China is challenging the idea that censorship thwarts online innovation - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/america-wants-to-believe-china-cant-innovate-tech-tells-a-different-story/2016/07/19/c17cbea9-6ee6-479c-81fa-54051df598c5_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_chinainnovation-1050pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> Article provides only two specific examples:

 _You go on Facebook and you can't even buy anything, but on WeChat and Weibo you can buy anything you see_

 _A more recent trend: live-streaming sites where people pay real money to reward performers with virtual gifts. (You sang beautifully, here's a digital Lamborghini, dear.)_

I might grant the first (with reservations), but the second is laughable (and was tried without success here in the early days of social networking). I can't help but think this article should be titled "Chinese internet companies flourish in Chinese market". Well duh - even aside from the "virtual protectionism" of the GFW, Chinese companies are more likely to understand the preferences of Chinese consumers than non-Chinese companies. This is important, but it isn't exactly _tech innovation_.

How many HN startups are localizing to Mandarin? Language alone provides a massive market barrier that leaves opportunity for regional companies to thrive. But that barrier works both ways - what Chinese internet companies are thriving in the world marketplace? The best example I can think of is Alibaba, but that is strongly tied to Chinese manufacturing. Is anyone using WeChat or Weibo outside mainland China?

I personally am very excited and encouraged by the emergence of China as a modern, educated populace. Great things will come from bringing another 1 billion humans online and contributing to the world marketplace - tech is one of the great positive-sum games. I'm looking forward to it! But this article is a pretty poor illustration.

Also, as a Norteamericano, I'm deeply offended by statements like "America want's to believe China can't..." \- we're not all xenophobic Trump supporters, not even most of us.

<comment><USER3> "Is anyone using WeChat or Weibo outside mainland China?"

I don't know about Weibo, but WeChat is available in 200 nations and 20 languages. Over 70 mil people use WeChat outside of China. They seem strongest in south and south-east asia. Wechat penetration into the mobile markets are: Malaysia 38%, India 22%, Philipines 19%, etc. My understanding is that they have aggressive inititatives underway in Brazil and South Africa.

So, not super-awesome, but respectable.

<comment><USER4> 22% of Indian mobile users use WeChat? I'd like a citation for that, since in my experience less than a percentage use anything other than Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.

<comment><USER5> They do not need to be evenly distributed across the country. It could be a specific regional area. The stat could also just mean "installed and is used." It's possible that there are a lot of Indians that use it to communicated with business partners / etc in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> China may follow a similar development history path to Japan. First the Japanese copied the west and made cheap bad quality items. Then the Japanese innovated and made very high quality items.

[http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/history-of- quality/overvi...](http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/history-of- quality/overview/total-quality.html)

"In the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese goods were synonymous with cheapness and low quality, but over time their quality initiatives began to be successful, with Japan achieving very high levels of quality in products from the 1970s onward." source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management)

Top500 super computer list, the fastest super computer now has a Chinese CPU Sunway SW26010 which has 260 cores. [https://www.top500.org/lists/2016/06/](https://www.top500.org/lists/2016/06/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010)

List of inventions [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions)

<comment><USER7> > China may follow a similar development history path to Japan. First the > Japanese copied the west and made cheap bad quality items. Then the Japanese > innovated and made very high quality items.

Same story with Italy. It started its industrial success of the '50s as a country where you could get cheap, unschooled (but not unskilled) workers that would work for 20 hours a day without any protection from the existing legal framework. (Plus a devalued currency.) Just like the eastern Europe of the '90s or China in this decade.

Now people forgot all that and like to think of "Made in Italy" as a symbol of innovation and style.

I think this is the pattern:

1\. country attract foreign investors because of lower wages and little legal protection;

2\. people work their ass off, without really understanding what they are doing;

3\. workers get skilled in what they do, a culture of "doing X properly" springs up;

4\. people realize that they are being exploited and demand more protection from their state;

5\. slowly people get what they ask for, but this has a cost and so factories move somewhere else;

6\. (This is the main point =>) You are left with a country filled with skilled workers and sense for the production of the good X, but it no longer makes sense to produce it there for the big market; you turn to the "luxury" market;

7\. people start losing jobs because the luxury market is hard to please and it is not big enough;

8\. the state gives away some of the rights acquired and starts the slow path towards becoming a state with lower wages and less legal protection.

I wonder if this vicious cycle can be broken with the advent of non-tangible products (for example services) and some kind of heavy taxation on transports (instead of VAT you would pay dist-in-km^0.12).

<comment><USER8> I really like your pattern and it fits in with what I've thought for years, but today I was thinking: what happens when there is too much luxury products? The end of the cycle doesn't work or else USA, UK, and a few other European countries wouldn't be doing very well. And what about highly skilled workers like Iranian/Persian rug makers?

<comment><USER9> There can never be too many luxury products because the definition of 'luxury' is simply redefined upwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where there are factories and competition, innovation will happen. When we started manufacturing in China, we had experience building and they didn't so we had to show them how to do everything. Now they manufacture without our oversight, have the relationships with suppliers, and figure out how to do things faster, cheaper, and higher quality because it directly benefits them.

Meanwhile, we don't have the experience building things that they do with their equipment and people.

The only problem is believing that other people innovating hurts us. It doesn't.

<comment><USER11> Not read TFA, but in my country (Western Europe) there's so much talk of how in the future we're going to live off our ideas and innovation, not manufacturing, and there always seems to be this.. underlying... thing that the people who run the factories don't have any ideas of their own. So we're going to sit here and think up brilliant things, and send them off to a land of smoke stacks and cheap labour to be made. And I just don't see how that system could ever be anything other than temporary. After we've outsourced all the dirty work, when would the expertise out there not insource the thinking work and cut me out? I would if I was them.

(And honestly it is very hard to ignore the colonialist undertones of this thinking)

<comment><USER12> You are exactly right. There is this inherent superiority complex in this thinking. And I think I know the reason why:

The elites in western nations aren't builders or doers. They are talkers (lawyers, bankers, politicians, MBAs) who have told themselves their entire lives that builders don't matter as much as the talkers. They love Steve Jobs, but wouldn't know who Woz was if you asked them. They talk about the "jobs of the 21st century" but make fun of the technology experts by calling them nerds on the floors of Congress.

If this is your line of thinking, then the whole "let them build the stuff, and we'll do all the ideas and innovation" makes perfect sense. Its a perfect example of why the remaining "doers" in the US have such a deep-seated hatred of all politicians and government. I'm talking about the remaining auto- workers and the oil-drillers, etc.

<comment><USER13> Fantastic comment. This country seemingly has a genuine disdain for its laborers, an attitude that has pervaded into every section of government and will surely bite us in the ass much like Brexit did in Britain. It's very telling that I've yet to read a single comment showing support for that movement online yet 51% of the voting population approved of it.

<comment><USER14> It's impressive that we manage to disdain laborers and intellectuals at the same time.

<comment><USER15> It's classic, text-book divide-and-conquer! You tell group A that group B are "liberal college-educated elitists" and you tell group B that group A are "gun-loving Bible-thumping rednecks" and let them go at each other's throats!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Though as a Chinese programmer, I have no doubt we will achieve some great innovation here, the author of this report apparently doesn't know internet industry well, for choosing a bad example. Xu Dandan himself is just a joke here, and himself is widely considered as a bragger.

</comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps the reason there's a stigma of China not being able to innovate is because they're so widely known for blatantly copying existing products and designs (and selling them for a much lower price). In some cases, it's a direct rip-off of an existing product (for example, search AliExpress for "TIAL Wastegate"), and in other cases, it's a similar, but often cheaper (in both cost and quality) design.

The problem is that people love to generalize, and the fact of the matter is that when many people think of Chinese products, they think of cheap knock- offs being sold on eBay. Obviously, this is a pretty bad generalization considering many of the "legitimate" products we use every day were made in China, but we're talking about perception amongst the general population. [Criticizes China for making knock-offs while typing on an iPhone…]

The point that needs to be made is that making cheap knock-offs does not preclude them from innovating. There are a lot of people there, and I'm sure the entire country isn't composed of mindless assembly drones.

It's a shame that this stigma exists, and it will take a while before it completely fades away.

I realize that some people might be offended by this (and my use of "cheap knock-offs"), but if you don't believe me, just go ask around for yourself.

<comment><USER18> Copying is usually the best strategy to start from behind.

Japanese started the same way. In the 60s and 70s "Made in Japan" meant cheap, low-quality knockoffs. Japanese cars were called rice cups in the 80's. Then they caught up and it took Detroit by surprise.

<comment><USER19> Ditto for Korea. In the 80/90's they were the cheap Japanese knock offs for tech stuff like TVs etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was at the Alipay headquarters a few weeks ago. What caught my eye was a large IBM machine kept outside the office with lots of signatures on them. When I asked them what it was, they said this was the last piece of American technology the company used and they'd kept it as a trophy. They've replaced every thing else in the company with Chinese tech. That's quite something for a company which processes millions of transactions in a day.

<comment><USER21> What operating systems, stacks, languages, compilers, etc do they use?

<comment><USER22> Those are pretty hard to assign to a country I'd say. I mean is the Linux kernel Finnish?

