The cost of keeping Singapore squeaky clean - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20181025-the-cost-of-keeping-singapore-squeaky-clean <comment><AUTHOR> I am right now in Singapore for a visit and personally I don't have the feeling of a very clean city. There are some things that drive me crazy as a european. I went to a hawker with some Singaporeans and we got new disposable chopsticks for every dish. Wich means I ended up with three pairs of chopsticks. All plates were disposable. Either of plastic or styrofoam. Like in the article we didn't clean our trays, a cleaner took them the second we finished eating. I asked the Singaporeans how they feel about all the plastic and they just replied that's just how it is. Especially, that you get a plastic bag for every two items in the supermarket drives me nuts. Even when I am holding a backpack directly in front of the cashier he starts packing the items faster in a plastic bag than I can say anything. They even have watered sponges for their finger tips so they can be quicker with the plastic bags.

Needless to say, that all the trash ends up somewhere. Maybe not so much in percentage, but you will definitely find litter every few meters. The difference to my hometown in Germany is, that the litter there stays for years but also not so much new litter per day is produced. Maybe the Singaporeans should place more public trash bins or get some moop bags.

<comment><USER2> Regarding disposable plates and utensils, I actually don't see much of them unless you ask for takeout. I suspect in the area you're in the cost of dish washing is more expensive than the cost of plates and refuse collection. A tax on disposables would be great.

Singapore is actually getting better on reducing disposables, though slower than I would like. Cashiers don't double bag items anymore, and try to pack as much into one as possible. Paper takeout boxes and bags have replaced styrofoam and plastic in many places, and it's currently trendy to not offer plastic straws for drinks.

Another reason for disposable chopsticks, (though this applies more in China, Taiwan and Malaysia) is that the customers may not trust the hygiene of the place they're eating in. Disposable chopsticks are cut with the centers intact so it's impossible to put them back together and resell them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had one metallic straw in a fancy cocktail bar. The rest were plastic. Not to say, that I get a plastic cup full of ice with a plastic straw when I order a green tea, which comes in a can and is already ice cold. For the litter I see the most: part of plastic bags and Dasani water bottles. I hope the change in trash management, recycling and maybe trash separation does not only start with the rich people here, but with everyone.

<comment><USER3> Metallic straw? Like, reusable? Fairly sure that wouldn't fly anywhere else, I mean, even plastic straws are individually packaged right now due to hygiene considerations.

Disposable plastic > poorly cleaned reusables.

<comment><USER4> I ate street food, while sitting on rickety plastic chairs on small metal tables, covered in noise and moped fumes in Penang, Bangkok and Ha Noi among other places.

I ate a lot of it and never, ever got sick.

Here's my golden rule from which I _never_ deviate:

      Make sure that you see how they cook the food on premises
      It needs to be well visited, preferably by locals

As I said I never got sick (or even felt slight discomfort) and I had a number of memorable meals under such conditions.

Would a western health inspector tolerate the setup? Hell; no!

But, so what?

Sure, you can stick to the hotel restaurant of The Intercontinental in Bangkok, but you'll be hardly any safer than eating on a wobbly table in some small soi in the area.

But man, will you be missing out...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am always shocked when I go to Singapore because when I was a child in the 1960s Singapore was no different from any other southeast asian city: muddy river banks, discarded rubbish everywhere, boats unloaded by hand, and street hawkers (with amazing food) cooking food on gas rings from their bikes.

Love them or hate them, but you have to admit LKW and the PAP just got to work and transformed the place. But somehow managed to keep the good food (though the food in Ipoh remains the best).

</comment><comment><USER6> Plus really strong drug laws.

Six executions so far this year. Most recent: October 26, 2018.[1]

[1] [https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2018/10/425285/prabus- fin...](https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2018/10/425285/prabus-final- message-do-not-be-involved-drugs)

<comment><USER7> They're not kidding. The visitor entry card everyone receives upon arrival to Singapore says "DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS" in hard-to-miss block print.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The area of Singapore is 278 sq miles, approximately the size of 17 miles square. Whatever policies that work in such small high density places won't work in larger countries. However, one can try to decentralize as much as possible; such decentralization may not work in large countries either.

<comment><USER9> Both Japan and Switzerland are know to be very clean and much larger.

But they seem to approach it very differently.

I seem to remember Spain being quite clean too. People mopped the pavements in one of the towns I visited every morning.

<comment><USER10> Was i sounthern Switzerland (Lugano) this spring and was chocked at the difference in cleanliness between Switzerland and Italy. Crossing the border by car, it was like somebody had turn a knob and enabled litter in the background graphics when entering Italy. It was that surreal a difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In London, the "war on litter bins" (removal of litter bins from train stations and central areas, supposedly to prevent them being misused by terrorists) has created a culture of simply leaving litter on the floor or in the street because there are no bins to put it in.

Perhaps that's ok in busy central locations where a street cleaner will be along shortly to pick it up, but the problem is that people are now accustomed to dropping litter and do the same in suburbs, parks, and countryside where it just accumulates.

How do we solve it? We need to teach environmental education in schools and try to stop littering habits before they form.

But also, I think a great application for robotics technology will be litter picking, street-cleaning robots!

<comment><USER12> The bin removal was actually prompted by a period when the IRA would put bombs into bins in train stations etc., see eg

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

So not a completely idiotic policy.

<comment><USER11> For a while there was a solution involving "hoop" bins with clear plastic bags so you could see what was inside them.

But recent terror attacks (which used knives and vehicles, not bins) prompted their removal again.

<comment><USER13> Wait, that doesn't make any sense. If the see-through bins solved a problem, why would they be removed when a different problem appears? They're independent problems, removing the bins when they're not involved in the new kind of attacks seems just random.

<comment><USER14> Yep, pretty much. I live not-in-London and during one of the heightened periods of security last year (armed police everywhere) all clear bag bins were removed from the metro and bus stations. This of course led to littering. It didn't make any sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing that always impressed me about Singapore was that they incinerated all their garbage, then they collected the emissions from that furnace to power the city, and used the by products again. Brilliant

<comment><USER16> Well, they drink their own piss too.

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

<comment><USER17> Just like astronauts.

<comment><USER16> Or perverts!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is not Japan similarly clean and they do it without lots of fines and cheap Labour. They do it through the upbringing and linking cleanliness to morality.

I have not been either place but maybe somebody who have can compare to cleanliness of both places?

<comment><USER16> Yeah. If anything, Japan is even cleaner.

Singapore is very clean in major areas (downtown, main streets, neighborhoods, etc) but not different than e.g. London in poorer ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Singapore is an interesting case study how a well-run government that restricts a lot of freedoms can work remarkably well. I wonder if this model is sustainable long term.

<comment><USER19> I lived in Singapore for a couple years and I can say that, at least as an expat, you hardly feel restrictions. Of the Singaporeans I know, locals from young to old, they all love it.

Like all countries, it has its issues, but consider:

\- Freedom of religion particularly stands out

\- It has great and affordable health care

\- It's safe

\- Very easy to do business

I could list more. Maybe freedom means something different to you than to me. Like I said, there's definitely room for improvement, but I think they're doing way more right than wrong.

<comment><USER20> I suspect your sample size was heavily biased to your own social class. Singapore is ruthlessly capitalist, and can be a terrible place to be if you're poor or a foreign worker.

One _Straits Times_ (local Pravda) story I recall was about one of those old ladies who cleans up in hawker centres, earning on the order of S$100/month. This is way below a living wage, even in Singapore, and there's no state pension in Singapore either, so this was the sum total of her income. Because she couldn't afford an apartment, she slept (illegally) on the "void deck" (ground floor, exposed to elements) of an HDB housing block.

None of this was news, mind you -- the news was the fact that somebody stole her life savings of $50 from a cookie jar, and _this_ is not permissible in squeaky-clean Singapore.

Many maids are also kept in modern-day slavery, working 365/24/7 and literally locked into the apartment so they don't run off and get pregnant, in which case the maid is forcibly repatriated and the owner is fined.

More eye-opening reading here: [http://twc2.org.sg/](http://twc2.org.sg/)

<comment><USER21> > Many maids are also kept in modern-day slavery, working 365/24/7

In order to get a maid in Singapore you have to pass a test. They are also paid ~500-700/m which is a lot more than they earn in their own countries. For example the minimum monthly income in Cambodia is roughly ~120$. So they earn a lot more in Singapore. Also maids must be given 1 day off per week.

Now every single person I know who has a maid treats them well, a co-worker of mine who is Indian paid for her maid to go back to India for 2 weeks while she went on holiday. This sort of thing is not uncommon.

Now that doesn't mean there are not bad apples in Singapore, I've read stories of maids who have been locked up and not paid, or forced to clean the outside of windows on the 20th story of an apartment block. But if caught, those families get in a lot of trouble. In asia, everything is about face, that doesn't go for just the families, in singapore it's the country too. So they put a lot of effort into ensuring people are safe and protected so it never gets a bad reputation.

> earning on the order of S$100/month

This is rubbish. The entry level for a cleaner is $1000/m, not $100, the salary goes up if you're skilled in operating cleaning machines and such, not just picking up trash. Also the government subsidizes salaries of workers over the age of retirement.

