Safari Should Display Favicons in Its Tabs - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/2017/08/safari_should_display_favicons_in_its_tabs <comment><USER3> Unfortunately there is a general trend towards removing colorful icons and I hate that trend with a passion.

Take for example the setting menu from stock Android: Yes, there are still icon but they all have the same color and it is really difficult to tell them apart. Every time I go to settings I have to search around until I find the settings I was looking for. If it had colorful icons then navigation would be easier because my brain would learn "blue icon = keyboard settings"

Or take Chrome on Android: Open Chrome, press the three dots on the bottom right for the menu and try to find the 'search in page' entry. Every time i wanna search something I have to read half of the menu items to find the search function... If it would have a distinct icon it would be much easier to find.

<comment><USER4> My bookmarks bar is a row of unlabeled favicons arranged by color. Beautiful and extremely efficient. I only need to store the color of an icon in my head, not the icon itself or the url. If this ever gets taken away from me I will become extremely cross.

<comment><USER5> This is exactly what I do. I am floored to hear that people are considering moving away from favicons. It's a tremendous space saver.

The all-out war on bookmarks and the original ways we organized information back in the 90s on the web is getting to be absurd.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention the fact that, as others have said, scanning your tabs for images is much, much quicker than scanning text. Favicons also give your site character and create a lasting visual impression of your brand. They are as important as a logo. Seems like a major step backwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I made a Safari extension that simulates favicons by prefixing tab titles with emoji. It's not a perfect substitute, but it's made it a lot easier for me to distinguish between tabs.

[https://github.com/logandaniels/emoji-tab- icons](https://github.com/logandaniels/emoji-tab-icons)

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, how does it know which Emoji to use?

<comment><USER8> so you don't even read 15 lines of readme?

<comment><USER9> That type of response probably won't get too many people rushing to your GitHub that you are suggesting here people should try out. To answer his question, it appears it allows you to manually add/choose a emoji on a site by site basis. As of December it looks like you can now set differently for different subdomains or other variations. Also appears to offer some suggested options to choose from for popular sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I never understood why people wanted their tabs on the top instead of on the side. I'm using [Tree Style Tab][1] on Firefox and whenever I need to use any browser I feel limited by screen real estate. With modern widescreen displays I can have my tabs on the side and the titles are still readable while the website content is readable, too. What's not to like?

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/tree-style- tab/](https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

<comment><USER11> I usually have less than 5 tabs open at any time. Side tabs are a huge waste of space for me.

<comment><USER12> You can hide them. The tabs sidebar only opens when you hit the key combo to open it or bump the side of the screen with your mouse. If anything it saves space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I much prefer to have no favicons. They're a really poor indicator of the content of the tab, especially when 20 of them are Stack Overflow and Read the Docs.

Safari has a really good way of visually distinguishing between tabs, a two fingered pinch on the trackpad and I can see the actual content of every tab that I have open. Can't remember the last time I even looked at the text in the tabs.

<comment><USER14> Tab Exposé is one of my favorite features in Safari (Right behind Reader view) that I wish other browsers copied.

<comment><USER15> The user experience once you have many tabs open in Chrome just completely falls apart. The tabs shrink so tiny you can hardly see them, and there's no way to reorganize them other than to one-by-one pull them out into a new window.

Safari, on the other hand, has Tab Exposé and also horizontally scrolls the tab bar once there are too many. It's such a simple thing that makes a huge difference.

<comment><USER16> You can shift click a range, or command click a disjoint set, of tabs in chrome. And then with one mouse drag move all of them to an existing window or create a new one. It's a feature that I wish safari had (although I have tried tab expose)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Totally valid. If they were going to change one thing about Safari, though, for me it would be to drop the required $99/year payment for a developer program membership just to distribute a signed Safari plugin. You can't really distribute plugins without a developer certificate, as Safari uninstalls them automatically when the browser restarts. Probably the worst Safari-related decision Apple has made recently, much worse than favicons, though I completely agree that they should return.

<comment><USER18> You can always distribute unsigned ones. You lose the ability to auto update however, as well as the extension store

<comment><USER17> So far, I haven't found a way to stop Safari from uninstalling an unsigned extension when it restarts. Have you? Because that would be great! More conversation about this issue: [https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/3675](https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/3675)

<comment><USER18> I've just installed the following extension, and it persists when I restart the browser:

[https://github.com/JoeKuhns/PiedPiPer.safariextension](https://github.com/JoeKuhns/PiedPiPer.safariextension)

<comment><USER19> That extension is signed. You cannot build a .safariextz archive without paying for a signing certificate.

<comment><USER20> Firefox has a similar annoyance but at least it's not behind a paywall. I wrote a plug-in I intended to be for personal use but I had to register and publish it on their site because it was removed on close. I'm not sure why they want to encourage a bunch of crap in their add-ons store but what infuriates me to no end is that they think they know better than me what I want to allow to run on my machine.

<comment><USER21> > I'm not sure why they want to encourage a bunch of crap in their add-ons > store but what infuriates me to no end is that they think they know better > than me what I want to allow to run on my machine.

The issue, as always, are malware installers on Windows.

Many companies (including Google) pay developers on Windows to ship their addons (or even entire browsers) with the installer, and to auto-install them.

This is how Google got their toolbar addon installed everywhere in the past, how Chrome is installed as default browser without the user noticing, how Bing gets their toolbar installed everywhere, and so on.

It's also used by other actors, not quite as evil as Google or MS, to distribute their malware addons and automatically install it in browsers.

By enforcing registration on AMO, Mozilla can easily remove an addon that was distributed this way for all users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Firefox shines here. Not only does it have the favicons but typing a site in AwesomeBar will prompt to "jump to tab".

<comment><USER23> And "% term" searches through open tab urls/titles

<comment><USER21> It'd be awesome if that would also search through page content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> By far my biggest gripe with Safari is the behaviour of the URL bar: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Safari/comments/2uikrg/any_way_to_d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Safari/comments/2uikrg/any_way_to_disable_the_centeralignment_of_the_url/)

<comment><USER25> I agree a centered URL is a bit of aesthetic ridiculousness when exposing the entire URL.

Aesthetic opinions aside, the linked complaint relies on a workflow that could be considered a UI anti-pattern.

      1. Move hand to mouse.
      2. Position cursor.
      3. Click URL bar. (activate caret)
      4. Move hand(s) to keyboard.
      5. Type replacement.

The following workflow lends itself more easily to UI automation (and muscle memory)

      1. Type Command-L. ("Open Location…" which selects all in location bar.)
      2. Type left/right-arrow. (Move caret to left/right side of location bar.)
      3. Option left/right-arrow. (move caret left/right one "word".)
      4. Type replacement.

The distinct advantage of the second workflow is that it is susceptible to the automated editing of URLs of many tabs using Keyboard Maestro [0] and a simple AppleScript.

Combined with keyboard tab-switching (Command-shift-[ and Command-shift-] for next left and right tab, respectively, you can fast web-page switch to spot small differences similar to the way in which a Hinman Collator works to highlight differences between bound books. [1]

Admittedly (and a bit off-topic), the link I provide for the Hinman Collator doesn't exactly illuminate what such a device does. A better demonstration of how collation can be used to highlight subtle visual differences between two artifacts can be derived in the service of solving a puzzle from one of my favorite web sites, Kindertrauma. [2]

The puzzle, which asks you to spot the differences between a series of two photos, is mildly challenging. That mild challenge is reduced to laughably simple when the images are collated. [3]

EDIT: Move parenthetical into footnote. Add adverbial phrase to footnote parenthetical. Rewrite Kindertrauma example. General readability.

[0] [https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/](https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/) (I'd be embarrassed to name drop Keyboard Maestro yet again here on HN if it just weren't so darned useful. A truly amazing piece of software Keyboard Maestro is. No relationship except as a satisfied user.)

[1] [http://library.unc.edu/2016/11/video-hinman-collator- compare...](http://library.unc.edu/2016/11/video-hinman-collator-compare- contrast-create/)

[2] [https://www.kindertrauma.com/the- thing-2011-funhouse/](https://www.kindertrauma.com/the-thing-2011-funhouse/)

[3] [https://secure.fluffycloud.net/shimmering/kindertrauma/20111...](https://secure.fluffycloud.net/shimmering/kindertrauma/20111014.The- Thing-2011-Funhouse/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> With Firefox, you get the best of both worlds. You get favicons, but you also get a minimum tab width so you can always read the first word or two of the page title. Rather than squishing down infinitely like Chrome, they just quickly scroll side-to-side more like Safari.

<comment><USER19> Side-scrolling tabs are one of the worst UI innovations I've suffered in recent years. They wreak havoc on spatial tab organization, make it impossible to see how many tabs are open, and slide out from under the mouse cursor unpredictably when clicking.

