Attorneys General in Six States Are Now Investigating Facebook's Data Practices - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/report-attorneys-general-in-six-states-are-now-investi-1832294726 <comment><USER2> I really hope this leads to a reform in the whole EULA thing. I've always really disliked that they have a fifty page document outlining all the minutia in a legal language that I personally don't know a lot about.

You could argue that I should thoroughly read everything, and that's fair enough for stuff I do at home, but very often I have to install things for work, and if I say that I need to spend four hours consulting with the legal team to install Microsoft Office, I honestly feel that they'll think I'm just trying to waste time.

<comment><USER3> While I completely agree, I think there's a more fundamental problem.

Imagine Facebook's T&C said, _" We will spy on you in any and all ways we can imagine. We will take every piece of information we can possibly collect about you and use it however we want. You have no rights and if you ever sue us, you agree that we win by default. We have the right to add whatever we want to this agreement, whenever we want with immediate effect."_ How many people would read it, and decide not to install their software or use their site? For sure some might, but for the most part I think people would mostly just shrug and click next.

Many people don't seem to understand the value of things unless it hits them directly in the wallet.

<comment><USER4> The "we win by default" phrase is also in some scummier payday loan contracts and is apparently legal.

But I don't think it should be legal to waive your court rights like that.

<comment><USER2> I remember during the Equifax breach of 2017, they put that clause in there if you signed up for their credit monitoring system.

I always thought those clauses were funny...would that hold up anywhere else?

"Hey, sorry I shot you...here's a bandaid, now you can't sue me!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a New Yorker who commutes to the Bay Area once a month (and grew up there), there is a distinct East Coast-West Coast divide on this issue. In the Bay Area, there is recognition of a problem but a sense that Facebook is invincible. In New York, there is productive outrage.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if this is simply tied to history, due to the nature of American expansion the Atlantic and Midwestern cities have a longer history of corporations and have more history of tackling large controversial industry (railroads, banks, even baseball!), off the top of my head I can't think of a history defining action vs. a West coast based industry (probably just lack of knowledge on my part), but it seems big tech will be the first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd rather they go after Equifax first, thanks.

<comment><USER8> I disagree.

Firstly, Facebook is much more dangerous than Equifax. Yeah, Equifax has data on hundreds of millions of US citizens, plus a few million more in other countries. Facebook has all that data plus MORE on some 2 billion people.

Secondly, why can't it be both? :)

<comment><USER9> Equifax can directly affect people's mortgage rate and everyone in the United States is forced to interact with them. US political figures can be concerned with both, but I'd say Equifax is a higher priority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Like all the scandals FB is involved in, nothing will happen. Sure, lots of hand wringing and talk about breaking them up will surface again like it always does. Nothing that will really put a kink in their revenues or get them to change anything about how they handle user's privacy will happen.

</comment><comment><USER10> And who has actually been materially harmed by using Facebook, because of Facebook's actions? No one, as far as I can tell.

> investigation of "existing allegations," though the report does not mention > what those are.

Okay...

</comment><comment><USER8> At some point in the future, we'll be looking back at news like this in one of two ways.

Either with fondness - this was how we reformed companies like Facebook and Google and their rampant invasion of privacy for the individual!

Or we'll not look back at it at all. Because they'll win, enslave us all, and have the Ministry of Truth rewrite it out of history entirely.

EDIT: fixed failed 1984 reference ;)

<comment><USER11> our reality seems closer to Brave New World than 1984

<comment><USER12> Different impulses for different people. Basically, both are actively happening (1984: 'The Party', realities built on lies and tightly controlled information, etc.), and on Brave New World, which is something that we see in contemporary social media, the opiate of the masses.

I've noted how much an effect marketing has had in my own cultural leaning and decision making process throughout my life of late, and I'm quite blown away. It seems that the only information source that I can read that isn't immediately trying to shape my opinion about something to my detriment are actual scientific papers, at this point.

It's quite exhausting to be informed.

<comment><USER11> interesting and I agree with you. sorry if my original comment sounded like I was correcting you or something. I had my mind made up after watching an actual 90 mins panel[1] on this subject - then after watching I re-read both books and since then thought I finally had my answer to this annoying question. that is until you just tore it all up again with more facts I hadn't considered :)

the problem you describe with reading feels very familiar. I haven't had time to read any fiction for 20 years and only focused on papers (or stuff that I felt had some kind of immediate value to my career). The only pleasure I allowed myself was social media, shallow type of blogs and regurgitated opinions from books that were published not longer than the previous 2 years.

then one day I noticed something was missing in my life and I missed the fiction of my childhood. I then switched to reading only old books (nothing published after 1970 preferably before WWII ...) and the more old stuff I read the less I wanted to write. I felt there is no point in reading new books because everything that could have ever been said has already been said. (NNTaleb pointed me to this "fact" in Antifragile which also triggered my abstinence from anything new). I used to write a lot of blogs before too but after reading old things I realize I have little to add to the conversation (and if I do it's just diluting the pool of good existing content).

maybe we're just all totally overloaded from the amount of data our brains are being asked to process these days.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31CcclqEiZw&t=1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31CcclqEiZw&t=1s)

<comment><USER8> That video looks intriguing, I'll check it out!

I just wanted to add though, that I think you should never stop writing and adding to the conversation. As a species, we know what we consider to be a lot of stuff. But really, we objectively have no freaking clue about much of anything. Take any subject, ask "why?" enough times, and you'll reach a dead end. In most cases, you'll reach that dead end surprisingly fast.

Rehashing knowledge may not be "useful" to us as a collective, but if it eventually leads to you (or someone reading your work) discovering a fresh new insight, then it was absolutely worth it.

Another example. There's a lot of art that is being produced, TODAY, that is incredibly fresh. The kind of stuff that is taking advantage of the exciting new mediums we've got at our disposal, encouraging a whole new generation of people to challenge themselves and others. I'm sure if a lot of those creatives had really stepped back and assessed the landscape of what's been done before, they would have resolved that "it's all been done" and they shouldn't even bother.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Future of the Tablet, and It Isn't the iPad 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1736602/the-future-of-the-tablet-and-it-isn-t-the-ipad-2?partner=homepage_newsletter <comment> brown9-2 _This is why the Xoom is so intriguing. Motorola and Google are two companies that have proven their ability to see around the corner and they have made it much easier for developers to get applications to market than Apple has with the iPad._

Really, Motorola has proven their ability to see around the corner? What have they been successful with since the Razr? Seems like the Droid is a success much more due to the Android OS than anything related to Motorola's manufacturing of it.

Also not sure why anyone would lump Motorola in with Google as having "made it much easier for developers to get applications to market".

Besides, the innovative features that the author mentions the Kno having, like split-screen functionality or things for note-taking - who's to say future versions of iOS couldn't incorporate those? This doesn't need to be a winner take all, one-shot market.

<comment><USER3> _Seems like the Droid is a success much more due to the Android OS than anything related to Motorola's manufacturing of it._

More like Verizon's positioning and the fact that at the time of its release, the Droid was the most advanced consumer Android phone around and the first credible iPhone competitor.

Before that there was pretty much just the weaksauce T-Mobile G1, and Android was really nothing to write home about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really? The future of the Table is 'more screens', and an added pen? I thought most people had finally learned that throwing more hardware at something doesn't necessarily improve the overall experience. Apple wins because they try to do more with _less_ hardware.

<comment><USER5> While I don't entirely agree with the article, I do think that the future of manufacturing is more automated, and because of that we may see refined products for specific tasks. Perhaps you could say there is a bit of 37signals mentality in having a simple, clean tool for each job rather than a multi- tasking OS. I don't see anything wrong with this, as products like the iPad would probably represent most consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Consider the tablet OSs competing with each other these days: iOS, Android, BBOS, Windows 7 and webOS. Out of those, only Android is built from the ground up to be customizable to any meaningful degree and I fully expect that within a year we'll see a dizzing array of tablet form factors with Android: 7" screens, 10" screens, dual screens, netbook-like clamshells, slide-out keyboards, thin glass slabs and who knows what else. A 10-12" Android clamshell is perfectly cable of replacing the majority of netbooks.