Singapore doesn't have handouts. You don't get handed money because you're old or unemployed. What they do is if you as a company hire someone over a certain age, the government will pay a portion of the salary. This is why Singapore has many workers who are old, and why tax in Singapore is so low.

Housing is also subsidized if you're a low income earner, or little to no family support. You still need to pay rent, but its a fraction of what non- subsidized renters pay.

<comment><USER20> You're confusing what _ought_ to be with what _is_. Yes, maids are _supposed_ to be given one day off a week on paper, but who enforces that? Maids and other foreign workers are also not supposed to pay huge sums to agents to score jobs in Singapore, but they do, often ending up in debt, with loan sharks threatening their families if they don't complete their terms.

It's not a question of "bad apples", but the system being stacked so heavily in the employers' favor that it effectively tolerates if not outright encourages abuse. The kind of thing that ends up in the courts and newspapers is only the tip of the iceberg: [https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-see-more- cases...](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-see-more-cases-of- maids-being-abused)

Note how frequently the _employers_ threaten their victims with repatriation or the police!

Re: homeless cleaner lady, the story in question was ~10 years ago, but my understanding is that it was not a formal job, but some sort of off the books/cash in hand arrangement -- hence the $100 figure, which was indeed absurdly low even at the time. And not everybody can afford even subsidized housing:

[https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/singapore- ho...](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/singapore-homeless- stereotypes-busted-destitute-9289070)

<comment><USER21> > You're confusing what ought to be with what is. Yes, maids are supposed to > be given one day off a week on paper, but who enforces that?

You been to lucky plaza on a Sunday? Chaos. Mustafa? Botanic Guardens? Gardens by the Bay?

These places are littered with maids every weekend. Some maids choose not to go out. 2 friends of mine have maids, and both their maids go out for 1 hour on Sunday to send money back, then come home, because they don't want to waste money.

The vast majority of maids live happily.

This is another case of "the minority ruin it for the majority". A few Muslim extremists have made a lot of the world think majority of Muslim people are bad people, when the majority are really awesome.

So yes it is a question about a few bad apples.

<comment><USER20> Of course there are people in Lucky Plaza and Mustafa on Sundays: there are on the order of 250,000 maids in Singapore, and around 1.6 million foreign workers total.

My argument is not that all Singaporeans are monsters, or that all foreign workers are oppressed, but that simply that the system as it is today has very few protections against the abuse of its most vulnerable, and the OP's claim that "all Singaporeans love it" is pretty darn starry-eyed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I once wandered around Singapore for a few days, and their infrastructure is mostly great, except that I never encountered a single drinking fountain. Not in the airport, train stations, shopping centers, food courts, public buildings...

Does everyone buy/carry water every day, or how do they survive?

<comment><USER21> Singapore is (I think) the only country in Asia that you can drink water from a tap. But even so, people here still boil water before drinking it.

So outside people will buy water even if a fountain was available.

<comment><USER19> Japan and South Korea tap water is safe...and I think it's commonly consumed in Japan. Koreans approach it like Singaporeans..some do, some boil.

<comment><USER21> I just googled and see Japan tape water is safe to drink. I've been by hotels in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Mt Fuji all told me not to drink the tap water. Hence I thought it wasn't drinkable. Good to know it is!

I've never been to South Korea, yet.

<comment><USER16> > _I 've been by hotels in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Mt Fuji all told me not to drink > the tap water._

And perhaps suggested you buy some bottled instead?

<comment><USER21> Bottled water is free in hotels in Japan, so no...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >The aim wasn't just to make the city more pleasant. A cleaner city, Lee Kuan Yew reasoned, would create a stronger economy.

>"These standards will keep morale high, sickness rate low, and so create the necessary social conditions for higher economic growth in industry and in tourism. [...]"

It's interesting that Singapore has, with this policy, become one of the very few unambiguously successful, unambiguously tropical countries. HK/Macao qualify, but historically had more support from their suzerains. Otherwise you've got, like, maybe Mauritius and Barbados. The desert oil nations would qualify, but their dryness prevents disease.

</comment><comment><USER24> I love Singapore, and visit there often. The cleanliness is definitely one of the things that brings me back, even though I love travelling through most SE Asian countries (I was born in Malaysia).

However, I recall about 20 or 30 years ago, the cleanliness was much better, probably while Lee Kwan Yew was still in charge. I would see businessmen in suits stop and pick up cigarette butts in the street and bin them.

But in more recent visits, I notice locals walking past litter and butts more casually. It is still better than most cities, but I think the fastidiousness has worn off a little with the latest generation?

</comment><comment><USER25> What I found really interesting when I there earlier this year was that the ethnic Chinese complained quite a bit about the strict laws, but the ethnic British or Malaysian didn't seem to be bothered by the plethora of laws, the didn't really seem to interfere with their daily life

<comment><USER16> Well, if you're a British executive or similar well-off job, it's not like laws restrict your daily life. Between your company, the expensive hangouts, the mall shopping, and the country club, you come so little in contact with them, you might as well live in London or New York.

If you're one of the statistically poorer ethnic Chinese or Malay, hustling to make a living, working in hawker centers, peddling some ware, running some small shop, trying to make a living, etc, you're more likely to brush with various laws and restrictions.

Some cultures also dislike restrictions more, and paradoxically that's truer for Chinese culture I find, than for British. Chinese culture might be ok with strong government and even straight-out dictatorship, but they are more laid- back, cheaty, work-aroundy etc in their day to day life (consider London vs Beijing driving for a crude example, or queue lines). I guess, less "by the book" is the term I was looking for.

(And yes, these are generalizations -- they're needed to talk about the world in any other way than on a case by case basis)

<comment><USER25> Well said on every point, and this has been exactly my experience traveling to both locations (Beijing / London)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Moist Tropical climate + concrete == mould.

Hawker style food + stalls with no trashcan == rubbish.

I love Singapore, but like Bangkok, Taipei, Hong Kong, its a constant battle to deal with nature, and social behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER27> In contrast, keeping your environment clean and respecting it is ingrained in Japanese culture and respect for nature was born out of the Shinto faith which believes that there are "kami" or spirits in everything from nature. Instead of creating institutions that perform the work of cleaning, they should instead change the culture to compel the populace to respect their environment and to "leave no trace" instead.

</comment><comment><USER28> 'Messy' and 'dirty' are very different things.

Not returning your dishes is a different thing from littering.

If it's custom in a locale, it seems reasonable to leave your plates ... it's what we do at regular restaurants.

But not throwing rubbish in the streets - this is universally a good thing.

I sometimes see people throwing water or coke bottles out of their car here in Montreal I find it maddening that someone could be so crude.

Kids and Teachers doing a one-over, such a great idea. I believe it's probably strongly linked to creating conscientious behaviour overall.

I also believe there are strong psychological effects (i.e. 'broken windows') - if people see a slum, I think they're more likely to treat it as such, and visa-versa.

<comment><USER3> I love those clips on e.g. youtube where someone picks up the trash and throws it back in their face. Littering is illegal pretty much everywhere, but it's hard to enforce because there's not police everywhere.

<comment><USER28> It's not lawfulness that will keep the city clean it's institutionalized behaviour. In addition to being taught that in school ... things like 'shaming' enforce social behaviour.

<comment><USER28> It's the same thing that drives the non-usage of the 'n word' for example. North Americans don't use the n-word because of some kind of legality, it's socially taboo. If someone were to get out of hand with it, someone would say something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> One part not mentioned in the article is the cleaning up of nature areas. There are calls for volunteers to periodically go for coastal clean-up at nature and other less 'touristy' beach areas [1] which usually yields a lot of rubbish, but does show that some people are enough concerns for the environment to volunteer to do it.

[1] [http://coastalcleanup.nus.edu.sg/](http://coastalcleanup.nus.edu.sg/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I worked in Singapore in 2016 for a few weeks and loved the place. Being 'cleaned' was only part of it: people seemed happy there, I got the impression that people had jobs and were enjoying their lives.

After working there, I briefly tried to get a full time job there but ended up accepting a job in the US. Singapore rocks!

</comment><comment><USER31> went to visit Singapore for a week. Some friends told me it was one of the best places to see in Asia.

Coming back from it, it looks to me as one of the most boring places on earth. Everything is indeed crazy clean and it reinforce to the fact that it looks as a place with no soul.

There is almost nothing to do beside working, going to the Casino or the mall. People like Singapore because it is clean and everyone speaks English

</comment><comment><USER32> What you should wonder is if this model is desirable in any term.

<comment><USER18> From what I have heard from people living there most people seem OK with it.

<comment><USER33> All over the world there are testosterone poisoned males engaging in as much obnoxious behavior as they can get away with (e.g. riding motorcycles with no mufflers). Particulary coming from the Southern US it is absolutely delightful to be in a place where "rednecks" are completley suppressed.

<comment><USER34> Then move? I like my motorcycle and my testosterone. Thanks for male shaming.

Edit. Thanks for the downvotes for pointing out literal bigotry. Wtf hn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > The country has long had an obsession with hygiene and cleanliness.

An obsession with shiny appearances. Hygiene and cleanliness? What a joke. So many meat shops don't store meat in a cold and clean place. Plenty of hawkers are far from clean.

> There are 56,000 cleaners registered with the National Environment Agency. > There are likely thousands of independent contractors who aren't registered. > Mostly they're low-paid foreign workers or elderly workers.