The original Safari behavior of a vertical overflow list of tabs, favicons included, keyboard searchable and navigable, was much more usable. [https://i.stack.imgur.com/eyXum.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eyXum.png)

<comment><USER26> Strongly disagree. That list menu made it hard to reorganize tabs, required a mouse click, and arbitrarily split your tabs into those visible and those relegated to some obnoxious menu.

<comment><USER19> Every one of those downsides was addressable without flushing the baby. Sessions ([https://sessions-extension.github.io/Sessions/](https://sessions- extension.github.io/Sessions/)) provides a keyboard-controllable vertical tab popover with draggable tabs from all open windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I concur. I don't use safari because it feels worse. I felt the reason was I couldn't easily identify where my tab was supposed to be easily without reading. Many websites these days do not provide super great titles.

Although I do kind of wish some of these browsers supported the ability to switch tabs similar to emacs and give me a full view to select and search between tabs. It would also show the favicon.

</comment><comment><USER28> Safari should also stop restoring private windows upon reopening.

<comment><USER29> Whoa, that's not cool. It stores all your private tabs on disk somewhere?

<comment><USER18> They're copying iOS behaviour

<comment><USER27> Agreed, but it should change. On iOS the OS can kill the browser for you so you may still want that page you didn't kill.

On the OS quitting the browser should reset it back to a normal state that doesn't include the private tabs you had.

<comment><USER30> I don't really see why a distinction would be made there. iOS's and macOS's process models are being made more similar as time goes on. And as a heavy user of both platforms I'd find it surprising if it didn't behave this way. An option to change it would be welcome, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For anyone willing to get a little experimental (it requires mySIMBL), Github user anakinsk's fork of SafariStand can enable tab favicons.

It's a total hack though.... every time a new version of Safari is released it tends to break. But kudos to him for trying.

[https://github.com/anakinsk/SafariStand](https://github.com/anakinsk/SafariStand)

Here's a (long) thread with some of the backstory about why this is so difficult:

[https://github.com/anakinsk/SafariStand/issues/38](https://github.com/anakinsk/SafariStand/issues/38)

</comment><comment><USER32> Favicons rainbowing up my top tab just acts as even more distractions. It only helps marginally because if you open 10 stackoverflow tabs, you would still need to open each one to see what's what. That's why Safari has the tabs overview view that shows you what's inside. You can't tell exactly, but you can most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's worth noting that Safari _can_ display favicons. If you pin a tab, it uses the favicon. It's even displayed in monochrome until you hover over the tab so they've definitely worked out a way to display them.

<comment><USER34> That's not the favicon that's being shown there. It is either a b/w mask as defined by the site, or defaulting to the first letter of the site's name.

<comment><USER35> Correct — defined by <link rel="mask-icon" />

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm quite surprised to find myself disagreeing with Gruber on this one. I like the way safari works currently, I don't want a bunch of loud little icons crowding up my screen. I don't have any problem identifying the tabs I have, and as others I have mentioned I can just use tab expose to find them quickly.

I've seen a few mockups on Twitter that he's re-tweeted recently and they just look more cluttered to me.

That may come from using Safari as my main browser for 13+ years, but I'm certainly quite happy with things the way they are.

</comment><comment><USER37> It should first start displaying the whole URL on my phone.

<comment><USER38> If you tap on the URL bar, it does.

What's the argument for showing it all the time? There's not enough space to show the entirety of even relatively short URLs without scrolling (and scrolling means tapping on it anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if it's because Apple didn't like the mush that 16x16 favicons become on Retina screens with their preferred linear upscaling.

Of course, other sizes of favicons are possible for use by site owners (.ICO supports multiple resolutions in a single file!), and there's no particularly good reason to use linear upscaling for what's often pixel art.

<comment><USER40> This predates Retina by like a decade.

<comment><USER41> IE used to use 32×32 for saving a bookmark to the desktop, 16×16 for the address bar favicon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I completely agree, one of the things that keeps me coming back to Chrome is favicons in tabs which is particularly useful when you have a bunch of tabs open. I also have a favorites bar with purely favicons so I can fit as many of my regular sites/resources in there as possible while still looking visually appealing.

</comment><comment><USER43> I tried out Safari for a week but I just couldn't stay there because extension support was terrible. Technically, the two critical extensions I use (LastPass and uBlock Origin) support Safari in some form, however they were strictly worse than the Chrome version. I can tolerate to some degree worse extensions. However, the UX was just _too_ bad to stand.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't even realize Safari lacked favicons until I read this article. I generally close tabs are soon as I finish using them. Consequently, I never have more than ~5 tabs open at any given moment.

<comment><USER36> > However, the UX was just _too_ bad to stand.

How so?

<comment><USER43> For me at least, the auto fill feature in LastPass didn't work half the time. Simultaneously, LastPass doesn't let me copy and paste my password without opening up the 'Edit' page for that particular username/password entry. In Chrome, the autofill feature didn't always work either (but it did work >90% of the time). However, I could just click the little 'LastPass' logo that popped up in the username/password field and click the 'Copy' button on my password.

For uBlock Origin (or rather, the fork of it since the actual developer abandoned the official version due to the difficulty of developing for Safari), I _hated_ how the icon in the toolbar displays the number of elements blocked in a big red badge that you couldn't turn off. I couldn't just remove it from the toolbar either because uBlock Origin frequently blocks what it thinks is an ad but is actually a critical part of a webpage. The only way to show the webpage correctly is to disable uBlock Origin for that webpage. And the only way to do that was to click on the button in the toolbar.

One of my favorite extensions for Chrome is 'Disable HTML5 Autoplay' which just blocks HTML5 videos from auto playing. Safari has no such extension.

I also hated how when you type in a web address in the omnibar in Safari and hit enter, half the time there would be no response (i.e. no loading bar, no change in the tab's contents, etc.). I don't actually know what's happening behind the scenes, but a refresh usually fixed it.

<comment><USER36> LastPass: I know from personal experience that plugin is garbage. No argument there.

There are extensions for blocking HTML auto-play. There used to be one called ClickToFlash, which became ClickToPlugin. I don't know if it's renamed again but it supported that.

The address bar thing is just weird. Can't explain that.

I won't deny that there aren't many extensions for Safari but I've never minded that, they largely never seemed necessary. For the longest time the only one I used was ClickToFlash. These days I have 1Blocker, but I've never been a plugin 'power user' even back when I used FireFox so that doesn't really bother me.

Thanks for the answer.

<comment><USER43> I looked into ClickToPlugin. The developer ended development because of Apple's development policies [0].

Also, I just remembered: the big extension that Safari was missing is Reddit Enhancement Suite. I could've lived with Safari if just RES was missing. However, in summation, all those issues made me decide to switch back to the RAM/CPU/battery sucking Chrome.

[0]: [https://hoyois.github.io/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/](https://hoyois.github.io/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Favicons in Safari for Mac? That's the least problem. They need to fix Safari on iOS so that it doesn't open the same site over and over again in a different tab each time.

They also need to catch up to the rest of the world and give the user a choice of which browser to open up by default on iOS. Oh, this is Apple though - <USER2> give you the absolute least amount of functionality that they can get away with while charging the highest prices. I can't wait for the time of Apple to come to an end.

<comment><USER45> > They need to fix Safari on iOS so that it doesn't open the same site over > and over again in a different tab each time.

Seems to work perfectly fine for me.

> They also need to catch up to the rest of the world and give the user a > choice of which browser to open up by default on iOS.

It's not as simple as that. If you want an OS that everyone can use, options are your enemy. Would I like to be able to decide the standard browser on my OS? To be honest, I don't care in this instance since I like Safari better than the alternatives, but sure, the choice would be great to have should that change.

<comment><USER44> > Seems to work perfectly fine for me.

Thanks. It still doesn't work fine for me.

> It's not as simple as that.

Yes, it is.

> If you want an OS that everyone can use, options are your enemy.

That's a ridiculously absurd notion and it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm not even going to ask you because you've got no evidence for this whatsoever.

It equates exactly to "Choices are bad". Perhaps that is true for marketing purposes but not for solving actual real-life problems. I guess we have our answer now though because "more marketing and less functionality" fits precisely within Apple's modus-operandi.

<comment><USER45> > Thanks. It still doesn't work fine for me.

Sucks for you, you should probably talk to apple about it since it's probably a bug.

> Yes, it is.