But yeah if the point is just to use non-US tech they could run Ubuntu Linux (SA) or OpenBSD (Canada) or I suppose Red Flag Linux (China). Language wise...maybe Python or PHP or Erlang or an ML language?

<comment><USER23> Popular FOSS projects are typically invented in the US, funded by US companies, and consists of US developers. I think its a little arrogant to pretend these things would exist without the US.

Also, whats in those Lenovo boxes? Godson chips or American Intels? They are absolutely not running Windows on any desktop then I assume?

<comment><USER15> The whole thing is laughable. And even then, even if they replace all "American" pieces of software and hardware, the remaining will probably be 80% _European_ anyway! Great Victory, Comrades!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I saw the word innovation, I was expecting something a bit more than web/mobile chat and e-commerce apps. Not saying that the Chinese startup scene is in any way worse than SV, but I think we've put the bar for what constitutes innovation way too low everywhere...

<comment><USER25> I guess they mean innovation in the business sense rather than the technical sense. I.e., finding new web-based business models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In Marc Goodman's book "Future Crimes" he discusses the largest transfer of Human wealth to ever occur.

Through China's hacking efforts they have stolen Trillions of Dollars of US Tax Payer money that has gone into research and development of anything the Government has done including the F 35 fighter development.

They have also attacked US Industry and stolen trade secrets and software. Recipes for Carbon Steel, Stainless Steel, etc. Decades of R&D and 100's of millions of dollars gone. Chinese State Owned Sinovel Wind Group stole AMSC's computer code that was developed to run power generating Wind Mills. It cost the company almost a 1 billion dollars a year in lost revenue and all the money it took to develop it.

Here is an article regarding the F 35 Program.

[http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian- politics/o...](http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian- politics/owner-of-b-c-aerospace-firm-gets-prison-sentence-for-stealing- information-on-f-35-fighter)

Is it really innovation when all you do is steal and copy from the west?

<comment> james-watson It ain't innovation, it's cleverness.

I can sit here and try to re-discover the fundamentals of physics from the ground up, or I can go to a library and read a textbook.

Discovering from first principles is the honorable path, but it is a colossal waste of time. To get to the state of the art, you have to steal knowledge. Only then can you begin to understand and improve it.

<comment><USER27> This is a ridiculously biased and oversimplified view. If everyone operated on your espoused principles, nobody would be incentivized to innovate.

You seem to believe the Chinese have some God-given right to get to the state of the art. No, there's a reason things like intellectual property, copyright, patent, etc. exist. How people here are defending the Chinese theft of proprietary US secrets and technologies is beyond me.

<comment><USER28> There a case to be made that innovations which require a lot of research won't be made, but I don't agree that nobody would have incentive to innovate. When there's no intellectual property you can't afford not to innovate. The fashion and food business, which aren't covered by copyright, are fast to follow trends. If someone can put out something very similar to yourself you have to have and keep your edge.

The other things is that why we can have such long copyright terms, but not the same for patents, is because it didn't use to matter. There were real limits to making anything useful out of it. Patents on the other hand outright suppresses innovation in the short term to reveal the knowledge to everyone in the long term.

The third things is of course that something can't be secret and morally defended by intellectual property at the same time. At least not from a functional perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think we need to figure out how to bring manufacturing closer to North America. For example, getting a prototype batch of PCB's from Advanced Circuits cost ~$400 for 5-10 pieces. Whereas it costs ~$30 from Seeed Studio.

The quality is obviously better from Advanced Circuits, and it doesn't take a whole month as it would from Seeed (I've heard good things about OSH Park and they're US Based).

The quality of Chinese products is improving, and the parallels with the history of Japanese tech are strikingly similar.

In terms of software expertise, I think the talent is still in North America. The hardware expertise though is somewhat non-existent. I'm surprised there's no city like Shenzen here.

<comment><USER30> Do engineers in China view software engineering as a kind of "second best" or even "third best" pursuit when compared to hardware engineering and manufacture?

Talking to some hardware engineers from Japan gave me the sense that they really think of hardware as the more "noble" or "higher" pursuit when compared to software engineering. They don't necessarily think of software as a really interesting challenge. Or something like that.

I know this is all very vague. I'm not sure about these attitudes at all. Curious about your take on it.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure but we know that the government invested into manufacturing. Perhaps Electronics Manufacturing was a byproduct that came from that? I think they're in a better position for the future if software innovation does slow down and hardware innovation continues to accelerate:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-are-firmware-engineers-paid-a- lowe...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-firmware-engineers-paid-a-lower-salary- than-software-engineers/answer/C-J-Windisch?srid=hSj0)

Software and Hardware is pretty fragmented now, and it seems its converging because of IoT and availability of cheap hardware.

In terms of noble pursuits: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763367)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The problem with innovation in China is the same problem it has in most areas namely corruption. In an actual free market innovation has huge dividends, but when success is arbitrary and often based on outside connections it's far less useful. That's not to say the people are not innovative and there is plenty of innovation in smaller more competitive markets.

In the end they will continue to innovate, but as long as it's fighting both the government and social norms things are going to be bottleneck.

<comment> eric-hu Corruption is an inefficiency of China, but the Chinese market is much larger than the American one. Compare the 1350 million mainland Chinese to the 350 million English speaking north Americans. A Chinese startup has 4x the potential customers. There's a lot of room for inefficiency.

I'm currently in Singapore. Some entrepreneurs here lament the small market size. The population is 5 million. Though it's highly educated and affluent, national and cultural borders set upper bounds on software startups. Creative (of Soundblaster fame) was the last really big Singaporean tech company. Software startups here can't quite compete with big country startups because they don't have the population to grow their user base. Exporting their software means going through translation work, redoing their marketing for a different culture and adapting to new laws. Now when I consider a country in the reverse position like China...

<comment><USER31> This really depends on what you are selling. China is a huge market for soft drinks and fast food, but BMW really can't care less for people making under 20k/year.

Singapore's total population size is less important to a restaurant than the number of people near your store.

<comment> eric-hu Okay, let's run with your counter argument.

In 2015, BMW sold 463000 cars in China, and 346000 cars in the USA. This was not the first year that China was BMW's largest market.

Last year was the first year that China was the largest market for Mercedes and Porsche. America was the second largest market for both companies.

[http://www.best-selling-cars.com/china/2015-full-year- german...](http://www.best-selling-cars.com/china/2015-full-year-german- luxury-car-sales-worldwide-and-in-china/)

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bmw-group-us- reports...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bmw-group-us-reports- december-and-2015-sales-300199606.html)

<comment><USER31> 1.3x sales with 4x the population _proves my point._ BMW is a mid+ brand (1 series is 25k) who does not care about total population just population with sufficient income.

<comment> eric-hu That's interesting. It demonstrates my point that a large machine is not to be disregarded just because of its inefficiencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > _"There's this strange belief that you can't build a mobile app if you don't > know the truth about what happened in Tiananmen Square," said Kaiser Kuo, > who recently stepped down as head of international communications for Baidu, > one of China's leading tech companies, and hosts Sinica, a popular podcast. > "Trouble is, it's not true."_

There's something that's hilarious, delightful, and depressing about the above statement, all at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER33> Let's play write the article that should have been written!

Here's my favorite example of Chinese innovation: the ESP8266. It is original hardware and 1/10th the price of the equivalent offering from TI (their CC3000), with more speed, more features and better reliability.

<comment><USER34> The esp8266 is cheap because they used expnsive to design, cheap to produce process(40nm). Quallcom had a similar chip(QCA4004 ?), probably with similar manufacturing costs, which they sold only to big companies, probably at a higher price.

Also when you come to judge that chip, don't forget china's interests in the chip industry and in security. I wouldn't be surprised those helped the esp to become reality.

<comment><USER35> The ESP8266 is an ingenious little chip. It's fully integrated - no external balun required unlike many of its competitors, no calibration by board manufacturers, just drop in and use. They reached the scales required to justify their NRE costs by making it a dual-use chip that could serve both as a a WiFi interface for cheap Android tablets and a standalone IoT design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Of course Chinese entrepreneurs can innovate. That being said, the CCP has been making it more difficult. As of this month every single mobile game needs government approval at cost to the developer.

<comment><USER18> On the other hand there is less red tape on biotech and pharma and Chinese government is encouraging innovation.

New Chinese biotech companies are dong well. gene therapy, proteins, viral vector therapeutics, cell therapy, small molecules, antibody engineering.

<comment><USER37> Certainly those couldn't go horribly wrong with less oversight, right? As opposed to mobile games...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Chinese companies are certainly innovating and they are picking up R&D teams anywhere on the planet.

For example you have Andrew Ng as Chief Scientist at Baidu Research in Silicon Valley even though Baidu pretty much only operates solely in the Chinese market.

<comment><USER39> The key being, "in Silicon Valley"

As an analogy, Russian VC money supported FB. I don't believe that is an argument that Russia is a tech innovator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Blocking Facebook and Google may have been brutalist censorship at first. But as a policy for encouraging innovation it is pure genius.

Will be interesting to see when/if some of the Chinese social networks become popular outside China.