Expecting everybody to use the same identical glass slab is no different from expecting everybody to use the same phone, same TV or the same car model. It's not going to happen and Android is the only OS cable of the flexibility required to meet this demand.

</comment><comment><USER7> "The future of the tablet" isn't bolting a second screen on it to mimic a physical methaphor - aka the book. As PG said, flexibility is key, not replicating existing technology with digital artifacts. Now, the Kno does some interesting things in software, but shackling that to two 14" displays sounds like a recipe for failure. (And it would barely make it through a day of class on that battery).

<comment><USER8> Also... it seems to me that using 2 screens just to overcome the current modal nature of tablet applications (that have been upscaled from smaller devices where modal makes more sense) isn't the way to solve the multi-tasking problem (reading and writing at the same time).

An iPad is still good for that, the screen real estate is enough to do the job... once the slate computer gets beyond a certain size the modality is what needs addressing.

Perhaps move to a, erm... windows approach or more likely... a tiling app manager so that 2 apps run side-by-side on the existing single tablet.

Seems weird to overcome a current (and probably temporary) software constraint with a hardware approach.

<comment><USER9> Even with a 27" monitor I choose to use second monitor, and when I am cross referencing two documents I will put one on each monitor. The 27" could easily hold both documents, but it just feels so much easier to use two screens.

It seems pretty unlikely that two screens on a tablet would be viable in terms of power and cost, but I can totally see it being a superior experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Kno "...emphasizes the ability to take notes and seamlessly integrate your own thought with the information that you are reading."

That's a software thing, not a hardware thing. The iPad can certainly allow this kind of functionality in an app. The quoted statement sounds like it's celebrating purpose-built hardware rather than general purpose touch computing.

Having these features in every ebook reader would certainly be a benefit.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's the first thing I found after googling for Kno besides their website: [http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110221/exclusive-kno-student- ta...](http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110221/exclusive-kno-student-tablet-start- up-in-talks-to-sell-off-tablet-part-of-business/)

</comment><comment><USER12> PG said it best: <http://www.paulgraham.com/tablets.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> Er dupe: (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2304779>)

</comment><comment><USER14> As a form factor the future may look more like the Kindle than the iPad, Xoom, etc. The killer application for tablet size devices remains the reader and once their economics approaches that of pocket calculators (or MP3 players or digital cameras or other bulk produced electronics), the hardware cost will be competitive with paper in three ring binders.

The tablets based on the iPad model are akin to graphing calculators - <USER2> is sophisticated functionality added, but it doesn't really offer improved performance on the tasks for which most people require.

</comment><comment><USER15> The FC EXPERT BLOGGER fails to distinguish between the hardware and software part of the tablet and is confused by it.

Moreover, he didn't explain why he thinks copying iPad is a doomed strategy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very poor article.

Claiming you can do truly multitasking because it has 2 displays is ridiculous, but that's not the biggest issue in my opinion. More of a problem is that whole vision of this tablet is made on old technologies presented in new form. Ooh, they also added pen!

Sort of like best use of radio, when it appeared as new media, would be reading newspapers.

<comment><USER3> To me, a pen is an important addition. A tablet should be more than just point and grunt; it should be a tool of expression as well as consumption.

I bought a Tablet PC -- a $1500 item at the time -- so I could do digital art with it. I'd like to do the same with a lightweight and cheap device with a nice battery. Right now I can't because all tablets (except certain Windows tablet PCs) are designed around point-and-grunt (and no, those little rubber styluses aren't good enough).

<comment><USER17> A pen-tablet is suited for applications which are too complex for an iPad and too simple for a netbook. That's a ridiculously thin niche.

Tablet + pen = 2 hands busy, you've lost most of your comfort and mobility advantage compared to a netbook user.

For the narrow niche of applications which require drawing on the screen, you can simply design a capacitive pen for iPad; you'll never amortize the development of a dedicated hardware, let alone OS.

<comment><USER3> _Tablet + pen = 2 hands busy, you've lost most of your comfort and mobility advantage compared to a netbook user._

There are tablet PCs which accept both pen and finger input.

And you pretty much need a Wacom-style digitizer in order to register pen strokes with the precision and pressure sensitivity required of art or handwriting applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think I agree with that. Usage outside of what was mentioned is possible with the apps running on the tablet. Pens can already be bought as accessories.

</comment><comment><USER19> The dual display is sorta neat, and makes me wonder if there's a way to link two iPads via Bluetooth to achieve the same effect?

</comment><comment><USER20> tl;dr:

<comment><USER20> he, oops.. that was supposed to be a snarky "that article was a long-winded way to say pretty much nothing". Starting at "tablets are basically expensive video game consoles" (really?!) with the conclusion "Rather, the tablet has the potential to improve our productivity." (wow!)

If your productivity isn't improved with the iPad (or any current gen tablets) then you're doing it wrong.</comment></comment>


Protecting against resource-heavy ads in Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chrome.html <comment><AUTHOR> Key quotes:

"In order to save our users' batteries and data plans, and provide them with a good experience on the web, Chrome will limit the resources a display ad can use before the user interacts with the ad. When an ad reaches its limit, the ad's frame will navigate to an error page, informing the user that the ad has used too many resources."

"Chrome is setting the thresholds to 4MB of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30 second period, or 60 seconds of total CPU usage. While only 0.3% of ads exceed this threshold today, they account for 27% of network data used by ads and 28% of all ad CPU usage."</comment>


Speed Hall of Fame - <AUTHOR> http://www.chromium.org/developers/speed-hall-of-fame

<comment><USER2> Some of the dates are 2012 when they should be 2014.

This suggests the site isn't even read by the people named?</comment>


The Economics of Bananas - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/the-economics-of-bananas/

<comment><USER2> "Others may thank their lucky stars that free markets are able to deliver a tasty, healthy, peel-intact fruit to their corner stores at very affordable prices."

Free markets != banana republics (the OP is aware of this).</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for incubator interior ideas - <AUTHOR>

Dear Hackernews,
I'm in charge of decorating and designing an incubator in Amsterdam. I have  full flexibility in how I want to decorate, and we're on a small budget (2.500-5.000) as we want to keep scrappy, but we foruntately already have some desks and office chairs. The space is about 250 m2 and is one big room with large white walls. There is room enough for a lounge-like-space in one of the corners.
We really would like to create a Google-like-atmosphere, so crazy and wild ideas are more than welcome. To give you an idea of the kind of ideas I'm dying to find more of: We have decided to paint one of the walls with ideapaint (http://ideapaint.com). We're also hooking up webcams to our website/flatscreens which are visible from the outside so people can see the work in progress.
Any ideas, tips or recommendations are highly appreciated, thanks!
Cheers, Edo. <comment><USER2> have a computer in the front lobby with skype open. Visitors can pick the person they're here to visit and call their desk from this terminal.</comment>


Ask HN: can one post to a blog without opening a browser? - <AUTHOR>

Right now I post mostly by email, but sometimes I don't want to open up a browser and wait for Gmail.  Is there a way to a blog directly from the desktop? <comment><USER2> Out of my reductionist tendencies, I would say - can this question be reduced to "Can one post to a blog without opening an application?"

If one would like to not open an application (browser) to be able to blog what would make them like opening another application to be able to blog without opening the browser?

Unless that alternative application can bring more user friendly utility than blogging directly through the browser.

I am a web technology neophyte, so wouldnt' know if such a thing exists, but if there is ONE application (could be desktop a la Ipad or web based) that can simultaneously post on facebook, twitter, techcrunch, posterous, myspace, orkut, etc I think it would save a lot of effort to lots of people who like to post on multiple blogs, etc. If you can save a lot of effort to a lot of people, you got a product with customers.

If it can have a selectability feature if one wants to post just on one of these social/blogging entities, still better.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> telnet your.mail.server 25

HELO your.domain

MAIL FROM: firstname.lastname@example.com

RCPT TO: firstname.lastname@example.com

DATA

Subject: Post title

[ press Enter twice ]

body of your post

End it with a single . on a line of its own.

QUIT

</comment><comment><USER4> I just started writing my own Weblog-oriented CMS this week, called Lump, and started using it at blogstrapping.com -- and not only can I post to it without opening a browser, but there is actually no way to post to it with the browser at all. I write up an entry using Markdown syntax in a text file, then use scp to stick the file in a content directory. Lump picks it up automatically.

