www.eastfarthing.com/luculent/)

<comment><USER38> Nice - reminds me of Envy Code R. Thanks for linking this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Caveat: "Infinite are the arguments of mages."

My current favorite programming font is Inconsolata, but I'm being swayed by Source Code Pro.

</comment><comment><USER40> As a developer, this font looks like it would be terrible for trying to scan code. Way too thin for my taste.

</comment><comment><USER41> Everytime I come across these programming font articles, no one seem to mention about BPMono, which I've been using for years exclusively and loving it.

[http://backpacker.gr/font.asp?m=1&font=bp2](http://backpacker.gr/font.asp?m=1&font=bp2)

</comment><comment><USER42> I tried it, and actually don't like the narrowness. It's less readable to me. Also, the light version isn't nearly as sharp as Source Code Pro Light. I think I will be sticking to Adobes font as my favorite...

</comment><comment><USER43> Surely its comic sans. It adds that certain something to most pieces of code...

<comment><USER44> Fantasque Sans Mono, font inspired by Comic Sans, is actually pretty cool. [https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque- sans](https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans)

<comment><USER45> I've been using this for a while and it's just nice to use - easy on the eye some how.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Oh good, a "the best programming font is [INSERT COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE PERSONAL OPINION HERE]" article.

Next up: what's the best text editor? You all start the discussion while I go pop some popcorn.

</comment><comment><USER47> I have spent a significant amount of time with many programming fonts. My favorite monospaced font is Menlo. That said, I'm farsighted and prefer fonts with more weight.

</comment><comment><USER48> The compressed archive containing this font is 37,6 MB. This makes me feel very old.

Of course there are more than 40 individual TTF files in the archive, but still: almost 40 MB! Yikes.

</comment><comment><USER49> For tiny text, my preference is ProFont. [http://tobiasjung.name/profont/](http://tobiasjung.name/profont/)

</comment><comment><USER50> Ubuntu Mono for me.

</comment><comment><USER51> How does it compare to Monaco?

</comment><comment><USER52> font looks neat, but I think it's a bit taller than luculent ([http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/](http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/)).

I like luculent.

</comment><comment><USER53> Yall trippin. The best font for programming is Anonymous Pro.

</comment><comment><USER54> Only M+ 1m, 1mn, 2m have those features author mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER55> Personally I prefer to code on an array of Nixie tubes.

</comment><comment> bulte-rs I actually quite like Unifont for coding :S

</comment><comment><USER56> i think that Terminus is yet bester

</comment><comment><USER57> You seem confused.</comment>


The Fertility Doctor's Secret - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/fertility-doctor-donald-cline-secret-children/583249/ <comment><USER2> Hi, I am one of the hundreds + of offspring of Thomas Lippert - read the crazy story here: [https://www.cityweekly.net/utah/multiplicity/Content?oid=237...](https://www.cityweekly.net/utah/multiplicity/Content?oid=2373794)

You can also find a bunch of video interviews that my half sister did when she found out by searching his name.

There are about 20 of us in contact now through 23&Me and Ancestry DNA tests, and at least 5 more that want no contact whatsoever. We get a new one nearly every month, and more so after holidays or sales on DNA tests. Estimations go into the thousands.

Luckily(?) my (real, not bio) dad was dead before he found out, but my parents had no idea.

Finding out was a serious trip. There were A LOT of implications with it, especially with meeting my half siblings. If anyone wants more details, I'm happy to talk about it.

<comment><USER3> Q1: What is your understanding of Thomas Lippert's motivations in doing what he did?

Q2: What physical & behavioral similarities do you observe between you and your half-siblings? Do you have any insight on the nature vs. nurture debate?

<comment><USER2> 1\. He hated kids and raised none, he was the epitome of the "get off my lawn" neighbor in his area and was really aggressive to the neighbors especially the kids. More info on that in the above link.

My siblings and I have speculated the hell out of his motivations, and I've personally come to the conclusion that he was in a position to industrialize his evolutionary impact and took advantage of it.

Most of life has an implicit "purpose" to reproduce, and he found an extremely efficient way of mechanizing that, without any of the downsides like actually raising the offspring.

It's odd and I'm getting personal here but I always knew I wanted kids since I can remember, and I knew that if I never found a partner to have children with, I'd want to donate sperm for the sheer biology of it. It's an odd thing to try to express, but I'd be surprised if most people don't have some level of that.

2\. As far as physical characteristics, I actually look quite a bit like him in many ways (especially the younger photos before he was drinking himself to death). But certainly better :D You can reference my website in my bio and the link in my parent post if you want to see. Eyes, hair, skin color, facial features, relative height, etc.

Behavioral - I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder when I was 20. We could never figure out where that came from. It's treated now and also good to have someone to blame. I feel i share many personality traits that describe him, to certain (usually lesser) degrees.

They also say 80% of "intelligence" is inherited, and not to rag on my wonderful parents or prop myself up or anything, but we all sort of always wondered where I got that too vs my parents or other relatives. Also the aforementioned biological urge is a pretty interesting point - all of my siblings so far either have children or want them.

Most of my siblings are musical and play at least one musical instrument or sing or act or perform in some way, and he was apparently a great multi instrumentalist. The list goes on and on.

I'd put quite a lot more weight into nature than I ever would have before. I was convinced of nurture being the obvious bigger influencer but much of that could be attributed to lack of similarities with my family growing up. When I found out about this, I discussed it heavily with my siblings and some of their families and we all agreed that nature plays an enormous role that we'd never know otherwise.

<comment><USER4> Elliot, are you part of "We are Donor Conceived" on Facebook? There is a group of 1,000+ people on there that I think could really benefit from your perspective.

<comment><USER2> I haven't heard of it, thanks for the recommendation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > But artificial insemination still requires an exchange of bodily fluids that > can be procured only through sexual stimulation. (Consider: the > stereotypical drawer of porn magazines at the fertility doctor's office.)

This reminds me of the time I went to give my sample. I checked into the office, and the nurse looked at me, looked at my (Asian) wife, and then reached into her bottom drawer and pulled out a DVD of porn starting some Asian girls (I was not offered a choice or selection).

I was then given a cup and shown to my room. In the middle of the room was a very uncomfortable hospital chair covered in one of those pads that they put down that absorbs liquids to keep it sanitary. In the front of the room was a 20 inch tube TV/DVD combo (this was in 2013, long after the advent of flat screen TVs, so this TV was at least 10 years old). Hanging off the TV was a crappy pair of headphones.

To the left, a rack of about 25 porno mags of every kind of kink.

I was told to lock the door and then knock when I was done so the sample could be collected.

Not exactly the most conducive environment for producing that sample.

