MS' error message equivalent of F YOU - <AUTHOR> http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macofficeo365-macoutlook/i-hate-you-microsoft/920e81ae-aa68-40d9-88a9-ae380a950919?tm=1453981545094 <comment><USER2> Pretty much everything from Microsoft at the moment feels like a huge construction site. Skype is becoming worse with every update. Windows 10 is better on Desktop than 8 (which is not saying much), but pretty much unusable in Tablet mode now (especially in conjunction with the onscreen keyboard). System settings are all over the place. HiDPI hasn't been solved even remotely, especially in comparison to OSX. I can't get Outlook setup with Gmail correctly, which in turn was only necessary because the built-in Contacts doesn't talk correctly to Gmail either, without a useful error message. I really have to question anything and anyone in conjunction with MS software right now...

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree that it is a terrible error message. Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't take as much care with their Mac products as their Windows versions of the same, you can see this throughout the history of MS Office for Mac.

As an aside: Do error messages with only one button ("ok") hint at a design problem? I often find that if you're presenting an alert() style error, you've done something wrong before that which could be improved to provide greater user feedback (e.g. turn the "bad" item red, and add a label, etc).

I wouldn't go as far as to say that alert() style errors are NEVER the right answer, but when you find yourself using them you should re-examine if you absolutely had to. They often hint at poor or lazy design.

> Secondly, what an ignorant unhelpful error message is this?

What is it people think the word _ignorant_ means? The sentence seems to make sense otherwise, "unhelpful error message" is fine as a stand-alone. But _ignorant_ error message? Is the error message meant to be safe aware?

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding the MS products on Mac - I have only installed Outlook for Mac because the web (Office 365) version of Outlook lacks most of the advanced functionality in the first place. I was hoping I will be able to apply a rule to existing emails (not only those that will come in future) or perform an action on batch of emails. In the end this is not possible on the Mac version either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've long held such sentiment for MS. Thing is, I've been staring to hate on Apple for such digressions as well... It's nice to be reassured that it's still objectively worse over in PC-land.

<comment><USER5> Not disagreeing with your point, but this is actually a screenshot of the Mac version of Outlook :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This happened to me a while back. The only way I could "fix" it was to close Outlook, discarding all my changes. I then made the same changes but saved the rules after every tiny change. Somehow the changes all saved and I moved on.

I wonder if the state somehow becomes corrupted and Outlook has no idea what to do, hence the error.

</comment><comment><USER7> You should take a look through the error messages in Windows event viewer some time. And then press on "more info" which takes you to MSDN and says the equivalent of "there was an error in windows"

</comment><comment><USER8> I upvoted the issue :D</comment>


The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.shenlanguage.org/lambdassociates/htdocs/blog/bipolar.htm <comment><USER2> I think the article describes ADHD rather than bipolar disorder. Selective attention, difficulty finishing what was started, poor fit for the current educational paradigms... Sounds like ADHD to me. There's nothing in the article that can be characterized as mania.

It's still one of my favorite posts though. Really resonated with me the first time I read it and I think it's just as relevant today.

<comment><USER3> Or just exceptional brilliance. At the extreme end of IQ or similar scales, aspects of one's very existence become eerily similar to ADHD symptoms - except the mind isn't understimulated because of chemical imbalance; it's understimulated because the world is perceived as unbearably mundane. Similarly, social deficits may be identified as Asperger syndrome when in reality it's may be a lack of common topics/culture and a disregard for the monkeylike social dance. It takes a real expert to properly diagnose such person. See [1], [2].

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Misdiagnosis-Diagnoses-Gifted- Childre...](https://www.amazon.com/Misdiagnosis-Diagnoses-Gifted-Children- Adults/dp/0910707677)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Different-Minds-Children-Asperger- Syn...](https://www.amazon.com/Different-Minds-Children-Asperger- Syndrome/dp/1853029645)

<comment><USER2> I agree and personally know two psychiatrists who share these views.

They interpret ADHD as the sign of an intelligent person whose talents should be cultivated separately. The mass education paradigm doesn't work for them. There's something highly paradoxical about ADHD: it's an _attention-deficit_ disorder and yet many display _hyperattention_ once they find something they do like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've used this essay as a justification to myself for why I got bad marks so many times.

Dropping this self-assessment was a big part of what "growing up" felt like to me.

<comment><USER5> It's funny how there's glamour attached to the idea of being a BBM. It's not like it tends to end well in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it interesting that Clojure (and LISPs in general) have enjoyed an upsurge of attention since this 20th anniversary post. Maybe we're in the mania phase?

As an anecdote, I've now been on both language spectrums. In large C++ projects I can absolutely attest to the "Needs many people" claim. Now that I've worked in Clojure on projects of equal importance, it's mind-bending how much I can accomplish alone.

<comment><USER7> Many of modern IDE features go back to Lisp and Smalltalk workstations.

Yet they still don't offer all their capabilities.

Had those environments succeed in the market, the whole development experience workflow would be much better.

Think of Bret Viktor style presentations.

Sadly due to their prices, many know Common Lisp via the open source command line compilers, instead of environments that trace back to those workstations like Franz Common Lisp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> While the "BBM" tends to work alone and be frustrated at artiface at every corner, when you get a few or more working together, some really great things can come together. I've experienced that firsthand.

<comment><USER9> These great things will still remain unfinished at 90% completion ;)

(Been there, done that. Feeling incredibly sad after reading this article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah, I used to love this article back then during my Lisp honey moon.

Today it reads like fedora tipping neckbeard porn.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this felt like an eerily accurate cold reading!

I'm currently waiting for some Racket tests to finish, and this morning I tutored a C/C++ programming lab. The other lab tutor is a C++ hacker, and was saying how the course this year is much better than when he took it, since they had to do it in Lisp ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think finishing projects is a learnable skill, not a fixed personality trait. It can be learned in quite a short time by repeatedly doing one-day projects and making them as finished as you can.

<comment><USER13> One day seems easy. How does that transfer to keeping an interest in long project(months/years) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, now we have Clojure, ClojureScript, and projects like Untangled. Is Lisp on its meds now?

PS - I agree it should have been titled 'The ADHD Lisp Programmer'

<comment><USER3> It's the other way round. It's a specific kind of personality that's easily attracted to Lisp, not a programming language that makes you special.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >> He can see far; further than in fact his strength allows him to travel. He conceives of brilliant ambitious projects requiring great resources, and he embarks on them only to run out of steam. It's not that he's lazy; its just that his resources are insufficient.

Oh give it a rest already. You're talking about someone who can't finish anything, and won't even bother to document his half-arsed, half-baked code, as a "brilliant" mind? And on the basis of, what? That he (it's always a he, in the article) used to get good grades at school. Not even university, mind- the brilliance lasted until high school. But, you know, it's all because that brilliant mind was such a great non-conformist who could see through all us phonies.

The only thing missing is a magical ring and a birthmark that, once deciphered using the ring, reads "Only You Can Save the World™". I won't bother to say where the birthmark is and how the ring fits it.

As if we didn't have enough trouble already with rockstars and ninjas and people thinking they're artists because they wrote their first for-loop...

<comment><USER16> Yeah, clearly the author chose to label this personality type with a _mental disorder_ because they think it's _awesome_. Who wouldn't want to be _bipolar_? The bipolar ninja, that's got a certain ring to it doesn't it?