This says everything. It's easier to keep the city "clean" when you have slaves.

<comment><USER36> > _Hygiene and cleanliness? What a joke. So many meat shops don 't store meat > in a cold and clean place._

There are legal statutes regulating this [1], and the enforcement agency (National Environment Agency) responds to all complaints about potential hygiene issues pretty fast.

I've reported some borderline cases where I felt that the places weren't storing cooked food properly, and I've always gotten a response including a statement that officers visited the place.

[1] [https://sso.agc.gov.sg/SL/EPHA1987-RG16#pr15-](https://sso.agc.gov.sg/SL/EPHA1987-RG16#pr15-)</comment></comment>


Thoughts on GitHub Giving Free Private Repos to Women - <AUTHOR> http://www.snipe.net/2013/04/free-github-repos-for-women/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, its a bit ranty, but snipe has a point. Everyone has anxiety about looking like a derp, some people embrace looking bad and move on, some just cower away. Its probably a lot better to learn to deal than to hide.</comment>


Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html <comment><USER2> "Data centers are filled with servers, which are like bulked-up desktop computers, minus screens and keyboards, that contain chips to process data."

"Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand."

"Even running electricity at full throttle has not been enough to satisfy the industry."

Wow, this is bad.

</comment><comment><USER3> Vast amounts of energy lol has the reporter not been to a blast furnace or an aluminum smelting plant or an actual energy intensive plant.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why would backup generators be running outside of power cuts? Even if it is just to test them, that should only be a minute from time to time.

<comment><USER5> Because when the power does cut, how long is it going to take to get those generators up and running? It's not like the whole place can run on a battery backup in the meantime.

<comment><USER6> No.. the whole place DOES run on battery backup while the generators start. A large data center will have multiple rows of these: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center#/media/File:Datace...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center#/media/File:Datacenter_Backup_Batteries.jpg)

<comment><USER3> Done right the DC is always running off battery the backup gensets are there to replace the mains power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an oversimplification, though I don't doubt that there is a lot of infrastucture crud especially in large companies, which is a problem that /should/ be fixed. But to measure utilization without any context is naive:

\- Most applications out there are probably not cpu-bound, so measuring cpu utilization is worthless. Should categorize services as either cpu, disk, network, or memory bound.

\- Even world-wide demand will vary a lot throughout daily and weekly cycles, so over-provisioning is necessary for system stability

\- Need over-provisioning to handle peaks due to soccer games, earthquakes, Christmas, etc.

All that said, I work at a company that (I get the impression maybe this is unusual these days) has historically pushed the limits of per-machine utilization through:

\- service isolation

\- minimal (pair-wise) redundancy (which is cheating, I know)

\- simple service architecture

\- leveraging mobile client processing power wherever possible

among other techniques, while using the latest and greatest bare metal boxes.. and we'd never hit anywhere near 100% cpu utilization. The most we've ever driven even a a cpu-bound app (the front end) is around 60%, which is dangerous, and we've suffered a couple outages as a result.

</comment><comment><USER8> "A server is a sort of bulked-up desktop computer, minus a screen and keyboard, that contains chips to process data."

Yes that is exactly what it is a bulked up desktop PC. Completely ignore these highly specialised coprocessors sitting in the same box. They do nothing but cost a fortune.

Besides the stupid article I can say there are some very old, inefficient servers in the datacenter on my last visit. In our aisle I've walked past dozens of yellowing beige boxes, Netburst era Compaqs, and old Cisco routers. All putting out an incredible amount of heat.

Also this author knows very little about how a modern data centre runs. Just because no one is using it doesn't mean the servers aren't working. I've timed our backup and integrity checks to run during the few hours of the week when usage is light.

Disneyland doesn't shutdown when the last guest leaves. Neither do datacenters.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm fairly comfortable with thinking about power consumption, thinking in terms of work, power or energy. This journalist mixes those concepts in confusing contexts. Also with data amounts. Can journalists please just use powers of ten in these contexts? Small explanation up front then use 10^n.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article is filled with misleading information and is written in a way to mostly gather hits, rather than inform.

</comment><comment><USER11> 2012</comment>


CIA director oversaw the torture of dozens of people - shaki-dora https://www.vox.com/2018/3/13/17113874/gina-haspel-torture-cia-pompeo-tillerson <comment><AUTHOR> Three articles on this same subject have been flagged off the front page this morning. Kind of smells funny.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16579219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16579219)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16578715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16578715)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569)</comment>


Affordable Audiophile Earphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.soundmagic.us/index.php/product-category/earphones/ <comment><USER2> Impedance levels across the devices are a bit weird I feel like my phone would struggle to drive them. I'll probably stick to kz-ed2's they cost 10 bucks with great response across all ranges. I have friends who master/produce a variety of music ranging from rock and hip hop to 150bpm psytrance and the kz's are well received by them.

<comment><USER3> Get a mp3 player. Seriously if you love music in best quality most phones are shit anyway</comment></comment>


7 ways to get a VC to mentor you - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/01/03/7-ways-to-get-a-vc-you-dont-know-to-mentor-you/

<comment><USER2> Those are all great points.

Another good way is to ask the prospective VC if you can interview him. Interview him (or her) on how they acheived success, and what've they've seen in companies they've invested in. This alone will be a mentoring experience as you can gain some insight into what they invest in, and what made those (or some) companies successful.

At the end of the interview, they will most likely ask what you are up to, which can lead into them offering some advice.</comment>


Show HN: RedraftHero – Lowest Cost Fantasy Sports Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.redrafthero.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We have just come up with a lowest cost daily Fantasy Sports Platform called RedraftHero([http://www.redrafthero.com/](http://www.redrafthero.com/)). We are planning to extend it for NBA and MLB as well given we sustain financially putting this up. Constructive feedback is very welcome.</comment>


Open Letter to the New York Times - <AUTHOR> Dear NYT,
I am referring to your article "What Explains Mass Shootings in the US (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html)."  In it you lead with a very compelling graphic that shows number of mass shooters vs. the number of guns. The United States is in the upper right corner, with everyone else clustered near the lower left. It's not even close, and the implications are clear.
And utterly misleading.
Of course the right way to look at it is chart 2, which scales the metrics by population.  The U.S. is still the outlier, but the image is not as dramatic. The truth can be messy like that.
Why would you do that? Surely you know how misleading the primary chart is. It must be because it tells a story you want to tell more clearly.
But wait - even that's not it. The real reason is Facebook. I keep seeing friends post a link to your article and your dramatic, misleading image is what shows up. Lovely clickbait, I'm sure.
This is very disappointing. I'm a liberal. I'm for gun control. But I don't want a liberal, less bad version of Fox. I want something that really tries to be the truth. A media outlet I can count on. If you will mislead so transparently, what's going on in all those other articles where it is harder to know the truth?
Disappointed,
Ross Rosen Seattle, WA <comment><USER2> Normalization matters. Well put.</comment>


Ask HN: Interested in a site for listing startup ideas you want done? - <AUTHOR>

I know there are a lot of experiences out there that frustrate people, and that they'd like to see done better (think cloud storage pre Dropbox), but unless you <i>have</i> one of those problems, it's pretty tricky to know that it exists, and even then, it's tricky to know that there's a sizeable market for it. But if people could post their frustrations online, it would be pretty easy for would-be entrepreneurs to find good markets, and the rest of us would get better products...seems like a win-win to me. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Yes. I had a similar thought last year, registering ideaserving/ideaservingsize.com, but obviously never did anything with it. My thought was to have folks post their ideas, and each day you'd see/get a list of 3-4 new ideas. If you liked one of the ideas you could then connect with the submitter. All the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be lean. Create a stack exchange proposal at <http://area51.stackexchange.com/>, make a new HN post linking to it, and we'll see where this goes. But anyone interested should try making the proposal, since it seems the OP has already lost interest.

</comment><comment><USER4> YEAH. I always thought this would be a good idea. A place to post good ideas that I don't want to or have the time or means to do. An "idea exchange". I half think that something like this already exists, but I've never seen it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Infinitly scalable real-time website analytics and server monitoring. <http://vanillamonitor.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> Not saying it should deter you, but there are a LOT of sites that already do this. The first that I know of was either "shouldexist.org"[1] or "The Halfbakery"[2], but there are more. [1] - <http://shouldexist.org/>

[2] = <http://halfbakery.com>

<http://Thinkcycle.org>

<http://ideaexplore.net/>

<http://www.whynot.net/>

<http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/home/>

<http://www.ideas4all.com/>

<http://www.springwise.com/ideas/>

Most of them are in various states of sucking, but Springwise looks pretty nice, and I like the half-bakery if only for nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER7> i like this one:

<http://www.ideaswatch.com></comment>


Ask HN: Game development resourses? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I am a developer interested in starting game development for mobile devices as a hobby. I've been looking around and since I already know C# I belive Unity will be a good engine to start learning. I'm more interested in 2D games.
I'm looking for any recommendations, online resources/tutorials or good books that you have used or are using that can help me.
Thanks so much, anecdotes are welcome too! <comment><USER2> I highly recommend purchasing the material from Ray Wenderlich. [http://www.raywenderlich.com/](http://www.raywenderlich.com/)

Very good stuff and he has a new course that uses Unity.