<comment><USER6> After I had my tubes tied, the office wanted a sample to verify the procedure, but as I recall they had me bring it in from home. Handing over a brown paper bag with a plastic container of your bodily fluids, whatever they may be, to the receptionist at a doctor's office is always an odd experience, but obviously they are used to it.

<comment><USER5> Most of my samples were given that way, but for the IVF fresh cycles, they needed it to be... fresher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My children were conceived by IVF (in the 2010s). I'm not too worried that the doctor used their own sperm, since the doctor is a woman, and in fact I didn't see a single man working anywhere in the IVF clinic.

But one thing that's always on my mind is what if they accidentally switched the sample before conception? Since the conception took place outside of my wife's body, what's even better is that our children might be related to me but not her, if they switched the eggs around.

At some point we'll probably do a DNA test on them just for fun. The results won't matter at that point -- they're mine and I love them.

But you know, maybe they get a free college education out of the results. :)

<comment><USER7> I have 3 kids conceived by IVF as well. We donated the leftover fertilized eggs and a couple has now a 12 year old daughter. I have seen the pictures and my 3 kids know that they have a biological sister out there. It will be interesting to see if she will contact us once and if she finds out (We allowed for the option to contact us)

<comment><USER5> Cool! We're still trying to figure out what to do with our last embryo. We've been told that they have too many embryos for science in California, and they can't cross state lines, so they are throwing away the donations.

We're still not sure if we want to try and use it ourselves (although the time for that is quickly going away) or give it to someone we know who wants it, or giving it to a stranger. Giving it to a stranger just feels odd to me, but at the same time I'd really like to see the results of nature vs nurture...

<comment><USER8> I recommend the documentary "Three Identical Strangers". Stay for the surprise ending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This sounded so familiar that I googled little.

Fertility doctor getting caught using his own sperm has happened several times before. It has been the plot in tv-series and SNL skit.

It's obvious solution if you want to improve the results of your clinic and perform miracles when all other doctors fail.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the- fertil...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-fertility- doctor-who-got-jail-time--and-inspired-an-snl- skit/2017/05/02/68788f36-1a1f-11e7-855e-4824bbb5d748_story.html)?

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5603323/Canadian- fe...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5603323/Canadian-fertility- doctor-used-sperm-father-11-children.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> *In 1987, a national survey of fertility doctors found that 2 percent had used their own sperm in patients.

<comment><USER11> And that's just ones who would admit it on a survey.

<comment><USER12> There may be the opposite effect too. People who misread the question or joke around or whatever.

I've heard that you will always get a small percentage yes on surveys no matter the question.

<comment><USER13> The Lizardman Constant: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll- results-and...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and- reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the record is 600 offspring:

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

</comment><comment><USER15> Wild. What a sick, strange thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER16> the Law and Order episode "Seed" in season 5 (1995) dealt with a similar case. I'm not surprised it's coming out in real life as genetic testing becomes consumer-accessible.

</comment><comment><USER17> Honestly men probably shouldn't be put in a position to be able to tamper with things like this. The evolutionary advantageous temptation is too great.

Similarly, to solve a related problem, we should require mandatory paternity testing at birth so men don't unwittingly raise someone else's child.

</comment><comment><USER18> In the end, does it really matter that much who provided the DNA? Family is mostly socially constructed anyway - just because half the children's DNA comes from someone else, doesn't mean they belong any less to the parents who raised them.

<comment><USER19> In the case of switching the eggs, is it possible that the host mother would be more likely to reject it? Because in that case, I feel it's a fairly clear case in which you have directly affected one's ability to have a family by doing this.

<comment><USER20> Not sure about one woman's eggs in another woman, but this is certainly true of an anonymous _sperm_ donor. In order to have the lowest chance of pre- eclampsia the woman needs to have been exposed vaginally to the man's semen for six months. Donor sperm children thus have higher rates of pre-eclampsia in pregnancy.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24011785](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24011785)

Similarly, donor sperm has been shown to increase pre-eclampsia

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25282539](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25282539)

Not all sperm is the same, regardless of what the market or the fertility industry thinks. There's a purpose to the act of sex.</comment></comment></comment>


Chipless tracker could transform barcode industry - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-04-chipless-tracker-barcode-industry.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's an interesting paper about actually implementing this (sorry for paywall).

[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumb...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5515168&queryText%3Dchipless+rfid)</comment>


Why is Balanced not being recognized as (YC W11)? - <AUTHOR>

Past few submissions haven't had the YC designation added to the company:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7111087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7105416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7097460
Is this intentional or somehow significant, either on the part of HN or Balanced?  Just curious. <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118142) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7111087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7111087) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7105416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7105416) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7097460](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7097460)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's random. We rarely add that for companies more than a year or so old.

</comment><comment><USER4> On [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118142) they've changed the title and added YC W11. Maybe it's just a mistake.</comment>


What is Happening in Brazil - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/d2e5f1f632ef <comment><USER2> Politicians tend to become worse and worse thinking and seeing from experience that they can "get away with it". But in reality all this time, the population gets more and more frustrated, and it's only a matter of time before the population revolts.

So far the Brazilian politicians have been _lucky_ that all these 1 million people haven't become _violent_ and ask for their blood. Because to be honest, I think at least some of the corrupt leaders need to be punished _severely_ , possibly even with the death penalty (like Ceausescu was in Romania).

It's really the only way they'll learn their lesson, and more importantly, future generations of politicians will know now to upset the population to the point where they'll revolt and ask for their execution. I'm not usually pro- death penalty, but if there's anyone deserving it, it's the oppressive/corrupt leaders that make millions of people suffer through their ruling.

I definitely think the leaders _intentionally_ abusing their own Constitution deserve the death penalty, because if they don't get that, then it's just an invitation for future leaders to abuse it. They swore to protect it and obey it, and there needs to be a way to force them to do just that. Otherwise what's the point? Imagine how different things would be in US, if politicians would fear death penalty if they abuse the Constitution, and keep passing unconstitutional laws.

I feel almost the same way about bankers who get away with their crimes. How are they supposed to learn their lesson if they aren't even threatened by prison time, even though they lost the pensions and deposits of millions of people? If they think they have the potential to earn tens of billions of hundreds of billions from risking the money of those people, they'll be much more inclined to do it if they only risk a couple of billion in penalty, and that's it.

The population is supposed to rectify these sort of abuses by the elite in a society. It's up to the population to ultimately decide how much of a punishment these people get, and if their "representatives" aren't up for it, then they need to change them, or at least scare them into applying their will.