I don't imagine many people would want to use Lump in its present state of simplicity, but it certainly shows that it's possible to post to a Weblog without having to open a browser.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's various desktop blogging clients you could use.

w.bloggar is one I've used in the past: <http://wbloggar.com/>

and another random one: <http://alchemii.net/bleezer/>

</comment><comment><USER6> On MacOS X, I used to use a program called MarsEdit. See <http://www.red- sweater.com/marsedit/>

</comment><comment><USER7> try google command line tools. <http://code.google.com/p/googlecl/>

example: $ google blogger post --title "foo" "command line posting"</comment>


The Key War on Terror Propaganda Tool: Only Western Victims Are Acknowledged - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2015/04/24/central-war-terror-propaganda-tool-western-victims-acknowledged/ <comment><USER2> " _Good evening. Here is the news for Parrots:

No parrots were involved in an accident on the M-1 today when a Lorry carrying High-octane fuel was in collison with a bollard. That's a BOLLARD and_ NOT _a PARROT. A spokesman for parrots said he was glad no parrots were involved._ ""

[http://www.montypython.net/scripts/news.php](http://www.montypython.net/scripts/news.php)

<comment><USER3> _Attaches a wallet to my HN account and bitcoins your comment_

One day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are shorter videos from Chomsky on this, but this one breaks it down thoroughly [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvZRsdHgxgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvZRsdHgxgA)

The truth is, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq are colonial wars against insubordinate populations. We extract resources from those countries and their neighbors. When someone stands in the way they have to be punished so that other countries stay in line.

There is little hope of winning hearts and minds with all the civilians that have to be killed. The main goal is to punish and make examples of insubordination. The West merely needs to scare them and their neighbors to get its way within a few decades. It worked well enough with Vietnam.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is the author seriously suggesting to view deliberate terror attacks against civilians the same as military strikes (drones or planes — I don't see a difference) performed against enemy combatants, by people who are trying to minimize civilian casualties as far as they can?

Yes, it's horrible that sometimes your only choice to kill a high-ranking terrorist is by taking innocent lives with him. But granted how many innocent lives you can save by it, it's more horrible not to do it.

There's never been a war where a victory didn't cost civilian lives, regardless how just was the cost. I really wish western governments would talk about this openly and have a serious discussion about these issues though, instead of awkwardly trying to hush it.

<comment><USER6> > Is the author seriously suggesting to view deliberate terror attacks against > civilians the same as military strikes (drones or planes — I don't see a > difference) performed against enemy combatants, by people who are trying to > minimize civilian casualties as far as they can?

Why not?

Let's that the countries of Xanadu ("X") and Yalü ("Y") are at war with each other. Isn't it meaningful to compare the number of X and Y citizens killed by each other, regardless of how it is carried out?

If X says "We're careful to minimize killing Y's civilians," shouldn't we judge X by how successful it is in minimizing those casualties? Or should we say, "Oh, well, X is trying their best, so no need to keep count or compare the counts."

Quite obviously "terror" attacks and "military" attacks are different things. But it's perfectly legitimate to compare them by the number of civilians killed. It shouldn't be the only way in which we compare them. But it's still informative to compare them.

<comment><USER7> > Why not?

Intention does matter. A military which aims to reduce civilian casualties and fails is less evil than a terrorist who deliberately targets civilians.

<comment><USER8> We have statistics. We know the probable outcomes. The man who pushes the button doesn't know if he's going to kill civilians and how many of them in that particular case, but the average number of civilans killed per bomb is well known. He knows that his actions will cause the death of a certain amount of innocents, and still he pushes the button in order to advance the political or military objectives of the entity he belongs to. On the other hand, if terrorists were able to drop bombs on the homes of high ranking army members and politicians of the West from drones travelling at 30 thousand feet and controlled from thousands of miles away, wouldn't they do so? Of course they would. Would that make them better?

<comment><USER5> > The man who pushes the button doesn't know if he's going to kill civilians > and how many of them in that particular case, but the average number of > civilans killed per bomb is well known. He knows that his actions will cause > the death of a certain amount of innocents, and still he pushes the button > in order to advance the political or military objectives of the entity he > belongs to.

This is exactly my original point: his "military objective" is usually to prevent far more civilians from dying in the end.

> Would that make them better?

Attacking officials of opposing force in high-precision strikes instead of civilians? Yes. It actually would make them better, yes. May be not "good", but definitely better. How is this not obvious?

<comment><USER8> No, your original point was that terrorist attacks against civilians are inherently worse than attacks which try to minimize civilian casualties as far as they can. Then you added that civilian casualties are horrible but justifiable when targeting an even more dangerous terrorist.

But you are confusing two aspects that are completely unrelated: the first is a matter of _means_ (how can you wage war), the second of _objectives_ (why you do it). And then you assume that the western justifications can be taken at their face value (we kill to prevent more being killed, no political purpose implied) which is even more naive.

Finally, you seem to admit that having higher precision weapons would make terrorists better people. Maybe, who knows, as good as we are? That was much of my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article seems to imply there is real malice and deliberate intent to deceive the public in the media coverage of civilian victims of Western attacks. This is one explanation, but I don't see conclusive evidence of this in the article.

More probable explanation is that viewing public's sympathy suffers from inherent biases and the media simply follows those biases. It's a well-known fact that media prefers headlines that are more likely to trigger emotional response.

Also non-Western civilian victims have been a lot more frequent and the media has a bias towards reporting events that stand out such as unintentional killing of Western hostages by a drone strike.

(Not claiming this outcome is moral - just saying that it may unfortunately arise without malicious intent on the part of the media)

<comment><USER9> If it were so, if the public were aware of the reality at least in broad strokes, and if the media simply just didn't report on things everybody knew were going on... how would you explain the outcry after the Bataclan shooting that "they attacked us", and "now we're at war" \-- while that same morning, just as every morning in the preceding month, French Mirages rained death on Syria? How would you explain the ludicrous notion that our soldiers and officials, when they are killed on our soil, are victims of terrorism, not casualties of the war we choose to wage?

Perhaps it is because quite to the contrary, the public doesn't think we're at war at all. We're just killing off terrorists who aim to harm us, with surgical, precision strikes.

<comment><USER10> Because the middle east is not "we" while France and the rest of Europe most definitely is "us." And war is going on in Syria, so a death that occurs in the homeland isn't a casualty of war, because the war isn't occurring here. Its over there. Deaths here are caused by terrorism, deaths there are caused by war.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recall considerable press coverage of the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki and his son. Granted, both were US citizens but Muslims -- family originally from Yemen. Many of these issues were raised at that time (2011).

CBS News

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ron-paul-aclu-condemn-anwar- al-a...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ron-paul-aclu-condemn-anwar-al-awlaki- killing/)

NPR

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2011/09/30/140950953/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2011/09/30/140950953/ron-paul-condemns-al-awlakis-killing)

Forbes (sort of)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/09/30/ron-paul- con...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/09/30/ron-paul-condemns- assassination-of-al-awlaki/)

PBS

[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/aclu- cri...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/aclu-criticizes- killing-of-anwar-al-awlaki-a-u-s-citizen-calling-it-a-dangerous- precedent/11813/)

The Atlantic

[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how- team...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama- justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/)

The New York Times carried an editorial by Nasser al-Awlaki, Anwar al-Awlaki's father, on July 17, 2013

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that- kil...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my- grandson.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER12> Would it have received that attention of they weren't US citizens?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's an article about non-western victims of the war on terror: [http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/18/world/asia/pakistan- peshawar-i...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/18/world/asia/pakistan-peshawar- inside-school/)

<comment><USER14> Yeah, but those are victims of the Taliban. The article was about the victims of attacks by Western countries: _" Muslim victims of American and Western violence are completely disappeared."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a long political editorial with no new reporting in it. There are better places to discuss pieces like this than HN.

<comment><USER16> If you have been a techie for many years you would understand that techies are very much united by political engagement and the issues of our time

<comment><USER15> I don't know about "techies", but I've certainly been a member of this community for many years, and I'm pretty sure the guidelines of the site ask us not to post things like this here.