<comment><USER17> So would it be safe to assume that you support Donald Trump in his plans to force companies to remain in the USA by increased tariffs on imports?

I don't necessarily agree or disagree, because it's really out of my realm, but it seems like a similar approach.

Block competition from outside the country...

<comment><USER40> I cannot vote in the coming us election.

I just find it slightly ironic that had Facebook and Google (and probably the us government) been accommodating for Chinese requests to censor uygurs during their uprising some 10 years ago then the situation likely would have been completely different.

Now Facebook and Google are missing out of a big high growth market - a market that ultimately may foster companies and innovation strong enough to challenge us social media dominance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > The United States wants to believe that the scourge of censorship thwarts > online innovation, but China is challenging the idea in ways that frighten > and confound.

As an American, I do believe that a culture of censorship and phenomena like the Great Firewall stifle an economy's capacity to innovate. That's not to say that innovation is impossible in such an environment, just more difficult.

> "It doesn't matter how the car is capable of traveling. Once it gets on the > highway, you can imagine what the end result will be," he said.

> The implication is that China's government is happy to have companies build > shiny, fast things as long as regulators can put up roadblocks as they > please. So far, they've mostly targeted foreign firms.

Exactly, so far! What happens when the state determines that your blooming startup threatens their agenda?

</comment><comment><USER18> Kleiner Perkins has currently offices in four cities: Menlo Park, San Francisco, Beijing and Shanghai [http://www.kpcb.com/china](http://www.kpcb.com/china)

China has markets, opportunities and innovative people. Things are just all somewhat different.

</comment><comment><USER42> In general a nation's ability to copy technology is a very good indication of its ability to innovate. Back in the day the USA copied British technology and art shamelessly. Later Japan was known for copying technology. Both went on to be great innovators.

Copying well, figuring out what to copy and what isn't needed, is hard.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've been hearing people say "the Chinese can't innovate" for many many years now, and I've seen "the Japanese can't innovate" in older sources, and once I saw a reprinted claim from a Brit in the 19th century that "the Germans can't innovate".

</comment><comment><USER44> I think that's why Chinese leadership want to separate themselves from the west, because they don't want western-style capitalism to influence their country, and end up negotiating economic advantages with developed countries. That's what state-capitalism is all about.

I think they want to have both the benefits of isolationism, and the benefits of exports.

Ultimately it's very easy to play with anti-US views. Much easier to blame the US than to blame the chinese government. For example the vietnam war, iraq war or japan nukes might sound much worse than the tiananmen square for a chinese.

But in the long run, a country like china should be able to catch up with how late they have developed. I believe they have excellent human capital. Not sure if they will be able to compete in very high tech fields, but they might one day.

</comment><comment><USER45> The thing most people forget is that China is the largest economic market in the world and is one of the only ones that is still growing in the economic slump the world is in right now. So even if Chinese startups and businesses aren't becoming multinational as fast as most western ones it has a hold of one of the ones that really matter. Think about it this way. Most of those western companies that have such a global presence are dumping billions of dollars to try and make it in China. Why is that? Clearly China is the market everybody wants but China is the market that Chinese companies already have which puts them at a big advantage for the future.

For example Apple is supposed to be the highest profitable tech company in the world. It is shaking in its boots now because it has 33% losses in China and has been funneling tons of its profits into trying to stop that loss from getting any worse. Meanwhile Chinese companies like Huawei are moving into their other markets while still holding on to their Chinese standing.

</comment><comment><USER46> America's service economy where we "own" IP and everyone sells each other backrubs is a joke.

</comment><comment><USER47> tl;dr Internet fails to turn China into America; Americans frightened, baffled.

<comment><USER48> The biggest surprise of the 21st century is that the Internet and massive outsourcing did not turn China into a country with policy acceptable to western powers.

The other comperable surprise is that massive debt fueled growth in China did not lead to a collapse and bailout by western powers.

The next surprise will be the complete substitution of the entire commercial and financial infrastructure of the world by Chinese institutions. Check out CIPS (alternative to SWIFT) or UnionPay (alternative to VISA/Mastercard networks), Asian Infrastructure Inxvestment Bank (alternative to wold bank), and of course the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (alternative to NATO), and the Shanghai Gold Fix (alternative to Comex and London Gold Fix).

Some are even saying the Chinese have got a new global currency in the works that's not the SDR or the dollar. However, I really doubt that is going to happen, at least in the next few years.

<comment><USER49> > The biggest surprise of the 21st century...

The century is only 15 years old. Give it time.

Social revolutions take decades to hatch after the conditions become right, and decades more of "happening" before there is any certainty about what they turned into.

The only thing that was ridiculous was the idea that a country with 1/3 of the world population would stay irrelevant forever. But outside of that, the future is incredibly uncertain.

<comment><USER50> not 1/3 but 1/5

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm here in Beijing and I just experienced this first-hand. Amazing.

Came over here for the launch of the Chinese translation of my book, Soft Skills, and I am amazed by the tech community here.

</comment><comment><USER52> I get a big popup "To keep reading, please enter your email address", any simple way to remove it other than removing nodes from DOM [1] and manually removing "drawbridge-up" CSS class from `<html>`?

[1] using [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hack-the- web/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hack-the-web/)

<comment><USER53> Firefox's reader view did the trick for me.

<comment><USER54> Smart, I just inspected the <article> section, set margin-top to -1px, and then just pressed down an arrow key and watched the article scroll while I read. Everyone has their methods of circumventing things like this :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The article fails to touch on what I regard the major barrier to Chinese innovation. Specifically, Chinese cultural norms are prohibitive towards the creative enterprise. They just don't think through a problem the way hippie American kids do; and why should they? The creative process NP-complete.

Chinese society is ingrained with the "get ahead by besting your peers". That sort of mentality is not conducive to creativity. It is stifling. It forces one to take the shortest path _all the time_ without any opportunity for making constructive mistakes.

And I don't buy the mentality of Chinese kids coming to US universities and solidifying their critical thinking skills. They congregate into throngs of Chinese students which perpetuate the Asian version of the "keeping up with the jones'" lifestyle. Trendy t-shirts and designer jeans, flocking to the basketball courts to ape Yao and JLin, nary an independent thought lest they should offend the echo chamber. "Why do we do what we do? Because we are told. Sure I can recite that the uninspected life is not worth living... But do I understand it?"

Furthermore, you see in Chinese pockets a lack of respect for their fellows should one fall by the wayside, whether it's the victims own fault or not. Those with weakness (or being different) are cast aside like lepers. It disgusts me. And to my original point, it stifles creativity.

The Japanese at least have Murakami. What celebration is there in China for revolt and indignation?

The Chinese competing with American innovation? Get real, and go F yourself (the preceding inserted as a provocative demonstration of American anti- normism, vote me down, square peg).

<comment> james-watson Where you see weakness, I see strength.

American companies are obsessed with political correctness, affirmative action, marketing and copyright law.

Chinese firms are only concerned with winning. They'll steal, lie and cheat, as long as they can build a superior product. Because they have no marketing, the product has to speak for itself.

Furthermore, Chinese culture is ruthlessly competitive as you alluded to. Guess what? This means it is incredibly robust and successful.

I personally believe the west is collapsing in on its kindness, and the east is rising up on its strength. A cursory look at what the two societies value will tell you the whole story.

West: Feigned Altruism at the expense of survival

East: Survival and Victory at the expense of everything else

Who wins? I think history can make a good guess...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Chinese have not innovated yet in anything in the present day. The examples given are just taking individual parts, and copying them all in one system.

The main difference is that in China there are not software and business patents. There are patents but in practice you can do whatever you wish. Also the Government can and actually does whatever pleases them. Someone knocks your door and tells you: We have decided you have to teach those guys what you do so they can do the same you do.

It is not innovation, but forced collaboration. Almost any technology is bought from outside, they will offer 10, 20 times(or whatever necessary) more salary(than what they actually earn) to key workers outside China with tech experience in order to go China and train Chinese replicating products in China. Once in China they will teach other companies to replicate the technology. This process is totally natural and periodic in Middle Land.

It has nothing to do with innovation. In fact the System makes it really hard to really innovate in China: Only traditional products like Silk, Porcelain and tea are protected from counterfeits. The rights of the individual is always less than the collective. The education teaches you submission and Confucian values, not risk taking and disruption.

Never forget that disruption and innovation is synonymous with change, and the first thing they will want to change is their Government.

Their system have worked fine for them until now, coming from total poverty(most people in China actually remembers the famine that killed millions, you see people wasting food as a symbol that they are "rich" enough to waste it),the advances have been impressive, but is not a model for developed countries.

<comment><USER57> > Chinese have not innovated yet in anything in the present day.

Really? Because it seems to me that Facebook Messenger is now copying WeChat.

<comment><USER58> I was really impressed by WeChat while living in China. Quite a few times I thought "hmm, I wish we had that back home"

To counter the argument that it's not true innovation, just a re-combining of existing ideas... what other type of innovation is there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Similarly, with regards to the common western belief of poor manufacturing quality from Chinese factories, I find that this is primarily true when western companies push the Chinese manufacturers to cut costs. In contrast, high-end Chinese-designed and -built products that I've bought have been excellent. Which is no surprise, and yet so many people associate "Made in China" with poor quality.