<comment><USER3> But the any constitution may have(read, HAS) things that are wrong. Constitutions were written by people too. People are fallible, and the possibility exists that going against what they wrote ten-score years ago is just plain wrong, and going against it is the correct thing to do. I don't think leaders should fear correcting the wrongs in the building blocks of their countries; it should be their utmost responsibility.

Now, this is not what is happening here. Not at all. But taking the constitution as sacrosanct and making going against it punishable by death is _not_ a good idea. Is dogmatic and wrong. The responsibility of politicians is towards the people, not towards the constitution.

<comment><USER4> _The responsibility of politicians is towards the people, not towards the constitution._

Do you mean to the current people? and/or the future generations? and/or the past ones?

<comment><USER3> The current people, and the future generations inasmuch as their well-being is relevant and important to the current ones.

<comment><USER4> For example, what do you think about the current constitutional issues in Argentina? do you agree with the supreme court ruling?

<comment><USER3> Are we talking about the judicial system reform? I believe the current system of choosing the magistrate is quite bad, but the alternative that's being suggested is rife with it's own problems. As such, I don't think it's worth changing the constitution. I really like the current composition of the Supreme Court, and I trust their decision. I do think there are ways to change the system for the best, and I hope there'll be a joint effort to come up with a better alternative to the current system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A somewhat different analysis of the current situation, reaching quite different conclusions:

[http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/21/sao- paulo-...](http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/21/sao-paulo- protests-things-have-changed/)

I hadn't seen until I read that that the original organizers of the protest, the MPL, have actually pulled out and denounced some of the current protestors due to them being coopted by right-wing groups.

The blog post linked here makes a curious comment about "corruption... especially after the fall of the military regime". I'm not 100% sure if this is intended as a dog-whistle comment to the right, but it's a common sort of discourse among the right-wing, to excuse the dictatorship or even call for a new one by using corruption as the opening, since allegedly the dictatorship, for all its faults, was clean and got the trains running on time etc.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure the blog post you linked to reached any conclusions. It merely observed that not all of the hundreds of thousands of protestors are all of the same mind and political ideology. It would be pretty shocking if that were not the case. It ended wondering what would happen next, not declaring what would. Mass movements are unpredictable. So is life.

You chose one line out of context from the original article to highlight a "dog whistle to the right" in support of a dictatorship while the rest of the article is an impassioned plea for human rights.

Any time there's a mass movement, many different people will try to co-opt it. It doesn't mean that you should avoid supporting the movement. It means that it is very important to vocally support the parts of it that you do agree with, so that the parts you don't remain on the fringes.

Acting like the whole movement is suspect because of a few strikes me as very counter-productive.

<comment><USER5> I'm not intending to say that the whole movement is suspect; more that I'm wary of the particular linked blog post's analysis of the movement and what its aims are / should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quote from prosecutor's FB according to this blog post: "I'm trying to get home for the past two hours, but I can't because there's some protesters blocking off traffic […] please, somebody tell the police that this area is under the jurisdiction of my court and, if any of them kill a protester, I'll just archive the case". Scary!

<comment><USER8> Yep.

I understand this as a humorous remark, no doubt, but there are certain positions of power from which I do not appreciate joking.

<comment><USER9> It's a little more than just an humorous remark (EDIT: not that I'm assuming he would actually archive the cases); the original text seems much more hateful. The last part of the post is roughly:

 _Shitty petistas¹. Motherfuckers. (...) I miss the time when this kind of thing was resolved with rubber (sticks) on the backs of the cowards..._

¹ Supporters of the Partido Trabalhista, as far as I can tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has been a very depressing week. Regardless of the many fair causes being taken by the protesters to the street, as a Brazilian living in São Paulo, I was worried since the beginning that the whole thing would turn into the mess we can see now. And while I sympathize what many of these causes, the lack of a proper, unified list of demands makes the whole thing completely worthless in the best case, and quite dangerous in the worst.

On the bright side, it was funny the watch the national and foreign media trying to understand what was going on. And then my own friends and coworkers who supported the whole thing trying to explain what they thought it was about (each one with a different explanation).

<comment><USER11> > And while I sympathize what many of these causes, the lack of a proper, > unified list of demands makes the whole thing completely worthless in the > best case, and quite dangerous in the worst.

"Represent us, not yourselves" is the message delivered by these sorts of protests. It's more effective than an itemized list.

> And then my own friends and coworkers who supported the whole thing trying > to explain what they thought it was about (each one with a different > explanation).

This makes perfect sense amongst people who aren't being represented at all well by their government - the government isn't just doing one thing badly, so of course there isn't agreement over what they're doing wrong. It says something kind of ugly about you that you think it's "funny."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was reading the _European Convention on Human Rights_ recently and I was surprised to see that Article 2 explicitly allows for states to kill people to quell rioting or insurrection:

      Article 2 – Right to life
      :
      2. Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in contravention of this
         article when it results from the use of force which is no more than
         absolutely necessary:
         :
        c. in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2_of_the_European_Conve...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights)

<comment><USER13> You have to read "riot" in context of "insurrection." Armed uprisings are put down with lethal force. That's not inconsistent with western thought. E.g. its one of the first things the fledgling U.S. federal government did in response to a rebellion in Massachusetts: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion#Rebellion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion#Rebellion).

Vis-a-vis riots, read in the context of "insurrection" you might interpret it as referring to the kind of riots you see in say Bangladesh: labor strikes where people bomb things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article left me thinking about how big of a mess the 2014 world cup could be - a whirlwind of political protest, drunken fans and violence. Brazilian leadership really has their work cut out of them. However, in China, where oppression and corruption also exist, the 2008 Olympics was an event of unifying nationalism.

Then, as the article portrays, Arab countries can oust their leaders, but Brazilians choose to re-elect corrupt politicians.

Why does it seem like communist countries can inspire nationalism and pride, and the people of dictatorships can change leadership. Yet, Brazil, as a democratic country, is depicted as imagining disgrace (in world cup / Olympics) and unable to instigate political change?

<comment><USER15> Simply electing leaders isn't enough in systems with winner-take-all dynamics. Brazil, Turkey, and Egypt all encapsulate this basic truth.

[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/21/the_tyranny...](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/21/the_tyranny_of_the_majority_brazil_turkey_protests)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Left started the protests to attack the gov. of Sao Paulo one of largest city in Brazil that is in the hands of 'right' wing. After the middle class joined the protest things changed because the middle class only see political 'right' or 'left' as:

which hand is stealing? If it is 'center' is both...

As the protest backfired agains the left and the president (left too) they are trying to get over the protest..

But it is a long way to put all sardines back in the can.

</comment><comment><USER17> Regardless of who started it, attacking peaceful demonstrators and journalists with that much tear gas is just wrong. When you add that those they attacked where chanting no violence and where running away, the police should have done nothing at all.