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure those guidelines also ask us not to post comments complaining about how submissions are inappropriate for this site.

<comment><USER18> So... if this post is inappropriate (not sure if it is or isn't) then how are you supposed to correct that?

The post is inappropriate, but it's inappropriate to bring up that fact...

Catch-22...

Edit: Just a quick look but "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports" \- not sure where this falls in "most"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER17> You can voice your concern by flagging the post you deem inappropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find it curious how the only name of a victim cited in this article - is of a westerner!

<comment><USER19> From TFA: "Today, if Nabila or Zubair or many of the civilian victims, if they are watching on TV the president being so remorseful over the killing of a Westerner, what message is that taking?"

<comment><USER14> Fair enough; I was talking about the dead - like their grandmother -, which is who are usually remembered, even in the attacks against westerners.</comment></comment></comment>


Disneyland to Close Due to Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disneyland-close-due-coronavirus-1282529 <comment><USER2> Nice that they will continue to pay cast member employees - good move!</comment>


Stroustrup's Rule and Layering Over Time in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://thefeedbackloop.xyz/stroustrups-rule-and-layering-over-time/ <comment><USER2> Change takes time! This is a great example, as he has specific instances of evolving syntax to describe the same thing, semantically.

The big problem, of course, is that code hangs around. Can you evolve your syntax as people get used to it? Not only are you adding work to your parser, but people who use your language also have to deal with the multiple iterations of the syntax that linger in various codebases. This is one reason I detest dealing with Perl codebases.

Anyhow, as an exercise of evolving syntax while keeping the underlying semantics, I find Reason [1], a new syntactic layer over OCaml, particularly interesting.

[1] [https://facebook.github.io/reason/](https://facebook.github.io/reason/)

<comment><USER3> > Can you evolve your syntax as people get used to it? Not only are you adding > work to your parser, but people who use your language also have to deal with > the multiple iterations of the syntax that linger in various codebases.

Clippy[1] helps a lot in this case, it helps people writting idiomatic Rust and it's updated when new syntaxes introduces new ways to do stuff, so the old one is deprecated _de facto_.

[1] [https://github.com/Manishearth/rust- clippy](https://github.com/Manishearth/rust-clippy)

<comment><USER4> There's actually some interesting discussion about making Clippy suggest ? instead of try: [https://github.com/Manishearth/rust- clippy/issues/1361](https://github.com/Manishearth/rust-clippy/issues/1361)

<comment><USER5> It would make sense to leave some time for the documentation to stabilize and usage to spread a little before pushing hard in that direction I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating example of the Overton Window ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)) and Milo Criterion ([http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/09/23/the-milo- criterion](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/09/23/the-milo-criterion)) in action in software.

<comment><USER7> Reading about Milo reminded me of MSOffice Ribbon. And now I wonder if there are reflection or theories about social fluid dynamics and how to redirect a flow of people into something radical-looking without creating turmoil.

<comment><USER6> The same site has this later post about the transition _process_ for a big change, which partially answers your question: [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/09/24/the-rhythms-of- informat...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/09/24/the-rhythms-of-information- flow-pacing-and-spacetime). It's a very alien worldview for most developers, who tend to focus all their attention on designing a feature and _none_ on designing the transition process for the feature.

<comment><USER7> What a long article, I am thrilled (no sarcasm, I love everything about rhythm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I often feel like I'm the only software developer in the world that thinks most programming languages are evolving in the wrong direction.

Our civilization is going to end up with countless dead languages -- dead programming languages, that is -- because future generations won't know how to read the increasingly terse and arcane syntax that is all the rage these days. Either that, or the investment necessary to read these crazy languages will be considered an ill advised investment in resources. We'll end up recreating the wheel indefinitely, but in different languages.

I would like to see much, much simpler programming languages, even if they're more verbose, as long as the result is improved readability and longevity of the code written in said languages. I think some of the older languages are far superior in many ways, if only because, with some of them, you can actually read and understand the code without even any formal training in the language.

<comment><USER3> > I would like to see much, much simpler programming languages, even if > they're more verbose, as long as the result is improved readability and > longevity of the code written in said languages.

I'm really sad to see this misconseption over and over on HN. Verbosity is so much worst than syntax complexity because you ends up having dozens of different patterns that do the same thing overall but with subtile differences on edge cases.

If you look at JavaScript pre-ES6, you had at least 10 ways of doing OOP with really different behaviors when it came to inheritence or encapsulation. This makes the code so hard to understand.

ES6 formalizing a specific semantic for OOP was godsend.

As long as you introduce syntax to help with what people are actually doing (and not juste because it looks cool) syntax addition __enhance __the code readability.

<comment><USER8> _I 'm really sad to see this misconseption over and over on HN._

Please don't be rude.

 _Verbosity is so much worst than syntax complexity because you ends up having dozens of different patterns that do the same thing overall but with subtile differences on edge cases._

There's a level of verbosity/terseness that's ideal for (your average) human. I don't know precisely what that level is, but I think many programming languages, such as C++ and Rust, have stepped way past that line.

 _If you look at JavaScript pre-ES6, you had at least 10 ways of doing OOP with really different behaviors when it came to inheritence or encapsulation. This makes the code so hard to understand._

The problem with JavaScript OO was, in my opinion, the use of prototypes.

 _As long as you introduce syntax to help with what people are actually doing (and not juste because it looks cool) syntax addition enhance the code readability._

This is simply an unsupported claim.

<comment><USER9> > I don't know precisely what that level is, but I think many programming > languages, such as C++ and Rust, have stepped way past that line.

There are no languages in the same domain that don't have a comparable level of syntax and semantic complexity given the intrinsic nature of the information they want to encode.

And I would make rather take sigils than using a bunch of different keywords every time I need to talk about lifetimes and pointers.

To date I have not seen languages with comparable complexity expressed with more elegant syntax. Some domains just have irreducible complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Following this rule, maybe it's time to add a shorthand for std::unique_ptr<> to c++ already. I'm not really a fan of asterixes or ampersands either but 17 characters, 5 of them requiring shift modifier, for something you write that often quickly becomes annoying.

<comment><USER11> Usually I define new types, when I use them a lot like:

        class Something {
          typedef std::unique_ptr<Something> unique;
          typedef std::shared_ptr<Something> shared;
          typedef std::weak_ptr<Something> weak;

        };

        // ...
        // later in the code

        Something::unique a;
        // instead of std::unique_ptr<Something> a;

<comment><USER12> That's a neat way of handling it. I wouldn't have considered it. I think I'm gonna steal it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I really appreciate in a language, especially when I am starting out with it, is the Python's slogan "only one way to do it".

<comment><USER14> Which doesn't work, even in Python. Python 1.0 could iterate over various collections with straightforward syntax that still works. No such programmer would recognize the functional style that's taken over for iteration in the modern language.

Likewise the evolution from list comprehensions to generators left us with some terribly overlapping syntax.

<comment><USER13> Can't argue with that, but what I really said was that in contrast to the article, and Stroupstrup's rule, if I was to design a language I would put the "one way to do it" very high in my priorities.

Going with let's have "explicit syntax" now until the users get familiar with it and we will make it more terse later, is not a good idea IHMO.

But I do understand and appreciate that sometimes evolutionary changes will bring in duplication, so I am in no way attacking Rust and the specific example of the evolution of the error handling syntax.

<comment><USER15>
      > Going with let's have "explicit syntax" now until the
      > users get familiar with it and we will make it more
      > terse later is not a good idea IHMO.

I don't think this is a conscious decision. IMO, when you're first designing a language, you don't necessarily _know_ what idioms are going to be most common, so you use special syntax sparingly, and force users to be explicit everywhere else. Then, once you have experience with how people use the language and can empirically observe what idioms are popular, you favor those idioms with shorthand syntax.