</comment><comment><USER3> You'll have better luck asking [http://www.reddit.com/r/unity2d](http://www.reddit.com/r/unity2d)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Reset The Net - <AUTHOR> https://www.resetthenet.org

<comment><USER2> I find it a little funny imgur is in there and not MediaCrush ([https://mediacru.sh/](https://mediacru.sh/)), when the latter has had HSTS as long as I can remember and has been a huge proponent of privacy in the field of image sharing, much unlike the former.</comment>


The Hijacking of the Brillante Virtuoso - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-hijacking-of-brillante-virtuoso/ <comment><USER2> What surprises me is that large-scale insurers aren't more stringent about cameras and evidence-taking. Maybe the ship was high-risk, but dash cams are becoming pretty normal now - shouldn't the industry be ahead of the curve, especially with that amount of money involved?

</comment><comment><USER3> Something I keep noticing: how nice and helpful American military always seems to be in stories like this. A U.S. ship rescuing Fillipinos, helicopter deployment and all. Then U.S. special forces extracting a British person from a dangerous situation.

The Americans must accumulate a ton of favour this way.

<comment><USER4> As an American I'd much rather the US try and accumulate favour in this way than any attempts at "nation building".

<comment><USER5> These actions are taken in order to support the legitimacy of the USA as 'world police'. They're not doing these patrols altruistically, but rather to set precedent and continue to justify American interference in the world. This is why its policy.

<comment><USER6> Maybe. But it means alot to those that are helped.

I know someone (an American) who was robbed and penniless in a foreign country and the embassy paid to get him back to USA.

Not all actions are sinister.

<comment><USER5> It means a lot to those who are not covered by this protective blanket too, though. i.e. the victims of Americas' violent policing of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron I'm loving the use of three.js to make the header image's water ripple. That's a really nice utilisation of a water effect on a website, usually I detest the effect.

<comment><USER7> Huh, I was all set to disagree with you but that really is nice. Understated yet effective, and lightweight as well.

<comment><USER8> > lightweight as well

Not on my machine, it wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> tldr: Great long form story of piracy and possibly insurance fraud off the coast of Yemen. Not tech related, but well written.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article didn't mention how Iliopoulos came to acquire his wealth in the first place. I did a few cursory Google searches but couldn't find much about him. This is truly a remarkable story.</comment>


Njalla – A privacy-aware domain registration service - <AUTHOR> https://njal.la/blog/opening/ <comment><USER2> > When you purchase a domain name through Njalla, we own it for you. However, > the agreement between us grants you full usage rights to the domain. > Whenever you want to, you can transfer the ownership to yourself or some > other party.

That's extremely concerning, given that the domain name industry has a very robust set of regulations and legal procedures to govern privacy, mediate dispute, and establish consumer rights. I'd be very concerned about what this relationship between Njalla and myself would do to those protections - they're not a registrar, nor are they a reseller - what am I actually paying them for?

Unfortunately, the ToS and/or registration agreement that I am signing up for doesn't appear anywhere that I was able to find. I went through the purchase flow to try to buy a domain, but it won't let me proceed without funds in my wallet, and I'm not going to put 30 euro just to try and read a legal doc.

In other words, this seems like it's Probably a Bad Idea(tm), though it's difficult to know without more transparency on their part. (full disclosure: I work for a company involved in the domain industry)

<comment><USER3> §2.3:

1337 will have the right to immediately terminate the provision of the Services and these Terms, as stipulated below under section 9.2. Such termination will have the effect that 1337 may, at its discretion, choose to assume the registered domain name and hold it in its own account, let it expire, or sell it to a third party.

<comment><USER4> Seriously? "leet"??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't it queer that "right-wing extremists" are seemingly prohibited from expressing their own "political weird thinking"?

>Think of us as your friendly drunk (but responsibly so) straw person that takes the blame for your expressions. As long as you keep within the boundaries of reasonable law and you're not a right-wing extremist, we're for promoting your freedom of speech, your political weird thinking, your kinky forums and whatever. Even Trump is welcome. Hell, he might even be a customer. We'll never know. We might even be approved by him! Or not. We don't really care.

<comment><USER6> I found this strange too. It sets a bad precedent. Neonazis are banned but the Black Bloc is OK? Does the Westboro Baptist Church fall under the umbrella of right-wing extremists? They mention reasonable law too. That seems to exclude child porn. What about libel? Copyright infringement? Pro-marijuana domains? Or domain usage that is pro-hard drugs?

<comment><USER7> > Copyright infringement?

This is one of Peter Sunde's projects, I wouldn't be too worried about that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another similar service which has been around for a while is PRQ [0,1] which was created by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, both founders of TPB. PRQ offer far more than just domains and accept payment via BTC. They also have a proven track record of hosting extremely controversial content.

[0]: [https://prq.se/](https://prq.se/)

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

<comment><USER9> [http://i.imgur.com/3mpqkOPh.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/3mpqkOPh.jpg)

<comment><USER8> As far as I can tell that's the result of an image (from ipv6forum.com) in their footer being loaded over http.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Main selling point of Njalla is that one of its founders is ex ThePirateBay guy, Peter Sunde who fights for privacy and creating privacy related services. He is a co-founder of Flattr. So it is more of a trust service.

</comment><comment><USER11> > As long as you keep within the boundaries of reasonable law

that's pretty subjective.

<comment><USER12> > If you use our service in a way that affects anyones health or safety, we > reserve the right to suspend your service

Clarifies it a bit

<comment> vertex-four I'd argue that's still overly broad, unfortunately. Do we interpret that as direct threat - i.e. someone's somehow using the service to directly fuck with people's pacemakers or nuclear facilities or something - or something broader, like for example a site being used to organise a harassment campaign against someone? Does a site used for serving malware fit in that definition somewhere? Etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >As long as you keep within the boundaries of reasonable law and you're not a _right-wing extremist_ , we're for promoting your freedom of speech

What did he mean by this

</comment><comment><USER14> lol I made almost the same thing earlier this year and everyone told me that it's never going to work out (it also didn't because I'm getting like 0 visits) [http://anonname.com/](http://anonname.com/)

<comment><USER15> It might be the lack of any upfront information on the terms and conditions as well as your technical approach to preserve privacy (remailers, etc).

<comment><USER14> yeah you are probably right, I should add that ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How do people concerned about security here register their domains? Security of some registrars seems extremely spotty and nobody really talks about how they're safer to use than the competition, but domains are a huge single point of failure. Maybe there is space for a specialized service, something close to Cloudflare Registrar ([https://www.cloudflare.com/registrar/](https://www.cloudflare.com/registrar/))?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is good. The closest I've been able to get to anonymous ownership is buying a domain on Gandi and then delegating all roles except Owner to another Gandi account under a fake name. This way I never show up in WHOIS at all but I guess Gandi still knows who bought it (I didn't use bitcoin)

I really want to see more of these kinds of services. Anonymity is important.

<comment><USER15> Section 9.2 in their TOS, though, seems a little concerning.

 _" 9.2 1337 may in its sole discretion, also terminate the Services and these Terms and choose to keep, sell, suspend or cancel your domain name registration if:"[1]_ (list of conditions follows)

I can see why that's needed, but it doesn't give a good feel to how much they'll push back before abandoning you once somebody is unhappy with your domain and/or content. Would have a better feel if they replaced "keep/sell" with "transfer", which they would be compelled to do, for example, if an ICANN dispute was lost. I would really want a little more detail on what exactly they do for common things like ICANN inquiries, disputes, DMCA, etc.

[1][https://njal.la/tos/#term_9_2](https://njal.la/tos/#term_9_2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Handing over my domain control to some hazy third party?

Some hazy third party in _Sweden_ , where top officials up to and including government ministers vocally promote the idea the idea of internet censorship, and where people have actually been sent to actual jail for voicing opinions.

I think I'll pass.

<comment><USER19> Njalla is owned by 1337 LLC in Nevis. It's also possible to own your domain within Njalla if you don't want them to be the actually owner of it.

I just moved my domains there. Super happy with the service since it's so simple and clean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see that they are offering the .fr TLD, for which such anonymity is illegal as far as I know (eg even OVH as a registrar and they OwO service which display OVH as the owner to be contacted and then transmit contact to you is not allowed).

I guess the difference here is that they don't hide the real owner behind a "contact us to get through" as they are themselves the real owner, so they might be legal, but then comes the question of "do you really want someone else to be the legal owner of the domain of your website".

<comment><USER21> >>> "do you really want someone else to be the legal owner of the domain of your website".

Interesting. I'd expect the problem to be the other way around.

Do Njalla want to be legally liable for all domains run by their customers?

<comment><USER20> I see that as a non issue because of the jurisdiction they're in (a small Caribbean place).

If there is an issue (drugs, pedophilia, the usual suspects ...) they close it down immediately, claim they weren't owner of the content and were merely leasing the domain to the user, since a sub-lease is what they're effectively doing.

If the domain because popular, they can seize control of it easily, or start snooping on users, or do whatever the hell they want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> .ca solves this issue by not publicly publishing the details of individual registrants in the Whois system. CIRA still keeps a record so that they know who the owner of the domain is. Corporate/organizational registrants still have their contact information made public.

Is there a reason why Njalla is better than this reasonable system?