</comment><comment><USER18> Stop this nonsense. Don't give voice to those people. Just the 1st paragraph shows he has no clue of what's happening.

Nobody protested because of 20cents. Those were yearly protests by movement free pass (passe livre). Their goal is free public transportation and they do demonstrations for at least 10yrs.

It's just for effect that they time the demonstrations to the fare raises.

And now, the media giving voice to that kind of people is what made the govt get away with 20c less on the fare for this issue. It totally undermined the movement and alienated newcomers.

Those people eager to appear in the media effectively destroyed the leadership and turned the protest into a headless occupy wallstreet kind of thing.

Yesterday there were talks of the military taking opportunity and throwing A COUPE... Highly improbable but since now nobody has any direction, even within the gov, it was a real fear for some in the workers party that heads govmnt currently.

<comment><USER19> So if it didn't start because of public transport, why did it, and what is it about?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just my 2 cents, but saying "paying one of the biggest taxes in the world" is _really_ exaggerated

<comment><USER21> Income tax might not be so high, but taxes for products are very high. Electricity: about 45%, gasoline: about 50%. Import tax/PIS/Confins/ICMS are calculated one after the other, so you pay tax over tax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great article. Congrats, bro.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sorry, but I call bs on this blog: "Feel Free To Kill Protesters", who said this? The author doesn't point any reference to confirm this quote, and I could not find it nowhere else.

<comment><USER24> \- [http://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas- noticias/2013/0...](http://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas- noticias/2013/06/10/promotor-que-incitou-violencia-contra-manifestantes-em-sp- tera-conduta-investigada-pelo-mp-para-oab-sp-houve-crime.htm)

\- [http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2013/06/apos- sugerir-m...](http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2013/06/apos-sugerir- morte-de-manifestantes-promotor-se-arrepende-e-exclui-post.html)

EDIT: You can see this in english here: [http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/14/fear- and-l...](http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/14/fear-and-loathing- in-sao-paulo/) (search for "prosecutor")

<comment><USER23> Unbelievable the downvote, it doesn't change the fact that Blog post has absolutely no references or names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm brazilian and this article is a lie. nobody has heard about anybody saying this, and the visions the author of the article atributes to all the manifesters are just his visions.

also, the author is an idiot.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the detailed rebuttal. Your considered response opened my eyes to the reality of the situation. Many thanks.</comment></comment>


It's not about innovation or invention; it's about protection. - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/intellectual-ventures-2011-7

<comment><USER2> Protecting intellectual property and fostering innovation clearly serves a role in the global economy. However, it's not clear the patent system is structured in the optimal way for an agile world in 2011 driven by the web and software. Perhaps a separate system needs to exist for software and the web versus industries of traditionally high capital expenditures (e.g., pharma, manufacturing).</comment>


VR training to reduce sexual harassment is not a gimmick - <AUTHOR> https://innovationforallcast.com/2018/11/30/vr-training-sexual-harrassment/ <comment><AUTHOR> Most VR is a total gimmick. Here the CEO of Vantage Point explains what really, really good VR training can look like on the Innovation For All podcast.</comment>


Ask HN: How and can a government block social media in a whole country? - <AUTHOR> I don't want to discuss politics, but I would like to know the legality and even the technical process involved in a government blocking social media. Here is the background to my question.<p>I am from Zimbabwe. There is a movement that is sweeping across the country protesting Robert Mugabe. Workers have not been paid and people are tired of his regime. Most of the campaigns against him have been voiced mostly through social media as it is dangerous to protest on the streets. Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp have now been effectively used to plan a nationwide stay away planned for tomorrow. However, the government has threatened to block all social media to prevent this from happening. So I would like to know whethere this is illegal and at a technical level how they could actually do it. <comment><USER2> A newly-released academic view of censorship technologies and anticensorship technologies:

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sk766/publications/pets16_sok_cens...](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sk766/publications/pets16_sok_censorship.pdf)

(This might be at a much more abstract level than you were looking for, but it tries to cover the whole landscape of how things can be blocked and how people can get around that.)

</comment><comment><USER2> If they run the ISPs or can give them orders, they can tell them to null route particular IP addresses -- not properly deliver the traffic to those addresses. By watching the traffic coming out of a mobile device when it's using a particular service, they can easily make a pretty decent list of some of the IP addresses of the servers of that service.

Another possibility is making the ISP's own DNS resolvers refuse to resolve the service's domain name, or making it resolve to something else. Or (at a higher level of sophistication) inspecting DNS queries and blocking those that are related to that service. This is a higher level of sophistication because it is deep packet inspection rather than simply tampering with routing tables or the ISP's own DNS services.

Those are the big ones, and the ways around them are generally proxies, tunnels, and VPNs to get other computers and services that the government isn't yet aware of (or isn't willing to block) to forward the traffic in some way.

Edit: for example, suppose people are using ExampleChat and the government doesn't like that. It can look at the data traffic coming out of a phone running ExampleChat and see that it first looks up chatapi.example.com and that this resolves to 192.0.2.40. Then the phone makes a TCP connection to, say, port 443 of 192.0.2.40. The government-run ISP, or ISPs following government orders, might then start dropping IP traffic to or from 192.0.2.40, or giving wrong results from its own DNS resolver for queries for chatapi.example.com. If they have DPI equipment that is able to look at the content of packets, it could also include searching for "chatapi.example.com" in outbound DNS queries to other nameservers, and dropping those packets or immediately spoofing invalid responses.

This would be pretty effective against ExampleChat because the app simply can't work if it can't talk to the server. If the company rolls out a new version that uses a new name and address, the government could notice the change and block the new one too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, they can block it. Brazil did it, I found this explanation on how they did it (basically, DNS hijacking):

[https://ooni.torproject.org/post/brazil-whatsapp- block/](https://ooni.torproject.org/post/brazil-whatsapp-block/)</comment>


Canadian Software Company OpenText Acquires Carbonite in $1.42B Deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.americaninno.com/boston/bostinno-bytes/canadian-software-company-opentext-acquires-carbonite-in-1-42b-deal/ <comment><USER2> Kudos to them, it's usually Canadian companies being bought.</comment>


Science Without Publication Paywalls - <AUTHOR> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.00656/full <comment><AUTHOR> FTA:

\- Authors retain copyright of their publication with no restrictions. All publications must be published under an open license, preferably the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY. In all cases, the license applied should fulfill the requirements defined by the Berlin declaration;

\- The Funders will ensure jointly the establishment of robust criteria and requirements for the services that compliant high quality Open Access journals and Open Access platforms must provide;

