Clearing up some things about LinkedIn mobile's move from Rails to node.js - <AUTHOR> http://ikaisays.com/2012/10/04/clearing-up-some-things-about-linkedin-mobiles-move-from-rails-to-node-js/ <comment><USER2> > And those requirements kept growing. If my calculations are correct, the > standard setup for engineers now is a machine with 20 or more gigabytes of > RAM just to RUN the software.

Close. In 2011, all the engineer desktops got upgraded to 36Gigs. At the time, the eng department still hadn't figured out how to deploy without duplicating hundreds of jar files everywere.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that sounds like fun. What exactly is in the LinkedIn stack that requires so much memory?

<comment> brown9-2 Speculation, but it sounds like the main webapp you see at linkedin.com is a single monolithic application.

<comment><USER4> Even if it is a single monolithic application, it in no way could explain the use of that much RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds much more sane than "node is 20x faster than rails", thanks for validating the assumption most of us were making.

<comment><USER6> I interpreted the original article that their new node.js approach was wildly different than a server-based MVC framework.

Sure, they ended up with 20x greater speed, but never did they say that it was because node.js. They even provide a high-level detailed description of all the things they did with their new approach to achieve this performance.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but the title on HN implied that. We need to be better about writing our submission titles, but hey, sex sells.

<comment><USER6> True! Thanks.

"LinkedIn Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster" should say something like "LinkedIn did a rewrite and rearchitecture that cut 27 Servers and increase speed aby 20x"

<comment><USER8> ... using node.js

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great post for validating management concerns about pulling in sexy new technologies for the hell of it. Every place I've worked I've been unable to convince management to use e.g. Rails (5 years ago) or node.js (recently). Even though I love these technologies and wish I'd had more time in full-time employment to learn and play with them, I understand and appreciate the risks implicit with adopting a shiny new technology in your company's IT dev/production environments.

It's also a great post illuminating how in hindsight some things can be really obvious (that building a high capacity web service dependent on a single- threaded server will give you problems down the road), but at the time it's not always easy seeing the woods for the trees.

For me though, the big takeaway was that one line summary: "You're comparing a lower level server to a full stack web framework." Node.js has a pretty nice library/module ecosystem now, but for a complete full-stack solution with maximum productivity I would venture that there is nothing out there that compares to Rails currently.

<comment><USER9> > _This is a great post for validating management concerns about pulling in > sexy new technologies for the hell of it._

But their old technology is requiring towers with 36GB of RAM. It seems like more of a choice between the devil you know vs the devil you don't. Obviously there needs to be a cost-benefit analysis even if it's imperfect. Otherwise you'll get stuck in a local maxima and before you know it you're paying $10 per million cycles of a mainframe running batch COBOL jobs maintained by old men who are dying faster than you can replace them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's definitely true, that node.js isn't a full fledged framework, but I still wrote several projects using it and you know what? I don't regret it, as much as I don't regret my move from C++ to C over the past years. And for the memory usage: Yes, even my biggest project never needed more than 100MB of RAM (when not using the cluster module).

But I completely agree with "the rewrite thing". I guess the other factors made it necessary to still do it....

</comment><comment><USER11> I met Ikai through the Silicon Valley Rails Meetup, which I co-hosted back in 2008-2009 and which met at LinkedIn HQ in Mountain View. This post is a great contribution to the recent discussion about Rails at LinkedIn, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Michael!

Was there a recent discussion? I'm fairly certain everyone has moved on from Rails, and I'm not sure if they're still using it anywhere at LinkedIn. There are a few folks using JRuby, but I believe they're using Sinatra:

<https://www.google.com/search?q=jruby+sinatra+linkedin>

<comment><USER11> I haven't been back in a while, so I've got no inside information. But it's great to hear from you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The concept that I got from the main article was that they tailored their application for "long-lived connection" to avoid multiple resource calls to make their web server more responsive. They also mention things like using "aggressive cacheing", "storing templates locally", "using timestamps to stream only required resources", "rearchitecture and rewrite."