Did you read to the end? The point, stated explicitly is that the BBM mindset is _problematic_ :

> So what's the message in all of this? Basically, that there are two > problems. The problem with the Lisp mindset and the problem with Lisp. The > problem of the Lisp mindset is the problem of the mindset characteristic of > the BBM.

I'm not sure what your cutoff for 'brilliant' is, but being able to ace high school without working probably makes you 1 in 50. From the point of view of a teacher calling the top student in a grade 'brilliant' is not a huge stretch. Of course, if you go to a demanding program in a good university, this level of 'brilliance' is commonplace.

It seems to me the author sees some beauty in this type of mind, but it doesn't mean they think you should try to be that way. I can understand that; because I see beauty in fragility too; for whatever reason, I have a soft spot for people with anxiety problems, and I try to reach out and help them. I think there is something brilliant about (some of) them, but it doesn't mean I think they are better than others. Having anxiety makes life harder, as does having the personality described in this article.

<comment><USER17> I'm not bipolar, but I have a few friends that are and being bipolar _fucking sucks_. No-one who glamourises mental illness has real experience with mental illness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> excuse my ignorance, but other than emacs, what are the uses of LISP?

<comment><USER19> Lisps can do anything other general purpose language can accomplish. People still overwhelmingly choose other languages.

<comment><USER20> When C++ and Java (the current industry standards) have adopted the last feature of Lisp then the world will realize that it actually wanted Lisp after all :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lots of those kind of people right here on the hacker news forums.

<comment><USER22> Existential proof by contraposition: I would attempt to disprove you, but I don't wish to sit up from the couch or put down my guitar. Therefore, you are correct (about me at least).

<comment><USER22> Sorry, Proof by *Contradiction. That's what I get for fooling around with math.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Article main points:

1\. Mental disorder (bipolar or ADHD) is also beneficial for a person (brilliant bipolar mind).

2\. There's nothing wrong with LISP language, only with people who use it.</comment>


The most logical explanation is that Covid-19 comes from a laboratory - <AUTHOR> https://www.minervanett.no/corona/the-most-logical-explanation-is-that-it-comes-from-a-laboratory/361860 <comment><USER2> If I understand it correctly, the Anderson et al study[1] basically said, "We looked at all (3?) noteworthy genetic features and they're definitely naturally evolved and non-optimal for infecting humans."

This study seems to draw the exact opposite conclusion.

1\. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, I can't post a comment here anymore, just replies, since this submission was flagged.

It is important from the outset to unequivocally clarify that no one is claiming intentional release of the Covid-19 virus. Both the researchers on the forthcoming paper and the former director of MI6 who bought the study to light say that intentional release is highly unlikely.

The research on the origin of viral outbreaks is scenario probabilities at best and speculative fiction at worst. The main takeaway of this paper is to highlight the risks of lab virus research. Earlier, I had posted in April about US diplomatic cables highlighting the lack of safety at the Wuhan lab ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868580)).

We are looking at million deaths and tens of trillions in damage. As a civilization have to come to collective decision that virus research with even the slightest risk of accidental release is catastrophic. Most people including the Chinese seem to be in no mood to even consider the possibility let alone take corrective measures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So many viruses have jumped to humans in the past. It's all very well documented in the book Spillover.

The reason we as the public are mostly ignorant about those zoonosis events is mostly luck. Most experts have been issuing warning about this catastrophe for years. I'm only surprised we haven't had such an outbreak before.</comment>


The relationship between Readability and Instapaper - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2011/11/16/readability <comment><USER2> I'm totally confused by the apparent consensus sentiment going around on this. I adore Instapaper. I think it's unbelievably well done, I use it, and I don't have plans to look elsewhere.. that said, I can't say I worry or get sad about people who develop competing products.

Seriously?

It's ridiculous to react that way. First of all, I find it patronizing. Marco's really fucking good at what he does. If it turns out that what he does is easy enough for someone else to swoop in and do better easily, then what he does isn't all that interesting. I doubt that's the case.

Second... fucking of course. This is how it works, and how it's supposed to work. We're all consumers first, producers second. As consumers we benefit from this mechanism CONSTANTLY, and the things we consume are directly responsible for making the things we produce possible. We all got Facebook from Myspace from Friendster... Look at your car, look at your appliances, look at anything in your life. The ability to completely rip off shit and do part of it a little better is where much more innovation comes from than individual giant Big New Ideas. The folks that stay on top for prolonged periods of time are folks who capitalize on that are able to do that internally instead of resting on their laurels, and frankly Marco has proven that tendency as well.

[Edit] Sorry, further. The point isn't what Instapaper (as a product) is today, and this is exactly why small companies are great. It's what Marco is. When I go down the street and buy fresh pasta from the place that's been making it for longer than I've been alive, I'm not buying a product.. I'm investing in a relationship... A relationship that I can trust to deliver me compelling value on an ongoing basis. It's one thing to swoop in and build a product that looks very much like one that's on the market (only free, or whatever). That's not interesting to me. You haven't really accomplished anything valuable. In fact, it's easy to argue you've literally sucked value out of the world. It's another thing to replicate the ability to deserve people's trust that you'll continue to deliver value in new ways... even if the original source for your inspiration is gone (and especially if you were to blame for it).

TL/DR: I ain't scurred.

[Edit] Downvote explanation anyone?

<comment><USER3> i down voted you because your comment was a little rambunctious and didn't really make a whole lot of sense.

<comment><USER2> Oh, well that's very fair. I'm kind of a handful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4>
        They are certainly a direct competitor to Instapaper
        now. But it didn't catch me by surprise, and I hope
        to still remain friendly with them.

        This is a very big and increasingly crowded market,
        and there's no reason why we can't respectfully
        share it.

Those are inspiring words, which I will keep in mind. It is a very healthy approach toward competition and competitors, and I would rather adapt this one instead of "we shall smash our competitors to death" which is more in common (see all recent patent suites for instance)

<comment><USER5> It's not how things usually work out. Cisco and Juniper aren't friendly competitors. They are each trying as hard as possible to destroy the other. And the employees at each company feel the same. Less so at Cisco because they are so much larger, but at Juniper, they are absolutely focused on "kill Cisco."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The reason I don't develop my ViewText any further is that the barrier to entry for this is just to low. Marco already has an excellent app, now reability will enter his market, along with Apple.

Here's an example: [http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marco.org%2...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marco.org%2F2011%2F11%2F16%2Freadability&format=)

<comment><USER7> ViewText is really good. If you have stopped development, why not dump the code to GitHub? Open source community could use a good text extractor as most of the current ones are pretty bad on server side and Readability's old code requires browser components to work well.

<comment><USER8> +1 for open sourcing it (from another ViewText user who also happened to need good open source text extractor).

BTW, what programming language you used for ViewText?

<comment><USER6> C#

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love Instapaper, but it's especially interesting that Marco has been able to compete against larger groups like Readability and Apple's Reading List. I'm afraid it might be inevitable that he gets swamped by a constant stream of competitive features, unless Instapaper expands beyond 1 employee.

<comment><USER10> But if it's just a 1 person company he can afford to stay small and still be highly profitable.