</comment><comment><USER60> It's insanely ignorant to even hold such views in the first place. It's not as if American media doesn't effectively self-censor already.

</comment><comment><USER61> I've also heard Foxconn drives a lot of what is possible in the future versions of iPhones and advises Apple on component level innovations.

</comment><comment><USER62> >what's more revealing is how Chinese firms have taken the best tech and adapted it.

Only felt like skimming the article but it seems that quote is at its base. There's a difference between "adapting" other people's work and "innovation". There is also a difference between manufacturing products and creating the original idea for those products and making them.

</comment><comment><USER63> Interestingly, the German part of Seafile just stopped working with the Chinese part because they got greedy and did other weird things they did not like.

Here is the source: [https://seafile.de/en/about-the-future-of- seafile/](https://seafile.de/en/about-the-future-of-seafile/)

</comment><comment><USER64> Big Chinese tech firms may not always be the first to come up with a good idea, but they certainly are able to refine an idea (which is often innovative). They also will run with bad ideas.

There's a story on TechDirt today [1] showing how the large Chinese firms have been putting together massive patent portfolios and have started litigating... in East Texas.

[1]: [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160718/06573135006/just-...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160718/06573135006/just- as-we-warned-chinese-tech-giant-goes-patent-attack-east-texas.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER65> It's amazing the lengths western people will go in order to convince themselves that competing political/economical systems will never pose any real challenge...

</comment><comment><USER66> Doesn't Chinese techies circumvent the great firewall of China constantly? Also, I think there was an article recently about how the government officials turn a blind eye at breaches that didn't involve political matters.

Somewhat on topic: [http://time.com/4283248/china-great-firewall-fang-binxing- ce...](http://time.com/4283248/china-great-firewall-fang-binxing-censorship/)

</comment><comment><USER67> I use WeChat along with WhatApp. Mainly I use it to communicate with some foreign friends. I like seeing the different features it has, it gives me ideas of what is popular in other regions.

Its nice to have that insight as to what works outside of the US market, I hope my side project could work in China.

</comment><comment><USER68> Recently Jack Ma claimed that China is delivering "low cost- better quality" products than USA;

</comment><comment><USER69> Innovation. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Seriously this is such an over used and hence watered down word. Every new thing isn't and innovation, novel maybe but not innovation.

The assembly line was an innovation. Ride sharing was an innovation. Pokémon go was a novel use of tech.

</comment><comment><USER70> Innovating takes time. There is way much less room for things that need more time to happen in China. The operation there is simply stimulated by different direct drivers. Now, with this taken into account, it's probably easier to have a rough idea of the reality.

</comment><comment><USER71> > "There's this strange belief that you can't build a mobile app if you don't > know the truth about what happened in Tiananmen Square,"

I think people want to find out what happened in the Tiananmen Square for other reasons than "wanting to build a mobile app".

</comment><comment><USER72> Bunnie of chumby/novena fame has this pretty great blogpost on how cheap stuff spurs innovation.

[https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

</comment><comment><USER68> It's [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect)

</comment><comment><USER73> We changed the baity title to a representative sentence from the article. If anyone suggests a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.

</comment><comment><USER74> Replace America with Britain and China with America and travel back a few hundred years.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think we should censor articles about how censorship is good for China.

</comment><comment><USER75> "Silicon Valley may be powered by organic kale"

sheesh.

</comment><comment><USER76> I wonder who is paying for this shill.

</comment><comment><USER77> So what are the actual innovations? Opening coffee shops and having lots of e-commerce transactions != innovation.

</comment><comment><USER78> > we're not all xenophobic Trump supporters, not even most of us

If one wishes not to be generalized, that person should abstain from doing it to others.

<comment><USER79> Are you a Trump supporter who isn't xenophobic? How do you reconcile his "build a wall" rhetoric, his comments about Gonzalo Curiel, his call to ban immigration of Muslims, and his recent isolationist-flavored comments in the New York Times about refusing to honor NATO? It seems like xenophobia is a core tenet of his campaign.

<comment><USER80> How would you reconcile that with the fact that his wife is Slovenian? Things are complex and you can simplify to fit your label of the day.

NATO commitments are a joke, when outside of Britan and few Eastern European countries, Germany, Netherlands, France are not spending to their commitments so why should Americans subsidize their mega-welfare states?

Here is a fact, Germany has about 330 or so battle ready tanks and most of them are made before 1980. That is some abysmal commitment to NATO.

<comment><USER81> Do you really believe that the world would be a safer place if Germany had a greater number of "battle ready tanks"?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-end- of-t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-end-of-the-tank- the-army-says-it-doesnt-need-it-but-industry-wants-to-keep-building- it/2014/01/31/c11e5ee0-60f0-11e3-94ad-004fefa61ee6_story.html)

<comment><USER82> Do you really believe that the world would be a _better_ place if the US has more commitment to NATO?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> >> "In April, the U.S. government officially named the Great Firewall a barrier to trade."

That's absurd.

<comment><USER84> It's a massive barrier to trade. It means Chinese people can't access services from many American companies. It's gotten so bad that I can no longer plan long working trips to China, because I simply can't work remotely with any reliability while in the country. It's little different from a law which just says "Foreign internet services aren't allowed here" except with better enforcement.

<comment><USER85> Something that's deep, nebulous, and legally deniable is better than an explicit law requiring enforcement. Therefore a language/culture barrier is better than any trade law. Likewise, something that's technologically enforceable (even if imperfectly so) is better than something requiring bureaucrats to enforce. Therefore the Great Firewall is better than any trade law.

Therefore the combination of the two -- Great Firewall plus language/culture barriers -- is a truly powerful combo. (What would that be in Magic the Gathering cards?)</comment></comment></comment>


Stop Writing JavaScript Compilers. Make Macros Instead (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://jlongster.com/Stop-Writing-JavaScript-Compilers--Make-Macros-Instead <comment><USER2> Its not exactly equivalent, but having spent the last month debugging a nightmare of C++ template meta programming mixed with a lot of C macros... I think things like this can be nice if they're applied tastefully but I wouldn't trust 99% of programmers to be judicious with these things. As someone else said, it's catnip to a certain type of coder. It also creates a really nasty implicit dependency — you can't pull out individual components because they're dependent on the DSL, and who knows what dependencies the DSL pulls in? I would actually argue that macros might be why Lisp didn't become mainstream; it creates a lot of fragmentation. Most people don't even want to learn the syntax of their build system, asking them to learn some weird language extensions they can't take to their next job seems like a rough sell

Edit: one more thing I forgot to add: this is a nightmare for tooling. I know there's the contingent that wonders why you'd ever want anything more than vim or emacs, but for the rest of us, this just means refactoring/code navigation/syntax highlighting/autocomplete/static code analysis are totally broken.

<comment><USER3> 'Most programmers can't be trusted with macros' is a sentiment I read a lot, but at one point in time people might have said the same about functions, and arguably they could say the same about pointers or recursion today.

I think that being able to think symbolically about one's code is a vital skill for a programmer (and, more generally, that the capability of thinking abstractly is a vital skill for a learnéd human being). Thus, if someone lacks that skill, perhaps _he should probably not be a programmer_? That may sound revolutionary, or elitist, but I think most of us would agree that someone who can't effectively reason about a depth-first tree traversal will have trouble as a professional software developer; mayn't that also be the same of someone who can't effectively reason about computational structure?

Your comment re. macros & fragmentation makes me wonder if you've ever used Lisp's macros: I think that they actually mitigate _against_ fragmentation, as e.g. CLOS started out as macros atop Lisp and ended up being standardised as part of it. Lisp's packages help manage namespace collisions, and thus prevent fragmentation by making differences manageable.

And Lisp tooling typically handles macros very well indeed.

<comment><USER4> I think the point being made is about incurring unwanted technical debt, rather than about the skills of programmers. A macro enthusiast can leave behind a codebase that requires substantial expertise or siloed knowledge to work with.

It's not that you can't trust people to make good decisions or invest in understanding what they're doing. It's that in real life people take shortcuts. Time constraints, deadline pressures, a brief skimming of a StackOverflow answer with no followup or further exploration - any of these can lead to code that does the job, is ignored until only one person is left who understands it, and needs to be parsed out and refactored. I think you can only trust programmers with macros (or functions, or pointers, or object- oriented programming) if you have good practices in place to handle technical debt (clean naming, clean separation of concerns, adequate testing, etc.).

As a side note: the other big part about macros is YAGNI. Macros are fancy, but I've yet to come across a use case for it that can't be replaced with a simple function call. I'm also curious about how one would test a macro.

<comment><USER5> > I'm also curious about how one would test a macro.

The same way you test any other kind of function call?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After using Elixir I love that 90.1% (according to github) of the language is written in Elixir and the excellent macros system is a major reason for this.

I actually think baking in the ability to add language constructs with macros is exceptionally useful and allows concepts to be expressed very clearly. A great example of this is Ecto which allows you to generate SQL directly from within the language.

        from p in Friends.Person, where: p.last_name == "Smith"

Will produce a select query at compile time, no ORM in sight taking up resources and getting in-between you and the database.