No it isn't, and it has been shown numerous times. You have probably experienced it yourself with a parent or someone else needing your help because they were trying to do change their wallpaper on their windows pc and now their internet is not working anymore. More options equals more complexity which isn't good if you need your phone to work for as many people as possible.

iOS even has had its fair share of problems with this for example with its third-party keyboards with people installing them from the App Store and coming back later and having no idea how they did turn them on, or that they even did so, they just did what the app told them to do while they thought they were installing some game and now they can't hit the keys any more because it's all different, and they don't remember what happened nor how to get things back to normal.

> That's a ridiculously absurd notion and it couldn't be further from the > truth. I'm not even going to ask you because you've got no evidence for this > whatsoever.

No it isn't, and a very famous and popular book was even written about it by Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less which spiked a lot of research on the topic. You should read it.

> It equates exactly to "Choices are bad". Perhaps that is true for marketing > purposes but not for solving actual real-life problems. I guess we have our > answer now though because "more marketing and less functionality" fits > precisely within Apple's modus-operandi.

Yes it is. It might not be optimal for you specifically, but if they made a phone that worked perfectly for you, it possibly wouldn't work perfectly for me, and surely not for my grandmother. Why? Because we need very different things from our phones. If you introduce all the features all 700+ million of active iPhone users need/want, the phone would be a complete cluster fuck. Even if you took the features of a few 100 select but very different people, that would be the case.

I would say that Android phones is a perfect example of why more (choices) is less (good). I can't remember when I last had to help someone with a problem with their iOS devices, but every time I am with a family member that uses android, they have a bunch of problems piled up for me they need help with. Of course, it's not only android but just as much the terrible apps that is on the android platform, but low quality apps is something the android platform enables, so it's kinda it's fault too.

The solution is not to put every single option into iOS. It's to have a wider range of operating systems that are tailored for different groups of people, like hacker types, the "I only call, text and facebook" type, and so on, but that costs a lot more money and takes a lot more time than making a single device that everybody buys.

<comment><USER44> I still don't see any evidence. All I see is badly formed opinion. How about a citation?

The simple truth is that either software does what you need it to do or it doesn't. In this case, I need iOS to open Chrome instead of Safari. Since there is no option to change the default browser or ability to uninstall Safari (thereby making Chrome my default), I consider iOS to be badly broken in this regard.

Your position is clearly indefensible here once you consider that the Mac OS lets you change default browsers. Why should there be a choice on Apple's desktop OS but not their mobile OS? I look forward to hearing the byzantine logic that you'll come up with for justifying that one...

Also keep in mind that this isn't just any old option. This is the type of option that the EU sued Microsoft over. Hopefully someone will force Apple to do the same. Too bad their global market share is tiny. I guess the rest of the world likes options, huh?

<comment><USER45> The book is based on research, and there are a lot more research that has been done on the subject since it was published. Feel free to read the book and the follow-up studies, or don't, but I am not gonna go and read it again to find citations to post here.

What surprises me is that you don't seem to agree any bit with the notion that less is more. I however see it all the time in my work as a developer. It's easy to add features in one long list, but users don't respond well to that. What makes a product that users appreciate is a tight package where features has been distilled to what is important and lets the user access the features they need in a convenient way. What doesn't make a user happy is when they have to hunt around for functionality or can't remember how to do stuff because there is to many features that clutters the interface and makes the experience of using the product more complex.

<comment><USER44> The option to change the default browser causes no confusion in their desktop OS and it wouldn't in iOS either.

You won't cite anything because you can't. It's quite clear that you're wrong. Sorry.

<comment><USER45> > The option to change the default browser causes no confusion in their > desktop OS and it wouldn't in iOS either.

That can be argued, but I can see a few scenarios that will be problematic for the less tech savvy users.

1) Do you present an option when the user installs another browser to set it as a default, or do you guide them on how to go to the settings and do it? 2) What happens when the user uninstalls the browser, maybe by mistake after having been prompted or guided to set it as default? Should the system a) ask the user to first switch to another browser, or b) notify that if they uninstall it, a default browser will be chosen? 3) What to do now that someone has by mistake deleted chrome, which is the only browser they have used on the phone ever and doesn't even know safari exists? They will have to go to a genius bar or ask someone they know for help to how to either download chrome again (possibly) or to be told about safari 4) what happens when the user by mistake (or not recalling doing so) put chrome as default browser but want to go back to safari?

All these things I just came up with on a whim (there are probably many more) is usability complexity that will put less tech savvy users in problematic and/or confusing scenarios that overall can make them appreciate the phone less and could potentially lead to less sold devices.

These are not problems I personally would have, but they are problems that Apple, whoms goal is to sell as many devices as possible, wish to be without. Adding options is possibly adding confusion that can lead to less sales.

> You won't cite anything because you can't. It's quite clear that you're > wrong. Sorry.

I didn't cite anything, yes, I mentioned a famous psychology book and research area that is specifically saying that I am right. It's not something I just thought of, you know.

Here is the author of the book doing a TED Talk on the subject: [https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...](https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I agree for sure. At the very least have it as a preference. My bookmark bar consists of icons w/ no label. I treat Favicons more or less like I do iOS app icons.

</comment><comment><USER47> Personally, I am not a fan of Favicons; it feels like yet another form of advertising - which the web has more than enough of.

<comment><USER48> That doesn't seem to make sense. Favicons tend to be the website logo, making it easy to pick out the tab when you have multiple open. The favicon tells you the site, the tab title tells you the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> One of the reasons why I don't use Safari (aside from almost no extensions, dev tools, tabs below navigation). Even though I usually use Vimium's T to navigate through tabs I still feel disoriented with no favicons on tabs.

What I don't really get - why is this not optional setting?

</comment><comment><USER50> I think you only see fav icons in safari mobile in the bookmarks menu as well.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is the single reason I don't use Safari.

</comment><comment><USER52> I wouldn't mind favicons in the url bar when the cursor isn't in it too if we are adding things to safari.

</comment><comment><USER53> >The Mac attracts visual thinkers and its design encourages visual thinking.

Any proof?

</comment><comment><USER54> iTunes Connect and other Apple properties that developers tend to bookmark should have favicons. Then you could just edit out the title/name and identify by icon.

</comment><comment><USER55> Forget favicons... it supports emoji domains!

</comment><comment><USER56> Daring Fireball should use a larger font and better contrast. Thank goodness for Reader mode.

</comment><comment><USER57> Sheesh, Daring Fireball whips up another tempest in a teapot. If he isn't more careful, Gruber could lose his "most favored blogger" status at Apple.

</comment><comment><USER58> Is Apple even still working on Safari?

<comment><USER50> They release every other week updates to Safari Technology Preview as well as daily builds of Webkit. Both include new features.

They have blog posts about feature development as well here: [https://webkit.org/blog/](https://webkit.org/blog/)</comment></comment>


China to take on Boeing, Airbus with new passenger jet - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/02/asia/china-new-c919-passenger-jet/index.html <comment><USER2> "The lack of certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is seen as a major hindrance for international sales."

no kidding.

China's current reputation (fast and default to crappy quality without extreme oversight) doesn't really fit what I'd want out of an airliner. Optimistically, this project succeeds and changes a bit of the culture around quality and shortcuts in manufacturing. If "Made in China" could gain some equivalence to "Made in Germany" without exploding their cost structure. That'd be an interesting world.

<comment><USER3> Well "Made in Germany" brand took on a hammering, the only other country manufacturing planes en masse is Russia, but their plane safety record speaks for itself.

It will be a steep hill for China to climb, the question really is how much technology and knowhow was "appropriated"

Cheap toys and phones is one thing, planes are another

<comment><USER4> There are two major aerospace companies, neither of which is German. Boeing is from the US and Airbus is from France.

Civilian aircraft production in Russia is practically non-existent.

<comment><USER5> Airbus is based in France, but it's actually an European consortium, with manufacturing facilities across the continent (and in China).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The line about lacking an FAA certification is odd. This aircraft couldn't possibly have an FAA certification yet, it hasn't even had its first test flight.

They have a basic certification from the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC) which will allow them to conduct test flights and similar.

They are partnering with Ryanair (mostly inter-europe flights) and even Airbus expects them to compete outside of China by 2020.

As to quality question: China produces both high AND low quality even if they're "known" for low quality. For example that iPhone in your pocket: China. Many chip fabricators: China. High end batteries: China. Etc. If china needs high quality, they will attain it.

There's no specific reason, aside from time, why China cannot be a legitimate competitor for international aircraft.

<comment><USER7> Fabricators of chips you are familiar with: Taiwan. Most of the Chinese fabless SoC companies (Allwinner, Rockchip etc.) aren't getting their chips fabbed by Chinese owned fabs. Most of those cheap chinese phones have Mediatek SoCs, from Taiwan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know their planes are a tiny bit smaller but has anyone not heard of Embraer planes?