Additionally Readability has stated that they're still figuring out their business model, where as Marco has had a steady income for a long time now. It's entirely possible that Readability vanishes in a few years and Instapaper is still around.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. From a casual observer's perspective Readability seems to have failed at a good idea and is now switching direction with no clear goal.

Evernote, however, has a pretty clear business model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I might be wrong, but isn't Instapaper is using the Readability's technology to process HTML and make it more readable? (<http://code.google.com/p/arc90labs-readability/>).

<comment><USER13> No, it uses a custom scraper written by Marco. I've found that both of them work better on some pages and worse on others.

(However, I do believe the "Safari Reader" feature of iOS 5 and Safari 5 _does_ use Readability to extract the contents.)

<comment><USER11> The "Reader" button appears to be a fork of Readability ([http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/06/08/think-safari- re...](http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/06/08/think-safari-reader-looks- familiar-thats-because-apple-used-op/))

Also of note, the original Readability was actually "partly inspired by" instapaper (<http://lab.arc90.com/2009/03/02/readability/>)

<comment><USER14> So I looked into all of these some time ago for an app that I use myself. The Safari fork of Readability is the best client implementation, while the best server-side implementation (by a mile) is Diffbot.

Out of the 50 sources I had (regular RSS updates, etc.) InstaPaper failed on far too many, either stripping important content or pictures and captions. Readability was only a bit better

I glued together an app that will pull in RSS, send each URL to diffbot, and then collate the output into a reader that I use. Never thought of releasing it as an app, I just use it myself.

<comment><USER12> Readability's code is a little bit old (2009), but seems no other better (opensource) alternatives...

And thanks for suggesting Diffbot, will try later.

<comment><USER15> C implementation and Python bindings, opensourced one hour ago <https://github.com/fiam/readable>

<comment><USER16> Maybe the name is generic enough, but I'm wondering if you're aware of Readable[1].

[1]: <http://readable.tastefulwords.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Offline reading and (more importantly) multiplatform support is going to keep me with Instapaper. The fact that I can get Instapaper articles to my Kindle is something that I know Apple is never going to offer. Ever. Now, if Apple offered an eInk Ereader that synced with Reading List (and offline support for Reading List) for less than $100 then maybe I'd jump ship.

In all honesty there would need to be a VERY compelling feature set at a low (free) price for Instapaper to lose me. I've already bought the iOS apps and incorporated the service into my flow.

</comment><comment><USER17> wow, and this didn't even touch on Evernote's Clearly. Busy day in the 'easy mobile reading' space.

<comment><USER16> Which appears to be derived from Readable[1], based on how the reading view slides over the page and some comments in the extension's js files.

[1]: <http://readable.tastefulwords.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Last time i use Readability it was too slow and stop using it. Original idea one was instant. So i use Readable most of the time. And sometimes i combine (Instapaper Text + Safari Read list). Speed is important, other features are secondary.

</comment><comment><USER19> tl;dr: "Competition is good; It motivates me to keep my offering better"

There are in numerous Basecamp clones out there, yet a handful of them manage to do a percent of the revenues Basecamp does.

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess it's weird that I often instapaper pages I've readability-ed?

<comment><USER21> I do the same thing, usually with multi-page articles, since Readability will stitch pages into one long one before I save to Instapaper.

<comment><USER3> Instapaper automagically stitches paginated articles together.

<comment><USER22> No, it doesn't.

<http://www.marco.org/2011/07/19/siracusa-multipage>

<comment><USER3> so it does. holy shit. i wonder how many articles I've only read a piece of because I thought Instapaper was stitching!

<comment><USER23> Exactly. It is a problem - I respect that Marco doesn't want to stich articles together, but I sometimes reach the end of an article to find myself unsure as to whether that really was the end, or just the end of page one. Would be useful to get some indication in Instapaper when this is the case. I am flirting with Readability for this reason.

<comment><USER21> One Chrome (and Safari) extension that I found helps is called Page One [[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pojkjlgamiogkhagab...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pojkjlgamiogkhagabbejodnkcnnbfdb)]. It will automatically redirect your browser to the single-page/print view for a number of popular sites (21 as of today).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >In February of this year, the app was finished and ready to launch, but it was rejected by Apple for the in-app-purchase subscription-matching rule, which had just gone into effect. Readability decided that they didn't want to give Apple the 30%, so the app was put on hold and soon cancelled once it was obvious that nobody was budging.

Readability didn't decide they didn't want to give 30%, they just couldn't because then Apple would end up with _all_ of Readability's revenues.

<comment><USER25> I was firmly on Readability's side on that, but don't lose site of the fact that Readability set their own business model. They're willing to cut their take to 0% now, they just weren't willing to do it then. The difference being before content creators would have gotten 70%. Now they get 0. (For the general, publicized case).

Back in February they could have easily revised their own plan, to take 70% of net rather than gross, say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A lot of imaginations among the announcements between Instapaper and Readability.</comment>


The Death of the Cyberflâneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-death-of-the-cyberflaneur.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> From the article: "Hardly anyone "surfs" the Web anymore."

Pffffft.</comment>


Facebook vigilantes catching thieves and punishing them - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-34224196 <comment><USER2> From the article:

 _> She set up a Facebook page called "Chapa tu choro", or "Catch your thief", calling on others to follow her lead, and her campaign has had a dramatic effect. More than a hundred similar pages have cropped up in rapid succession, and more are being created all the time. Many have far more brutal names than the original, adding phrases like "leave him paralysed", "cut off his hands" and "castrate him" into the title._

Next step: crowdsourced (mis)identification (a la Reddit's Boston Bombing debacle [1]) of suspects followed by the old as dirt lynching mob.

Not a good way to bring justice, technology only increases the chance of slacktivism to become deadly on those parts of the world (or any other by that matter).

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/1iv343/the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/1iv343/the_boston_bombing_debacle/)

<comment><USER3> There's a difference between crowdsourcing identification/discovery/information processing and crowdsourcing punishment. The former has be done for a long time through things like wanted posters, and even the police in this article support it.

Turning the information over to the police and not taking the punishment into your own hands is key though. This includes harassing the person or their friends and families.

<comment><USER4> _Many have far more brutal names than the original, adding phrases like "leave him paralysed", "cut off his hands" and "castrate him" into the title._

Does this scream punishment or identification to you?

<comment><USER3> Sorry if I was not clear. I consider threats harassment which I tried to explain are a kind of punishment that should not be taken into our own hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to live in Peru. Cops are totally useless there, they just don't come in case of emergency, you have to go to the station and pay them for the "gazolina" (gas) they'll be using to get to your place. Most residences there use private security agents, they are much more effective, way less corrupt and when an agent misbehaves, he's reported by the residents and fired. This convinced me that police is something that could be private and not be done by the state. Even here in France, bad cops just keep their jobs, in Peru bad private security agents get fired and replaced and they're always here to help you first as a client.

<comment><USER6> One of the most important roles police can have is to protect the poor from oppression from the rich, and private armed forces are not a substitute there.

<comment><USER5> Poor people have private agents too, they usually gather the money to pay monthly. There are various types of private agencies, some are way more sophisticated, expensive and efficient than others. Some are just ex-cops trying to make a living (this is what it was like where I was). And it works great, poor people tend to have less stuff to defend from thieves while rich people have way more valuable property to protect so they attract more thieves and kidnappers than the poor and have to pay more efficient/modern/expensive agencies, which makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually saw this when I was in Xela (Guatemala) a few years ago. They had the slogan "Vecinos Organizados Contra la Delincuencia" stencilled on the side of buildings.