Getting back to the specific example in the OP, for a _long_ time there was a discussion on whether Rust should use the question mark for some dedicated syntax (having removed the C-style ternary operator in 2012 as redundant with `if`). But people disagreed on what to use it for: some wanted to use it to designate functions that return booleans (like Ruby does); others wanted to use it to designate functions that return Option (my original stance, way back when); others wanted it as sugar for constructing and typing Options (as Swift eventually did); some wanted a C#-style coalescing operator. But after years of experience it turns out that none of the above are especially prevalent in Rust, especially once the community embraced the Result type (which matured relatively late in Rust's development) for most of what Option had originally been used for. In retrospect having a terse way to handle Results is an obvious win and I absolutely adore the new `?` operator, but it takes time to produce the evidence that such things are truly worth their weight.

<comment><USER13> Ack.

Maybe I misunderstood the article then! When I read:

            For new features, people insist on LOUD explicit syntax.

            For established features, people want terse notation.

I understood, keep it explicit to begin with, and make it terse when users get familiar. Probably I got it wrong.

<comment><USER15> I don't think you're wrong, I just think that you're overlooking that not all features eventually receive terse notation. Some stay loud and explicit forever! Only a few, relatively important features receive terse notation, and _knowing_ which features those are requires observing how the language is used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It only works when your function returns error of the same type as expression inside 'try!' or '?' macros. So in a lot of cases it doesn't work or forces programmer to return underlying type of error, instead of error which belongs to current level of visibility (in other words, it provokes programmer to violate encapsulation for the sake of lazyness). Also it means we have 2 ways to do same thing and users have to know this small trick even to read code (so it raises entry level).

I love Rust language and feel sorry for this criticism. But small things are important.

<comment><USER17> > It only works when your function returns error of the same type as > expression inside 'try!' or '?' macros.

The language has actually thought of this case -- it turns out you can map lower-level errors into your higher-level error type by implementing the `From<E>` trait. E.g.:

        use std::io;
        pub enum MyErr { Io(io::Error), Custom(String) }

        impl From<io::Error> for MyErr {
            fn from(err: io::Error) -> MyErr { MyErr::Io(err) }
        }

        fn do_stuff() -> Result<(), MyErr> {
            let f = try!(File::open(...));
            // ...
        }

<comment><USER18> The error-chain [0] crate helps to reduce this boilerplate. I usually don't like macro magic like this, but the code is so straightforward that you can trust the macro to work as expected.

[0]: [https://github.com/brson/error-chain](https://github.com/brson/error- chain)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really don't see Rust as a good example of a language getting its syntax right. It reads like Perl. You know what's good syntax? The one that reads like pseudocode (Python is the closest to that).

<comment><USER9> Perl has infinity ways of describing the same computation with no clear best practices in many cases.

Rust's problem is the same that any language in its domain encounters: it must encode a lot more information than similar scripting languages in order to describe the semantics of this program.

It most certainly does not read like Perl. The sigils are weird but there's few of them and they're used consistently and without overloaded meaning. And unless you want to make a horrendously verbose language by assigning keywords to stuff related to lifetimes, pointers and references, it attempts to strike the balance between readability and compactness for the experienced developer.

Rust used to have a lot more sigils. Its syntax and semantics are nowadays a lot simpler than languages in the same domain (C++ I'm looking at you) and a lot of the complexity has been pushed into the traits system, IMO for the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "syntax doesn't matter, only semantics!" is what I classify as geek machismo. I used to see a lot of that over at [http://lambda-the- ultimate.org](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org) in its heyday.

<comment><USER21> It's basically a pedant's creed. I really wish everyone who desired to express that point would translate it into some forgotten language first, just to drive the irony deep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is worse than Perl.</comment>


After the Deadline Acquired by Auttomatic - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/automattic-acquisition-after-the-deadline-spell-checker

<comment><USER2> I think PG would be the first to tell aspiring entrepreneurs that while being accepted to YC is a strong indicator of future success, a much stronger indicator is relentless drive and determination. This is clearly a case of the latter. Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER3> "Better Spealing" need After The Deadline (<http://afterthedeadline.com/>).

Congrats Guys, being rejected by YC is not a curse.

</comment><comment><USER4> So, now the spelling and style checker has a name that looks like a typo?

[edit] OK, it looks like it _is_ a typo. Automattic is misspelled incorrectly in this thread. And no, that is not redundant.

</comment><comment><USER5> cross link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=811860>

</comment><comment><USER6> "I'm thankful we had that interview though and was encouraged to make the first cut." (check grammar: <http://www.afterthedeadline.com/features.slp>)

What ever happened to eat your own dog food?</comment>


Ask HN: Base new open-source library on an existing one, or start from scratch? - <AUTHOR> One of my projects uses a BSD-licensed C library which works fine but is too slow for my needs. The developers of the library have told me that they are not interested in making the major internal changes necessary to improve its speed.
I would therefore like to write an alternative to this library which focuses on performance. I will also be writing in C and am happy to use the BSD license, however I don't think I will end up re-using much of the original library's code.
There are two possible approaches to writing my library:
1. Start with the code from the existing library and make changes, replacing sections of the code at a time.
2. Begin writing my library from scratch, using the existing one only for reference.
Most conventional wisdom about rewriting code (such as Joel Spolsky's famous "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" [1]), strongly recommends taking the first approach.
Is it always better to start from existing code, or are there situations in which it would be better to start from scratch?
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ <comment><USER2> What about the third approach, find another existing library that provides similar functionality but is faster?

Or fourth approach, pay for faster hardware (cheaper than your time, usually!).

Or fifth approach, refactor the code and submit a change request? Even if they are not interested in doing the work, maybe they'll accept it.

Probably other approaches you can take as well.</comment>


Easily sync data between your mobile and web apps using Firebase and Trigger.io - <AUTHOR> http://trigger.io/cross-platform-application-development-blog/2012/06/19/easily-sync-data-between-your-mobile-and-web-apps-using-firebase-and-trigger-io/

<comment><USER2> I've used Firebase a lot (lucky to be in the beta) for my web apps and trigger for my hackathon projects that i want to quickly push to app store. Great to finally see an in depth tutorial getting written about Trigger and Firebase working together!

</comment><comment><USER3> There's few things that are as infuriating as having to write sync code, when you have other things to take care of. Glad this is around now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice write up. I also made a dead-simple jQuery Mobile + Firebase app and blogged about it last week, if anyone is interested: [http://blog.codiqa.com/2012/06/opencount-civic-app-with- codi...](http://blog.codiqa.com/2012/06/opencount-civic-app-with-codiqa-and- firebase/)

</comment><comment><USER5> have they sorted out the security issues with having the sync code exposed to clients? what prevents others from accessing that information when they shouldn't?

<comment> j-v Curious about this as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any application built with Trigger.io? I must use a few applications built with a framework before giving it a try. I should see which UI components are out there and how they make feel.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check these out for starters... lots more under development:

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hojoki/id525010205?mt=8> <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wine-box/id525182844?mt=8> <http://needanaccountant.org/MobileApp.aspx>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Curious. What are Firebase and Trigger.io help me solve that isn't already available in any other standard web framework (think LAMP)? Are they only really applicable for building real-time apps?

<comment><USER8> My understanding, from a cursory perusal, is that this isn't serving web content to the phone's existing browser, but rather packing up your html and javascript with a (thin, one hopes) custom browser to display them, which also exposes more native functionality than does the regular browser. So you aren't writing a web app, you're writing a native app with web technologies, sort of.

Someone please correct me if I'm off base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One step closer to completely serverless development. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can use firebase in any browser or html5 setting. You can also do the same with phonegap and firebase. I fail to see the extra value added by trigger.io here.

<comment><USER2> Trigger.io has numerous advantages over Phonegap, some of which being setup and speed.

<comment><USER10> Agree that trigger might be better.

But in this case both runs firebase the same

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone have a firebase beta code? Never got an invite from 'em yet. Email dan'at'thestroots.com if you have one please!

<comment><USER12> Check your inbox :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> my 'build stuff with javascript' to-do list grows even further.

now...to find some time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks cool.</comment>


Introducing iUI (UI library for iPhone) - <AUTHOR> http://www.joehewitt.com/blog/introducing_iui.php

<comment><USER2> Really clever idea, but it seems a little buggy right now =/</comment>


Coronavirus: 'Baffling' observations from the front line - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/52760992 <comment><USER3> The pathology of COVID-19 is really interesting. As the article describes, the viral pneumonia is well-described, but there are a lot of knock-on effects from infection of epithelial cells. Namely, virus binding to ACE2 receptors causes oxidative stress which can give rise to disease and cardiovascular events. MedCram did a really great video talking through some papers on this subject. [1]

If you want to learn more, also check out This Week in Virology, a podcast that has been covering COVID-19 in great detail the last few months. It features a panel of virologists and other folks in the scientific field (immunologists, etc) plus a doctor reporting about the situation at a clinical level.