<comment><USER7> Clojure had this same property, and it seems like a benefit at first: because new "language features" aren't tied to releases of the language, anyone can create them and instantly share them with the community for everyone to immediately start using.

A great example is destructuring, which someone wrote a macro for, around version 1.2 or so, that got bundled with the language shortly after. You can't do that without changing the language, or being able to extend it with macros.

But in practice, having community-written macros means you'll get several versions of the same one, and there often won't be any clear winner since each will have strengths and weaknesses, and at least some authors will be unwilling to merge or add features or change their version, so that you end up with a bunch of almost-perfect macros and have to settle for their annoying bugs _that you know you could fix in 5 minutes_ if you just made a private fork, but then you end up in the xkcd-standards paradox.

Babel showed that you can successfully achieve the same thing macros do, but outside of the language, by writing a compiler and just targets the language you want to execute. No need for macros to get destructuring, just enable the "destructuring" plugin.

Unfortunately, Babel misses the mark on this dream, because _literally every Babel "plugin" is actually implemented in Babel's core library_ and all the plugins do is just enable a flag or two in the core parser/compiler. It doesn't expose any parser or compiler for you, and you can't actually add new tokens without forking Babel.

<comment><USER8> Changing a macro you own > forking a macro library > forking a transpiler > forking the language.

I admit I never worked with Babel on the plugin-writing side, but that sounds much more complex than writing macros.

With Clojure macros, and Lisp macros in general, one of the important part is that they run within the same system as the rest of your code. That is, macro logic can be split out to _regular functions_ , that will be executed at compile-time. Macros can reuse functions you wrote to be used at runtime. This property makes a language and your codebase much more coherent wrt. macro use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In this example:

      macro swap {
        rule { ($x, $y) } => {
          var tmp = $x;
          $x = $y;
          $y = tmp;
        }
      }

      var foo = 5;
      var tmp = 6;
      swap(foo, tmp);

the article says it expands to this:

      var foo = 5;
      var tmp$1 = 6;
      var tmp$2 = foo;
      foo = tmp$1;
      tmp$1 = tmp$2;

Is that really true? The statement "var tmp = 6" appears in the source code _before_ the place the macro is invoked. Can a sweet macro reach back and modify statements that occurred earlier in the file?

<comment><USER10> Macros cannot reach back like that, no. The renaming of the variable is due to sweet's hygiene system that operates on the program as a whole - if two variables with the same name exist in the same scope it will rename them to ensure uniqueness.

<comment><USER11> But then shouldn't the rewriting be like this?

        var foo = 5;
        var tmp = 6;
        var tmp$1 = foo;
        foo = tmp;
        tmp = tmp$1;

<comment><USER10> It could rewrite it like that, yeah, but sweet renaming all collided variables, likely to make it clear that they collided. It doesn't try to keep the distinction between what a macro introduced and what was already in scope (not worth the complexity).

This was back in 2014 though and sweet has changed a ton since then, so the output is probably different

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > so they (C macros) are pointless except for a few trivial things

Oh, believe me, they are NOT.

<comment><USER13> Right? This seems a little obnoxious. I could totally see doing all of the things he talked about with C macros.

But whatever.

<comment><USER14> Since C macros are glorified copy/paste, you can do anything with C macros... which was the point, I think.

<comment><USER15> ??? Not sure what you're getting at. You can't actually use the language itself from inside a C macro, like you could a Lisp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Please no, I'd much prefer the logic of taking nice things like types and new features and having them implemented by a central team that knows what they're doing as opposed to being implemented on a per-team/project basis by people have no idea what they they are doing.

<comment><USER17> Do you let the people who have "no idea what they are doing" write functions too? Put code into production? You pay them right? You train them?

Why not teach them about macros and have code reviews on things they submit, just like you would normally?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was written in 2014. What's the js macro scene look like today? Has Sweet grown in usage/utility?

Also, does this macro system have a concept of quoting/unquoting?

</comment><comment><USER19> Worth noting that sweet.js mostly fell by the sidelines after Babel came along.

With babel-macros, one can write macros that look exactly like function calls. Or, more accurately, one can make any valid syntactical construct expand as a macro. Webpack and friends also do this to an extent with loaders.

In the current Javascript landscape, I don't generally see macros being used for syntactical sugar as much as they are used for code generation: things like "take this SVG file and generate a React component that renders it" or "generate the boilerplate to inject this stylesheet that I added via a ES6 import declaration".

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember when Sweet.js was first announced, I was excited by it so I started playing around.

I still like it a lot as an idea, but maybe not in the way it was originally intended. In the last four years people have built parser libraries for JS (of varying kinds), and of course you have what became Babel. And Webpack. You might as well see them as way of plugging in features into the language you're writing and taking macros to an extreme, because it's not pure JS any more.

Yet most of that could be represented as macro definitions if you were to put the work into it. So I actually like the idea of Sweet.js as a really simple way to experiment with JS syntax without investing in parsing a language from scratch, or trying to plug it into Babel.

In the context of JS itself though, it's not a solution I would promote as sustainable. As soon as you see the idea of macros you start to want to think of everything as a macro ("because it produces more optimal code!" or whatever) and then you get a codebase that cannot possibly be maintained, because changing one line of code in your macro isn't always the same as changing the same line inside a function.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have never used macros. Is it really that much productive and readable? Versus proper compiler features (async, =>, type system) + a proper code design.

<comment><USER22> > Is it really that much productive and readable?

It can be. Used judiciously, they can reduce boilerplate and help highlight the important parts of the codebase.

The problem is that they're catnip to a certain type of developer. If they're allowed to proliferate in an uncontrolled way, you can easily end up with unmaintainable code.

Worst case, you'll end up with someone implementing a half-arsed type system at which point you may as well delete the repository (ok, slight exaggeration).

I can't really comment on whether or not JS would be a better language with a good macro system. My guess is probably not but I have no evidence for that.

<comment><USER23> Emacs is a very important ecosystem that effectively uses macros. The danger of macro overcomplication is real, and emacs' conventions are the primary way they avoid introducing problems.

For example, macros and functions are nearly the same thing: one runs at compile time, the other at runtime. But they both have documentation, and you can jump to a macro's definition the same way you would for a function. You can also compose them together and generate new ones on the fly, etc.

Basically, a lot of the problems with macros in other languages is that macros are considered this special type of not-really-a-function. It's either templating sugarcoat, or restricted turing-noncomplete layer. But if you treat macros as literally functions that just happen to run at compile time, the problems are reduced. And if you treat them with discipline and document what they do, and show examples, and add test cases, then you never have to worry -- just like normal software.

One helpful rule of thumb: If you copy some functionality more than twice, it's probably time to make it a function. If you _define a set of functions_ repeatedly -- like test cases -- or find yourself writing the same pattern over and over, or if you can generate most of your structure automatically based on e.g. "I know this is a React component", it might be time to write a macro.

If this concept sounds intriguing to anyone, I highly encourage you to check out Lumen: [https://github.com/sctb/lumen](https://github.com/sctb/lumen)

It's a Lisp that's literally javascript:

Compiled code: [https://github.com/sctb/lumen/blob/master/bin/reader.js](https://github.com/sctb/lumen/blob/master/bin/reader.js)

Original code: [https://github.com/sctb/lumen/blob/master/reader.l](https://github.com/sctb/lumen/blob/master/reader.l)

So if you understand Javascript, then there's not much to learn. And you can use it in your own projects right away.

Most of Lumen's brevity is thanks to macros.

(One hack for quickly understanding Lumen: read the tests. Every language feature is meticulously demo'd: [https://github.com/sctb/lumen/blob/master/test.l](https://github.com/sctb/lumen/blob/master/test.l))

<comment><USER21> As a OO programmer, I would still argue that: if I define a set of functions repeatedly, I will try to find an elegant object design to abstract that. One good point, then, is that I can debug that object design at any line of code. Whereas (I feel that) macros are undebuggable by design.

<comment><USER23> Suppose you were forced to use a language with no objects, and no closures. Since you're an effective dev, you'd find ways to cope. But we invented object systems to do better work.

Closures were another step up the ladder of abstraction, and now it's hard to imagine not being able to use them.

Macros are no different. It seems worth being skeptical of the idea that it's better for a programmer to have less power. And Emacs Lisp shows macros can work at scale without causing friction.

To your point on debugging, it all depends on the language. Elisp has an excellent debugging facility: [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Ed...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Edebug- and-Macros.html#Edebug-and-Macros)

The key is to internalize that macros are no different from functions. If you know how to call a function, you know how to use macros. The only difference is that they return _code_ rather than _values_.

<comment><USER22> This was kind of my original point though. If you do treat them as compile time functions i.e. for a bit of light code gen then they can be super useful.

But that's often not the case. In fact, OO is a nice example. It's probably less true now that OO seems to be a bit out of fashion, but the number of crappy, poorly documented OO systems I've seen in Lisps over the years is staggering.