I asked my Spanish tutor about it and he said that they had a movement there to counter the growing gang culture and police indifference / corruption. People had whistles, and if anyone heard one they were to coming running with whatever weapons they had to hand.

The conversations were in Spanish so I may have misunderstood some of the details but he had some pretty harrowing stories. He wasn't involved, but he relayed a case in which a gang member was dragged into the street and killed by being set alight. When the police arrived everyone just said they had no idea what had happened.

<comment><USER8> A lot of social mechanisms are quite counterintuitive. One example I like to point out is that the purpose of voting is not to determine the winner, but to determine the loser. The winner already knows they won. Problem is, the loser also knows that they won. Voting is brilliant for creating a non-violent mechanism for convincing losers to go away while feeling like they have a chance next time. That's why voting corruption is so dangerous... the problem is less "the wrong thing winning" and more "society breaks down, the losers stop trusting the ballot box and start trusting their guns". People ought to be a lot angrier about voting corruption, even if they think it corrupted it on to "their side", then they actually are. (This is also why high voting rates are important. It's not about whether you tipped the balance between the two options, it's whether you are bought in to the result being fair, at scale. Low participations leaves rationalizations available to the losers. It really is a civil duty, even if the immediate payoff seems low.)

Similarly, police protect the citizenry, right? Well, yes, but the citizenry unless actively prevented will work out ways of protecting themselves. The notable difference with a formal police and court system is that we still treat _criminals_ with respect. Allowing the police and courts to breakdown is, in the final stable societal state, more dangerous for criminals and anyone perceived to be criminals, ultimately potentially degenerating into outright tribalism (usually called gangs in this context) that simply equates "outsider" and "danger".

People really underestimate the importance of these social mechanisms, and corrupt them at more peril than they realize for their own petty short-term gains.

<comment> adam-a > The winner already knows they won. Problem is, the loser also knows that > they won.

There are people within politics who are not so deluded to believe they have already won every contest they enter. Your comment has a real lack of charity for your fellow man.

<comment><USER8> There's charity, and then there's just plain being naive. You, ironically, can only say this precisely because you very likely live in a civilization that has had strong voting traditions for hundreds of years, which gives people a lot of training in losing properly. That's a long-term effect of successful voting, a bizarre local aberration in history that's disturbingly fragile, not a universal human truth. One would have to be naive to the point of willful blindness not to see the Will to Power writ large in human history.

<comment> adam-a So according to you I am naive, over privileged, unaware of the "universal human truths" and wilfully blind. This is what I mean about charity. If you can't make a point without accusations and hostility then I believe you need to look at your beliefs and whether they stem from rationality or a desire to put people down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Peruvian from the ugly side of Lima here. What really happens when you are robbed and try to go the police is that the cops would try to get money from you with lot of excuses: gas for the patrol unit, office supplies, even food for them... So, most of the time, it's almost a joke to ask the police to do something.

I _totally_ disagree with this 'popular justice' movement, but I kind of understand the frustration of people who really have no one to help them.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is very worrisome. Particularly if the thief has been forced into crime as a victim of circumstance and misfortune, it is inhumane to target him/her as a vigilante.

<comment><USER11> Or they turn out not to even be a thief. A lot of the time, vigilante justice ends up not being true justice at all.

<comment><USER12> Sometimes official justice turns out not to be real justice. Sometimes the whole institution is corrupt, sometimes it's corrupt this time, sometimes it just makes mistakes.

That's not an argument for or against vigilantism, just that justice is tricky.

<comment><USER13> It _is_ an argument against vigilantism because there is at least some process in place to hold the official justice system accountable for its mistakes.

<comment><USER12> Obviously, I'm playing devils advocate a little, but I don't like this line of thinking.

It's kind of deifying the official. If the official process sucks, then it sucks. _At least there is some process in place to hold the official justice system accountable_ only counts (in my eyes) if and when that works.

I think there's a stretch of an analogy to the current refugee crisis. On one hand we have this official set of ideals in laws and institutions. The principles are clear enough. Refugees need to be assessed fairly and settled in safe places.

In the other hand we have selfishness, bigotry and/or genuine practical objections mean that these do not produce a result. The reality is that taking refugees from some distant war on a different continent is politically a landline.

So, the official establishment ties itself in bureaucratic knots. Throttles and avoids the rock and the hard place.

Lets not forget that it's all people. Cops are people. Judges, Presidents, people.

Just because a system is not formalized doesn't means it works worse.

<comment><USER13> I'm struggling to discern your point here. I'm not arguing for the infallibility of official institutions, but how often do you imagine one mob can succeed in holding another mob accountable for its mistakes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was particularly interested by the lack of condemnation from the government. I would have expected a stronger stance.

>But he's not entirely negative about the vigilante movement. In fact, rather than condemning the "Catch your thief" campaigns in their entirety, he says he actually wants to harness its energy, and endorses the notion of citizen's arrests. "Catch your thief yes, but hand him or her over to the police. Don't take justice into your own hands," he says.

<comment><USER15> I am from Brazil, some police departments here support vigilantism (even when it is violent, for example a cop friend of mine told me that when a small town population found out that the owner of the biggest factory raped hundreds of children, the police purpusefully ignored the riot and let the population maim the guy, because they knew that if they just arrested him, the broken justice system would release him again and allow him to do his nasty stuff again).

But here the police is stronger than Peru, and the official stance that the police is supposed to pass on is that you should not even try to defend yourself (also guns got banned in 2003).

Of course this does not work, specially because a rise of gratuitous murders (ie: people that murder someone else for no reason at all, one happened in my parents neighbourhood for example, where a pedestrian was walking, then he suddenly stopped, pulled a gun, shot a guy that was sleeping in his own home in the head, then concealed the gun again, and kept walking like if it was a completely normal day and nothing had happened), we don't have (that I know of) wildly popular facebook pages about vigilantism, but people DO share on their timelines targets for vigilantism, and frequently share the end result of vigilantism, every time I log in on Facebook it is a gorefest, lots of pictures of several cases around the country of thieves shot, lynched, kicked to death, guts spilling out after being knifed to death, and so on...

And honestly, sometimes I share those pics too, and I want a gun too, I saw the wrong side of a gun (ie: the open end of the barrel) too many times for my taste, and the police never helps, sometimes they don't even pickup the phone (by the way: neither the firefighters, the few times I had to call a firefighter, they never came, one of those times one house, thankfully not mine, burned down).

So the police tell us to "don't react", sure, I will stay standing, give the guy my stuff, and then get shot in the face, like it happened to some kid some time ago (it is a infamous case, because it was captured on camera, and the kid followed exactly what the police taught: he was in front of his house, a robber that was too young to be legally arrested showed up with a gun, the camera has no sound, so what we can see is the victim, that was coming back from school, giving his entire backpack, and contents of his pockets to the robber, then the robber starts to walk away, stops, turn around, consider the student for a moment, and shoots him in the face, then he smiles happily and walks away again).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have to imagine vigilante justice is how justice systems begin in the first place. I mean... at it's essence, what is a justice system but either A) the arm of the masses or B) the arm of the powerful?