\- In case such high quality Open Access journals or platforms do not yet exist, the Funders will in a coordinated way provide incentives to establish these and support them when appropriate; support will also be provided for Open Access infrastructures where necessary;

\- Where applicable, Open Access publication fees are covered by Funders or universities, not by individual researchers; it is acknowledged that all scientists should be able to publish their work Open Access even if their institutions have limited means;

\- When Open Access publication fees are applied, their funding is standardised and capped (across Europe);

\- Funders will ask universities, research organisations, and libraries to align their policies and strategies, notably to ensure transparency;

\- The above principles shall apply to all types of scholarly publications, but it is understood that the timeline to achieve Open Access for monographs and books may be longer than 1 January 2020;

\- The importance of open archives and repositories for hosting research outputs is acknowledged because of their long-term archiving function and their potential for editorial innovation;

\- The "hybrid" model of publishing is not compliant with the above principles;

\- The Funders will monitor compliance and will sanction non-compliance.</comment>


Javascript — Wat - <AUTHOR> https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

<comment><USER2> You are late by 582 days [1]. Looks like the duplicate filter missed the duplication because of https vs. http.

I wonder if the duplicate filter should be changed to consider https and http equivalent? Are there sites that serve different content on URLs that differ only that way?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3515845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3515845)

<comment><USER3> That's so long ago that likely a lot of people here haven't seen it.

You can complain about reposts within a short timespan, but, really, reposts over the span of several years, or even several months, are irrelevant if their content is genuinely interesting. You have too much spare time if such reposts really bother you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Following @garybernhardt (the presenter) on Twitter is the best decision I've made.</comment>


Apple patent: Method and apparatus for executing program code  - <AUTHOR> http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=16&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=%22Apple+Inc%22&OS=%22Apple+Inc%22&RS=%22Apple+Inc%22

<comment><USER2> It's a patent for a specific set of steps to execute vector code in loops in parallel, which means the HN title is needlessly linkbaity. The truth is ridiculous enough.

Your average HN reader would probably 'invent' the same technique if CPU design was their profession and they were tasked with the continuous march of CPU performance.

There wasn't anything in there that didn't seem straight forward enough to me after casually reading Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach five years ago, and I make _flash games_ for a living.

At least in the case of patents on CPUs, though, your average company is well financed enough to fight a lawsuit around this patent, which was the particularly annoying thing about Lodsys.

<comment><USER3> >Your average HN reader would probably 'invent' the same technique if CPU design was their profession and they were tasked with the continuous march of CPU performance.

In French law, you can only patent something if it is not something that would be evident to a trained professional in the field ("Pour un homme du métier, une invention ne doit pas découler de façon évidente de l'état de la technique ; on considère que l'homme du métier est le technicienmoyen dans un secteur donné"- art. L611-10, Code Propriété Intellectuelle.)

Is it not the case in the US?

<comment><USER4> Trained professionals in the field don't tend to work in the patent office (it probably pays less well, especially in software), so the patent office errs on the side of granting too generously, and lets the courts decide later whether to actually let them stand.

How does France deal with this situation?

<comment><USER5> I love how Polish law deals with this situation - software is algorithms and algorithms are math and math isn't patentable :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Careful with the title -- this patent is much more specific than the name of the patent implies. There's a human-readable version of the claims in the "Description" section of the patent (past the initial, incomprehensible- unless-you're-a-patent-lawyer "Claims" section).

It looks as though it's a patent on a particular model for implementing a highly parallel CPU, with a focus on making vectorized loops work better. Interesting stuff.

<comment><USER7> > (past the initial, incomprehensible-unless-you're-a-patent-lawyer "Claims" > section)

On the contrary, the claims are meant to be understandable to any reasonably technical person (anyone "highly skilled in the art"). On the other hand, your average non-technical lawyer would be completely unable to read them.

This doesn't mean it won't take time to fully digest a patent's claims, as they tend to be written with a very high degree of precision.

<comment> excuse-me they tend to be written with a very high degree of obsfurcation since you are trying to both claim absolutely everything and yet be specific when it comes to the court case.

Fortunately patent cases now tend to get decided out of court based on who has the biggest portfolio, or when they do go to court it's a jury in East Texas deciding which lawyer they dislike least. this has taken a lot of the work out of trying to write elegant claims!

<comment><USER7> The obfuscation comes as a result of the patent examiners whittling down the overly broad claims made by the authors. This is a process that goes on for numerous rounds, back and forth. Personally I see the result as "precision" -- an agreement between the authors and the patent office about what has truly been invented -- rather than any kind of purposeful obfuscation. (I make no claims that this is a good process, that the patent examiners are as competent as they ought to be, or that authors in general are not trying to scam the system).

<comment><USER8> Also part of it is from the form - a series of separable claims. That way if a judge finds prior art and strikes down part of the patent, they are leaving as much leeway as possible to leave as much of the patent as possible standing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is related to what Apple apparently calls "macroscalar architecture." Here's an excellent writeup and collection of links on what is involved: [http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/asampson/blog/macroscalar...](http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/asampson/blog/macroscalar.html)

(Someone previously posted that URL to HN as <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3887700> and it received little response. Maybe the title wasn't sexy enough.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Here we go again. Another HN submission about a patent, pretending that the title of the patent means __anything at all __about what it covers. Gotta read the claims, people.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think the title is accurate, this seems to apply to parallelizing a particular type of loop, not "executing program code" in general.

But I don't understand the area enough -- what are vectorized loops, and what is Apple doing here? Can someone explain this patent in an easy way?

<comment><USER12> Seems like you have a vector of functions and a set of control functions. Each control function resolves dependencies, in such a way that the vector of functions can execute parallely while maintaining a "correct" order of execution.

It's definitely clever, but I can't believe they were granted a patent for this. It would be like patenting the map reduce framework. :|

<comment><USER13> People really need to calm down about whether or not the patent was granted. The fact is that the patent office is basically rubber stamping most patents and relying on patent invalidation processes within the legal system to resolve issues.

Not every patent clerk is going to be Albert Einstein. Nor should we expect them to be.

<comment><USER14> > The fact is that the patent office is basically rubber stamping most patents > and relying on patent invalidation processes within the legal system to > resolve issues.

Which is expensive. It should work other way around. Those who file such patents need to spend money to prove that this stuff is really innovative and for some real experts. Current patents system is pure farce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Careful, I don't think this is a "Apple patented executable code" situation. It looks more like the process is to build instructions to help concurrency, not just generalize program execution and compilation.

When the titles of most patents are taken in isolation, link bait is usually the result.

<comment><USER16> Patenting instructions to help concurrency is not much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am not an expert in patents or the subject matter, but it seems the patent only covers some encoding of (possibly automatically) vectorized loop. Maybe using LLVM, maybe in Apple's GPU drivers effort. No at all as general as the submission's title claims.