Never once did I ever feel this article was advising that node.js was superior to RoR - they only every justified, at a high level, a way better approach (in terms of server load) to an "MVC" like architecture by leveraging client side frameworks and technique to lessen server load.

The author of this article also makes it clear at the end by stating that comparing the solutions is apples to oranges, but so did the original article...so I don't get the need for "clarification".

EDIT: I retract my "way better" statement - I mean "way better" in the sense of server load.

</comment><comment><USER12> And the blog-to-commentary-to-blog cycle begins anew.

<comment><USER13> and then come the posts about how they scaled their custom blog backend to cope with the hn front page traffic.

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm hosted on Wordpress; that's their problem now)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mongrel isn't and wasn't single-threaded. Rails was.

</comment><comment><USER15> "•Firefighting? That was probably a combination of several things: the fact that we were running MRI and leaked memory, or the fact that the ops team was 30% of a single guy."

:o That may explain why they had spam and security issues.

<comment><USER16> He's talking about a mobile site that was using a public API. They had no more access to the password database than you or I do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Node.js is old news. Time to move on to GoLang. :)

<comment><USER18> Please do not even joke about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, linkedin sounds like a place I really want to work!

Billy Madison: "High school is great. I mean I'm learning a lot. And all the kids are treating me very nice. It's great."</comment>


Questions to Ask When Negotiating Salary - <AUTHOR> https://www.cleverism.com/20-questions-to-ask-when-negotiating-salary/ <comment><USER2> I'm super distracted by the use of ԛ instead of q in this article, what's that about? Plagiarism detection? Seems bad for accessibility/SEO.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I get it, it's a defense _against_ plagiarism detection. The article is largely plagiarized from other sources, but since they didn't contain the homographs you can't just google the unique sentence "This is a fair and legitimate question, but not the first question you want to ask." (Original source, possibly: [https://www.risesmart.com/blog/6-key-questions-ask-during- sa...](https://www.risesmart.com/blog/6-key-questions-ask-during-salary- negotiations))

<comment><USER3> Looks like this article has been posted on multiple blogs -- the oldest one I found was on glassdoor's blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was making $500K/year in my last job, and I never asked for a raise in all my career. IMO, the best way to get market-level compensation is to find an offer from another employer that you're willing to move to. Once you show your employer the other offer, the burden goes to the employer to justify why they should keep you at a below-market rate.

<comment><USER5> When you show your employer an offer you received from another employer, aren't basically saying "Pay me more" and asking for a raise? I can't imagine going to your manager and saying, "Look, these guys want to pay me more. haha. OK, back to work."

<comment><USER6> There's a soft way to ask for it. You basically point out that your manager is at risk of loosing you. Note that you need to understand both how much you bring to the team _from your manager 's perspective_ as well as your manager's budget considerations.

It's possible you outgrew the position altogether and the group you're in isn't interested in what you've become, at least not at that price. Or it's possible that what you've become is truly worth it to the team and replacing you with someone new would noticeably set the team back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of this transactional argument is misconceived I think. The argument that you can trade off picking off your kids at 4:00 against, say $5000 seems particularly wrong-headed to me and detracts from the value proposition you bring to the company.

</comment><comment><USER8> These are nice tactical questions but they overlook the prime strategy in any comp negotiation: demonstration of value.

Eg what demonstrable value are you, the person asking for money, bringing to the table? What problems are you solving? Why are you worth what you're asking for? What things have you accomplished, issues you headed off, etc that I might not know about. Etc.

<comment><USER9> I have already demonstrated my value during the interview. Negotiation occurs after I have passed the interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a "feel-good" list without any concrete examples.

Check this out instead: [https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a- job-offer...](https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer/)

It is much more directly applicable to our field with concrete examples.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a value in "agents" for tech talent. (I seem to remember `toptal` trying to position itself like that).

Now that 500K is in the reach of SREs at Facebook, it seems worthwhile to get someone in to negotiate on that SREs behalf. Or is the "stupid high salary" world just too small?