So ya, this is terrible. But it is a clear example of why having a fair and effective justice system is so important to a society. Because failing that, this is the type of thing we will eventually get.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is the next step after our internet shaming culture.

</comment><comment><USER18> Could just be "the media" or perception or whatever, but there seem to be more instances of people deciding that they are qualified to act as moral arbiters to the general society. The Ashley Madison story is a great example, but also there seem to be more instances of minor things like people breaking into cars to "rescue" dogs or babies (and often then discovering that the dog or baby in question is not real, or otherwise not what they thought).

Not sure what to make of it, maybe people think they're Superman, or maybe they think evil and corruption lurk around every corner and _somebody_ has to do something so it may as well be them.

The question always is: what if you're wrong?

</comment><comment><USER19> These are definitely against FB TOS for promoting violence.

<comment><USER20> and the members ought to be tracked by the NSA and GCHQ

<comment><USER21> Why? The members who actually participate in the violence ought to be jailed, but why should they all be tracked? Especially when they already put all of their worst crimes on a public forum — what good would surveillance do if they already confess to their worst crimes publically?

<comment><USER20> You don't think fascist death squads worthy of monitoring?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The negative comments on here are obviously coming from folks who live in societies where police and court systems are effective. I don't think most on here understand the extent to which police and courts are corrupted or completely ineffective in several countries. Having spent a good amount of time in places like Guatemala makes you appreciate how secure we are in the developed western world.

Imagine living in a place where the is literally no chance of the police helping you out or successfully prosecuting crime. Indeed, imagine living in place where the police often actively work against justice. Imagine living in a country where there is no value to life and everyone has a family member who has been murdered and there is no chance whatsoever of a prosecution because, likely, the person who murdered your loved one is part of a society-wide general corruption of civil institutions.

Just for a small taste of how things are: [http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113293/900-bus-drivers- de...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113293/900-bus-drivers-dead- guatemala-city-worlds-most-dangerous-job)

So please, spare me your moralizing when it comes to people who turn to self- policing neighborhoods just so they can try and bring a semblance of stability to their lives.

<comment><USER23> There are a number of fundamental points you fail to comprehend or address in your posting. The article does a much better job in this regard.

The article talks about Peru, so for the moment, let's scope to that. According to the article, Peru's crimes tend not to be violent, yet the vigilantes can be. Some of the cases described appear to show a lack of restraint - consistent with mob mentality. Also, if the mob is wrong? Nobody cares.

Now let's extend this to places that are actually violent. Organised crime run the show. They could easily pay/manipulate these groups to do their dirty work. Anyone who threatens the organisation will have themself and their relatives killed, so the hardened criminals remain protected. Lawlessness still reigns supreme. Now, you may argue that it's difficult to track the orchestrator (which isn't hard). But, if it were, they make a statement by killing people randomly who may have contributed. Organised crime will not tolerate these vigilantes. Violence begets more violence.

What's also missing in your argument is peaceful protest. You assume violence is the only option. Think of Gandhi.

I'm not sure if your comment attacking moralistic people is a dig at political correctness. I support any constructive criticism of political correctness (and there are many valid criticisms), but morality? I'm assuming you've lost something in translation. The world you talk of and are willing to tolerate sounds like the antithesis of my world.

<comment><USER22> You fail to comprehend that I was attacking those who _moralize_ about how bad it is for people to take justice into their own hands without having the slightest clue as to how it is to live in a lawless place. Of course I don't oppose morality.

<comment><USER24> Ahhhh yes, the old "you don't know how I grew up" argument but with a global twist.

Fortunately we are all products of our various environments, so quit telling people to stop moralizing if you don't have "the slightest clue as to how it is to live" in a place where the demarcation between right and wrong is more clear.

(see how twisted that logic can get?)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scala: the Case for Correctness - <AUTHOR> http://arthur.gonigberg.com/2014/10/06/scala-case-for-correctness/

<comment><USER3> Having jumped back into some green field work in Scala in the past few days, I will say I'm quite impressed with the improvements to the SBT, IntelliJ, universe. Compile time seems to be improved considerably (though the project is still quite small so time will certainly tell).

One problem, which is also one of the advantages of scala is that the interop with Java often means that all your Option[] etc code can still get NPEed by some offending Java Lib you've decided to use.

As the fidelity and ubiquity of pure scala libs improves this will hopefully go away to a some extend.

<comment><USER4> You can always use Option() as in:

scala> Option(System.getProperty("kaboom"))

res1: Option[String] = None

then map, getOrElse or fold at will.

(edited format)

<comment><USER3> For sure you can, but the internals of the libraries can also cause NPEs because of turtles all the way down :P

We've been running scala in production for 4 years, and had our share of NPEs in our code and in the libraries we host. My point I guess was just that it's not entirely true that they will not boil to the surface on occasion.

<comment><USER4> It's true what you say about libraries and turtles. Still it's rare the event when I get an NPE from my/our code.

Sometimes think I would love to have a layer between us and Java. Some sort of FFI which returned everything on an Option.

Probably too cumbersome, but still ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Scala gets a lot of things right by default. Also it got a lot of flexibility and power. Almost "a framework" to write other languages within the language.

Use it every work day for over two years... Like a lot, but sometimes wishes it would be a bit simpler and more aesthetic.

<comment><USER6> What do you mean by "more aesthetic"? As in syntax?

<comment><USER5> There are sometimes too many ways of doing the same thing.

E.g.

\- syntax: def func() { and def func(): Unit = {

\- collection library

<comment><USER7> > def func() {

That's already deprecated (under -Xfuture):

      <console>:1: warning: Procedure syntax is deprecated.
      Convert procedure `func` to method by adding `: Unit =`.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fair Warning, I worked with the other for some time, and have been having an out of band convo with him.

One of the things I absolutely HATE about scala is operator overloading - <USER2> the excessive abuse of it. I ran into it just now using some library that used ==.

A Case:

List(1,2) == List(1,2); true Array(1,2) == Array(1,2); false

The reason for this is obvious, list implements equals and does a deep compare. While Array.equals is a pointer compare (like how java do).

This would be obvious in Java because that would look like.

ArrayList<> a = ArrayList<Int>(); ArrayList<> b = ArrayList<Int>(); a.equals(b); // equal because it's a value compare

versus

int[] a = new int[5] int[] b = new int[5] a == b; // obviously false because it's a reference compare.

The lack of a universal idea about what == means is pretty dangerous IMO.

*edited for spelling

<comment><USER7> > The lack of a universal idea about what == means is pretty dangerous IMO.

There is an universal idea what == means, it's quite simple and more consistent then the mess Java has.

It's just that the JVM's idea cannot be brought in line with it consistently.

If you look at the history of Scala, you'd see that they tried to make Arrays work this way for 5+ years.

The blood being shed just wasn't worth the quirks it caused in other parts and in the end trying to fix the JVM's idea of arrays was abandoned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would pay good money to see Paul Philips' reaction to the sentence

> "the biggest benefit with Scala is correctness."

...before the author goes on to say

> "When I say correctness, I mean the ability to easily and consistently write > code that works as inteded (not the academic definition of correctness)"

<comment><USER9> As someone who used to work on automatic proof of correctness systems, that irked me too.