It's not really a criticism of macros so much as an observation. It's also possible that the type of developer who is attracted to adding a bijou OO system into their application is the type of developer that is attracted to Lisps. It may well be the case that adding a macro system to JS wouldn't have the same attraction so wouldn't have the same downside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Something I have been experimenting with what I call "persistent snippets", over frustration with boilerplate. Basically when inserting a snippet into an editor it leaves behind a magic comment, that lists the parameters of the snippet, and wraps the snippet code in a //#region to enable folding in editors and languages that support that.

e.g.:

        import {insertSnippet} from "polish-and-release-this-someday"
        import {mstBoilerplate} from "./some-local-snippet-store"

        insertSnippet(mstBoilerplate, {name : "XCardModel"})
        //#region mstBoilerplate 20180911
        export interface XCardModelInstance extends Instance<typeof XCardModelImpl> {}
        export interface XCardModelCreation extends TypeHelp.Id<typeof XCardModelImpl["CreationType"]> {}
        export interface XCardModelSnapshot extends TypeHelp.Id<typeof XCardModelImpl["SnapshotType"]> {}
        export interface XCardModel extends TypeHelp.Id<typeof XCardModelImpl> {
          Type: XCardModelInstance
          CreationType: XCardModelCreation
          SnapshotType: XCardModelSnapshot
        }
        export const XCardModel: XCardModel = XCardModelImpl
        //#endregion mstBoilerplate 20180911

This means a simple editor extension and very simple command-line tools can be written to expand / refresh the "insertSnippet" lines as needed. mstBoilerplate, basically is a template literal string in typescript / javascript land but you can use whatever makes sense for your language. So this is useful for language that don't want to / can't support macros natively. You end up getting a lot of the boilerplate reduction power, and everything just works.

I feel for a lot of cases this works better than macros, the expanded code is checked into version control so there is nothing hidden going on, debugging works, if the code ends up needing to be specialized a bit, it's pretty easy to erase the insertSnippet line / comment lines and start modifying.

<comment><USER25> Interesting. I had the opposite idea a while back, inspired by a coworker who struggled greatly with indirection.

In my scenario I'd like to extend the code folding mechanism to show inherited methods and macro expansions inline, folded by default. Then you could drill into a five function and/or macro code flow, without ever leaving the current editor window, if the code has good cohesion.

And if it doesn't, then this is more incentive to fix your code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > when run through the sweet.js compiler.

So.. which one is it?

<comment><USER27> The title says writing compilers, not using compilers.

It's almost the case of "one compiler to rule them all", though IMO pervasive changes (like adding a type system) are better done at the compiler-level rather than the macro-level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Macros typically have limited scope compared to a compiler, and tend to operate locally.

Also, macros typically do not carry state between macro instantiations.

As such, with a macro it would be very hard to eliminate null from the language.

Therefore, we need compilers.

</comment><comment><USER29> So CL macros often follow the pattern of several forms of processing before returning a quasiquoted expression using the results of those earlier forms. That is, some regular code lisp code, followed up by, I guess I'll call it, a DSL.

Is that really all that different from where much of mainstream javascript- land has ended up?

It might take a moment to familiarize oneself with macros or a DSL, but does that not almost precisely define react component definitions?

Component definitions execute some javascript then spit back JSX and these JSX components can be used in a DSL that doesn't follow javascript syntax?

<comment><USER23> _It might take a moment to familiarize oneself with macros or a DSL, but does that not almost precisely define react component definitions?_

Surprisingly, the answer seems to be no.

Experienced react devs rely heavily on metacomponents: components that take other components as input, and return a combined component as output. It's like oldschool template metaprogramming in C++, but you end up merely wanting to stab yourself in the eye with a fork rather than hurl yourself out the nearest office window.

A proper macro system would make this pattern unnecessary, because you would rely on macros to generate the specialized components. It would spit out react code that you'd otherwise have to write -- or that you'd have to write a metacomponent for.

Note that a metacomponent is _not_ the same as a macro. It's similar, but it still operates at _runtime_.

Here's a rule of thumb. Can your macro system embed the contents of your /etc/passwd file as a string literal into your codebase? If the answer is no, then you're missing out on significant power.

<comment><USER30> Hopefully etc/password is a bad example? Security issues aside, I feel like reading files that are configuration in nature are best done "at runtime" not compile time. Can you imagine the code that loads a configuration file directly into the code and the ops team unable to reconfigure things? That would be the epitome of "well it worked in MY build".

<comment><USER31> Note that `/etc/passwd` contains no passwords or other security sensitive stuff. You might be thinking of `/etc/shadow`.

That is an example of something you might not actually want to do, though embedding a file from the code repository (e.g. as [https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/macro.include_str.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/macro.include_str.html) does in rust) is a reasonable and common thing to want to do at build time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7025261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7025261)

</comment><comment><USER33> How do you define in what order macros are applied?

<comment><USER15> Dunno about sweet.js, but in Lisps, it's usually source order. E.g., read the next token, is it at the head of the list and names a macro, if so, call the macro function, and pass in the code as the param, take the output and replace the macro form with the expanded version, resume reading...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> But there is Biwascheme.

</comment><comment><USER35> Honestly, can we just stop writing java-script. Even better remove java-script from webpages. Oh wait that boat sailed a while ago.

That aside I don't see what's the problem is with cross compiling to an other language. Other than if your writing a compiler why not compile to machine code. Honestly, I think code generators are better than macros.

<comment><USER36> I enjoy writing JS, so no, I won't stop.

<comment><USER37> Seriously. The hate for JS is strong, but I don't really see why.

Use typescript if you want, but I don't really see the issue. There are funny things related to implicit type conversion and some rules produce funny and unintuitive outcomes. These conversion can be very handy on the other sides.

"Math.min() > Math.max()" and they are damn right that this is true!

<comment><USER38> > Seriously. The hate for PHP is strong, but I don't really see why.

> Just use PHP 7! There are funny things related to implicit type conversion > and some rules produce funny and unintuitive outcomes. These conversion can > be very handy on the other sides.

> "PHP_INT_MIN < PHP_INT_MAX" and they are damn right that this is true!

Feeling the perception difference?

<comment><USER39> I always felt the same about PHP.

It gets a lot of shit because some of the oldest parts have some weird function names or parameter order, but outside of that it's a fantastic language, especially if you stick with php ~5.5 and newer. It's fast, it has a nice package system, and the pepole behind the language are making it better, faster, and more feature complete every day, with standards bodies which includes the biggest players in the space.

IMO languages like Go could learn a thing or 2 from PHP about how to stop worrying about the "best possible choice" and just start giving the language the tools that developers can use to solve real problems.

<comment><USER40> The difference is that JS has to be backwards compatible in order to not break 50% of the internet. With PHP, it is theoretically possible to make a major version upgrade that fixes most if not all the issues without worrying about breaking backwards, since upgrading is opt-in.

<comment><USER39> Upgrading was opt-in with python as well, and look at where breaking changes got them... A decade in and there's still a massive rift in the python community over 2 vs 3.

PHP is backwards compatible almost to a fault, but that doesn't mean you can't use new libraries or frameworks that hide those warts away from you, and that's a MUCH better choice in my opinion than making a significant percentage of the internet incompatible with the latest PHP so that your function arguments for a handful of old function calls can all look the same...

<comment><USER41> "massive rift" is a bit of an exaggeration. Most Python libraries have Python 3 versions and it's not at all uncommon to see libraries that don't have support for Python 2 (see Django)

<comment><USER39> I don't think it is. Sure, it's not like they are 2 different languages, but it's something that all python developers will have to keep in mind when using libraries. Not to mention the headache of having both installed on many systems (what does `python` give me?), and there are still many things that don't have python3 versions still (node-gyp is the one that still bites me every day).

It's not the end of the world, and it is getting better every day, but having to spend the better part of a decade dealing with multiple "main" versions of a language is not something that I want any other languages I use repeating.

And if that means needing to lookup if the function is urlencode or url_encode, well i'm happy to pay the price.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox acquires email app Mailbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/15/4108640/dropbox-acquires-email-app-mailbox

<comment><USER2> The Verge adds zero value to the sources they plagiarized. I mean summarized.</comment>


Beer is Bad for Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/sciencetech/beer-is-bad-for-science/808 <comment><USER2> Rubbish. Beer is good for you. Well, maybe not if you write science papers. I don't. But I've met a lot of interesting and smart people in my local pub who do help my with my startup (or some other things I'm not really good at). Czech beer rocks! :)

Btw avian ecologists aren't the hard partying types. Geeks and doctors are.

</comment><comment><USER3> How convenient -- my head just happens to hurt from all the beer I drank yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER4> Beer is also bad for my brain!</comment>


Why I'm not speaking at CPDP: It's the privacy-washing - <AUTHOR> https://ar.al/notes/why-im-not-speaking-at-cpdp/ <comment><USER2> I'm inclined to agree with the author about the legitimizing effect that sponsorship can have. In the case of Palantir it looks like a clear conflict of interest. I appreciate the deconstruction of the 'multi-stakeholder conference' into the realization that the stakes are indeed not equal – and in fact so unequal that the very existence of the conference hinges on the cooperation of the bigger stakes.

I'm a bit put off by the multiple references to Caspar (Bowden) supposedly "turning in his grave"; the author doesn't explain how he is so sure (that Bowden would disapprove). Especially since the CPDP event of 2015 was also sponsored by Palantir, and Bowden was on the organizing committee, a moderator and on a panel of that conference.