</comment><comment><USER11> Considering this is a low quality listicle without much content and is posted by a new account the same username as the domain, it seems somewhat likely that it's using fake votes to get as many points as it did?</comment>


How, not why, the human brain folds - <AUTHOR> http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/how-not-why-the-human-brain-folds/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hu-twitter-general <comment><USER2> Here's a link to the paper: [http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nphys3...](http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nphys3632.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Our research shows that if a part of the brain does not grow properly, or if the global geometry is disrupted, we may not have the major folds in the right place, which may cause dysfunction in the brain."

Causes dysfunction, or has common cause with dysfunction?

Super cool research.

<comment><USER4> That excerpt brings this to mind:

[http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070716/full/news070716-15.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070716/full/news070716-15.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> (documentary narrator voice:)

"Expelled to the desolate periphery yet in the irrevocable embrace of the dura mater, the cortex directs its entire energy into the fractal dimension."

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's nice that science never makes the claim that how it actually happens, only that it might have happened this way, on _a priori_ ground.

Maybe we never really know (the truth as is), but if we can mimic (the truth as if), it's already intriguing and fascinating.</comment>


Golang: bcrypt, Blowfish password hashing - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/zoowar/bcrypt

<comment><USER2> Q: is this preferable than using the built-in blowfish? What is the advantage?

<http://golang.org/pkg/crypto/blowfish/>

<comment><USER3> They're for different things. Blowfish is a block cipher. Bcrypt is a password hashing function build on top of a modified version of Blowfish.

If you want to store hashed passwords, Bcrypt is a Right Way to do it. Blowfish doesn't really get much use anymore.

<comment><USER2> Great. Thanks for the clarification. I've been trying various ways to do secure login on my webapp so this will be just the ticket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I created pretty much the same thing about two weeks ago, although I think your library looks much nicer (I'm just getting into Go).

<https://github.com/silas/bcrypt.go>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. My advice is that you should get into the habit of writing tests.</comment></comment>


Internet Videoconferencing with CU-SeeMe: History, Culture, and Usage (1995) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sattlers.org/mickey/CU-SeeMe/internetTVwithCUSeeMe/chapter08/culture.html <comment><USER2> Back in the day, working in a University in Australia on multicast stuff (we used it heavily for conference broadcasting) I had a service point which I forgot about. One of the network admins brought me a printout of six unknown users who were sharing dickpix live. I shut the service down.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mods, I edited the original title from "Internet TV with CU-SeeMe: Chapter 8 - History, Culture, and Usage" because I thought "Internet TV" would be confusing in modern usage and because the Chapter 8 is spurious. The source uses "Internet videoconferencing" interchangeably with "Internet TV" in the intro paragraph, so I went with that. Cheers

</comment><comment><USER3> I recall getting our 56K link and were wondering what we could do with it and so we fired up CU-SeeMe and promptly saturated the link :-/. Ahh, Archie, Veronica, anonymous ftp, muds and gopher... good times</comment>


Show HN: Mined for Change – In-Browser Crypto Mining for Effective Altruism - <AUTHOR> https://minedforchange.org <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

Would love to hear any feedback on this project! Positive or negative

</comment><comment><USER2> Congratulations for no autorstarting the miner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I think it's important to be completely open about it since browser mining has a bad rep. Everyone trying it should know what happens as much as possible before just clicking 'mine'</comment></comment>


Ignore the Headlines: We Don't Know If E-Cigs Lead Kids to Real Cigs - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ignore-the-headlines-we-dont-know-if-e-cigs-lead-kids-to-real-cigs/ <comment><USER2> This being fivethirtyeight, I wish they could display a bit more statistical sophistication.

Okay, so we've got six out of sixteen. That's not a large number, but it's not small enough to be meaningless either. Let's talk probabilities. You could have a graph. You could teach the reader some actual statistics. But no.