They've sold over a thousand of these jets but CNN don't think they are worth mentioning?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E- Jet_family#E-190_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E- Jet_family#E-190_and_195)

<comment><USER9> My OCD now wants an aircraft manufacturer starting with a D.

Airbus-Boeing-Comac-D????-Embraer.

Who wants the D?

<comment><USER10> Dumbardier

<comment><USER11> Bombardier is currently being bailed out by the Quebec government to the tune of $1bn, so that's another (almost) D company that's not doing so great:

[http://business.financialpost.com/investing/trading- desk/bom...](http://business.financialpost.com/investing/trading- desk/bombardier-inc-could-need-a-second-bailout-within-12-18-months- scotiabank)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/709422/another-woman-killed- in-...](http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/709422/another-woman-killed-in-china-in- elevator-accident-this-time)

China can't even make an escalator or elevator safe. I'm ethnically chinese, but I wouldn't set a foot on a chinese plane.

<comment><USER13> I did a little bit research and found the escalator is from Otis. Of course there are management and maintenance issues, but it is not related to the product quality Chinese-branded plane.

And if you are buying cheap product or using a cheap service, don't expect it to be the same quality as the expensive counter parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting, and I hope their aviation industry can do well at home before it decides to go international. Sometimes things crash during R&D. Admitting failure isn't something I've come to expect from China's authorities and media, personally speaking.

Unfortunately for China, the problem in the world and coming years isn't a lack of aviation manufacturers, it's a lack of _aviators_ [0]!

I've got several commercial airline professionals in my family (all retired) and each of them is glad to be out of the industry - especially the pilots. Working conditions went downhill. Frequent airline executive decisions (bankruptcies / mergers) found ways to, essentially, erase agreed-upon pensions or seniority. On and on.

Basically my understanding is that the profession of being a pilot is about on-par with that of being a teacher: Do it because you love it, not because the pay or working conditions are really that good. I'm not sure if it's the same globally, but if the US isn't producing a surplus of pilots to staff the rest of the world, I've got significant doubts that needs will be met with qualified personnel. As in, you don't want a pilot who cheated to get into the cockpit.

[0] [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-09/asia-is- run...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-09/asia-is-running-out- of-pilots)

</comment><comment><USER15> People think they will compete with Boeing and Airbus internationally but they are not, at least not initially. They mainly aim at China's domestic market which has long term high growth as more people becoming wealthier and use air flight as a mode of transportation. Some estimate that the demand for new planes goes into thousands in the near future. It's better to develop and buy from a domestic manufacturer than sending the money oversea. In some sense they are competing with Boeing and Airbus for the China's and the other emerging markets.

</comment><comment><USER16> I read a component checklist for C919 yesterday and it seems other than the main body, most if not all the internal pieces(including the engines) are outsourced elsewhere.

Boeing probably does something similar, in that it acts like more of a system designer and integrator, I recall its major software was also outsourced to some India company for its newest model.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone else wonder if much of their R&D and design on this is coming from international espionage? Chinese exfiltration of sensitive industrial data is becoming pretty well known.

<comment><USER18> That would probably make me feel better about getting on one of these.

<comment><USER19> I don't know about that....

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

That story is probably untrue, but the potential for similar things has to be there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Boeing and Airbus are known for quality AND reliability. Those two terms are derived from hard data just as much as from public perception. As other's here have said...China will face an uphill battle.

</comment><comment><USER21> What are the C919's selling point versus the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320?

<comment><USER22> They're trying to be the "Kia of aircraft" meaning they offer a lot of value for a relatively low price. They're primarily targeting budget airlines.

It is a little speculatory but supposedly their average aircraft will cost $68 million Vs. $71.9m or $78.3m for a A320 and 737 respectively. So they will be the cheapest in that line, and are trying to match or better the other two in fuel economy, supposedly 15% more fuel efficient than the A320 [0] (but the A320neo is meant to be more comparable).

That being said few analysts think that Comac's first attempt at commercial success will be successful. They have a lot of obstacles to overcome. However assuming the money doesn't dry up their second or third aircraft might be fairly competitive.

So watch this space for the mid to late 2020s, might see Comac on the tarmac somewhere nearby.

[0] [http://leehamnews.com/2012/01/05/c919-gains-but-loses- advant...](http://leehamnews.com/2012/01/05/c919-gains-but-loses-advantages/)

<comment><USER23> $4 million cheaper, on a $68 million price tag? Is that a typo?

<comment><USER24> No. $4 million is a lot of money. Now imagine that you're buying 100 of them.

<comment><USER25> Then I'm still only saving a few percent on the large amount of money I'm spending.

And in return I not only have to deal with the risk of buying a hundred aircraft designed and built by people who were pushing plows a couple of years ago based on some photocopies smuggled out of Toulouse, I also have to have the airline that people say "Oh hell no I'm not flying on that".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 3 years of test flights. Am I the only one that finds this a long time to test an aircraft?

<comment><USER27> Planes have pretty disastrous failure modes, and useful lifespans in the decades. An accelerated test cycle seems... unwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So this is a competitor to the 737 and A320. Seems like a pretty crowded market.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention that both 737 and A320 are fully depreciated, highly optimized cash cows. It takes decades for a plane to reach that stage, and both Boeing & Airbus can mass produce them with their eyes closed.

As with many other "value added" Chinese products, it might make inroads in "friendly markets" such as Asia and Africa, but will have a very hard time competing in the huge European and American (as in the continents) markets.</comment></comment>


Short Studies On Excuses - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/24o/eight_short_studies_on_excuses/ <comment><USER2> I don't think removing the "8" from the title in this case was warranted. This is not a list post, and the items are not quickly read, content-empty mini- articles, but short essays that all fit together.

Calling it "Eight Short Studies on Excuses" is as reasonable as calling this Mozart set of studies (<http://www.classiccat.net/mozart_wa/265.htm>) "Twelve variations".

On the topic - interesting and well written. What are the advantages of the normal mode of excuse-evaluation compared to this?

<comment><USER3> ...but then every article with an excuse will want its leading number back!

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I down-voted this but meant to up-vote it. These arrows are a bit small..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) When evaluating excuses (or other "low-probability" events), it's important not merely to evaluate the likelihood of this exact pattern, but of all patterns that are of the same level of impressiveness or more impressive. For example, if you're evaluating whether to accept "my cousin died", you really have to evaluate the whole class of excuses "my relative who is at least as close as a cousin had a significant occurence". This is one of the best observations in this essay.

2) Taking a game-theoretic approach to excuses, rather than merely accepting "true" or "believeable" excuses, has the advantage of allowing you to reject excuses without calling into question anyone's character. Nobody wants to be the jerk who said "I don't believe your grandmother really died" to the kid whose grandma actually DID just die; it's much easier to be the guy with the "late work is not accepted even if your grandma dies" policy.

3) The excuse evaluator can add a cost to making excuses. A teacher might require an essay explaining the excuse in detail, thereby wiping out the added utility the student derives from procrastinating, but not wiping out the utility the student derives from attending his grandmother's funeral. This creates a threshold that prevents people with no real excuse from gaming the system.

</comment><comment><USER6> In reality, most teachers accept late work from students they like. Still, I suppose the example was specifically for economics professors. ;)

<comment><USER7> Because grading a work by student you like gives you positive utility :).

<comment><USER8> Yes; generally, quality of work and how much a professor likes a student are positively correlated. So, if a professor likes grading good papers, ey will accept papers from late students ey likes.

<comment><USER9> Excellent use of Spivak pronouns

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of a great talk i attended by Karl Kruszelnicki analyzing the increasing number of 'my grandmother died' excuses he sees each year at exam time. He ended up with an exponential-looking graph for the last few years which showed that in 10 or 20 years the average student will have 3 dead grandmothers each.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll give you an upvote if you give me an upvote and reply to this post.

<comment><USER12> but you're at 1 now...

retreat, retreat!

<comment><USER11> Crap, now we need 3rd party review.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Alternatively, you could try writing awful science fiction novels and hiring a ton of lawyers. I hear that also works these days."

Off-topic but I disagree : Battlefield Earth was a good book. And terrible movie.

<comment><USER14> No. It was just as terrible a book.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should CTO have majority of company ownership? - <AUTHOR> Preface this by saying I know a company takes more than just a Product. That you have to sell and manage people. Currently I am in a team of three and I am the developer so the other two are being marketing and business. I hate meetings and trying to seel our product so I am glad someone is doing that. But to be honest, at the end of the day I am working those long nights making the product. I always hear the three founder dynamic to be 33% split. But I dont feel like that is fair compared to how much work/hours I am putting in.. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> > I hate meetings and trying to seel our product so I am glad someone is doing > that.

This is your answer. They're doing things you don't want to do. Now, they don't have to have equal ownership per se. But you need to decide how important they are to you, and they'll respond by letting you know what they want to do the job. And that very well might be a 1/3 split.