I would like to hear from more knowledgeable people what the invention is and how novel is it really.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am not a big fan of the sensationalist and misleadingly terse headlines that sometimes accompany posts like this, but this one is pretty serious. Apple is claiming domain over a very fundamental operation here - one that is at the core of human thought and consciousness if not performant software.

</comment><comment><USER19> Stop paying attention to trash patents that get filed every day (too many to count and of little consequence) and start getting outraged at companies that actually sue based on trash patents (Apple is the #1 offender here, but sadly not alone).

</comment><comment><USER20> Scoffing at the _titles_ of patents is usually a sign that you don't understand how patents work. A patent covers a _specific method_ for achieving a goal, not the goal itself.

</comment><comment><USER21> WTF there desribing a vector processor. These were about and prio-art back in the 70's. INTEL have added instructions to handle this type of processing. This is not new and how they got that patent again highlights what a crock of shit this whole patent mess is.

Are patents realy down to wording a known process in such a complex way that it appears to be new - as thats how I see alot of patents.

Bottom line if you can't sumarise it on the back of a postit note without duplicating somebody elses work then you have created nothing new at all.

I think bad patents like this should be fined, submit prior art patent then you should be fined - big time. Help pay for all this courtroo bullshitting about patents.

</comment><comment><USER22> While the patent is not literally for "executing code", it still completely ridiculous and should not have been granted. Does anyone at USPTO actually reads the content of these applications, I wonder?

<comment><USER23> More important than reading them, I think, is the question of whether they have staff that understands computing well enough to discern whether something is novel or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Glad to see most of the comments here are from people that read the patent, understood it and not the general lets go with the now popular Apple is a patent troll line of hating.

</comment><comment><USER25> Makes me think of the Hughes/Raytheon SPE (Signal Processing Element) that I programmed when I worked at Raytheon about 2006. Loops to control parallel processing to/from multiple memories, ... It's at least 20 years old.

How can they get a patent on this? There must be lots of prior art (such as the SPE).

<comment><USER26> They get away with it because the USPTO clerk isn't particularly inclined to check for prior art.

There should be a way to sue the patent office for patents you had to spend money invalidating. Better: to Sue them for approving bad patents and enabling trolls to thrive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is it clear yet, that "intellectual property" is not property at all? Rather, it is a government sanctioned monopoly on ideas that are not scarce like physical property.

</comment><comment><USER28> Looks to me they are patenting event queues? If I don't understand this I can't imagine the government agent that approved this patent did either.

<comment><USER6> No, not really. Read the "Description" section of the patent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised they don't attempt to patent Von Neumann architecture, or even the concept of algorithm itself.

</comment><comment><USER29> Come on people; flag it and move on.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can we just kill software patents already? Seriously, they need to go away.</comment>


Free software is dead. Long live open source - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10361785-16.html

<comment><USER2> Seems entirely built around the straw man argument that Free Software doesn't want to interoperate with standards created by proprietary companies.

I'm not sure you could be any more wrong about something, unless you were actively trying to do so. Even then it would take effort and a certain twisted kind of mad genius. Just seems to come naturally to Matt Asay though, he can churn this nonsense out week after week.

<comment><USER3> This article is not even wrong.

It must either be a slow news day or they are hurting for readers.

<comment><USER2> I think you'll be entertained to read through his archive, "not even wrong" is a very apt description of most of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on the phrase from Matt Asay's piece where he quotes Jason Perlow as saying:

      "But some people ... will use only free and open source software
      for the sake of ideological reasons alone"

The part I'm curious about is the ending "for the sake of ideological reasons alone." To me, "ideology" refers to the values that drive us-- the reasons we do things. Certainly, Stallman is driven by ideology, but isn't Eric Raymond as well? Aren't we all?

I understand that there are non-ideological reasons for things-- like you started crying because you learned your dog had died. You're having an immediate, emotional reaction; there's no rational thought involved. But I don't understand the distinction between "pragmatism" and "ideology" in the realm of rational thought, like choosing software licenses. In my experience, when someone asks me to be "pragmatic," it is the same as someone asking me to do something that seems like a bad idea.

They're usually requests like, "Let's just copy a little bit of this code off Sourceforge and act like it's ours. They won't mind. Come on, be pragmatic." Or maybe, "If you would release that code under the BSD license, we could use it in our proprietary commercial applications. Come on, be pragmatic."

I'd love it if someone could give me a better way to think about the difference between pragmatism and ideology, or help me understand why I continually disagree with other people about this sort of thing. My best guess is that people who ask me to be "pragmatic" are just full of crap, or at least some of them are, but I'm also open to the possibility that I'm just misunderstanding the world.

</comment><comment><USER5> Okay, so holding to uncompromising moral principles isn't particularly compatible with real-world success. This is neither new nor limited to Free Software; you either compromise in order to get along, or you retreat with like-minded folks and live your own way (cf. Amish communities, hippie communes, &c.)

Not everyone agrees with Stallman's ethical standards, and it's not even hard to argue that strategic compromises could better achieve the long-term goals of the FSF (in fact, they've been known to make exactly those sorts of compromises).

But it really bothers me when people criticize Stallman for being out of touch, or imply that it's "hatred of Microsoft" or whatever motivating him, while sometimes seeming to promote compromise as a virtue in and of itself. Are these people willfully ignoring the explicit philosophical/ethical framework behind the FSF? Are they opposed to the ethical stance but unwilling to say so directly? Is it inconceivable to them that someone could actually dedicate their lives to a moral cause?

I suppose the obvious cynical answer is "they're trolling GNU/Fanboys in order to rack up more website hits", but I try not to assume acting in bad faith as my first explanation.

<comment> loup-vaillant > …or imply that it's "hatred of Microsoft"…

Especially when you know that Stallman explicitely stated that Microsoft isn't the enemy, proprietary software is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article is right - demand freedom from _free_!

I've been working with open-source software for 15 years. Very early on it was clear to me that GPL is not very compatible with commercial enterprises, for exactly the reasons specified in the article.

It is a waste of time having to evaluate or code around the ability to use/ship GPL software with your own commercial stack. _A waste of time_.

OTOH, all my MIT/BSD code happily works perfectly without a thought or worry about legal ramifications. MYSQL is for me the canonical example of the crap that goes on with GPL software.

 _All_ of the open-source software I produce is MIT/BSD style.

I don't have any problem with FSF wanting there to be tons of GPL software. It's just not useful for me. There are clearly some social goods from GPL software -- knowing it has to be virally free is useful to that stack of software. It just doesn't play nice enough with non-FREE software to be very useful to commercial interests.