It's quite reasonable to have a language where certain classes of errors cannot be generated from the source code. There are languages which can reliably detect or prevent subscript out of range errors, null pointer errors, dangling pointer errors, and race conditions. (C and C++ detect and prevent none of the above, which is the cause of most of the troubles in computing.) That's not full correctness; it's just language safety. It means you can't break the language model from inside the language. Most of the "scripting languages" have this property, or at least are supposed to.

Scala takes the null pointer issue a bit more seriously than most languages. That's good, but not enough to justify a claim that it offers "correctness".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not mentioned here: pattern matching. It certainly goes a long way to ensure all cases are being handled, since the compiler lets you know when your patterns are non-exhaustive.

<comment><USER10> It is.

"Yes, you can write more concise code; yes, you have a more advanced type system; yes, you can pattern match. There are hundreds of other reasons that Scala makes a great language. When a language can offer me constructs to write more correct code, I'll always be willing to deal with the learning curve."

I think the point was that these are the things that he thinks are of more value to developers than the other good things that Scala offers.

<comment><USER6> I thought it was worth mentioning as a separate point; just saying "you can pattern match" doesn't say much, when it's actually a key feature to guarantee certain correctness in a program.

Pattern matching offers mainly correctness and conciseness, maybe the correctness part should have been emphasized more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see Scala as an alternative to Java/Go for Ruby web developers who want a statically typed language that feels more dynamic. Yes, you can go crazy with Scala, but if you are responsible, I would say that migrating from Ruby to Scala is easier than to Java or Go. (I use Scala at work commercially for 3 years now and I have my issues with it, but I don't have an alternative, tried Kotlin and Java 8, and some Go, couldn't give up Scala)

<comment><USER12> > Yes, you can go crazy with Scala, but if you are responsible

The problem is not so much the code you write but the one you have to read/use.Languages that are more rigid are often easier to work with,they are predictable,as you wont have to deal with strange apis.

I believe Java8 or Kotlin are good enough. Scala is sometimes just unreadable when you have to read other people's source code.

but maybe it's just me.

<comment><USER13> Is it really worse than the pattern/OO folks that end up creating dozens of one-member interfaces, namespaces galore, even separate compilation units for absolutely no reason other than it feels "enterprisey"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another thing I like about Scala is its support for duck-typing like python, except it is actually enforced at compile time via traits and magic methods.

e.g you can define your own methods to sugar and desugar for pattern matches, define an apply method to treat a class like a function, or map() on an Option type - it simply behaves as a list of size 0 or 1 and that is all you need to map.

<comment><USER15> Apart from pattern matching, your example isn't like duck typing: it's all entirely statically typed. Scala does have structural types, which is a bit like duck typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16>
        When I say correctness, I mean the ability to easily and
        consistently write code that works as inteded (not the academic
        definition of correctness).

I'm curious as to what the author believes the academic definition of 'correctness' actually is. Is it something other than code "working as inteded [sic]"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing out the typo, I fixed it.

By academic correctness, I mean the formal definition in computer science, i.e. for an algorithm. More here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correctness_(computer_science)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correctness_\(computer_science\))

By this measure, it's hard to say any language is more or less "correct" than another.

<comment><USER17> You can get pretty darned close to that kind of correctness in a type- dependent language, but the amount of work involved is tremendous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Been working with Scala for 1.5 years and loving it. sbt feels easy to work with, compile times have improved (and you can improve it further by modularizing your app). Scala gets a lot right. Type inference makes it _feel_ dynamic while still being safely typed at the compiler. Pattern matching and everything-is-an-expression are really the killer features for me that makes my code much more expressive.

The one thing that does bother me, as mentioned elsewhere, is operator overloading. There is a veritable soup of operators and you're never quite sure what an operator is actually doing. Worse, there aren't any plaintext equivalents. scala.collection.List doesn't have any "prepend/unshift" or "append/push" methods... all you have are ::, :::, +:, :+, /:, :\, :::, ++:, :++, ++ and so on.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't get the business of marking variables as const in local scope (aka "val" aka "final" for local variables). It's easy for a parser or a person to scan the local scope and see if a variable is ever possibly mutated or not. This is very different from the situation with globals where it's generally intractable to prove that something is never mutated. In local lexical scope you can see all possible mutations by the definition of "lexical scope": a const variable is one that is assigned only once, a non-const variable is one that may be assigned multiple times – this is a straightforward syntactic property. Is there some benefit to marking local lexical variables as constant that I'm missing?

<comment><USER6> At least in Java, non-final variables can't be used inside anonymous inner classes. Also, it's easier for me as a developer to read "final" and know that (referential) immutability is guaranteed by the compiler instead of having to read the local scope, which likely contains method calls that may or may not modify that variable.

val and final have stronger meanings when your objects are immutable. True immutability makes reasoning far easier than just referential immutability.

<comment><USER19> > At least in Java, non-final variables can't be used inside anonymous inner > classes.

Aren't those members/fields not variables? If so, then those are effectively global not local, so that's a completely different story – I'm talking strictly about local variables.

> True immutability makes reasoning far easier than just referential > immutability.

Yep, immutable types and constant global bindings are great.

<comment><USER6> No, it applies for local variables as well: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7423028/java-local- variab...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7423028/java-local-variable- visibility-in-anonymous-inner-classes-why-is-final-keywo)

I still don't understand why you consider having a compiler-enforced restriction on mutation worse than letting readers figure out what was the developer's intent.

In Java, the only "downside" is having to add "final" as a modifier, which is negligible.

In Scala, the alternative is to declare that variable as "var" instead of "val". When would you ever choose var over val if your object isn't supposed to mutate?

<comment><USER19> That's just a weird wart of Java – not allowing anonymous inner classes to close over non-final variables was just a cheat to avoid having to implement proper closures; I have no idea what the technical impediments to doing so were when that decision was made, but plenty of languages, including Scala, have real closures.

> In Scala, the alternative is to declare that variable as "var" instead of > "val". When would you ever choose var over val if your object isn't supposed > to mutate?

It's an extra keyword, an extra complication in the language – one more binary choice to multiply with all the other options. It would be nice to get rid of the distinction altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The main issue at the end of the day is compile time. They are working hard to address this, and from the first day we started using Scala to now, it's improved dramatically - but definitely lots of room for improvement where that's concerned.

<comment><USER20> > The main issue at the end of the day is compile time

For deployment, sure, but for daily dev the vast majority of one's time should be spent taking advantage of sbt's incremental build feature; there the compile hit is pretty neglible (particularly when you break out your application into sub projects/modules).

Even after the proposed Scala overhaul (i.e. Dotty in around 4 years time) it's unlikely that clean builds will be blazing fast.

To put in perspective, right now scalac is roughly 10X slower than javac. Scala compiler team is banking on getting a speed up by generating Java 8 closures under the hood with Scala 2.12; that will mean less code for scalac to generate.

Beyond that, trimming down language features and streamlining the type system will provide further compile time reduction. As you say, lots of room for improvement ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I totally agree with the author. The one's mentioned in the article are really the key benefits. I really wish scala didn't have implicits. People go crazy with implicits resulting in very difficult to read code. Sometimes I feel like going back to java just for the readability and then I remember these nice features of scala. We need a scala minus implicits.