Also, keep in mind that the hours put in by each 'department' does depend on the state of the product. In the early stages, product development takes up nearly all of your time. Once you get a product that can be sold, marketing will consume a lot of time. And once you have customers and more employees, the business crap will take up a lot of time. Also, don't discount those two factors. Think of all the shitty products that have and still continue to be sold thanks to good marketing and connections.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ownership should probably have a vesting period. You could create milestones that must be met to vest X% of the 33%.

They should be spending just as much time on marketing material reaching out to initial "customers", market research etc.</comment>


Need game timer software cause I lack self control - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for existing software or direction for how I should write my own.
What I want is a simple timer that would allow me, say, a two hour session of Starcraft 2.  It would alert me when 2 minutes are left so I could save my game and then it would quit and disable the application for 24 hours.
All the software (mostly parental) I've found logs you off the computer or shuts it down.  I'm looking for something that is just application specific.
If it doesn't exist then I want to build it.  My experience is mainly in ruby and a little bit of java but I'm willing to learn something new if it would make it quicker/easier. <comment><USER2> I'm sorry to say it, but the only way to cure your sickness is to suck up your time and just get 100% of the SC2 achievements. Once you do that the temptation will go away.

Happy hunting!

<comment><USER3> You got downvoted for trying to make a joke, that hardly seems fair, that's why I voted you back up.

Now remember everyone, Hacker News is for SERIOUS business only, no joking, no lightheartedness, no screwing around.

I would say in regard to the original post that a low tech solution might just be a digital watch and some self-control. The thing is you have to be concrete before you go into it. I used to have a terrible time exercising until I said beforehand "I'm going to do X minutes of this or Y reps of that" Giving yourself a goal provides you with a kind of instant gratification when you complete it, which is similar to the stimulus you are getting from StarCraft 2.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what irks me. I am actually quite disciplined in exercise and my diet but when it comes to the instant gratification of computer games I just got no self control :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> SafeEyes might work for you. I think they have both application-specific controls and some cron limits. It's aimed at parents, but might work for what you're going for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hadn't seen that one yet. Thanks.

However, it appears to only block online gameplay and internet game related sites. I don't see anything about blocking a specific application.

<comment><USER4> Oh, I think you're right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe <http://www.rescuetime.com/> could help with blocking distracting sites and more. If it doesn't have what you're looking for, shoot them an email, who knows they might listen to ya (besides, they're a YC company - show them your HN love and that might get even more attention :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to @robdimarco. Found something that works for MacOSX. 'SelfControl' <http://visitsteve.com/work/selfcontrol/> It allows you to choose specific domains to block. For the Starcraft example, blocking battle.net would be somewhat effective. Source code is on GitHub too. Now I just need something for Windows 7.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What's the best way to prevent an application from launching temporarily?</comment>


Do NOT click this link if you ever want to be productive again - <AUTHOR> http://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defense-1-5 muhahahahahah!!! ... sniff... <i>sob</i> <comment><AUTHOR> Muhahahahah! ... sniff ... _sob_</comment>


This Just in From the Institute for the Obvious: Media Likes Covering App - <AUTHOR> http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100927/pew-apple/ <comment><AUTHOR> What's interesting to me is the percentage of tech articles that cover Apple (15.1%) and the advantage that Apple has over competitors, particularly Microsoft and to some extent Google. The implications of this advantage in terms of brand value are substantial.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended JavaScript books? - <AUTHOR>

I've read these so far:
- JavaScript The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan
 - High-performance JavaScript by Nicholas Zakas
 - Object-Oriented JavaScript by Stoyan Stefanov
 - JavaScript Patterns by Stoyan Stefanov
 - JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford
 - Test-Driven JavaScript Development by Christian Johansen
 - Learning JavaScript Design Patterns by Addy Osmani
 - High Performance JavaScript by Nicholas C. Zakas
and am thinking about getting these:
- Maintainable JavaScript by Nicholas Zakas
 - The Past, Present, and Future of JavaScript by Axel Rauschmayer
 - JavaScript Web Applications by Alex MacCaw
 - Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke
 - JavaScript Enlightenment by Cody Lindley
 - Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig
are there any others worth adding to my reading list or thoughts on these? <comment><USER2> It seems to me you've read quite enough!

If you want to learn, maybe your time is better spent coding? ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Java script the good parts is worth a read</comment>


Fellow website owners, lend me your [best] feedback emails - <AUTHOR> http://feedbackfail.com/

<comment><USER2> Should have used weebly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I get it, irony: <http://alaskamiller.com/>

<comment><USER2> No, I just thought it was pretty cool it used all these YC companies' products.</comment></comment></comment>


20 Million Google+ Users May Exist by the Weekend - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/235468/20_million_google_users_may_exist_by_the_weekend.html

<comment><USER2> I've already noticed that my Google+ feed is becoming dominated by posts along the lines of "Why am I still using this? FB is the same and all of my friends are there"

I expect them to have a fair bit of churn once the novelty wears off and all the invites stop hitting people's inbox

 _edit: I have a lot of non-techie friends not in the early-adopter crowd (who I invited) so I expect, for them, it feels pretty empty. For people who read HN, it's likely much more vibrant. Ultimately, it's the mainstream that matters and, until it hits critical mass, I believe the people we pull in from the mainstream won't see the point and will go back to FB where their news feed is always full._

<comment><USER3> We must have different social circles then. I've yet to see any messages along that line in my feed.

<comment><USER4> I would have to agree with that. The initial posts in my circles are about how they love G+.

<comment><USER5> Same for me. 95% positive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any historical evidence that a meteoric rise in traffic, of this magnitude, has translated into a long term success? I am not making any prediction on Google+'s future; I am just interested if there are examples that I am not able to recall.

Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare had to earn their traffic along the way. The evolutionary process of going from 100K users to 750M users must be an important component in their success.

If these statistics for Google+ are correct, they seem to be leap-frogging the entire process that happens when growing your user base from nothing to something. I cannot decide if this is a benefit or a detriment to the eventual success of the product. I would love to hear examples or counter-examples of this.

<comment><USER7> I feel like G+'s success is related to Facebook's past success. Ever since G+ came out, I've seen many posts on my FB feed for people giving out and wanting G+ invites. The me-too mentality inherent in FB (and other social networking sites) means that people will want to join whatever site their friends are on. That being said, it will be interesting to see if G+ can keep these people around or if it is going to just be a passing fad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So now the same back of the envelope calculation by Paul Allen will keep on getting rehashed as a breaking news story by every single tech site out there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google _require_ that new users give them a valid phone number, and they phone you up to check you're not cheating.

That's way more intrusive than anything Facebook has ever done. My wife just flat-out refused to countenance the idea - so G+ lasted about 1 hour in my household.

<comment><USER10> I find it absolutely unacceptable that so many companies, under the guise of protecting your important data, insist that you give them your important data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Right now everyone is signing up just to check it out. Let's wait and see what the active user count is in a couple months.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's almost 2% of the users Facebook has.

<comment><USER13> And engagement? All I know is in early days of fb I remember vast majority of people in large lecture halls being glued to fb.

I don't see remotely that type o of engagement with g+.

<comment><USER14> Facebook was most peoples' introduction to social sites, that accounted for a lot of the simultaneous fascination. I don't see it as a strike against Google+ that it won't achieve the same encounter with novelty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ...and I'm still not one of them! :(

<comment><USER16> I'm almost going out and sitting on the sidewalk with a sign: "will code for a Google+ invite".

<comment><USER17> I believe you can just sign up now...

<comment><USER16> That's great :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am I mistaken, or can Google "turn on" G+ for any google account, and have that count as a G+ user? It doesn't seem like these numbers are very meaningful. We need monthly-actives to accurately compare to Facebook.

<comment><USER19> They don't though. You currently explicitly have to sign up for it.

I'm not even sure whether you can currently just sign up, I think you still have to invited (and it's not enough to just be invited to count as a user, the invited person needs to explicitly sign up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's talk about DAU then I'll be impressed.

</comment><comment><USER21> Buzz also had millions of users.

<comment><USER22> Buzz was much more forced upon people though than this is.</comment></comment>


Music Memos - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/music-memos/ <comment><USER2> Remember back in 2009 when Microsoft released SongSmith?

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/song...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/)</comment>


Margaret Howe lived with a dolphin for ten weeks in the 1960s - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2653422/The-woman-taught-dolphin-speak-fallen-love-her.html <comment><USER2> There was a RadioLab podcast about this story a few months ago (I believe it was RadioLab). Margaret was asked about the reports of sexual contact between her and Peter. Her response was, if I can paraphrase, that Peter would get distracted during the day because of his sexual urges. This would slow down the training Margaret was trying to do and therefore she would... fulfil his urges and Peter would then start to complete his training again.