As far as I can figure out, the writer isn't a statistician at all, so I'm not sure why she's writing for fivethirtyeight.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this part of the article directly addresses your complaint:

"I asked Andrew Vickers, a statistician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, to take a look at the analysis. He said it wasn't surprising that there was an association between e-cigarettes and smoking. The real question is how big it is. While this study suggests that the effect is large, Vickers found reason for caution in what statisticians call the "confidence interval," a plausible range of values for the study results. The confidence intervals here are "ridiculously wide," he said, which means that the estimate that e-cigarette users are about eight times as likely to take up smoking as non- users is just a rough approximation — the true increase in risk could be anywhere from 30 percent to 5,700 percent."</comment></comment>


80x25 - <AUTHOR> http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/10/23/80x25/ <comment><USER2> 80 characters was the number of characters a 10-pitch typewriter could fit on a line on standard letter-size paper. 24/25 characters came from the vertical resolution of CRTs and what you could fit into 2KB of RAM.

The point size argument is clearly wrong, as this sample from the early 19th century shows: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/A_Specim...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/A_Specimen_by_William_Caslon.jpg)

<comment><USER3> That appears to be typeset, not typewritten.

<comment><USER4> But they didn't used typewriters to make punchcards; they used a press.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 80, yes. 25 lines, though, had nothing to do with punched cards.

And yes, physical card quality was a big deal. The early feeding mechanisms relied too much on the card thickness and card edge properties. That lasted into the 1970s.

Then, near the end of the punched card era, Documation nailed it.[1] They discovered that if you squirt air into the base of a card stack just right, you can make the cards separate themselves slightly. Then a vacuum picker can reliably pick them off one at a time. A neat little piece of machinery, far simpler than most earlier card readers.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu55b0GpgE8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu55b0GpgE8)

<comment><USER6> The 25 lines comes from the 2 Kb display RAM of the VT52/VT100, plus the desire for 80-character lines.

<comment><USER7> the Vt100 had a 132 character mode as well.

They also had shockingly bad protection on the serial port from induced surges, eventually we brought the full service manual so our in house electronics shop should could fix ours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I expect the standard would be something like 80x25 regardless, given the size and resolution of early terminal monitors and how small you could make text before it's unreadable. Whether a different sized greenback ends up making a 70 or 90 column punched card, it's not that big of a difference from what we got. The 4:3 aspect ratio is probably the bigger influence.

It's like how rack mounts are 19 inches wide because the Bell System made that the standard for its telephone relay racks 100 years ago. In the long run it's more important that there is a standard than what it is.

<comment><USER9> Video memory addressing could have become quite a bit simpler and faster if the width would be nice round 2^N number (e.g. 32, 64 or 128 characters on a line), especially on limited 8-bit machines of the 70s and 80s. So 40 or 80 is indeed a somewhat strange choice (at least those numbers aren't completely odd though, with 40=(2^5)+(2^3) and 80=(2^6)+(2^4).

<comment><USER10> TRS-80... 64 chars (or 32 double-width) by 16 lines

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As others have pointed out, the claimed link between banknotes and terminal dimensions is unclear, if not flat out wrong. The article's own logic is missing a crucial connection right here:

> At one point sales of punchcards and related tooling constituted a > completely bonkers 30% of IBM's annual profit margin, so you can understand > that IBM had a lot invested in getting that consistently, precisely correct.

> At around this time John Logie Baird invented the first "mechanical > television"; like punchcards, the first television cameras were hand-cranked > devices...

It goes on to argue that the television standards influenced terminal dimensions, but there is no link (unless I missed something) between the banknote/punchcard discussion and that of the television - other than the fact that they used hand-cranked devices. No mention as to the punchcard's size/dimensions being carried over to television (and by extension, terminals) other than what appears to be a coincidence in the number of characters fitting on a line of a punchcard.

Looking at the origins of the television standards (at least for the number of terminal lines, since the number of characters per line seems to have been influenced by typewriters), one could trace it back to William Kennedy Dickson (created the 35mm standard by cutting 70mm roll film in half), or previously to Peter & David Houston and George Eastman for their creation/marketing of early roll film cameras.