[1]: [https://youtu.be/Aj2vB_VITXQ](https://youtu.be/Aj2vB_VITXQ)

<comment><USER4> Oxidative stress, why? I'm really confused at why we don't think of the mechanics of this disease in terms of the cell and tissue types that express ACE2 receptors. ACE and ACE2 receptors regulate fluid pressure. ACE increases pressure by constricting tissue and ACE2 decreases pressure by dilating tissue.

ACE2 receptors are found in the lungs, blood vessels, heart, kidneys, and gastrointestinal system. This makes sense and matches the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV. SARS-CoV-2 also infects the epithelial cells of the upper respiratory tract, like the cold-like HCoV-NL63.

All the symptoms seem to match the spread of the virus to new tissue types. The timing matches too, with each new tissue type having an independent incubation period. Am I missing something? Children only seem to be susceptible to gastrointestinal infection which looks like Kawasaki's disease when it spreads to adjoining blood vessels.

<comment><USER5> Thats a lot of disputin' for not having clicked the attached explanation links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These articles can certainly be scary. It might be good to keep the risks in mind too.

"for people 49 and under, the agency [CDC] estimated that 0.05% of symptomatic people will die."

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/health/cdc-coronavirus- estima...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/health/cdc-coronavirus-estimates- symptoms-deaths/index.html)

<comment><USER5> That would be comforting if the outcomes were limited to 'death' or 'full recovery'!

<comment><USER7> From what I got, lung damage was actually caused by unnecessary ventilators. We now know that the vast majority of people are out of oxygen because of their blood and not lungs.

This is an extremely mild disease, I would assume that in a few months we'll know enough to make it a minor inconvenience for most people (more than it already is, since most people don't even experience symptoms today).

What long-term damage you know of (not saying there isn't, just curious)?

<comment><USER8> Prolonged ventilation is damaging to the lungs. But ventilation is not given lightly - usually it is for an acute deterioration and is life saving (ie without it, patient would have died in that instance).

Interestingly in COVID it appears that positioning and CPAP/BIPAP can be more effective that venting in edge cases. This is a very new phenomenon in medicine, and we probably over vented in the early course of the pandemic. We were acting in what we knew of other severe respiratory diseases, and the case data from COVID hadn't had enough time to present best treatment modalities.

However, to suggest that the lungs are not being absolutely ravaged by the virus infecting, replicating and rupturing lung cells is ludicrous

<comment><USER9> > However, to suggest that the lungs are not being absolutely ravaged by the > virus infecting, replicating and rupturing lung cells is ludicrous

I was talking about permanent damage. I actually read my comment again, and that isn't really clear.

Doctors in Italy are saying that ventilators were thought to be useful because people complained that they couldn't breath, but now they're saying that it's not the lungs that aren't working, but it's oxygen that is not carried out in the blood, and that ventilators can actually cause permanent damage in many cases.

I'm not a doctor, so I just base everything on what the (supposed?) experts are saying. As far as I know they might very well say that on TV because there aren't enough ventilators, no idea.

<comment><USER8> One of the reasons we worked out we could get people through without ventilators was because we ran out of ventilators. And people with COVid are being vented for 2 weeks plus. A normal time (and a time that would minimise Kung damage from a vent) would be several days.

But if someone has saturation's in the shithouse, they're going to die. Lack of oxygen (Hypoxia) in the blood is many many fold more common than severe thrombosis or whatever else was suggested; and the answer is right there - <USER2> the oxygen isn't getting to the blood it's because the lungs are shot. If we have enough gear, we put someone in ECMO to solve the gas exchange problem.

Lung damage severe enough to do this is caused by the effects of the disease, not the ventilator

<comment><USER10> When did we run out of ventilators?

As far as I know nowhere ever ran out of ventilators, not even in Lombardy. But I sure saw that claim made a lot of times back when people thought that would happen. Spent a lot of time pointing out the authorities were denying it'd happened too. I concluded it's very easy for people to mix up "we think this is about to happen" with "this has happened".

<comment><USER8> Lombardy was utilising operating theatres and had ICUs and trauma bays full (70-80% is full because you have lost lost of your surge capacity), using the vents in all these areas. There was a shift to NIV because once you have no vents you let people die

<comment><USER10> 80% isn't full. 80% is 80% full and is about normal for an ICU. The whole point of having some headroom is you can lose it without being full!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Doctors often want to keep pneumonia patients "dry", that is, somewhat dehydrated. (That's maybe contributing to the kidney failure.) To what extent could this also be resulting in increased clotting?

<comment><USER12> As someone who has been treating COVID patients since early April, my working theory has been that many if not most of the secondary disease processes (non- respiratory effects of the virus), and even to some extent the worsening of respiratory function, have been largely driven by micro-thrombotic disease. Delicate capillary beds, like the ones seen in the lungs and kidneys, are highly susceptible to becoming blocked in this sort of setting. When these small vessels get plugged up, end-organ dysfunction necessarily follows. The kidney won't work properly if the blood needing filtration can't reach the nephron (functional unit of the kidney).

I'm in large part guessing here based on clinical observation, but my feeling is that you can extend this logic to other syndromes that accompany COVID-19. For example, we often see worsening liver function in the setting of this illness (albeit delayed by a few days). This could be explained in a number of ways, one of which is by impaired perfusion within capillary beds in the liver. Further, there is a myocarditis-like picture we sometimes see as well that could be explained by direct viral infection or again by impaired perfusion of the cardiac muscle by small vessel clotting.

When the thrombotic disease progresses, you start to see a more macro version: think strokes and pulmonary emboli in patients who are otherwise low risk at baseline. Thus, there's some interpolation going on here.

Hope that makes some sense.

<comment><USER13> Hey, it's great to see something from a professional !!!

A dear friend is dying of pancreatic cancer. And one of the key reasons that she's still alive was getting thrombosis under control. Initially with IV heparin, and now with Lovenox.

Are those commonly used for COVID patients? Or do they use oral anticoagulants?

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Unfortunately, cancer is one of the big predisposing factors for thromboembolic disease, so I'm glad to hear that controlling this issue has helped her along.

Based on our institutional protocol, hospitalized COVID-19 patients receive therapeutic dose Lovenox, Eliquis, or IV heparin.[1] Lovenox is the first line treatment, but is contraindicated in patients with, among others things, severely impaired renal function. If these patients are able to tolerate oral medications, they can be given Eliquis. If not, they're typically put on IV heparin drips (and are subject to the uncomfortable and burdensome blood draws that come with them).

Typically, all of these patients are discharged on two weeks of Eliquis if there are no major contraindications. The thinking is that the risk of damage to the body by microthrombi doesn't necessarily end just because the patient is stable enough to go home.

Of course, with all of these medications, preventing clotting has to be balanced with preventing bleeding. We've had to stay vigilant for things like GI bleeds and hemorrhagic strokes, as these things become more common when everyone in the hospital is being heavily anticoagulated.

[1] Therapeutic dosing in this case is higher than typical prophylactic dosing. In the case of Lovenox, it would be something like 40 mg twice a day for the therapeutic dose versus 40 mg once a day for the prophylactic dose, which is what would be used in non-COVID-19 patients to prevent thromboembolism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Naïvely I would think factor v Leiden defect (prone to clotting, DVTs) would be a risk factor, but I understand it's most prevalent in white Europeans and Americans, which is somewhat the opposite of covid's (suspected vitamin D related) bias.

Has anyone seen any studies mention it, or otherwise know that it's a silly suggestion that wouldn't be worth studying?

On second thoughts I think it raises the clotting risk particularly in the event of severe blood loss, so maybe that's it. Covid patients are clotting but for unrelated reasons?