<comment><USER4> Your response is interesting to me. I agree with almost everything you wrote, but all of the open-source software I produce is GPL'd.

I think the difference is that you want your software to be useful to commercial interests, while I don't. I've gotten a lot of benefit from what you call the GPL "stack of software," and I'd rather advance that than the commercial stack that I (mostly) can't afford to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _To go mainstream, free software needed to become open source._

Anything Free software is Open source (But not vice versa).

Am I wrong?

<comment><USER8> You're not wrong.

What the author means is that software maintainers need to embrace compromise instead of Stallmanesque freedom. The first he calls open source, the second Free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Leech is the new black.</comment>


Ask PG: Statistics - <AUTHOR>

There have been a few posts (one being mine) around concerning fears about "fluff" posts taking over. Solutions are ranging from allowing downmods, adjusting weighting algorithms, and even just blacklisting Reddit posts.
One thing I'd like to see before considering adjustments like this would be more detailed statistics about how people vote, how leaders vote, how karma is distributed, &c.
I feel like interesting data sets would be:

   Across all users
     Karma
     Number of votes
     Number of submissions
     Times downmodded
     ...

   Across all posts
     Karma
     Comments
     Flag for whether it's considered "fluffy" (mod's discretion)
     Flag for Reddit submission
     ...
 Really, it could be a pretty big problem. It does seem like a potential playground of hacks and at least some of those statistics are certainly not difficult to mine (probably Arc one-liners).
So, if it seems interesting and there's not any issue with privacy (strip out usernames and it'd be hard to correlate anything beyond the leaderboard) is there any chance of seeing a hn-stats tarball? <comment><USER2> Anyone so concerned with stats that does not work for HN is just looking for more places to waste their time instead of working on their hack/startup. This isn't your community; it's a website. You may think of it as your community but where will you be two years from now? Still wasting time on this site asking for stuff like this? No. Google "This too shall pass" for it is the lesson of life. Really - the post today, "Do It Fucking Now", applies here as well lol. Figure out what's important and do that; having stats on this site is not important in your or my life.

<comment><USER3> Some of us aren't interested in the numbers but we are interested in the patterns behind them, especially if they could be used to identify destructive trends.

<comment><USER4> Organizations that think like this:

DHS

FBI

CIA

DOD

KGB

Thought Police

Please don't add YC.News to this list. It's one of the few places I enjoy on the net at the moment (and of those few, this is my favorite). I don't like the notion of having some sort policing activity to identify "destructive trends" as you call it.

Sorry for putting it so bluntly.

<comment><USER5> Having observed Digg and Reddit devolve, solving this problem has nothing to do with conspiracy theories. This is more about addressing Eternal September concerns (brilliant reference by someone yesterday). History will repeat itself until a clever, llama-free community _ahem_ addresses these problems intelligently. I can't think of a better place for it.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry that you think I was subscribing to some sort of conspiracy theory in listing those organizations. The point I was trying to make is that what has been termed "fluff" is now "destructive trends", and worse it was somehow suggested that by exposing others behaviors (or rather, revealing stats as illustrated in the above description) would somehow lead to a (final?) solution.

The degree to which the original "problem" is becoming viewed as cancerous is alarming because I feel that News.YC is a place for diverse thinking and sharing interesting content. Digg/Reddit have devolved because they are more homogenous than they are diverse (hence the mob-like mentality).

The very diversity that makes an online community interesting should be embraced instead of eradicated, but that's just my opinion. I know that eventually as News.YC becomes more popular this community will homogenize and follow the same fate as Digg/Reddit.

It is inevitable...

<comment><USER3> _I know that eventually as News.YC becomes more popular this community will homogenize_

Suppose you wanted to convince someone who doesn't "know" that. Don't you think the right data could prove your point?

<comment><USER4> I don't feel the need to convince anybody of that which they do not know. Also, I don't feel that having data of users is more advantageous than proving my point; there are also other pieces of info I can dig up (if you're interested) that may or may not strengthen my argument. I am VERY open to the idea that I might be wrong, which indeed might be the case. However, I will always maintain that what most concerns me about the nature of this discussion is NOT the efforts put forward to solve a perceived problem but the way in which a threat is interpreted and what we are willing to give up in exchange for dealing with the perceived threat.

Btw, I really don't want to come off as being antagonistic here. I'm sticking to my view until I see a benefit to what everybody has been advocating. In the meantime, feel free to downmod me if you disagree. I have no problem paying a penalty for disagreeing, if that is the cost associated with expressing my views, regardless of how well they are accepted.

(thanks for reading this long-ass post if you got this far!!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In general, Paul, is there a reason not to open up a machine-readable HN platform for people to tinker on top of (other than the time it'll take to code)?

<comment><USER7> Exposing voting history strikes me as an obviously bad thing to do given that votes have always been anonymous. Even if you tried to scrub personal information from the data, it'd be fairly easy to match anonymous ID's to HN nicks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Full voting history, probably, yes. Number of votes (some relation to activity, perhaps) not so much.

Anything that's obviously going to make it easy to reverse engineer anonymous things isn't a good idea, but that doesn't mean you can't still find interesting gems.

<comment><USER8> I agree. Aggregate stats such as whether a small group does most of the voting, whether the same people seem to vote for the highest ranked items, etc. would be pretty interesting while not giving away too much information.

I am also curious whether a completely open system would work. Has that ever been tried? On a system the size of Reddit or Digg it would be intriguing to see how groups cluster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm in favor most of the flag option. I understand how users with a high degree of karma can prove themselves worthy by virtue of what karma even means, but combining flags and the number of times downmodded creates a more level playing field for the process.

</comment><comment><USER10> The original question aside (for the record, I'd find it interesting as well), does anyone else think this comment thread is kinda nasty? Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have the following question for those that are advocating a tech/statistical/mathematical solution: How many of you are individuals who are in the process of creating a startup in the hopes of getting YC funding?

The reason why I'm asking this question is because I had the impression that the articles here are more reflective of the VC/hacker roots of YCombinator (silly me!). I also feel that somehow alot of the up-votes for this perspective is reflective of the notion that if you complain to PG enough, he'll swoop in and fix things so that all is well. Hint: if you continue to have this attitude, then you will see your chances of getting YC funding (or even have them bat an eyelash at your application) decrease rapidly because your objection to "fluff" is so strong; do you really think anybody in their right mind would fund somebody who can't handle the "fluff"?!?!?!?!

I recognize that there are many who have been suggesting solutions that PG implement (and to his great credit he has pleased many of you by expanding the leaders list to 100 now!); but I also want to know if your energies would be better suited in actually finding articles that you like and submitting those (in other words, being competitive), and perhaps even EARNING karma points (which translates into recognition as well).