<comment><USER12> The link is probably as follows: Bank notes -> Hollerith card (80 x 12) -> Datapoint 2200 terminal (80 x 12, facilitated by 1K Intel linear shift register for display memory) -> 2K display buffer & 4:3 display dimensions of silent film (as opposed to the later academy format) as generally used for television as the major source of demand for readymade raster cathode ray tubes => two punch cards + 1 extra status line.

The Datapoint 2200, evolving from an original idea about some data editing device to replace the IBM 029 keypunch, is missing in this account, though. Announced in 1970 (and shipping in 1971), it predates any of the terminals mentioned in the article. (BTW, the Datapoint 2200, which was also the ancestor of the Intel 8008 MPU and by this the ancestor of the modern PC, was an enormously influential device and is generally underrated for historical aspects.)

The link between columns on a punch card and typewriters is probably found in the need for some correspondence between typed tables and information punched on cards. The aspect ratio of silent film is probably more for esthetic reasons, since the technical aspect of the width of a frame could have been addressed by any kind of gearing. However, there's a link between the speed of the film moving through the camera, the number of exposures per second, the width of the image, the optical quality of the lens, the shutter construction and the sensitivity of the film, putting some constrains on the aspect ratio of choice. (Obviously, if the film is moving too fast and exposure becomes too short for the chosen material, the resulting image will be dim. The choice of film sensisitivity, on the other hand, is related to image contrast.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Something I missed in this great writeup was the Datapoint 2200 terminal (the ancestor of the 8008 MPU), announced in 1970 and introduced in 1971. It originated from an idea about a replacement for the 029 key punch (intended to replicate the prior success of CTC's Datapoint 3300 terminal as a drop-in replacement for the ASR 33 TeleType.) From this initial idea the Datapoint 2200 directly inherited the 80 x 12 layout of the Hollerith punch card. (That this fitted quite perfectly into 1K, certainly didn't hurt and may have been an incentive for keeping the dimensions of the initial project. Reportedly, the narrow built height resulting from the narrow 12-lines screen was generally liked by users.)

Compare: Wood, Lamont. Datapoint: The Lost Story of the Texans Who Invented the Personal Computer. Hugo House Publishers, 2013.

See also, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200)

<comment><USER12> What may be interesting, as well, is that the earlier Datapoint 3300 terminal (announced in 1967, shipped 1959) already featured a 25 lines display, but at 72 characters per line, just like the ASR 33 it was meant to replace. There seems to be no hard evidence on how CTC arrived at 25 lines per screen, though.

Regarding the Datapoint 2260, there's prior art in form of the IBM 2260 Model 3 terminal (1964), featuring 80 characters in 12 rows as well, in direct correspondence to a punched card. (The Model 1 displayed 40 characters at 6 lines, while the Model 2 managed 40 characters at 12 lines, with only the top model of the family featuring this relation to punchcards, though. Bonus fact: the 2260s used a portrait raster tube turned on its side, resulting in vertical scan lines.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yup! Python folks don't seem to think it's funny when I call the PEP-8 standard, with its 80-column line limit, "punchcard compliant," though.

<comment><USER14> I'm one of those that sticks with 80x25 because I had decades of it influence me.

I do understand, though, that it's dumb, and wouldn't force it on others.

<comment><USER15> When I started conforming to it, my code became a lot more concise.

I'd advocate every developer conforms to PEP-8 rules (80-char, nesting limits, etc), at least for a 3-12 month period. They'll be a better developer for it.

<comment><USER16> That's a great idea. Have an opinion about the standard from experience, not gut feel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember back in the DOS days being able to type a tiny program into DEBUG.COM that would set the screen to 80 x 50 mode! It was one of the first things I would do on a machine if I didn't have my floppy disk of favorite tools with me. It was just a couple instructions, like MOV AX this and INT 10h that. Now I have to go find it!

<comment><USER18> I thought the MODE command could do this.