<comment><USER3> Agreed about Caspar Bowden. He worked at Microsoft for a while. And both before and after that, he was very active with the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in the US (he once described CPDP to me as "a European attempt to replicate CFP"), whose sponsors include Microsoft, Google, and other companies that have similar conflicts of interest.

To me it seems that there's something to be said for both approaches. Conferences with corporate sponsorship aren't going to be revolutionary; balanced against that, they do provide places to engage and ways of getting different perspectives out more broadly. [The same's true for government speakers.] Purer conferences like Aral's talking about can have a different focus and I can certainly see why some people prefer them.

So, kudos to Aral for sticking to his principles and declining the invitation. I'm still looking forward to the panel, and don't think that Marc Rotenberg or Brigitta Johansen will limit what they have to say based on the sponsorship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I love about the Choas Communications Congress in Germany at the end of the year is how _uncorporate_ it is. It's a massive, multiday, 10,000 attendee conference that has been going for _decades_ and they manage it without corporate logos splashed all over the place.

<comment><USER5> The only reason why any conference needs sponsors is to help bring ticket prices down, besides that there's no real reason for sponsorship. Well, except maybe increasing profits for organizers (there are several strings of conferences organized by companies that do it for profit. Can't blame them either, the only costs involved in a lot of dev conferences are the venue, food and drink, and travel/lodging expenses for the speakers - usually the speakers do it for free or for marketing reasons (recognisable by the "evangelist" job title)

<comment><USER6> You have never organized a moderate or large conference. Your list doesn't even cover all major areas. No logistics? No electricity, network and video recording? None of the legally-required (depending on venue + number of attendees) professional personnel (event technicians, medical, fire, maybe an electrician. optionally security, cleaners). Not even insurance? Not even gaffer tape (not kidding, it's expensive)! (And I'm assuming your volunteers have enough time for all the time-intensive tasks.)

Attracting visitors is hard. Getting good speakers is harder. You can't just let the "evangelists" speak, or your talks will be advertisements. Worse than sponsors!

Low-cost, single-track, single-evening events for fifty people or so (= small event) are possible. They'll just not have any significant impact. (They'll _definitely_ not have an impact without lecture recordings.)

I can say from experience that low-cost, non-profit, moderate (500+ people) events are possible even without listed sponsors or paid talks but have to be grown over many years and require goodwill from everyone (venue + various organizations and student groups) around.

And Congress is special, you can't duplicate it easily. It's grown over decades, it's the largest European hacker conference now (and btw: so that niche is filled now). They know in advance that they'll sell all tickets. It's prestigious. It attracts top-notch speakers. That would have attended anyway, of course. _Everyone_ _wants_ to help (time, money, equipment, and favors you can't just buy with money). It's not for profit. Dozens of volunteers begin working on it days to months before the Congress, a select few full time. Some are experts; you couldn't afford to pay them. Multiple hundreds of visitors volunteer on-site, working for the fun of it, free water and a special t-shirt. And it still costs 90€/ticket.

<comment><USER7> > largest European hacker conference now (and btw: so that niche is filled > now)

There are quite a few European hacker conferences and CCC's ties to hackers (in the computer security sense) are getting weaker as it gets more political and less technical.

<comment><USER8> Please name at least one conference which has a similar number of participants, ah forget that even 10% would surprise me. The CCC was political since its beginning.

<comment><USER7> Obviously nothing of the same scale, and yes it was always political, but the balance is shifting away from security to all of their other tracks, I counted up the talks from last year and only 25% were in the Security track vs 45% from 23c3.

There were 67 hacking talks at 23c3, and 29 Security tracks at 32c3, it's very clearly on the downhill as there are less talks, and people become less interested in submitting and attending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      But when you invite them to sponsor the event, that's a whole different ball game. They're no longer just at the table, they've paid for the table.

Or in other words: He who pays the piper calls the tune.

He makes a very valid point in my book.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but the author doesn't make it clear what exactly is objectionable about Palantir with respect to privacy issues. That's not to say that there isn't anything, but just that it would be helpful to have a synopsis of what exactly they're doing wrong.

I understand that they do work with governments, but that's as much as I've seen in the press. There has been far wider discussion of the privacy challenges facing Facebook and Google.

<comment><USER11> They collect health and financial data on people to help health insurance companies deny claim to people who want their medical expense reimbursed. And they are suspected to be in the chain of data (probably phone data collection and mining) to drone people in Yemen and Afghanistan.

<comment><USER12> Source?

<comment><USER8> Come on, those "Source please" requests for stuff you could google yourself in about 3 seconds are really lame.

<comment><USER13> In this case, it's appropriate. Palantir doesn't "collect health and financial data on people", and I've never seen anything in the press that suggests they do.

<comment><USER14> I don't have any information about the other parts of the issue, but they do work in the healthcare industry.

[https://www.palantir.com/solutions/healthcare- delivery/](https://www.palantir.com/solutions/healthcare-delivery/)

<comment><USER13> Sure. Palantir, like other successful enterprise software companies, has a variety of large, enterprisey customers. But saying that Palantir collects health and financial data on people sounds super scary, when in fact Palantir isn't in the data collection business in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has Aral left the UK yet? [https://ar.al/notes/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the- fish/](https://ar.al/notes/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/)

<comment><USER16> The idea that anyone that voted Tory is reading that article and cares what he thinks is hilarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Excellent blog post, seems bizarre that the organisers wouldn't agree.

<comment><USER18> Money does that to people. (Re: Organizers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's good to read about people standing on principle, I admire this person and they encourage me to stand by mine.

</comment><comment><USER20> I applaud everyone who sticks up for their principles. However like with most matters of principle it's really hard to draw the line (as the author outlines when it comes to corporations). I'd add these questions...since state governments are major eavesdroppers and ignore privacy rather often, should I stay away from almost all scientific conference that are usually organized by state funded universities? Should I refuse to work as a scientist if it means working at a state sponsored university? Should I refuse to take state- funding?

I think participation under protest and a FU-Palatir etc. panel would have sent a stronger signal but that's debatable. It's a sorry state of affairs any way you look at it.

<comment><USER21> Don' exaggerate. His point is that you shouldn't allow sponsors that could lead to conflicts of interest, not all sponsors that do "bad".

In your example you can go to a symposium on quantum chemistry sponsored by the gov despite the gov eavesdropping. You shouldn't go to a converence on cancer research standards sponsored by the homeopathy league of gentlemen.

<comment><USER20> Just to clarify I'm talking about scientific research in the area of privacy/crypto etc.

The argument would be "this nation state is an evil eavesdropper thus I won't work for it when my area of expertise is privacy/crypto etc.". I think that's taking it a bit too far because "the state" is pretty big and its sole purpose isn't to eavesdrop (I'd hope) but I wouldn't say that position is unreasonable.

<comment><USER21> Sorry, i misunderstood then.

I would agree that as long as the specific arm of the gov that spies isnt involved in the conference, its fine. The articles argument does not say otherwise either. It highlights that palantir has opposed interests to the attendees of the conference.

Id say the author would be fine with a state department sponsorship as they repeatedly have backed secure communication for dissidents et al, but would oppose sponsorship of the nsa.

Its not just "on principle" either, but the dangrr that i terested sponsors can influence what gets presented and how. Like how the nsa would push an encryption standard theyve already broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It parallels that the majority of UK government initiatives into startups involve or are sponsored by Google, Facebook and Apple. Seems antithetical.

</comment><comment><USER16> > So, since I've been living in England _in yonks_ now

Apparently not that long.

</comment><comment><USER23> Whats the purpose of a conference in the youtube era? I mean, medieval jousts are kind of obsolete so we don't do them either, outside renn faires. I have some theoretical reasons conferences still exist:

1) There's corporate money sloshing around to be soaked up in giveaways, free food, fancy rentals, honorarium payments...

2) The American obsession with uncivilized amounts of vacation is partially (only partially) made up for in som white collar fields by providing a fake vacation aka a conference. Of course some really cheap companies not only don't pay expenses to attend but don't even pay salary, which is off the charts cheap. But at least some attendees are getting conf week in place of civilized euro-style vacation schedules. Historically you take some brogrammers and give them a non-beach spring break at a conf, they act like they're back in the frat flirting on the beach, and next thing you know its social media meltdown mode, which is at least funny to watch.

3) Only that rare bird of very rich noob will attend to learn. Everyone else there "knows the score" and if the "bad guys" are buying lunch, we'll I'm glad to reduce shareholder value by eating their lunch. On the internet we have agreed we have to LARP that everyone is a noob, the public are all noobs, only noobs matter, but once in a while its OK to admit expensive conferences are for non-noobs, possibly even for experts. And its impolite to speak down to all the experts and tell them they're all idiots for not noticing what they probably noticed back when you still wore diapers. Sit back and listen to grandpa talk about military sponsorship of university research back in the hippie decade half a century ago.. This is only "news" if you're not observant.