This article fails to mention a few important details that I'm sure the BBC documentary will. The lead researcher was very much into drug culture and Margaret said in the podcast that he gave drugs to some of the dolphins (not Peter) hoping that it would "open their mind" and help with the language development. I don't remember clearly, but I'm not sure if the podcast mentioned the timeline of the experiment. I was surprised to read it was only 10 weeks.

<comment><USER3> Horrible trainers doing stupid things.

Everybody knows that dolphins can not be safely drugged. They stop to breath and die if you try to use sedatives or anesthesia.

<comment><USER2> I think they were given LSD or other psychedelics. I think the idea was to relieve their inhibitions and their language skills would broaden. This is why we have research ethic boards now.

<comment><USER3> This could explain the agressive behaviour cited in several parts of the article and naively explained as "love". Poor animal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Most probably, an uncontrollable and too aggresive male dolphin (caused by forced isolation and a wrong training) is put down after the experiment. Cause of death "suicide".

<comment><USER4> He died after refusing to breathe

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the- dolph...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who- loved-me)

This same thing happened to one of the dolphins that played flipper on TV causing the dolphin's trainer to become an anti-captivity activist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Url changed from [http://nypost.com/2014/06/10/the-dolphin-that-fell-in- love-w...](http://nypost.com/2014/06/10/the-dolphin-that-fell-in-love-with-a- human/), which points to this. Although unduly sensational, it contains new information about a historically significant experiment. We can change the URL to a better source if anybody finds one.</comment>


Unit testing for regex  regex101.com – thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://regex101.com/?

<comment><AUTHOR> The unit testing feature is located in the menu on the left, under the submenu "TOOLS" (the checkbox icon).</comment>


Servants Without Masters - <AUTHOR> https://write.as/harold-lee/servants-without-masters <comment><USER3> > It made me intensely uncomfortable to have someone hanging around just to > attend to my needs, and tell them to do menial chores for me.

>And yet, when I thought about it, I realized that I had no problem with janitors or baristas doing dirty work for me.

In order for the economics of having a personal servant to work out, there needs to be a fairly grotesque level of income inequality, driven by high levels of societal and legal inequality. That isn't the case when 'being served' by waitstaff or a barista, who can both walk across the street and afford the same level of service you got from them at a different establishment.

<comment><USER4> Funny, a personal servant makes us uneasy, but a personal/executive assistant does not. What's the difference? They're both employees and both are being paid to do tasks that need to get done but aren't worth their boss's time.

Is it the extra indirection of the salary coming from company instead of personal coffers that does it? What if the person hiring the assistant has 100% ownership of the company like in the case of a small business?

<comment><USER5> When I had a corporate job, the _administrative assistant_ to the big boss in my department had real power as de facto gatekeeper and seemed to be quite well compensated.

It's a role that would have been called _secretary_ at one time. The title change was intended to show more respect and try ditch some historical social baggage for such jobs.

<comment><USER6> Which is an example of the the euphemism treadmill. Secretary means secret- keeper and has built into it connotations at least of trust and often of power. Which is why top officials of many great ministries ion are called _secretaries_.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Xgd7Cjm98](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Xgd7Cjm98)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that had occured to me. It just didn't really seem pertinent to this particular discussion. It struck me as a tangent, so I opted to not get into it.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I mostly agree with this description of the current western institutions, but I don't agree with the conclusion he came to as to why we accept these institutions.

The same way he points out that a human master can disregard their incentives in the interest of their subordinates, they can just as well disregard the interests of their subordinates and even their own incentives for some kind of personal enjoyment.

I don't think we picked the greater or the lesser of two evils, I think we picked the more consistent of two evils. If it were possible to plot "good" and "evil" on an axis, and if we were to plot to plot "human masters" and "uncaring system" on this axis, we'd see two bell curves. Maybe the mean of the "uncaring system" is farther towards the "evil" end of the axis, but the curve would have a very sharp peak, while the "human masters" bell curve would be a lot shallower, with a lot of variance.

I think we chose the systems we have now, or more correctly, the systems we have now are the way they are (nobody consciously chose them) because we as a society prefer things predictably kinda bad, rather than having the possibility of things being really bad or really good, this is made even worse when the outcome is decided by the whims of a person and not pure chance. At least when the system is predictable, we can plan around the bad parts, and introduce a system of checks and balances in an attempt to shift the mean more towards the "good" side. A benevolent dictator might be better than the best democracy, but a malevolent dictator is way worse than the worst democracy, for the majority of the people at least.

<comment><USER8> Yes. Using a system takes partially out of the equation, which is more fair, especially in cases where huge numbers of the involved.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, it takes 'partiality' out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like this is seriously under-appreciated. I never figured to frame this into servant/master terms, but the depersonalization of human relations in the West (especially USA) is something that bothers me for a long time now. And it's not only not seeing a human behind a servant/master role, it is deliberate tendency to replace humans with institutions, up to the point of refusing to recognize personal qualities behind a institutional label, even in cases where the quality in question is obviously personal. I mean, it's considered normal to refuse to see, say, judge, as a person with personal qualities and human flaws, who personally makes a decision about another human's life. American society is educated to treat judge as a judge, period. And contrary to what one may think, this is not something special to judges due to their "special" role in society, but a general tendency to de- personalize and outsource to a institution anything of consequence in society. You should not do anything outside of your profession, please hire a specialist. You should not try and fix your kitchen sink, a plumber will do it better. You should not try to protect yourself, there is the police to take care of you. You should not try to decide if anything is right or wrong, there's a judge to do that. You should not have an opinion, there are journalists or maybe politicians to do it for you, you just chose your side and mind your business.

</comment><comment><USER10> The faceless interaction with a Starbucks worker is associated with their freedom to switch between different worksites. In a culture where you have to have a personal relationship with your servants, they have less power to engage in the market. Yes, they're interchangeable to you and to Starbucks, but Starbucks and you are interchangeable to them.

Anyone who works in the service industry can tell you that their customers are terrible. Could you imagine how bad it would be if the proverbial lady demanding to speak to the manager _was_ the manager?

<comment><USER11> It's also associated with the freedom to specialize in an _industry_ , and not just in relationship-specific capital. A Starbucks barista is far more comfortable and effective at making coffee than a jack-of-all-trades personal servant would be, and can also avail herself of expensive machinery to that purpose - so "depersonalization" (which is literally unavoidable - a barista _cannot_ possibly know her customers socially the way we expect of a servant!) comes with very real benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I definitely understand the desire to be served by people you don't have any kind of a personal relationship with, but I don't think it's inherently terrible. I like to keep my business/transactional and personal relationships separate as much as possible.

Purely transactional relationships have clearly defined rules - I pick my food on DoorDash's app, someone delivers it, I pay and tip. Done. Once the relationship becomes personal, any request becomes more complicated than just a transaction. This definitely applies at work - it's weird that I have to build up and use social capital within an organization in order to get things done. It's an inefficient system of distributing resources (charming/friendly people get what they need, instead of everyone optimizing for what's best for the business), and if I don't have the social capital, it can be uncomfortable to ask for the things I need to do my job.

I think there's something to be said for a hard separation of the personal and professional/transactional, though obviously that total separation isn't possible in real life.

</comment><comment><USER5> _It's not obvious, then, why "inverse Confucianism" has taken hold._

Probably at least in part because humans tend to actively reinforce pecking order. Institutions will let you escape it.

Humans will actively seek to put you back in your "place" and maintain the status quo where they are socially superior to you.

If you graduate college and get a better job, the college is okay with that. So is society, so long as you pay your student loans.

But mentors, masters, etc want to remain _above_ you, even if they have to tear you down to keep their superior position. And it's really poisonous, insidious stuff to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER13> The reason hierarchical relationships always seem to exist in the context of an organization, is that that's why civilization invented organizations in the first place. To mediate and de-personalize power.

To get large-scale things done in the world, some people need to make plans and other people need to carry them out. And the last 5000 years of civilization has been an exercise in defining exactly how people are expected to do that.

In a fully developed civilization (which we are, at least, approaching) power dynamics between people are always contained in an institutional framework with explicit limits and rights. Otherwise, power tends to get abused.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was born in Indonesia. In here most (if not all) of middle class in big cities have live in servants. The servants came from rural areas of the country where opportunity to work is low. Some of their families in rural areas might have a small land, but still not enough to be used as a farm.

There are some horror stories on masters abusing their servants, but my family treated our live in servants well though we are not by any means rich. Most of the work for the servants are light such as cooking, washing clothes, watering plants, helping moms taking care of the babies, etc, and they can do whatever they want, watch TV in their own room or in our lounge, etc.