</comment><comment><USER22> Their ratio is going to be 10 customers x 10 DMCA notices.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is extremely expensive.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is an interesting idea executed terribly. Obviously there are huge liabilities associated with this kind of proxying, but for people which want or need highly anonymous domain registration it could be a worthwhile idea if backed up by an adequately robust contract.

The issues: firstly, they don't support freedom of speech:

>As long as you keep within the boundaries of reasonable law and you're not a right-wing extremist, we're for promoting your freedom of speech

Secondly, they don't make it clear in what jurisdiction they operate.

Thirdly, they don't specify anywhere what registrar(s) they use to register domains. This prevents customers from performing due diligence on the registrar and its history (for example, does the registrar have a history of arbitrary domain suspensions?)

Fourthly, as mentioned in another comment, their terms of service is absurdly loose with regards to their responsibilites; they can terminate service arbitrarily, and have no obligation to transfer ownership to you in this case. This is completely unacceptable.

Fifthly, their website doesn't work properly without JavaScript. This is completely unacceptable in any case, but is particularly egregious for an anonymity-focused service which provides a Tor hidden service, where many customers may wish to keep JavaScript disabled (as is Tor Browser's default) to reduce attack surface. Apparently people don't know how to make websites anymore.

Sixthly, their website copy is amateurish and has basic typographical errors.

Seventh, and perhaps most gravely of all, their entire website betrays a fundamental misconception of the roles and demarcation of a registrar (or pretend registrar, as is the case here.) Above I mention that they are anti- free speech, but the very fact that they think it is the place of a (pretend) registrar to have a policy on this matter betrays a fundamental misconception about the liabilities of a domain registrar. The very idea that a domain registrar (or pretend domain registrar) should be in some way responsible for content hosted "on" a domain is faulty, and at the same time sets a hazardous precedent; this is exactly the kind of thinking which absolutely should not be encouraged or perpetuated in the domain name industry, as it is only going to lead to more and more political intervention at the domain name level.

A domain name registrar nominates domain names (meaning essentially the name itself, plus the specified nameservers) to a domain name registry. The only legitimate involvement a registrar has in the use of the domain name is any issue involving the legality of the literal domain name string itself, or the nameserver names, or maybe WHOIS data. Notice that for all its faults, this actually moreorless matches the ICANN model: There are dispute processes for trademark issues regarding the domain name string itself, and dispute processes for WHOIS data. There are emphatically not ICANN dispute processes for content served by nameservers, or content served by hosts referenced by zone data served by nameservers! (I suppose theoretically someone could find a way to break a law with the nameserver names themselves; setting a nameserver for example.com to <illegal-string>.example.com, say, but it seems like that's sufficiently obscure a possibility that it has not yet arisen.)

A domain name registrar is not responsible for the content served by name servers referenced by a domain name, let alone the content served by services provided by hosts referenced by the content of a zone file served by a name server referenced by a domain name. That this pretend registrar fundamentally fails to comprehend this demarcation of responsibility is extremely problematic, and betrays a troubling lack of understanding of the system.

Of course, it certainly may be the case that domain name registries and registrars (and pretend registrars) in the future get more and more dragged into disputes regarding services provided by hosts referenced by zone files served by nameservers referenced by a domain name, but this is _extremely_ undesirable. It would represent the politicization of the domain name system, which would itself seriously undermine its stability and reliability. We have already seem some attempts to politicize the system and they do not bode well; it's certainly not helpful if registrars start overestimating the degree of their responsibility, as it only increases the feasibility of future politicization of the domain name system.

In particular, it should be noted that there is basically no case where the seizure of a domain name for the content it "hosts" (in reality, references, not even directly but via a set of referenced nameservers) can be proportionate; or at least, no case where it can be reliably ascertained that the seizure of a domain would not be grossly disproportionate.

For example, if google.com accidentally hosts a small amount of illegal material, should google.com be suspended? Of course not; so unless one is suggesting that 'important' domains should be subject to different, more preferential rules than 'unimportant' domains (an affront to the idea of an internet open for all), where is one supposed to draw the line?

Moreover, most nameservers do not allow zone transfers. This means that the extent of a zone served by nameservers referenced by a domain name cannot be reliably ascertained, which again means that there is no way to reliably ascertain that the seizure of a domain name is not grossly disproportionate. If a domain hosts illegal.example.com, but also hosts a million legal subdomains, how can the seizure of example.com for hosting illegal.example.com be proportionate? There is no way to reliably ascertain the existence of subdomains, so illegal.example.com could be known to search engines but the million legal subdomains could be unpublished, internal names yet unknown (by obscurity) to the world. Even if the full contents of a zone could be reliably ascertained, most records reference IPs (A/AAAA), not services (SRV, MX), so unless you portscanned every IP referenced, that doesn't tell you what type of service is hosted on those subdomains (and even if you did portscan those IP addresses, there's the possibility that some services are firewalled to certain source IPs, for example services for internal use only, etc. etc.; the possibilities are endless, and thus so are the opportunities for unforeseeable collateral damage).

There is an extremely relevant real-world example of this: the no-ip.org debacle (no-ip.org is a domain which provides free subdomains to arbitrary parties), in which a court, truly extraordinarily, allowed a private corporation, Microsoft, to assume control of the entire no-ip.org domain, simply because of a single bad user, and a very tenuous claim that the abusive subdomain involved infringement of a Microsoft trademark. This resulted in massive disruption to all other no-ip.org users. Again, there is no way of reliably ascertaining an upper bound for the operational impact caused by a domain seizure.

<comment><USER24> Another example is the case of US ICE seizing domains quite dubiously. This brings me to another example of how the seizure of domains for law enforcement purposes related only to services provided by hosts referenced by the zone files served by nameservers referenced by those domains is almost necessarily disproportionate: when one seizes a domain one assumes control of all records served by it, including MX records. As such, when one seizes a domain, one takes control not just of any websites served via it, but any email service for it as well. (For this reason in particular, thinking of domain names as fundamentally website-centric is hazardous to the future political integrity of the domain name system. Domain names are not websites.) As such when ICE seizes a domain, they also are implicitly assuming the right to redirect all incoming email to that domain to them (not even intercept but forward, e.g. with a warrant, but redirect outright). In fact, I'm not sure if this would even be illegal; if you've obtained a domain legally, you can configure it as you wish.

If someone claims a domain of mine, example.com, has a website facilitating illegal activity, and has it seized by some jurisdiction's law, what if my principal email address is @example.com? Now I am deprived of the ability to engage in correspondance so as to ascertain the grounds for such seizure and contest it. The intention was to disable the website, yet email service and potentially an arbitrary number of other services are also disrupted. Again, I reiterate that there is no way of reliably ascertaining an upper bound to the operational impact of a domain seizure, and as such it is hard to see that domain seizures can ever be reliably ascertained to be proportionate as a law enforcement measure in advance.

The idea of domain seizures as a law enforcement method is a really, really bad idea. It makes about as much sense, and is as about as proportionate, as the postal service revoking the address of someone who commits mail fraud; their house number is literally erased from databases, and mailmen return mail sent to that house number as undeliverable. Nobody would claim this is a sane way of dealing with abuse of the postal service.

And of course, nothing in this should seem like it makes law enforcement impractical. If a service is illegal, go after the people, the company, the servers; going after the domain always has the potential to cause extreme collateral damage, and the degree of damage which may be caused cannot be ascertained in advance. Even more worryingly, to the extent that we've seen seizures so far, it seems like something mostly done because it is easy, not because it is right; a cheap, usually due-process-free way of smiting websites deemed improper when persuing the persons or machines involved would be more effort. This reduces the trustworthiness and reliability of the domain name system, and its ability to serve an apolitical role for entities of all countries worldwide. This is a disaster for the law abiding just as much as it is for the lawless.

If this company is serious about the robustness of domain names, it needs to stop perpetuating an idea of the registrar (or pretend registrar) as a publisher, as a legally responsible entity for the services dereferencable via domain names, particularly since such a model of liability is, mercifully, not yet one that has appears to have become reality. To do so simply accelerates the undesirable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> nice service, I like the idea of the automatic pgp-key-lookup-service

</comment><comment><USER26> ICANN shutting this down in 3...2...1...

<comment><USER27> It won't even take ICANN, since I seriously doubt they are accredited themselves. They are probably dealing with one or more resellers and may well be breaching the terms of their agreements with those resellers.

<comment><USER19> You don't think they have look this up before they started to build this service? I'm pretty sure they have been thinking of every little scenarios that might come up and double check with all parts involved.

<comment><USER27> It really wouldn't be the first time a startup hadn't fully checked the regulations that would affect them, or decided to take their chances with flaunting them…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> No DNSSEC support?

</comment><comment><USER29> They don't seem to be very interested in listening to feedback:

> We're sure it's the best there is, but since we're always improving, we'll > pretend to listen to your feedback and make it better.

Openly saying that they'll only "pretend" to listen to feedback doesn't fill me with confidence.

<comment><USER19> Think it where writing with some irony...</comment></comment>


Spreed.io - Desktop-sharing via browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.spreed.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not my project, but I'm sure it's useful for you.