4) I had the misfortune to have a presidential debate in my home town less than a mile from where I work, so at least some form of evil on earth was talking nearby while coworkers and I had those supposedly valuable "hallway conversations" at work. I'm seeing a parallel with letting the evil empire sponsor the official track which doesn't matter because conferences are all about meeting people in the halls or sitting at the (subsidized by the evil empire) bar.

This is a good example of the net loss to society caused by excessive social signalling on the internet. Yes he earns exactly 332515 whuffie by making an air tight politically correct (at least by our standards) accusation, but the big picture is it does nothing for anyone and doesn't matter. Even worse 332515 Whuffie and $7 will get you a cup of coffee at starbucks, its worthless and can't be converted into anything useful in general, or specifically it can't be converted into anything more useful than hanging out at a conference and talking to people.

<comment><USER24> _Whats the purpose of a conference in the youtube era?_

It's fun and rewarding to get together with your peers and talk shop over coffee or beers.

<comment><USER23> Exactly, which is why it doesn't matter who's paying the rental bill on the hall, that you're not in, because you're making personal or business contacts at the bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > While CPDP doesn't pay its speakers

Isn't that the real issue? There is nothing brave to give up on nothing.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't it a bit hypocrite that mr. Balkan's Hearbeat project is specifically designed for Apple IOS, which is a major corporation? see: [https://forum.ind.ie/t/we-re-building-for-os-x-and-ios- not-l...](https://forum.ind.ie/t/we-re-building-for-os-x-and-ios-not-linux- this-)

<comment><USER27> > Apple is a major corporation

Aral isn't against making money - I'm not sure why anyone would think he was - he's in favour of privacy.

Apple have actually done a pretty good job in stopping governments who want to forbid privacy.

<comment><USER26> I understood Aral's rethoric as follows: I develop for Apple (and only) Apple, due to the lack of a better platform.

A majority of privacyscholars participate in CPDP, due to the lack of a better platform.

Bit hypocrite no?

People seem to like Apple a lot...

<comment><USER28> Apple's mission isn't privacy advocacy, or serving as a platform for debate on privacy or human rights.

Yeah, they advertise some kind of privacy protection as a product feature, and you can debate whether or not those advertising claims have merit, but it's a long way off from the CPDP conflict of interest that Aral describes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


China targets Google in crackdown on pornography - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/05/international/i022808S45.DTL&tsp=1 <comment><USER2> "The central government has blocked access to many Web sites it considers subversive or too political, including The New York Times' Web site on Dec. 19. It was unblocked a couple days later and remained open Monday."

I wonder how many political sites will be swept up in the campaign against Internet pornography?</comment>


How to make a conference speaker's day - <AUTHOR> http://gist.io/3608854 <comment><USER2> Link to original presentation on sketching: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Q9K93bK-4></comment>


How would you prepare for a 30 day coronavirus quarantine in your home? - <AUTHOR> People under quarantine often complain about inadequate food, or lack of food.  My proposal - stock up on dry whole grains and beans, which have a long shelf life.  Also buy an instant pot, sprouting jars and a supply of Vitamin B12 supplement and soap.   (Oat Groats and Mung Beans would be good choices).  When the quarantine starts, cook bean sprouts, beans and grain in the instant pot, repeat as necessary.  Note that when it cooks, the instant pot also sterilizes the food.  That's my idea, what's yours? <comment><USER2> Viruses don't live for long periods of time outside their hosts, so rations could still be delivered if quarantined.

Instant Pot is great for cooking food and it not spoiling too fast (e.g. meal prepping), but overkill when we're worried about viruses.

I did a quick inventory today and estimated we have enough calories from sugar, rice, beans/pulses and oil alone to live for 2+ months at normal function without weight loss. And enough other things for nutrients and many more calories. And that wasn't even planning for anything. Maybe I buy more than we need...

<comment><AUTHOR> I was answering a somewhat different question, namely, what is the minimum you need to live in quarantine for 30 days, starting with nothing but water and electricity. I'm not assuming the person has an oven or a refrigerator, or access to a delivery service. I was aiming to optimize nutrition and calories while minimizing cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amazon prime

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've read that Amazon keeps low inventories for efficiency reasons, leaving the company vulnerable to supply shortages. Already the quarantine in China has disrupted some Amazon supply chains. It seems unlikely that Amazon can keep up with the current level of deliveries, let alone handle a surge in demand for staples needed in a widespread quarantine.</comment></comment>


The psychological appeal of charismatic political candidates - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/15/i-asked-psychologists-to-analyze-trump-supporters-this-is-what-i-learned/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is ostensibly about Donald Trump for the hook value but goes on to make general observations about leadership, communication, and charisma that apply in a wide variety of contexts, including the workplace, so I think it will be of interest to HN readers.</comment>


Why Canada is failing at tech (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://business.financialpost.com/entrepreneur/fp-startups/why-canada-is-failing-at-tech <comment><USER2> I suspect that paying more will help keep some of those people in Canada instead of the Bay Area. Follow the money.</comment>


Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN - they aren't it - <AUTHOR>

I took a long time to get on Facebook, may be because the notion of telling my friends what I did every minute of my day (or sharing 'interesting' photos) was not my definition of keeping in touch with friends. Yes, Facebook turned out to be a great experience, just not what I had in mind for the use case of keeping in touch with friends.
LinkedIN, defines how we stay in touch with our professional relationship. It is, again, a great tool for that purpose! I cannot think of a better tool, as of now, that serves this purpose.
Twitter - oh God, do not ask me what it is useful for. I am as vague as anyone can be. I am sure it is serving a purpose, I just do not seem to get it.
Anyways, given some of the criticisms I mentioned above, the question I would like to ask is this - can there be a 'different' type of network? After struggling with the question, I think I found one other type of network - network based on merit, not based on who we know, but based on common set of interests.
Imagine being able to identify an interesting 'persona' on the other side of the world that shares your opinions, and being able to converse with them. We do this today, through other people's blogs - if they have one. But blogs are notorious for how hard they are to promote and reach a meaningful readership.
Also, let us say I create a blog and start writing there. But the problem is that I need to maintain the theme of the blog, I cannot write on any topic that deviates from that theme. Hmm...am I to create another blog?
I think blogs is not the answer, at least for those of us that already do not have huge followership. But we still have a lot of good things to share.
That is why we created ShareCred! Please visit <a href="http://sharecred.com">http://sharecred.com</a>, and let us know in the comments what you think.
Signing up is easy - just sign-up through your LinkedIN.
Thank you for your time, ShareCred team <comment><USER2> Is signing up through LinkedIn the only option? For a brand new, unheard of web site, I'd really rather just create a new account that is not directly tied to my professional networking account. If I like what I experience with the site, then I might want to tie in external accounts later. If it's the only option, I am not joining.

This registration strategy seems at odds with the "anonymity" the site markets.

On a positive note, I do believe that community rating of content is a useful mechanism, and connecting yourself and your content to certain areas of interest can also help others find people and content that may be relevant. It's hopefully a more structured way to find your way around than Twitter's hashtag stew.

Good luck in all you do!

<comment><AUTHOR> hi Thank you very much for your feedback. Point taken. The reason (not saying it is the right one) we started with only LinkedIN was that it is seen as one way to keep the quality of the participation.

Trust us (you can ask - what is that?), there is not going to be any connection between your LinkedIN account and your ShareCred activity. It is just a way to login.

Having said that, we will seriously consider opening up registration.

Thanks again,

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems like what you're describing is achievable via Twitter.

Use hash-tag for a particular topic.

If you like what somebody posted (perhaps a link to their blog), you follow them and if need be you can interact with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Theoretically, I agree with you. But since the conversation itself (comments, related posts, recognizing merit, etc.) is not the focus of Twitter - it is a good tool for emitting news, but not built as a platform/environment for meaningful dialogue or eco-system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quora?

<comment><USER5> Mixed with Glipho perhaps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, in my earlier response, I missed the term 'mixed' in your comment.

Having realized that, I agree with you. I think it is right to characterize what we are doing at ShareCred as a mix of HN and Glipho (of course with additional features, enabled by the combination).

Thank you,

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's what I meant. Such combination is an interesting one. However the critical thing (besides design) is how are you going to attract the required mass of users to keep it vivid. So far there's little incentive to put my content there, and without content there's no incentive to visit the site. The loop is closed. Maybe you could consider an easy way for users to automatically put their content from other places, via RSS for example? That way you could focus on the discovery not content creation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed that there is a catch-22 here (as I would imagine with any social network - if our friends are not on the network, what is the point in me joining?). As I mentioned in my post, it took me a while to join Facebook. And how long LinkedIN has been around, it feels like only the last couple of years people have been 'regular' on LinkedIN.

Having said the above, I wholeheartedly agree with you. In fact, we are working on a Wordpress plugin to let users cross-post to ShareCred simultaneously. RSS could be another great way, but we will have to work out ownership.

Frankly, I am glad that the discussion is about how to attract users than 'the concept does not make sense' - which was the first hurdle we wanted to get through.

Now that we are through it, I truly appreciate any ideas you (and others) can share.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Time to Build Trust With an "Open Achievements API"? - <AUTHOR> http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/time-to-build-trust-with-an-open-achievements-api/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Grades would be a much more useful metric if the course description _and_ course syllabus were available as well.</comment>