Inequality? Sure. That is one thing that I can't fix. But one thing for sure that I know. Most of our servants like working with us, and actually do not want to choose other jobs or work for other families despite higher pay. Average tenure of our servants were about 4 - 5 years. Our longest servant has been with us before before I was born (I am 32).

</comment><comment><USER15> How anybody can think that some form of servitude under a human master is more "likely to be human-friendly" is just beyond me... If this guy wants to be somebody's property, and given a "flogging for good measure" then by all means, but stay the hell away from me.

</comment><comment><USER16> 'What individualism has bought us is not the end of servitude, but merely the cloaking of masters.'

A really provocative and intriguing article. I'm not sure if I agree with all of it, but I do notice that some Americans are myopic to any description of freedom that cannot be expressed as an arrangement between two supposedly free economic actors. For example, some Americans are particularly resistant to describing the relationship between a boss and his or her subordinates as inequitable and potentially exploitative, even though a boss can sometimes exert more control over an employee's life than the state can.

<comment><USER10> You can change your boss, unless there's something seriously wrong with the local labor market. Your boss' highest threat? They can change you. Unless you are a farmhand in the middle of the Great Depression that's pretty fair.

<comment><USER17> The ability to move between lots of autocratic states wouldn't be seen as freedom. The most probable result of your decision to move around in the local labor market is that you just end up under another boss who restricts your freedom.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure how you would enforce freedom of movement if every country in the world was autocratic, but if that happened somehow then one of the countries could simply become free and take all of the best people from every other country. Sure if every employer was wordlessly conspiring to torture their employees for no reason things would be pretty bad, but that's not what happens.

<comment><USER18> You're making it sound a lot nicer than it actually is. Few issues are: you don't know if you're going to get a good boss before accepting the job, your boss can change attitude with no notice, power dynamics are impossible to ignore, your boss can fire you for no reason much of the the US, very difficult to know company culture without knowing insiders, you get fired and your life becomes significantly more difficult while your employer is mildly inconvenienced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Weird conclusion. The best managers/masters tend to be predictable. Institutions by their nature have norms that enforce this. It's not even close to the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Institutions, rather than individuals, as masters, makes the master - <USER2> relationship far more consensual. You choose to serve others in the context of a job, and when that job's over, they no longer have any power over you.

A personal master servant relationship carries over to places where the servant may not consent to. It's a personal relationship, meaning it encompasses your entire person. It's far harder shed that relationship than it is a job.

Making the master role institutional, and one where the person filling it is interchangeable, also means that it's meritocratic. Anyone can fill the master's role, because it's ultimately about how useful they can be in that role (e.g. by spending more money), rather than about them having a personal status of 'master', which they need not contribute value to maintain.

</comment><comment><USER21> > we've settled on the greater of the two evils

in retrospect it'll've been the smoothest option for our eventual transition to submitting to algorithm/machine bosses. first get comfortable submitting to humans acting like machines, then replace them with machines.

</comment><comment><USER22> > this is really a case of Nietzschean slave morality run amok. Individualism > isn't about freedom so much as it is envy of the powerful and dominant. We > therefore have a strong instinct to pull down anyone who's in a position of > personal authority, but this instinct doesn't care about domination that > doesn't appear to be done by a human-shaped agent.

This is also known as the crab mentality. If you try to pull just one crab out of a pot, the others will grab on mercilessly, until the first crab's legs are ripped off.

</comment><comment><USER23> Um. Bullying poor neighbors is how we solve elder n childcare. Bullying Bangladesh n India is how we solve hard manual labor. How does the author imagine singapore maintain all that greenery? Or how is the place kept clean? Or how can the people below median income afford to have kids(do u know how much a flat with 2 bedrooms cost here?)..or pay for their parents' healthcare?

<comment><USER23> Without the maids. Retirement in singapore probably generally wouldn't work. Elder care is basically a combination of legal threats to the next generation to financially support their parents, maids and low living costs(in terms of public healthcare, food and transport).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> People prefer the rule of law to the rule of a man

</comment><comment><USER25> > Individualism isn't about freedom so much as it is envy of the powerful and > dominant

How does individualism, "the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual", imply envy? That's just a weird non-sequitur assertion.

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel Ike the feeling of being served on our society has everything to do with economic equality. There are professions that pay more or less, and people with professions that pay more are able to afford services that people with lesser paying professions can provide. Using words like "profession" and "service" tend to imply that these are normal, usual things that happen in "free" societies, a.k.a. capitalistic societies. If I'm not mistaken, this is essentially the exploitation of the working class that Marx was talking about.

If everyone earned the same living, then there would be very little serving happening, because everyone's time is effectively worth the same amount, and thus it wouldn't make sense to give away all your money to people to perform services for you that you could have done yourself if you didn't have a job.

The reason that people serve other people in our society is that we're unequal, and there are socio-economic reasons for that. I believe it has more to do with economic inequality than Nietzchean slave morality.

<comment><USER26> "If everyone earned the same living, then there would be very little serving happening"

So, if lawyers and surgeons' compensation were similar, lawyers would do their own operations, and surgeons would represent themselves in court?

You seem to be arguing that, if all specialisations have equal market value, then there are no/few gains from specialisation.

<comment><USER8> No. And that's a good point. But:

1\. I don't think that fits into the category of servitude that the other was talking about. 2\. Why would one put in the effort required to go through specialized school and certification processes if there wasn't a huge payout waiting for them? I think only the most passionate would bother.

<comment><USER26> Re #1, you're probably right, they were probably talking about serving where the one doing the serving is less well off that the customer. But in a world where everyone earns the same, this category by definition doesn't exist. So it's not a meaningful point.

I may be wrong about what they meant, in which case the preceding paragraph may be attacking a straw man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like the job Nathan Robinson did on this topic with his essay "Service With A Smile" at Current Affairs:

> In every restaurant, except a buffet (and I am not pro-buffet), I feel like > an aristocrat who pays someone to put on his clothes for him. I know I can > supposedly mitigate this by being polite and tipping well. But it's the > whole concept of paying someone to feed me that I don't like. Yes, > obviously, it's better if I pay someone well than if I pay them badly, and > better to be appreciative than abusive. It doesn't make any more of a > difference to my gut reaction, though, any more than it would if I found out > that the millionaire who pays a valet to tie his cravats for him is > extremely generous in compensating said valet.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you smile and ask the barista how their day is, then the interaction isn't faceless.

<comment><USER29> Then they smile, and say 'great, thankyou!', except actually their dog died the other day, and they're just saying that because their manager is right there, and the company policy is 'service with a smile'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> save this.</comment>


To Heil, or Not to Heil, When Traveling in the Third Reich - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2018/10/10/to-heil-or-not-to-heil-when-traveling-in-the-third-reich/ <comment><USER4> Reminds me of that extraordinary piece of travel writing, _A Time of Gifts_ , in which the author is walking across Germany and Austria in 1933. He encounters the Brownshirts only once as a minor incident, but the foreshadowing somehow hangs across the whole book's view of this part of the world as an Eden before its collapse.

But see also [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times- they...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they-could- have-had) on Wallis Simpson; it should not really be surprising that the British aristocracy were often Fascist sympathisers and that a lot of the history has been whitewashed since and during the war.

I had no idea there were foreign visitors in Dachau before the war, but then it was merely a brutal prison or a "concentration camp" in a pattern deployed by many countries against their colonial victims.

A useful reminder that Fascism had absolutely tremendous advertising - <USER2> Hugo Boss uniforms, the logos, the slogans, the films, the rallies, etc - <USER3> tapped into exactly the sort of mass movement belonging and hostility to the Other that really galvanises people.

> Did the parents of these fresh-faced young people not read newspapers? Or > was it that they simply thought of Nazi violence and philistinism as an > irrelevant sideshow compared with the joys of Schiller and Schubert?

Depends which papers they were reading. The famous Daily Mail "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" article by Viscount Rothermere was in 1934.

<comment><USER5> Fascism had some other key attributes: violence and dehumanizing rhetoric against opposition to keep them from having a voice in government was likely the biggest one.

<comment><USER6> This sounds strangely familiar in relation to what is occurring within the USA. I wonder if the same play book is being used today in my country, the USA.

<comment><USER7> > _This sounds strangely familiar in relation to what is occurring within the > USA..._

Not quite. There are no concentration camps in the United States. And we don't have guys out executing jews and other minorities while trashing their temples and churches.

EDIT: Oops. iamdave below makes a very good point that people _are_ out executing minorities and attacking their churches. (In fact, a few enterprising numbskulls are out doing both at the same time.) That was a miss on my part. Extremely bad example.