I use it for presentations, so there is no need for clients to install remote viewing software.</comment>


The thing killing open-source is the people - <AUTHOR> http://shruubi.com/2015/03/07/the-thing-killing-open-source-is-the-people/ <comment><USER2> Why do so many articles about the Kernel culture assert Linux has a contributor problem? Whenever Greg K-H does his contributor report, it looks like the largest collaborative software project ever shows no signs of slowing down. Are there reports or complaints from the Kernel maintainers that I've overlooked? Are the main barriers to entry no longer the technical skillset, intimidating problem domain and desire to work on kernels? I honestly don't know. If anything I think that the kernels contributor problem is that it's too attractive compared to chopping wood next door in the userland libraries and core processes.

Note: For this post I'm not trying to say anything one way or another about the complaints towards the social environment of the Kernel community, I find this a particularly poor point to use when arguing that message.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think the Linux kernel is a good example here. The vast majority of people who commit to it are paid to do so by their employers, and if you're just getting started then committing to the kernel is probably a bad idea anyway.

There are a tonne of smaller projects who will gratefully accept submissions and not be such a pain. It's easy to view Linux as the centre of the open source community, but in practice it's not.

A much easier way to get involved in open source is just to do so as part of your normal life - when you're using a library and find a bug, submit a fix - if there's a feature you've added and found useful, submit it as a PR. It might not be well received in every case, but it will in many.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nothing is killing open source. Open source is not dying.

</comment><comment><USER5> Be careful about taking one open source project and then using it to paint all open source projects. Toxicity exists everywhere. It's just that in open source projects it's a lot more, well, open.

<comment><USER6> Is there somewhere a clear explanation of social toxicity?

I get that people use it to label things they don't like, it just seems like it is used as a catch all.

For instance, is bluntness that occasionally comes across as rudeness toxic? Is the use of expletives toxic? Etc.

I think something like excessive, pointless rudeness probably fits under toxic as a category, but it also more useful to just say that such and such is rude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best open-source projects are the smaller ones, IMO, which are usually the efforts of a few developers who welcome outside help.

I've contributed to large-ish projects like Symfony2 with high standards, but the community was still encouraging.

Point being, I think the overall community and age of the project are the best indicators for determining how hostile contributing would be.

</comment><comment><USER8> This isn't unique to the Open Source movement - basically, all human mass movements eat themselves with hostility, aggression and downright .. cannibalism, of the metaphorical kind .. sooner or later.

This is why leadership is so important, because without a leader, the human mob maintains a state of semi-cannibalism, feeding on itself. With a leader, they either stop doing that and get on with the project, or .. they eat their leader, and for a little period of time while doing that, forget about their own self-cannibalism long enough to actually get big things done.

In many open source projects, things go awry because the leader is trying to engage in aggressive cannibalization of 'others', and so the goals and purposes of the group are not propelled forward.

</comment><comment><USER9> One size does not fit all. LKML has evolved to what it is. If everybody played nice nice, we'd be discussing the merits of the new 1.20 kernel about now. It is not a warm inviting place for the uninitiated.

That being said, managing your new project like it was the LKML will probably be a kiss of death.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sensible projects have a community code of conduct, and are prepared to enforce it. We're not all infantile and rude :)

(edit: but to be clear, yes, toxic communities do exist and are a terrible blight on the wider universe of open source)

</comment><comment><USER11> How many articles like this do we have to have before we collectively learn to ignore $X is killing open source?

</comment><comment><USER12> Like the rest of the things in the world, as programming knowledge and competency continues to become democratized and ubiquitous, these tendencies will change.

The incredibly competent men who run the show in authoritarian ways that appeal only to men just like themselves will slowly give way to communities built on negotiation, respect, and compromise -- humans will be humans.

Those who mutter the word _feminism_ only in derisive tones will complain loudly as their world mutates, even as their own standards of normality and fairness change.

This world of computers has been the domain of such men for a long time, for a lot of reasons, but the days of this sort of thing are numbered. Computers are too important.</comment>


Instrumentation in Go - <AUTHOR> https://gbws.io/articles/instrumentation-in-go/ <comment> Julio-Guerra Something to note here is that everything is known and done statically in the source code. This could be addressed through metaprogramming if only the Go language had some ^^

We have similar needs at Sqreen but for security monitoring and protection reasons: we need to dynamically instrument functions at run time, while not asking any code modification to our users. To do so, we instead leverage the Go compiler to perform compile-time instrumentation that inserts hooks anywhere interesting. You can read more about this approach at [https://blog.sqreen.com/dynamic-instrumentation- go/](https://blog.sqreen.com/dynamic-instrumentation-go/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have read this article before and I really like the idea of doing so. I would love to read more about how you guys modified the compiler!

<comment> Julio-Guerra We haven't modified the compiler but instead plugged into it an external instrumentation tool using the compiler option `-toolexec`.

With this option, the compiler invokes every toolchain binary (compile, asm, link, etc.) through the provided program. So you can basically write a proxy program intercepting calls to `compile` to do source-code instrumentation, exactly like you would with go generate, but now automatically done during compilation on _every_ package.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, cool! Thank you so much, didn't know about this parameter :D Will try it definitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Not a big fan of this pattern. I feel like the state of the application should be maintained in the usual way, with just some struct fields or global variables. It is easy for any reader of the code to understand what is meant by a statement like `bytesReceived += msgLen`. To observe this state, you can have a function that reads and exports bytesReceived, on demand and when/if needed. This provides for the best flexibility and maintainability of the system, since you will be able to change your observability stack at a later time, or have more than one of them, without changing the stats-keeping statements at the point where they appear in the application code. This also provides the best scalability and performance since you are able to aggregate separate counters from multiple threads, if needed, minimize or optimize locking, etc.

The problem is there are a lot of off-the-shelf observability frameworks for Go that require the pattern in the article: you emit a value to a hook function at the point of production. This sucks at any reasonable scale because you are now required to just take a global lock (or write a channel, which is the same thing) every time you record a value. This is a significant contributing reason why Go servers fall apart when given access to more than a handful of CPU cores.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think all mentioned issues are related to the implementation of the user probes, not the pattern.

You mentioned an observation methods, but essentially they are absolutely the same as hooks, just inverted (with a bit less overhead on branching and hook call). E.g. your example with bytesReceived counter can be implemented with atomic operation and further export on demand by some other goroutine.

<comment><USER2> The thing I keep in mind is that state is mutated far more than it is observed. You might handle 1000 or more requests per second and only export the number of requests once per second or less. In light of this ratio it's important to make the recording path as simple and cheap as possible, and it's ok if the observing path has to be complicated to compensate.

I usually refuse to use atomic increments for services because it scales very poorly. Even a mutex-protected increment scales much better than atomic increment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point that recording must be much cheaper than exporting, and I completely agree with it.

Anyway how will you collect that counters inside your component (to be observed later on demand)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Or you could just adopt [https://opentelemetry.io/](https://opentelemetry.io/) and then everyone can benefit from all OT enabled libraries without having to write extra code, and you won't have to rewrite in order to change implementations since it's just an API.

The go implementation of OT makes extensive use of the Context [1] object to support tracing, logging, and metrics. You write once, and then the user only needs to decide which exporter to use, and possibly filters to apply.

[1] [https://golang.org/pkg/context/](https://golang.org/pkg/context/)

<comment><USER4> Is opentelemetry ready for production usage? As my understanding this project is a merge between OpenCensus and OpenTracing, but it's still in beta and the documentation is really lacking. Does anyone have any hands-on experience with this library?

<comment><USER5> SDKs for languages are in beta and might not be production ready but the collector is production ready. You can use any of the OpenTracing or OpenCensus instrumentation libraries but deploy the OpenTelemetry collector and once Otel SKDs mature, migrate OC/OT to Otel or not if you don't want to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Turns out you can use any language to write Java code.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Logging is a feature", as the authors of Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided by Tests state. As such, we need to treat them as we would treat any other feature. One relatively straightforward way of adding logs is by decorating your objects. Logging decorators.

For example, if `Client` is defined as an interface, we can have two concrete implementations. One that holds business logic – `NetClient` – and one that holds logging/developer logic – `VerboseClient`. As we inject dependencies, we can compose a client like this: `NewVerboseClient(NewClient())`. This way you may even test you logging logic by composing it with different implementations of clients (one that always fails, for example) to test the different kinds of logs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats true that such approach also exists.

But it doesn't work well in Go by several reasons.

For example, you usually define interface not in the package where its implemented, but where its needed. Thus you must provide such wrappers in every place where some (subset) of the `Client`'s methods are used.

Another reason is that such thing rejects an ability to use your struct as is, without interfaces (and thus sometimes without heap allocation for your struct).

And, finally, if you want to adopt such approach in proprietary/internal software, where interfaces usually change more often than in libraries, you will change code in N places instead of 1 (in best case); where N is number of instrumentation methods you want to provide "as feature".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do Go articles so often have no syntax highlighting?

<comment><USER9> > _Why do Go articles so often have no syntax highlighting?_

Rob Pike, one of the 3 original Go architects, has stated in the past he doesn't like syntax highlighting [1].