<comment><USER6> Just out of curiosity, which libraries or frameworks do you feel abuse implicits?

<comment><USER21> Sorry, I don't want to blame any frameworks in particular. There's already too much bad blood in scala land. Let's just say there have been many instances where I had a really hard time understanding a piece of code and it turned out there was an implicit conversion hidden somewhere out of sight that was the missing piece of the puzzle, and in most instances there would have been a simpler design without implicits. Most great pieces of software, such as unix, are great not because they use very complicated concepts but because of how simple they are. Finding that simplicity is the key. Very frequently people don't see the importance of simple things like the presence of hints in code to where the related pieces are. Implicits break this flow. The number of places implicit conversions can be defined at is mind boggling. And even when some code doesn't use implicits the possibility of implicits does harm. When you don't understand some code, well who knows there may be an implicit conversion in play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It seems like these points are true of other Java alternatives as well. What about Ceylon, Fantom, and Kotlin?

<comment><USER7> Fantom: Typesystem is unsound, far away from correctness, only hard-coded Generics, many basic things are not expressions, like if-then-else or try- catch.

Ceylon: if-then-else or try-catch are no expressions, embraces null, unstable software, breaks backward compatibility in minor releases.

Kotlin: Embraces null, inexpressive type system limits the things the compiler can check, unstable software, breaks backward compatibility in minor releases.

<comment><USER23> Good summary. New "null-full" languages should be shamed publicly. Null as a bottom-type is a semantic wart.</comment></comment></comment>


Given various sums of money, what would you do? - <AUTHOR>

If you had 10,000 dollars right now, what would you do?  What about 50,000?  100,000? <comment><USER2> If I found $1 on the ground right now, I'd leave it for the next person to pick up.

If I found $10 on the ground right now, I'd use it to buy next week's coffee.

If I found $100 on the ground right now, I'd use it to buy some Christmas presents and not have to hit my bank account quite as hard for Christmas.

If I found $1000 on the ground right now, I'd report it to the police. Then if it ended up coming back to me I'd probably put it towards rent for a month, and watch my bank account grow a little more cushion.

If someone gave me $10,000 today, I'd pay off a couple student loans, and feel a lot more comfortable financially each month.

If someone gave me $100,000 today, I'd pay off all my student loans and finally be able to enjoy my actual income level. I'd stop renting and find a home that my family could make our own.

If someone gave me $1,000,000 today, I'd do a few things. I'd pay off my student loans. I'd rent the house I'm in until I found the house I actually want for the rest of my life. The house would have some modest guest quarters, probably in the form of a mother-in-law apartment. I'd buy a truck and a boat, and invite friends and people I admire to come visit for 2-4 week blocks. I'd keep teaching because it keeps me young and because I've learned how to teach pretty well at this point, but I would reduce my hours. I'd travel with my family, to Iceland and Patagonia, and a few other places.

If someone gave me $10,000,000 today, I'd do everything I would with a million, and try to give most of the rest away, buying similar freedoms for a few people I've looked up to all my life. I'd consider them genius grants for people who have given freely of their time and their experience, with little financial gain.

With a little more freedom, I'd teach really well, help other people figure out how to teach well and hopefully revolutionize public education. I'd develop some really important open source software projects.

But I live quite comfortably in southeast Alaska, where every time I drive to work I look up at the mountains and give a little thanks for living where I do. So while I'd make good use of any money sent my way, I'm working on all these things little by little, and thoroughly enjoying the journey as it is playing out.

</comment><comment><USER3> With 10k, I'd hire a designer for all the ideas floating around in my head, and move to a bigger city.

With 50k, I'd also hire a developer, to take care of some of those ideas while I take care of others.

Also, with 100k I would do the same and invest some in other peoples ideas.

</comment><comment><USER4> Buy more Bitcoins, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you believe the price ceiling to be?

<comment><USER4> No idea really, but much higher than it is now.

<comment><AUTHOR> On what basis do you make that claim?

<comment><USER4> It seems like massive investments are pouring into Bitcoin. I don't see why that will suddenly stop.

<comment><USER5> Famous last words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 10K - put everything into savings

50K - put 40K into savings and use 10K to get a hot tub

100K - buy hot tub with 10K and use 90K to buy more land

EDIT: typo

</comment><comment><USER7> I would buy things in large bulk to save money, getting a safe return on my investment.

</comment><comment><USER8> \- a. $10,000 i. Save $5,000 ii. Invest $1,000 into CrowdFunding Startups iii. Invest $1,000 into Ramen-Noodle Startups iv. Use $3,000 for my own startup.

b. $50,000 i. Save $25,000 ii. Invest $5,000 into CrowdFunding Startups iii. Invest $5,000 into Ramen-Noodle Startups iv. Use $15,000 for my own startup.

c. $100,000 i. Save $50,000 ii. Invest $10,000 into CrowdFunding Startups iii. Invest $10,000 into Ramen-Noodle Startups iv. Use $30,000 for my own startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you done any start ups? Is 30k enough to start your own? And how would you invest in a ramen noodle start up? Where would you find those contacts?

<comment><USER8> \- a. Have I done any startups? ~> Presently, Im working on one.

b. Is 30k enough to start your own? ~> $30,000 is more than enough, because presently Im more like a college student paying $400/month for rent. Add $100 for food and $30-$50 for internet and $30,000 can last me for a long time. It can last me until someone buys my startup for a good price.

c. How would I invest in a ramen noodle startup? Where would you find those contacts? ~> Now I've never had $30,000 but the best place so far for me will be AngelList ~> [https://angel.co/](https://angel.co/) and sites similar to it. Doing a HNSearch can also get you in contact with people who have posted their apps/startups here. I'll email them and see if they are interested in me investing in them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet. How can I contact you about your startup?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Patterns for designing a reputation system - <AUTHOR> http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/06/10/patterns-for-designing-a-reputation-system/

<comment><AUTHOR> The actual pattern library is here - [http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/parent.php?pattern=repu...](http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/parent.php?pattern=reputation) \- but the post has some interesting backgroup + rfc.</comment>


How to make a good-looking README for a GitHub repo? - <AUTHOR> https://www.yegor256.com/2019/04/23/elegant-readme.html <comment><USER2> The advice about badges reads like parody to me. I only really care if the project has CI. The Zoid repo has way too many!

I focus on making sure the mobile view of the github page has a compelling summary of the state of the project "above the fold":

\- purpose and goal

\- programming language

\- software type: library, framework, language, CLI, server, etc

\- maturity: age, production-readiness, prominent users, corporate backing

Logo is a nice-to-have.

<comment><USER3> I agree that I don't understand the author's take on badges, particularly because they even admit:

> They don't really deliver any valuable information.

I've yet to ever see a badge on a GitHub repository that offered useful information I couldn't find in a more convenient place. The Zoid repo is particularly a case where it just feels like the love of badges in README's is some leftover from the 1990s web design world where every web developer seemed to love all their "Works in IE", "Best in Netscape Navigator", "Made in Dreamweaver", "HTML 3 Compliant", "Grandmother Approved", etc pieces of flair.

I don't even really care if the project has CI as a badge in the README, because GitHub already surfaces that knowledge in places where it is much more useful (Pull Requests and Commit Lists).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, the first readme linked is horribly ugly and provides no context above the fold. It looks like the zodiac killer's rear bumper.