<comment><USER8> _And we don 't have guys out executing jews and other minorities while trashing their temples and churches._

How far off the mark would I be in guessing you're not a minority in America?

Jason Van Dyke, a Chicago police officer was just convicted of 2nd degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery with a fire arm of a black man in a time when more and more black Americans feel scared for their lives simply being in the presence of a police officer (I happen to be one of them) and Dylan Roof was given the death penalty for killing nine black parishioners at a church in my hometown of Charleston South Carolina three years ago.

These are by no means the only examples I can give you.

<comment><USER9> This year in Chicago there has been 457 (around 350 blacks) killed, how many have the police killed in Chicago? 4 this year. The crime rate is the biggest problem not the cops in minority areas.

I understand the fear of cops and I do believe in self policing but for the black community the biggest problem is rampant crime.

<comment><USER10> What do you believe causes the rampant crime?

<comment><USER11> Poverty[1]:

For the period 2008-12-

\- Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000).

\- Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8-2.5 per 1,000).

\- The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels.

\- Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000).

\- Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000).

\- Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000).

[1] [https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137](https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137)

<comment><USER10> I agree, in part.

According to the latest government data, as of 2017 21% of African Americans and 18% of Hispanics are living in poverty. Only about 10% of Asian Americans and 8.7% of whites are in poverty.[1]

To what would you attribute the racial disparity in poverty rates?

(Naturally I have an opinion, but I'm withholding it because I want to understand your approach to this.)

[1] [http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty- statistics.html](http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html) citing [https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-26...](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.html)

<comment><USER11> > To what would you attribute the racial disparity in poverty rates?

It's no secret that blacks and latinos in the US have been the victims of widespread institutional racism. I recommend 'The Case for Reparations' by Ta- Nehisi Coates for a thorough breakdown on the topic.[1]

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the- cas...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for- reparations/361631/)

<comment><USER10> Heh. You got me. I thought this was gonna go in a different direction based on your initial post.

I agree completely :).

Unfortunately, I think the solution is likely as cyclical as the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Sarah Norton was eventually caught vandalizing a publicly displayed copy of > Julius Streicher's virulent anti-Jewish newspaper Der Stürmer and sent home > by the Foreign Office. Her mother's reaction was better than expected: "Well > done, despite your nuisance value. I hope you learned the language." She had > in fact learned it well enough to be employed at Bletchley Park during the > war.

Outstanding part of a great read.

</comment><comment><USER13> Despite 4,230 words the article never really addresses the title and instead wanders off on verbose tangents.

So I had to go and search for the answer myself.

No, it was not mandatory to perform the salute if you were not a German citizen. Yes, it was often easier to do so; the Portuguese Consul General was beaten by SA thugs when he failed to do so, but couldn't be charged with any offence.

<comment><USER14> The article talks about it a lot. The question wasn't what the law said but whether you should or not, especially if you weren't a supporter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also highly recommended: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_%282008_film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_%282008_film%29)

</comment><comment><USER16> One thing that stands out to me in the photograph at the top of the piece is that so many of the crowd are smiling. I always thought of such salutes as a serious, even fearful, thing.

I know it is fiction but The Man in the High Castle on Amazon certainly has everyone looking very grave when giving the salute.

<comment><USER17> In the 1920s, Americans used that salute in the Pledge of Allegiance. It was called the Bellamy salute.

It's mind warping to realize, but every symbol and word that we associate with the Nazis and Fascists had innocuous connotations until the Nazis corrupted them.

The swastika, the fasces, the Hugo Boss uniforms, the salutes, the word "Nazi" (nickname for rural Bavarians), the word "Fascist" (Sicilian labor militants before WW1), the names Mussolini, Adolf, Hitler, none of those things had any scary associations before that era.

<comment><USER18> Some of the American symbolism user by the Nazis is actually a bit more than coincidental: this New Yorker article details a lot of the American racism that inspired Hitler [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how- american-r...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american- racism-influenced-hitler)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My (American) grandfather owned a pair of lederhosen. I knew he had gotten them in Germany, but it was twenty years from when I learned about the lederhosen to the time it occurred to me to ask _when_ he had been in Germany. It turns out that the answer was "early 1930s," and that there are droll family stories about how well he passed for a young German. Apparently he'd spent a considerable amount of time there after university, and developed a firm command of the language. I was met with shrugs from my parents' generation when I pointed out how terribly bad that looked. Apparently it was far from unusual. Much like the young English people in the article, he was left-leaning and from a well-to-do family, and had been sent to Germany for perspective.

So this article touched a nerve -- I was already distrubed by the idea of my grandfather blithely roaming around Germany in the early '30s, and by my family's willingness to treat the whole thing as a trifling bit of youthful tourism -- now I'm confronted with the mental image of him heil-ing his way across the country and dropping in to Hitler's favorite tea room.

<comment><USER20> Why does it look bad?

<comment><USER19> Because going to Germany in the 1930s to soak up the kultur implies some pretty unsavory sympathies. At best, this puts him in the company of a great many other anglophones who allowed themselves to be duped by the regime into thinking that its intentions were basically civilized. It's not quite Wodehouse broadcasting from internment bad, but it doesn't look good.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Eh Germany had the reputation of being into healthy natural lifestyle type stuff; vegetarianism/special diets, exercise and fresh air, homeopathic medicine and so forth. It was kind of the California of Europe in that regard. The Nazis did pick up the clean living aesthetic but it was more about being German than about being fascist

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Britain had its own fascist party, the British Union of Fascists, formed and led by Oswald Mosley. On 6 October 1936 (just two days after his blackshirts came off rather the worse in the 'Battle of Cable Street'), he married Unity's sister Diana, at a private ceremony in Goebbels' home. Hitler attended both this and an extravagant follow-up celebration hosted by Göring and intended to upstage Goebbels. During these events, it became clear to everyone present, and especially Mosley, that his bride was infatuated with Hitler, something that Mosley was not, of course, particularly thrilled about.

At least three of Unity's and Diana's sisters (Jessica, Nancy and Deborah) leaned left to a greater or lesser extent.

</comment><comment><USER22> Curiously the actual origins of the salute have been lost to history:

[https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/people-politics/where- did-t...](https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/people-politics/where-did-the-nazi- salute-come-from/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm told Unity Mitford patted my dad on his head when he was a baby, to the horror of those around. This was on a ferry on the West Coast of Scotland, where she went after her failed suicide attempt.

This means I always win at "6 Degrees of Hitler".

</comment><comment><USER24> This always fascinated me. What happened to foreign nationals who found themselves 'stuck' in Berlin when Hitler invaded Poland? Were they allowed to leave? Where they imprisoned?

<comment><USER25> If they were the right heritage and class, they were fine. Of course, that was at the beginning of the war. Near the end, when Germany knew it was losing the war, it would not have helped a foreign national.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Regarding the Mitfords, Wikipedia notes:

" _The sisters, six daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and Sydney Bowles, became celebrated, and at times scandalous, figures that were caricatured, according to The Times journalist Ben Macintyre, as "Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover; Nancy the Novelist; Deborah the Duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur"._"</comment>


Founder Stories - <AUTHOR> http://www.danecjensen.com/2012/10/20/founder-stories.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Like I say at the end of the article any feedback is appreciated. Please leave it here in the comments of the hacker news post.</comment>


Show HN: Eefgilm - a gem for organizing your Gemfile - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/enilsen16/Eefgilm

<comment><USER2> What causes the change in colour of the additional arguments (:git, :require) and the 'end' keyword in the demo gif? Not really important but the difference stood out and made what is otherwise a useful comparison more complicated.

Other than that, looks good - I've seen some pretty awful Gemfiles in my time. I try to keep them well-formatted with useful comments (some gem names aren't particularly descriptive) so I don't need if for my current projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like it has something to do with the how that particular syntax highlighting was done. I actually just removed the gif because it also doesn't reflect Eefgilm's newest additions.

Yes, We put the gem together to help clean up terrible gemfiles. There are currently over 400,000 gemfiles on Github that are using `source [http://rubygems.org`](http://rubygems.org`) instead of `source [https://rubygems.org`](https://rubygems.org`). Eefgilm also works great for new projects.

<comment><USER3> So, you are going to write a script that uses the GitHub API to walk the list of [http://rubygems](http://rubygems) repos, and open an issue on each one, suggesting the use of Eefgilm, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats the plan :P</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Papers on Convolutional Neural Networks Every Data Scientist Should Read - <AUTHOR> https://lionbridge.ai/articles/5-papers-on-cnns-every-data-scientist-should-read/ <comment><USER2> Wow, this is a completely random list of 5 papers that mention convnets. Most likely generated for SEO purposes by some bad algorithm. The whole website looks like a domain parking page. Shady.</comment>