<comment><USER8> You're choosing a narrow band of the population. Undoubtedly there are thousands of groups out there who, by way of genotype, phenotype or lifestyle, are at higher risk.

Teasing these all out is going to be the work of the next decade. It's all in the last paragraph - (to paraphrase) 'we're having to learn in months what we've had hundreds of years to learn about other diseases'

When I was at Med school I naively thought 'there will be no new pathophysiology' - we knew all the continents and had mapped most of the interiors, in varying levels of detail. This is an entirely new continent. (So was vaping associated lung injury actually)

It's fascinating

<comment><USER14> It's not that narrow among aforementioned populations though - 15% iirc.

Enough that (again, as a naïve layman) I'd have thought it would be noticed or considered when discussing clotting and DVT/PEs? And enough to have an counteracting impact on the opposite African/Caucasian divide that's actually being seen - not to say that they couldn't coexist, but that if so it'd make the latter even more dramatic.

<comment><USER8> From UpToDate:

 _In the general population without a personal history of VTE, a study involving 1690 unrelated individuals from Europe found a prevalence of FVL of approximately 4 percent, and a study involving 356 individuals from Canada found an incidence of approximately 5 percent [47,48]. In a series of 4047 men and women participating in the Physicians ' Health Study and the Women's Health Study (both in the United States), the following frequencies for FVL heterozygosity were found [49]:

●Caucasians – 5.3 percent ●Hispanic Americans – 2.2 percent ●Native Americans – 1.2 percent ●African Americans – 1.2 percent ●Asian Americans – 0.45 percent

A higher prevalence of FVL (12 to 14 percent) has been reported in populations in parts of Greece, Sweden, and Lebanon_

Compared to a more likely cause for thrombophilia in the patient population, ie inflammatory response, endothelial damage, up regulation of clotting factors; I think focusing on factor V Leiden (and I'm speaking just as a clinician, not as someone who has had to work with covid patients, we've had relatively SFA here in Australia thankfully) is a footnote. And any patient who is admitted is going to be on anticoagulants anyway, nullifying most of any procoagulant effect of FVL in hospitalised patients.

It might show up in the data, it might be a footnote, but treatment would be covered under normal VTE prophylaxis (and seems like many protocols are now stepping up fairly significantly the prophylaxis regime)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know the SNPs for ACE2 expression? Curious which variant I have...

<comment><USER16> More complex than having "more" or "less" because while the presence of certain SNPs would mean more expression by default, the presence of the virus downregulates them, which means you could tolerate "more" virus.

SNPs: rs4646127, rs1996225, rs2158082, rs4830974.

Source: [https://selfdecode.com/blog/article/ACE2-coronavirus-128](https://selfdecode.com/blog/article/ACE2-coronavirus-128)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When your per-capita covid19 mortality rates are almost 200% of the US and almost 600% of Germany you need all the bafflement your citizens can buy.

</comment><comment><USER18> Personalized medicine has been a big deal lately, which makes me wonder if perhaps the "weirdness" of COVID-19 is only due to the fact that this disease is being studied at large scale, across the country and the world. It's already known that not everyone reacts to drugs the same way, why would we expect everyone to react to a disease the same way? Western medicine focused on it's successes with a one disease, one drug model, but just like it's obvious one drug doesn't always work for everyone, one disease could affect different people in different ways and could in fact manifest as several different diseases. Possibly if we had studied flu and colds at scale in the population we would have found a wide variety of reactions that would also surprise us.

I also wonder why we seem to never have even tried to cure the flu and colds (there seem to be only a few tiny research groups studying either). We thought mapping the genome was impossible till we tried it. The variety of viruses causing flus and colds caused medicine to make the same claim, impossible to solve because it's so complex, but is it really that complex? We have 100 candidates for a vaccine for what is essentially a cold virus after a few months work. What if we'd started working on colds and flu seriously a few decades ago? Cold and flu cost society tens of billions each year, why have we lived with this disease burden for so long? I'm not an expert but the complexity seems less than that of decoding DNA. Is the fact that colds and flu only kill a few tens of thousands of people a year really a good reason not to eradicate them? The cost/benefit ratio here seems skewed because the benefit seems really high and the cost not so high. For one thing, it could have saved us from this, previous, and future pandemics which have enormous costs.

<comment><USER19> I do not have answers or facts to offer, but I suspect they are similar in nature to those for the question of "why haven't we solved security critical bugs? Why haven't we just heavily invested in software verification? Etc."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Every anti-opinion in the comments was [flagged]. I guess this is done by algorithms. Only the anti-anti-opinion comments survived.

That above is the main issue with this disease.

<comment><USER21> No, the situation is that everyone is fed up with contrarians and downvotes them on sight. Cautious well evidenced dissent should still get through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This might be a rant, but it would be awesome if these new findings lead to laws that required doctors to give accurate cause of death for people that also test positive for COVID.

At least in Italy, doctors were pressured to put "COVID" as cause of death of people that were given 10 days to live because of cancer and other diseases, but also tested positive.

Newspapers went as far as saying that a policeman that was shot by a colleague by accident and had been on a coma for 3 months was the country's youngest COVID victim, because allegedly he tested positive (of course, they failed to mention he had been shot and in a coma, other journalists exposed that lie).

From what I read and understood, since in the US hospitals get reimbursed by number of patients doctors came out saying that they were pressured to put "COVID" as cause of death even without testing, just because it was presumed to be COVID because the symptoms matched.

Unfortunately, politicians want power and businesses want to make money—and other people have their own agenda. This pandemic and been spun out of proportion by people that gain from it, at the expense of workers and most importantly small businesses, and at the advantage of China (and perhaps Amazon)—who are the only ones who are actually making money.

I wish the world was less corrupt—or at least people that are given positions of power in good faith.

<comment><USER21> Citation for the shot police officer's name?

People seem to have chosen bad faith attack media and elected bad faith leaders. That's why the US, UK, and Brazil are doing particularly badly.

<comment><USER22> > That's why the US, UK, and Brazil are doing particularly badly.

And Russia.

<comment><USER23> And Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, Turkey, Iran, etc etc

Does anyone know of any large country that managed to:

\- not lockdown

\- keep the disease under control

?

<comment><USER24> > And Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, Turkey, Iran, etc etc

This assertion grossly misrepresents the facts.

Italy and Spain were one of the first countries after China to be massively affected by covid19.

They endured a fast and entirely unexpected rise in infection rates during a period where WHO was still repeating the Chinese regime's claims that covid19 didn't spread among humans.

Still, once they started to track the disease and register hundreds of of deaths in patients infected with the disease, they acted decisively. Not only regarding quarantine and social distancing but also putting up massive field hospitals like Madrid's IFEMA hospital.

Spain and Italy's government did not overreacted or downplayed the threat. The UK, US, Brazil and Russia's government started by either pretending it did not existed, assumed they could ride the wave while doing nothing at all, or that everything would just kill off a bunch of people and vanish without any need to worry. Arguably, the government of Brazil is still in the denial stage.

That approach to an epidemic is world's apart than the approach taken by either Spain or Italy or France or Portugal or Greece or Germany or any other country in the world whose government decided to act responsibly and looking after their citizens best interests.

<comment><USER25> I agree about Italy, but I don't agree about Spain.

By March 8th 2020 there were 366 deaths in Italy and over 7000 registered infected, according to: [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/)

The same day the Spanish government let hundred of thousands take part in the 8th of March International Women's Day rallies all over Spain: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-womens-day-spain- idUSKBN2...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-womens-day-spain- idUSKBN20V0ZJ)

According to the Reuters article there were already 589 confirmed cases in Spain at that time, 202 of them in Madrid.

Since Spain did not react earlier I don't think it is right to say the following about Spain (not referring to Italy here): "Spain and Italy's government did not overreacted or downplayed the threat".

<comment><USER26> Spain was following the indications of the OMS at that point. The pandemic was not declared until March 11th, three days after Woman's Day.

By default, anyone can rally in Spain at any point. They don't seek authorization for the government, they have it by default. It can only be revoked and not granted. While there probably was some thought given to preventing the rallies, given what the OMS was saying at the time it looked like an over reaction. It was, of course, an error in hindsight, but I don't think it's indicative of a big failure of leadership.