> _Syntax highlighting is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught > arithmetic using colored rods > ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods)). > I grew up and today I use monochromatic numerals._ — Rob Pike

Maybe Sergey Kamardin, the author of this article, is following Rob Pike's philosophy. That being said, the website has references to a Go library called Chroma [2] which purpose is to colorize source code. The library borrows ideas from a popular JavaScript library called "highlight.js" [3] and that is why you can also see "highlight" CSS classes. The website downloads this CSS file [4] which contains a couple of instructions to make the code look the way it looks.

The official Go Blog has popularized this type of design [5] and many Go programmers has adopted it in their own websites.

[1] [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang- nuts/hJHCAaiL0so/kG3B...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang- nuts/hJHCAaiL0so/kG3BHV6QFfIJ)

[2] [https://github.com/alecthomas/chroma](https://github.com/alecthomas/chroma)

[3] [https://highlightjs.org/](https://highlightjs.org/)

[4] [https://gbws.io/scss/syntax.min.css](https://gbws.io/scss/syntax.min.css)

[5] [https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts](https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts)

<comment><USER8> That is very bizarre

<comment><USER10> I would call it juvenile...

<comment><USER11> Well, he has a point. If you need a variable to be colored to know it's a variable, then I'd argue that you don't really know what you're doing.

If you don't need a variable to be colored to know it's a variable, then why do you color them?

A counter argument would be that you have this huge visual cortex in your brain which can use cues like this to help you quickly find what you're looking for.

A counter argument to _that_ would be that you should know your code well enough to not need to rely on anything like that.

When I started programming, I had notepad and that was it. I didn't need colors. I use colors now, though. What's that say? I have no idea.

<comment><USER10> Not everything you do is about need. I think highlighting helps reduce some of the cognitive load involved in mentally parsing a code block. Especially in a language you might be unfamiliar with. I also happen to like the way it looks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tracing is a microservices phenomenon, right? In other words, would it benefit monolithic systems that already log and collect metrics?

<comment><USER13> Even monoliths are dealing with outbound network calls.

I assume it depends on your current solution, but for a new project, I find that setting up instrumentation and pushing traces to Zipkin or Jaeger is very straightforward, at least on the JVM. Out of the box I can see the overhead on top of DB queries and plain HTTP calls. And if some bit of internal logic is particularly time consuming, I can add a custom span in two lines of code and figure out what's going on. There are of course other ways to achieve the same thing, but the experience feels nicer.</comment></comment>


Vinci – like Prisma app, but faster - <AUTHOR> http://vinci.camera/ <comment><USER2> How does this app achieve performance speed up? I know the original algorithm relies on converging a white noise image, which seems to be slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03417](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03417)</comment></comment>


Distributed TensorFlow on Any Infrastructure with Mesosphere DC/OS - <AUTHOR> https://mesosphere.com/blog/tensorflow-gpu-support-deep-learning/ <comment><USER2> This is a reasonable example of building application understanding into your cluster management system. At what point do we get departmental access to 'AI' resources? Let's say you're BigCorp and people periodically want to create a model to filter data or look for trends or something. When does employee Bob log into his machine and say "new tensor instance; import foo.xlx, bar.csv, baz.sq3 into instance; generate model;'?</comment>


Lets build compilers - <AUTHOR> http://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/ <comment><AUTHOR> This fifteen-part series, written from 1988 to 1995, is a non-technical introduction to compiler construction. You can read the parts on-line or download them in a ZIP file.</comment>


Show HN: Rockstar programmer keyboard layout - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MadRabbit/rockstar-layout <comment><USER2> > Swapped _ and - for easier snake style variable names

Just in time for me to start using hyphenated variables in Perl 6, so it's no longer helps!

> Swapped [] and {} for easier curly brackets access in JavaScript/CSS/...

What? You use both in both languages, object/array syntax in JS, and selector attribute and style blocks in CSS.

> Swapped | and \ coz, who really needs a backslash anyways?

Every language that allows interpolated strings with escapes? I use them more than |, but that's likely because I use Perl and get to type "or", which I find much more readable.

I look forward to having time to try out your new layout in the next _tau_ years, as long as nothing more interesting comes along to replace the bottom of my list of interesting stuff to look at within that time.

<comment><AUTHOR> you're so cute when you try to look all grownup and important )

<comment><USER2> What, is this layout serious? I would reply seriously if I thought it was, and that reply would be along the lines of the above with less snark, and a note that I have an immediate aversion to anything that labels itself as "rockstar" seriously.

<comment><USER3> I thought it means "Rockstar Games developers". No idea why would they force this crappy layout, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> layout is questionable itself could go as a set of rules for karabiner though.</comment>


"Ad"fully Awful - <AUTHOR> http://appicurious.com/2011/10/17/adfully-awful/

<comment><USER2> _It makes me happy to see more advertising networks such as The Deck and InfluAds spring up._

If you run the numbers on the rate card, number of advertisers, and number of impressions (all public knowledge), The Deck works out at somewhere around $2.50 CPM and I bet not all advertisers are paying ratecard. $2.50CPM won't pay anyone's wages on a niche site unless they're getting silly traffic. I love The Deck philosophically but from a business point of view, I wouldn't run their ad unit even if I were invited.

Not many people outside of media circles are talking about the real trend that's going on nowadays (although Monocle magazine keeps sharing the secrets, but their circulation is small ;-)): advertising/editorial crossover and product development. The real money is in building audience loyalty and producing your own premium products or services targeted at them (and not a paywall that just locks up the previously free stuff). Keep an eye out for sites that advertise their own stuff (training courses, merchandise, reports, premium subscriptions) rather than other people's - it's a growing trend.

<comment><USER3> _Not many people outside of media circles are talking about the real trend that's going on nowadays (although Monocle magazine keeps sharing the secrets_

Interesting. I had a look at the Monocle website but couldn't find anything. Do you have any useful links ?

<comment><USER2> I say this as a huge fan, but Monocle's Web site is.. not good. They're very much focused on their print magazine. They're definitely living by their word, though, a loyal subscriber base (a subscription costs _more_ than news-stand and we lap it up!) and highly profitable.

Perhaps I'll take some time to distil the philosophy into a blog post sometime, since it does take a lot of effort to get into a print magazine if it's not at a newsstand near you. It's only a must read for international business and media types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You're way _way_ off the mark with your thoughts on these new "ad networks". DF is not a good example, gruber is a brand, DF isn't just a website and his use of a small ad network is proof of nothing. He would make a lot more with adsense etc, but money isn't his goal. You have to assume money _is_ someone's goal when they run adverts, otherwise why run adverts?

We tried out one of the fancy curated ad networks (projectwonderful) and if our experience is anything to go by they suck, they absolutely suck. Unless you are in a very specific niche they will not do anything but make your revenue tank.

There's a reason these advert displays are not widely popular, it's because they pay nothing. Sure on a blog with a few thousand visits what's the difference between $100 and $50? Larger sites will hurt a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree that Gruber is not the best example but is just that an example. I am trying to prove a point which is that there are ways to make money online from advertising.

I do not have any experience with the networks first hand but from what I can gather from their websites and other places they are a step in the right direction.

I know most "big" websites will not change but at least if smaller blogs and sites start experimenting with something other than AdSense I think it would create a better experience for the end user (us).

<comment><USER5> It's not a better experience for the end user if there's not enough revenue to create the content for the end user in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Advertising is awful because the incentive system is fundamentally broken. The only thing a publisher has to risk by showing crappy ads is you going to another site. Even the sites with the most annoying ads will only lose a small percentage of visitors if the ads become more annoying. They have nothing to gain by making ads appealing.

The problem with online advertising is that the system is entirely skewed to the advertisers. Since they are the ones injecting money into the system, they get whatever they want. If they want to annoy you, then they get to annoy you. And there's nothing wrong with that. They _are_ the customers.

The Deck is really cool, and so is InfluAds. But those solutions don't seem to scale. Exclusivity doesn't solve the underlying problem, it just passes it along to someone else.

The solution to the problem lies in finding a way to make money from a website that doesn't involve doing whatever an advertiser tells you to do. The details of this solution are left as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, unfortunately the system is fundamentally broken and skewed towards advertisers. Although as another commenter here pointed out there are ways to make it better and create a system more independent of advertisers.

In my article a left out a big portion of alternatives but I'm researching and writing a follow up with 4 or 5 ways to substitute display advertising.

Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Use adblock[1] or advertban[2] if you are annoyed by ads. IMHO, neither publishers nor advertisers loose a penny if you _consciously_ use ad blocking solutions, because this means the probability of your _intentional_ click on annoying ads tends towards zero even if you'll see all these ads. In other words, you don't belong to the target audience of these ads. [1] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/> [2] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adban/>

</comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr version: many websites have far too many adverts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly the point I try to make in the article.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately the article provides no real extra benefit beyond the tl;dr version.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am new at this whole blogging thing and It is a work in progress. I try to write about things that interest me and hopefully I will get better at it with time.

What do you think would provide real benefit for this article?

<comment><USER8> You identified a well-known problem without providing a solution. For example you could have talked about the reason for things being like they are and alternative methods for them achieving that. But you'd have to provide some new ideas, don't just drag up micropayments again without adding something new.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will try to keep these ideas in mind for my next article. I would try to provide more alternatives (where possible) and new ways to achieve goals.