[https://github.com/zold-io/zold](https://github.com/zold-io/zold)

</comment><comment><USER5> > Changelog [...] is something from Pre-GitHub time. I would recommend you > rely on the "releases" tab

> GitHub has a special tab in each repository, which is called "contributors." > There is absolutely no reason to reproduce the list in the README file.

Why would you tie yourself to github like that?

</comment><comment><USER6> We super need these kind of content, in Portuguese</comment>


Prospective study:transmission of MDROs between sites and hospitalized patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/infection-control-and-hospital-epidemiology/article/prospective-study-of-transmission-of-multidrugresistant-organisms-mdros-between-environmental-sites-and-hospitalized-patientsthe-transfer-study/2699FD7DB1CA8327E48E9E56062D9F47 <comment><AUTHOR> "Conclusion: Microbiological bacterial transfer events between patients and the environment were observed in 18.5% of patient encounters and occurred early in the admission."</comment>


Opinion: Speeding Up Baseball to Save It - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/08/07/748972052/opinion-speeding-up-baseball-to-save-it <comment><USER2> Counterpoint: stop trying to "save" baseball. It's a fine game the way it is.

Jon Bois had the right of it: [https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season- preview/there-is-...](https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season- preview/there-is-no-future-of-baseball)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was a big baseball fan when I was a kind (like under 12). I lost interest after that and it was rekindled by watching Japanese baseball. My own personal opinion is that the length of the game is not really a problem. Take a look at cricket -- it's both longer, more boring and dramatically more popular than baseball.

The thing I find about American baseball is that I think it lacks drama. I've felt the same way about a lot of Premier league football (soccer). At the top end in soccer, they can pass the ball endlessly and then suddenly score for 30 yards out. It's breathtaking, but ultimately boring, IMHO.

With American baseball, it's similar. You have guys who can hit ridiculous home runs. You have pitchers that are so good that they can play the entire game without really losing much. Often, in American baseball, you'll only have 2 pitchers for the whole game.

What I've enjoyed about Japanese baseball is that it's really never over. Your pitcher can suddenly just stop being able to throw the ball over the plate. Or the batters learn their timing. Even if you are losing 7 - 0, you still have a chance! There is a saying that baseball doesn't start until there are 2 outs. Your whole goal is to get a man on base and then start putting on the psychological pressure. In Japanese baseball, it is common strategy if you have a man on base and no outs, to throw away your next 2 outs advancing that man to 3rd -- because _this_ is where baseball starts.

With American baseball, the pitcher will just shut you down. The batters usually have a single goal: hit a home run. There are obviously amazing players in the US and all the best players in the world want to play there.... But, I don't find it as interesting, personally. Nothing at all to do with the length of the game. Longer games mean that I can drink more beer! (Just like cricket... Um... I assume that's not true of Pakistan. They must actually love cricket ;-) ).

<comment><USER4> >Often, in American baseball, you'll only have 2 pitchers for the whole game.

!!!???

You must have not watched baseball in the past several decades, major league teams are averaging 4.5 pitchers per game now and it's rare for a team to use three or fewer pitchers in a game. [1]

[1] [https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/historical- lo...](https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/historical-look-at- pitcher-usage/amp/)

<comment><USER3> Admittedly this is the truth :-) Maybe I should start watching American baseball again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree, but he doesn't really propose a solution. I guess he kind of hints that batters shouldn't be able to step out... but that only really works when the pitcher has a time limit... and that only works with no runners on. Am I missing something?

A magic bullet to speed up games would be welcome by all, but if they start making drastic changes (like 2 strikes for a strikeout and 3 balls for a walk, which I've seen proposed), I suspect they'll lose fans even faster

<comment><USER6> Drastic changes aren't needed. The rules just need to be tweaked to encourage efficient play.

Not allowing batters to step out is one good idea. Excessive pitcher changes is a huge problem. Each change adds 3-5 minutes to a game. One thing I haven't heard mentioned is providing a way for catchers (teams) to call pitches in a more secure manner. Catchers go through so many signs just to communicate a pitch type while a runner is behind the pitcher. Each pitch could add an 5-10 seconds to hide the sign from the runner, depending on the scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For god's sake- please speed it up. I have a kid playing AAA little league and most games go over the 2 hour limit with just 4 innings played. Soccer, Basketball, Flag Football are all 1 hour games tops and involve a lot more running, action. Baseball has 1 poor kid pitcher trying real hard to get the ball in the strike zone and most often missing, walking the batter and repeat...while all the other players (batting team and fielding team) are just watching idly and praying- 'for god's sake just throw the damn ball straight, so we can move on!'

</comment><comment><USER8> I have to disagree with the author's premise. The home run is _boring_ in its current form. When it was a relatively rare sight it was more exciting and impactful. Because the home run is so much more prevalent (and other reasons of course) the truly exciting stuff is nearly gone. You don't see trick/special plays nearly as often anymore. When home run hitters are up every other batter, whats the point of risking stealing third base? There are less bunts, squeeze plays, pickles. Its the risks and the payoff (or lack thereof) that makes baseball games fun to watch (and to play, to be frank).

You end up with boring, high scoring games like 11-6, 10-2, etc depending on which team's home run hitters got streaky that game. The NHL had a similar problem in the past where scores were creeping way up and it wasn't uncommon to see things like 7-3, 6-1 kind of blowouts. Those are exciting if they are rare occurences but if they are regular it makes the game boring. A 2-1, 3-2 game is far more exciting in hockey. The NHL has made changes to curtail (and encourage) high scoring games and waffle back and forth on which they think is better, but its not really clear that baseball can really do the same without fundamentally changing the game itself or rebuilding stadiums to have a much larger minimum outfield wall distance.

</comment><comment><USER9> Minor league games with a pitch clock[1] move at a faster pace.

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

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a whacky theory to share - making baseball 6 innings with four outs instead of 9 innings with 3 outs. It will make the game slightly shorter but also make the scoring potential a lot higher

</comment><comment><USER11> > I lost interest after that and it was rekindled by watching Japanese > baseball.

I would recommend hitting up the local minor league baseball team, then.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've always thought of baseball and American football as two sports designed to be televised for the amount and length of commercial breaks. Always found it impossible to watch a full game by myself

</comment><comment><USER13> So they finally jazzed it up

<comment> King-Aaron What just happened? Why is the ball on that springy thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Baseball has a lot more problems than just length of play. Umpires, for example. A good way to get me to watch again would be to move to an electronic strike zone.

I have no interest in watching man-children think everyone is there to watch their show.

[https://youtu.be/s-me7_Y42qQ](https://youtu.be/s-me7_Y42qQ)</comment>


Google Integrated Beacons with Chrome and Google Play Store - <AUTHOR> http://blog.estimote.com/post/144608806035/fall-of-friction-googles-foray-into-beacons-is-a <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, this is Jakub - founder of Estimote, Inc. (YC S13)

Google has announced yesterday during IO in Mountain View an integration of two 1B+ users properties with beacon technology.

TL;TR - beacons can interact with users even if they don't have apps installed.

Google did great job making sure it won't introduce spam and will respect privacy.

I will be more than happy to answer any questions here.</comment>