Not everything is solvable in code and not everything that you do not like is a "problem". I would argue that the diversity (which can be read as the mix of hard-core geekstuff along with fluff) is reflective of the VC/hacker roots of Hacker News. Or in other words: break out of the box and have a multifaceted view of the world.

<comment><USER11> I'm probably going to regret responding to this, but here goes...

Many of us are also very invested in this site, and are interested in keeping it close to its roots. That's why there's been a lot of alarm regarding the content on the site. I'm sure that some of it will blow over. Some of it will cause changes.

I don't really think that people are trying to get PG to automagically fix the problem for us. I think that we're trying to have an open discussion about solving the Eternal September problem with social sites. This is a recurring problem that occurs on pretty much any site that has a user-contributed component and gets popular.

And, regarding earning karma points: If you take a look at the people frequently involved in the discussion on fluff, trolls and quality slides, I think that you'll find that many of the people that are concerned about this are actually quite active on the leader board. I think it's because we're on the leader board, that we're so invested in keeping Hacker News on the straight and narrow. We've invested a lot of time and effort into the site, and are willing to continue that investment.

<comment><USER4> First of all: great response!!

"...a lot of alarm regarding the content on the site."

The fact that people are finding "fluff" to be "alarming" is what is concerning me more because this is the attitude that leads to mob mentality very quickly. Everybody is free to think and act as they please. So if this means combatting "fluff", then by all means do that.

On the other hand, I will always be speaking out for diversity. I'm sure we can all agree that great ideas don't grow out of homogeneity and that it requires a mix of information from different sources.

Fear mentalities are much more dangerous than "fluff" because they can seep into other aspects of your life...

Btw, can anybody explain to me why I'm being downmodded so much? I really don't care about the karma itself (except for real-life Karma of course!), but I would like for somebody to explain to me what is wrong with my arguments regarding this emerging "War On Fluff" (sorry, I couldn't resist!!). I will also add that I hope when I ask for feedback on my startup/concept in the coming weeks people are just as sincere about giving me some feedback!

;)

<comment><USER12> Its because you imply (intentionally or no) that everyone who believes that some form of content control should be implemented has intentions similar to the DOD, CIA, KGB, etc.

In retrospect, ultimate control of the site belongs to pg and if fluff does start flooding the site, he could just reincarnate the site elsewhere with a different policy backend. However, there's no harm in trying to do it right the first time. :)

<comment><USER4> Interesting....

The reference to that list of covert organizations was to imply the fact that there is a lot of snooping going around into people's activities in real life and that I like the fact that I can hang out with some people online without the need to worry about what other people think my intentions are. Or more directly: I don't like to have to worry about my participation on News.YC being accepted/rejected on criteria other than being voted up or down.

You disagree with me on something? Fine, down vote me or respond, but don't start trying to make predictions on what I might do next. There is nothing friendly about trying to anticipate what my next move might be so that you can identify something "alarming" about what I'm doing. I think the aptly termed "fluff" is harmless, and I've been arguing all along that it contributes to diversity, which is key for idea generation/exchange. Homogenize the community, and it begins to lose value.

I MIGHT submit a series of articles that others think are "fluff", but does this mean that now I go on some sort of "fluff watch list" and need to be monitored, or perhaps "dealt with" because my articles/views/ideas are not in line with the majority members?

Apologies to everybody if I am still coming across as implying some sort of conspiratorial tone (in which case you may down mod me or explain to me where I err in my argument), but I still stand by my conviction that monitoring others to "weed out" certain "alarming trends" is far worse than the pain suffered by "fluff".

I will add that fluff != spam. What others judge to be "fluff" is just that - a judgement call. I'm simply speaking out against judgmental attitudes en masse (or if you prefer the shortened terminology - mobs).

I appreciate the response!!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Magikstra – No magic tricks. Just connections. - <AUTHOR> http://www.magikstra.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> A social network for high school students to connect to mentors in businesses and universities</comment>


Artic – Online Art Community [Just Launched] - <AUTHOR> https://artic.xyz <comment><USER2> From the "Terms and Conditions":

"By posting Content to the Service, you grant us the right and license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content on and through the Service."

...

"You agree that this license includes the right for us to make your Content available to other users of the Service, who may also use your Content subject to these Terms."

I think you need to make this _a lot_ more obvious. You demanding that posters give the right to modify and distribute the work on the site.

In a similar vein, I think this license needs quite a lot of work before it is going to be useful. It allows derivative works, but says nothing about attribution, or commercial use. I assume that Artic is a "commercial" entity (hate that term -- damn you CC ;-) ). So there must be some assumption that things like CC-NC are not allowed -- Artic needs a C license and is explicitly specifying that the license must be the same for other users.

Basically, this is a whole can of worms, and it needs to be sorted _before_ you have problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> We appreciate your feedback. We will try our best to apply your advice and overall make artic better.

Regards, Artic Team

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just posted three artworks. I hope you are for real.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your contribution. We are looking forward to grow our community.

Regards, Artic Team</comment></comment>


Signs intermittent fasting is unsafe or unhealthy for you - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/signs-intermittent-fasting-unsafe-unhealthy-2019-7 <comment><USER2>
      In general, though, she advises people to eat a meal or snack every 3 to 4 hours.

Says the "registered dietician", ignoring every paper of any significance in the past decade-plus.</comment>


Lua Internal Development History Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lua <comment><AUTHOR> At the lua workshop this year I spoke about my efforts to convert the historical source code of lua into git form. Until now this history was private to the lua team.

I finally put the last pieces together and have now pushed the results to github.

It's split into 4 repositories:

      - Main source: https://github.com/lua/lua
      - Tests: https://github.com/lua/tests
      - luac: https://github.com/lua/luac
      - manual: https://github.com/lua/manual

See my talk's notes for more info: [https://www.lua.org/wshop16/Daurnimator.pdf](https://www.lua.org/wshop16/Daurnimator.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> I saw that you use reposurgeon, an Eric Raymond project. Did you have problems with reposurgeon or did things go pretty smoothly?</comment>


Server Farms Flourish in Iowa: Microsoft to Add $700 Million Data Center - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/06/21/microsoft-plans-major-expansion-of-iowa-data-center/

<comment><USER2> $700 million dollars for 29 jobs? Thats one of the worst ratios imaginable.</comment>


Facebook to launch two smart speakers with 15" displays and FaceID - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2018/02/15/facebook-portal-smart-speaker-release-date-features-leaked/ <comment><USER2> And just like that, the telescreens from 1984 _really_ become a reality.

We've known fb is invasive to the point of being problematic for a while, but surely this is pretty next level?</comment>