Thanks

<comment><USER9> Also take criticism with a grain of salt. Often it's much easier to complain than to create. If you don't have a critic you might be doing something wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no problem taking criticism when it is productive. In this case I also believe the article does not cover all the alternatives, which is a good point. In the future I will try to make my articles better by not only pointing out the obvious but also giving more relevant examples of how to change something for better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll happy run the deck ads, its pretty much invite only though right? The reason the Internet is covered in adsense is because pretty much everyone can join and the cpc from my experience is better than similar providers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, as far as I know these are all invite only networks. It is what makes them special and good respectively. There is a good business model in these kinds of networks and if more such networks can come into existence then blogers like us will have an option.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As always I would like to hear the community comments on my article.

Cheers

<comment><USER11> Grammar issue: "peeked my interest" is incorrect; it's "piqued my interest". Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine.

<comment><AUTHOR> I fixed it. Thanks</comment></comment></comment>


Ex-Googler Launches Search Engine Community, Topicle - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ex-googler_launches_search_engine_community.php <comment><USER2> Ouch! The latest example in a recent spate of bad names.

<comment><USER3> I don't know what you're talking about. It's a simple combination of the words "topic" and "testicle."

<comment><USER2> I would have gone with topigina. It has a nice cadence to it.</comment></comment></comment>


Producing a Music Video in the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://blog.vizibop.com/producing-a-music-video-in-the-browser/ <comment><USER2> Only slightly on topic, but the title reminded my of a "music video" by a band called Brightly for their song Preflight Nerves[0]. It pulls live tweets that contain the lyrics of the song in time with the song. Pretty neat

[0]: [http://tweetflight.wearebrightly.com/](http://tweetflight.wearebrightly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've also messed around with browser video editing. WebRecorder's poor browser support (h264 only available on chrome) is one thing, but only being able to encode in real-time is just too frustrating, with frame drops and forcing the user to play back the entire vid. Have you tried any of the ffmpeg wasm ports floating around?

</comment><comment><USER4> I think video generation for other media types is definitely getting some legs these days. This is a great start for music/podcasts.

There are so many directions you could take it, but generally I suspect it will be hard to offer the "right" amount of customization to end users. It may be easier to find product market fit by focusing in on a smaller niche.

<comment><AUTHOR> What smaller niches come to mind for you?

<comment><USER4> That one is for you to discover! I would think about subcategories that already have communities. Maybe it's a genre of music, maybe it's a circle of podcasters (e.g. sports). Incorporating speech2face would also be sweet feature for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You mention Wavve, is that powering your backend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Backend is Firebase and AWS for the transcoding pipeline using a Lamba / S3 / Elastic Transcoder.</comment></comment>


MIT and Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://crookedtimber.org/2013/01/13/mit-and-aaron-swartz/

<comment><USER2> I spent many years at MIT and continue to support the Institute today, financially and with my time. What makes MIT special - for me - is the way that the administration (at least while I was there) embraces the hacker culture and understands that the type of brilliant, creative young people they recruit will break a lot of rules to test the system before they find their place in it. They continually shielded us from the outside world and maintained a bubble in which we could experiment and push the boundaries. If it went too far, you were suspended for awhile, but I can't remember anyone referred to criminal prosecution.

If that type of community spirit is lost, it's a loss for everyone because somewhere special like that deserves to exist.

<comment><USER3> It's worth pointing out that he wasn't a student or employee of MIT. Yes, he was a member of the hacker elite, but I would imagine any institution would be less likely to protect someone it can't internally discipline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a member of the MIT community, I honestly do not feel very bad about how MIT (Administration) handled this situation. MIT's tradition of careful and thoughtful rule breaking clearly recognizes that rules will be enforced and that the police may be involved in criminal matters.

MIT does not and should not decide prosecution strategy. This was not a civil case, but a criminal prosecution in the American tradition of criminal justice. The victim is not the one prosecuting the crime but rather the government prosecutes on behalf of all people, not on behalf of the victim exclusively.

<comment><USER5> MIT involved the feds in the first place. That was a decision made by authorities on campus, one which was not inevitable. So yes, they do decide prosecution strategy, by deciding when there should be prosecution at all.

<comment><USER6> Yes, involving the USSS was the first seriously questionable decision MIT made. I hope Prof Abelson's report includes who made that decision, when, on what evidence, and why.

I'd be fine with invoking the USSS if there were serious crime going on -- someone using MIT to host cp, or compromising research integrity, or planning violence or financial crime, etc.

If it's someone using your network resources in excess of terms of service, to download another freely available resource in excess of service.

I'd give a technically lesser party (say, a small business, or an individual, or a local government office) a pass if they called the USSS in on something, since they might not be competent to figure out what is going on. However, MIT is clearly in a position to know exactly what was happening.

I'd be inclined to wait for Abelson's report, but from what I've seen so far, MIT Libraries, MIT IS&T, MIT Police, and the MIT Office of General Counsel are all to blame to some extent.

The lion's share of the blame falls on USA Carmen M. Ortiz, AUSA Stephen P. Heymann, and AUSA Scott L. Garland, however, and on Congress for passing unreasonable computer crime and copyright laws with such absurdly excessive criminal penalties.

<comment><USER7> > Yes, involving the USSS was the first seriously questionable decision MIT > made.

The unknown intruder evaded several attempts to cut him off. The volume of downloads was so high that it was causing problems for JSTOR's servers, and JSTOR finally blocked ALL of MIT for several days.

MIT was suffering serious harm. Calling in the Feds for help doesn't seem all that questionable to me under the circumstances.

<comment><USER6> Blocked all of MIT? I thought they just blocked the single /24 he was using. MIT has a /8.

<comment><USER7> According to the information in the indictment[1], they first blocked a single IP, then a bigger block, and then finally all of MIT.

[1] [http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pd...](http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Ah, thanks (I didn't read it that closely). Having your entire netblock blocked from an important service definitely is more justification to bring in the SS, since it's actual ongoing harm to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It matters how you say things. I disagree with the statement that this is "quite clearly" saying that the penalties are too much:

> But the penalties in this case, and the sources of those penalties, are > really remarkable. These penalties really go against MIT's culture of > breaking down barriers.

Using the phrase "really remarkable" sidesteps saying that they're wrong. It's classic weaseling.</comment>


More CO2 in the atmosphere today than any point since the evolution of humans - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/13/health/carbon-dioxide-world-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> Current discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19897250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19897250) (380+ comments)</comment>


One's funny perception of Theme Forest - <AUTHOR> http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/my-perception-of-themeforest-sellers-and-reviewers/29791?page=1

<comment><USER2> What's a paw?</comment>


Non-profit videogame museum in Oakland teaches kids Scratch, Python - <AUTHOR> http://themade.org/node/109

<comment><USER2> Slightly more informative link: <http://www.themade.org/node/100></comment>


Why the creator of Dwarf Fortress is really excited about boats - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/why-the-creator-of-dwarf-fortress-is-really-excited-about-boats/ <comment><USER2> I never really paid attention to individual dwarves when playing, so I had no idea they had so many personality traits: [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Personality_tr...](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Personality_trait)

I wonder if someone's written an online quiz to give you a code to insert at the bottom of your emails, like those old hacker code one-liners people used to put into their sigs. (Can't for the life of me remember what they're called now, and searching for "code email signature" is about as useful as you'd expect.)

<comment><USER3> You're thinking of "Geek Code": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code)

<comment><USER2> That's the one!

<comment><USER4> Oh... When I saw that in passing I always thought that it was short hand for the psychology discipline - you learn something everyday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A bit off topic, but regarding DF: If I wanted to make a much more simpler game where some "factions" would iterate basic geopolitics among themselves what kind of resource should I be looking for if I was aiming at basic consitency? I mean probably some AI book, but other than that or maybe exactly that, there is some blog or article that would exemplify the basics? Perhaps a paper? DF is full of simulations, super complex, but I wonder what is the simplest implementation to get surprised by the "emergence" of the game itself and not pre-established design.

<comment><USER6> You don't need AI. The starting simulations and agents don't need to be that complex. You make a toy first, and then see if it's of use. (I think Europa universalis and other games from that house may suit you?)

Matter of fact, if you have time, use the bay12 Way.

Write a story of what you'd like to see. Then break it down into interactions, atomic items, compound items, and then go from there.

Do note, that DF allows for hugely complex interactions and emergence partly because it has the advantage of a millions year of development time, unburdened by having to conform to market or business expectations.

So this allows for moderately deep systems to interact with shallow systems and yet more systems which are very deep.

The sheer number of systems results in all sorts of emergent behavior, without having to resort to depth of simulation.

So for example, you don't need a z axis when you start out. You may well want geography though, since that determines ecology and weather.

These inform resources, nutrition, growth, abundance and derive from there to economy.

Assuming you don't simulate evolution, and hard code races/civs - you have the basics to define conflict.

But unless you write a story down, it results in an antiseptic sim. A story or text helps you identify quirks of your style, which you want to see reflected in your sim (you may want people to always have a predilection for ponies, or prefer cats over dogs. You may hardcore pacifism as a civ trait which leads to other results )

This keeps some sort of emotional and narrative hook, which makes the simulation worth engaging with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be super happy if Dwarf Fortress managed to make canal locks navigable by the AI.</comment>


21st Century Medicine Wins the Brain Preservation Prize for Small Mammal - <AUTHOR> http://www.21cm.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> More on the topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070197)</comment>