<comment><USER27> I'm afraid politics have been a big part of bad decisions. There were enough cues to stop the rally and they still _encouraged_ people to go there.

Not that the other side isn't being as idiotic now, asking for raising the restrictions immediately.

But there's no excuse for March 8th. Different agencies had clearly warned what was happening and were ignored.

Edit: for fargren, what I mean encouraging:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Juy7YnqCTQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Juy7YnqCTQ)

For extrangers: it's the vice-prime minister saying on tv that all women should go to the rallies because "it's a matter of live or death" to them. Indeed.

There are many facts that have been arising later, like ministry of health forbidding doctors to attend conventions, police acquiring masks massively and several medical agencies and organizations advicing against the rallies.

It was a typical case of management discarding what every technician under them was telling them for politics.

Edit 2: please don't adopt the typical partisan position with "the opposition was also organizing rallies". No they weren't. There was _one_ party that had its national convention around the same days. Still, it isn't comparable. The government had the direct access to the official sources of information and ignored and hid them.

This isn't a right vs. left matter. More to the left is labour minister Ribera and she was correct to inform the public of how lockdown scenarios would affect workplaces. No good deed goes unpunished, everybody attacked her from all sides... until a few days later it became obvious that what she said was unavoidable.

In the right wing, Ayuso was correctly willing to wait a couple of weeks more to open Madrid, when her coalition partner Aguado forced her to ask for immediate unlock. Central government didn't consent, so change of position was useless, but now there's a left for lockdown, right for unlock division, that's it.

I won't go into the masks issue. It's too painful to just recall.

<comment><USER24> > There were enough cues to stop the rally

This is blatantly and shamelessly false. On the day of the rally there were zero reported deaths by covid19 in the entire country, let alone Madrid. By then the total number of confirmed cases in the entire country barely reached 1k.

There isn't a single nation or government in the history of humanity that decided to lock down an entire country just because there was 1k cases of what was described by then as a mere atypical form of viral pneumonia.

<comment><USER28> By March 8th, they had been 3k deaths in Wuhan. It was blatantly obvious by that time that Covid-19 was dangerous, and also that the testing situation was such that no one knew how widespread the virus was. Since the strict Spanish lockdown started just 6 days later, it seems clear that not halting the march was a big mistake, although it seems unclear how many were actually infected there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


URI Template - <AUTHOR> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6570 <comment><USER2> This is one of two proposed standards I've been following with some interest, the other being a sane(ish) way to implement PATCH for JSON objects:

<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6902>

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a mature Perl module for this as well: [http://search.cpan.org/~bricas/URI- Template-0.17/lib/URI/Tem...](http://search.cpan.org/~bricas/URI- Template-0.17/lib/URI/Template.pm)

</comment><comment><USER4> For rubyists, the addressable gem has support for it: [https://github.com/sporkmonger/addressable/tree/#uri- templat...](https://github.com/sporkmonger/addressable/tree/#uri-templates)

<comment><AUTHOR> And for Node.js: <https://github.com/bramstein/url-template>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's pretty great to have a standard for templates to generate URIs, but it's equally important to parse URIs and extract the variables. It looks like this RFC skimps on that part:

In Section 1.4:

        Some URI Templates can be used in reverse for the purpose of variable
        matching: comparing the template to a fully formed URI in order to
        extract the variable parts from that URI and assign them to the named
        variables.  Variable matching only works well if the template
        expressions are delimited by the beginning or end of the URI or by
        characters that cannot be part of the expansion, such as reserved
        characters surrounding a simple string expression.  In general,
        regular expression languages are better suited for variable matching.

It'd be better IMO to have a stricter definition of parseable templates and include test cases so that implementations that try to validate templates for parseability don't disagree.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if it'd be worth implementing this in my URLObject library (<https://github.com/zacharyvoase/urlobject>).

</comment><comment><USER7> Slightly related (if you hold your head at the right angle) is the (commercial) platform called NetKernel. It brings URIs into conventional programming scenarios, presenting something like a RESTful programming language. (Whatever that might mean...)

I haven't done anything with it, but I find it fascinating just to read the documentation:

[http://docs.netkernel.org/book/view/book:quickstart/doc:quic...](http://docs.netkernel.org/book/view/book:quickstart/doc:quickstart:title)

</comment><comment><USER8> GitHub uses URI templates extensively: <https://api.github.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Very helpful, thanks for link. I'm working on my own web app "framework" and had rolled my own URL/URI router. This will reduce my reinvention quotient.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ruby Gems for this <https://github.com/sporkmonger/addressable>

</comment><comment><USER11> Why do RFC's have to be so ugly?

<comment><USER12> Because they originate from a time where plain text was what you had, and the format was created to be consistent and easy to format by hand. I still prefer my specifications to be in plain text so that I can view them easily and quickly.

<comment><USER13> It would be easy enough to at least format them in HTML, they use such consistent ascii 'typesetting', it could easily be automated.

I mean, they are formatted in HTML now, but as a giant block of monospace text. They could use <hx>s for the headers, let the text flow with browser resize for small screens, heck use bootstrap for good readable web typesetting, etc.

I am not sure why the IETF isn't interested in better web typesetting for em.

At one point someone had a site that did that, I think it was advertised and discussed here on HN, but I forget what it was called, and I think it faded into non-supported obscurity (since it was obviously a labor of love, unpaid).</comment></comment></comment>


New Australian Laws Force Facebook, WhatsApp to Open Encrypted Messages - <AUTHOR> https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/new-australian-laws-force-facebook-whatsapp-to-open-encrypted-messages/ <comment><USER2> Its laughable that the 5 eyes make this policy, and try to use sympathetic old politicians who have no idea what it can entail, to implement it everywhere as policy in those countries and elsewhere.

Its reasoning is contemptible to western values. The banana republic-ization of the west continues. Its a disgrace.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article contradicts its own title. WhatsApp is not required to open end-to-end encrypted messages.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does and it doesn't. It's entirely unclear what the new laws are hoping to achieve. PM Turnbull appears to think that companies can decrypt messages without a back door, with the only thing stopping them to date is the fact they haven't been compelled to do so.

This is an actual real quote from him : "The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only laws that apply in Australia is the law of Australia."

<comment><USER4> He does at least admit he knows exactly nothing about this area, and is leaning on the UK contact who told him this was "feasable".

But, considering they're ignoring Troy Hunt, who is usually an advisor in these matters, its clear they just don't care. (Moreso as this appears to be a bipartisan decision).</comment></comment></comment>


Books from the Soviet era - <AUTHOR> http://mirtitles.org/

<comment><USER2> What a gem! What a discovery this site has been for me......

To the OP: You have my eternal thanks! They bring back mixed memories... The unblemished joy of returning back to childhood/youth and the absolute white- knuckle terror at the inability to solve many of the problems and getting reprimanded....

I am going to have sweet dreams and nightmares tonight - I am sure that would be possible, now that I have seen these familiar titles....

Thank you again, OP :-)

[I know this is all against HN guidelines, but please let go this one time]

<comment><USER3> Ha! Looks like we had a similar childhood. Especially solving problems by I.E.Irodov. Thanks OP!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a link to all their titles on TPB:

<http://thepiratebay.se/tag/mir+publishers/0/7>

<comment><USER2> Thanks :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the first time I see moderation adding to the title instead of subtracting or replacing it. But in the way it is titled now, they made it look like I meant to submit the latest post and haven't put the permalink by mistake.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm quite late for this, but anyway. To whoever has put the original title back, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excellent collection. Demidovich, Bronshtein, ... I still have nightmares even in my late 40s....

<comment><USER2> I know...! Tell me about it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heh. What about the original Russian ones? I still have several.

Or, say, about the ones translated into Russian from English (and other languages)? They were very useful for my studies of computer science.

</comment><comment><USER2> Anyone has any guesses what would be the equivalent font to be used today if typesetting books like this?

One guess would be Century Schoolbook which would be close to the original. Any others?

</comment><comment><USER7> I had the physics book: General Physics – Landau, Akhiezer, Lifshitz

</comment><comment><USER8> What's the copyright status of these books?

</comment><comment><USER9> Demidovich is the hard stuff!</comment>