<comment><USER19>
      MODE CON LINES=50

Indelibly burnt into my long term memory. You needed an EGA or higher graphics card though.

<comment><USER20> There was also LINES=43 for EGA (640×350, rather than VGA's 640×480).

MODE CO80 was for 80-column colour. ``MODE MONO'' switched to MDA/monochrome VGA mode (if you hadn't used &b700-b7ff for a UMB.)

MODE CO40 for the 40-column mode intended for the original IBM PC when used with an analogue TV set as its display.

<comment><USER19> Didn't 'MODE MONO' need a Hercules graphics card though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretty good quote at the end. I'll have to remember it next time I think I know something.

>As a personal aside, my two great frustrations with doing any kind of historical CS research remain the incalculable damage that academic paywalls have done to the historical record, and the relentless insistence this industry has on justifying rather than interrogating the status quo. This is how you end up on Stack Overflow spouting unresearched nonsense about how "4 pixel wide fonts are untidy-looking". I've said this before, and I'll say it again: whatever we think about ourselves as programmers and these towering logic-engines we've erected, we're a lot more superstitious than we realize, and by telling and retelling these unsourced, inaccurate just-so stories without ever doing the work of finding the real truth, we're betraying ourselves, our history and our future. But it's pretty goddamned difficult to convince people that they should actually look things up instead of making up nonsense when actually looking things up, even for a seemingly simple question like this one, can cost somebody on the outside edge of an academic paywall hundreds or thousands of dollars.

<comment><USER22> The example the author uses reminds me of some wackadoodle numerology BS proving that the ancient Egyptians predicted the Federal Reserve. "...which gives us 675, which is close enough to 640, and therefore there had to be a second shooter". Hey, wait, what? And the comments! "Yeah, that makes sense." Umm, might I posit that it most certainly does not make a fucking _lick_ of sense? Yeesh, round off enough numbers, and I've got yer String Theory proof right here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Most early terminals were actually 80x24. I know the DEC VT series were. I remember being surprised when the IBM PC came out with an 80x25 display.

<comment><USER24> _Early_ video terminals had a variety of sizes. The 1964 GE Data Editing Display (earliest I can find a manual¹ for) had 46×26. The 1967 Datapoint 3300 had 72×25. The 1967 Sanders 720 had (up to) 40×50 or 64×32, depending which orientation you got the monitor.

But the IBM 2260, their first character display, had 40 or 80 columns by 6 or 12 lines, depending on how much you spent on the controller, which stored a cluster of terminals' displays on acoustic delay lines.

¹ [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_geterminalayDec64_1626...](https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_geterminalayDec64_1626712)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The leap between IBM punchcards and VT100 makes no sense. Teletypewriters used 72 characters per line. IBM mainframe line printers used 132 characters per line. DEC and IBM probably just happened to pick 80 character columns for unrelated reasons (1970s CRT resolution and 1920s printing technology, respectively)

<comment><USER25> It makes lots of sense - as we moved from batch systems to working from terminals (mid to late 70s) some people were editing cards on card punches, while others were editing card images on terminals

<comment><USER4> So DEC thought of this as a way to edit IBM cards but IBM didn't?

The implicit claim is that somehow the machines for manufacturing punch cards were reused for computer output and that is what terminals were trying to emulate. But surely there were more displays and non-card-sized printers?

<comment><USER25> Actually I was using Burroughs systems (in pre-VT52 days)

There certainly were non card size printers - but they scaled linearly with technology

But no we didn't repurpose card punches to be terminals, but we did need terminals to edit card images (fortran was 72 characters plus 8 digits of sequence numbers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Apparently the author is not aware that delivering a box of microfiche cards instead of a fat paper printout was a common practice back then. It had nothing to do with spooks.

You find that mentioned in Brooks's Mythical Man-month book: everyone working on OS/360 got a box of microfiche representing the current state of the OS, each morning. Without a terminal, how else would you look up what a system call actually did? Printing one copy of all the source, and then optically reproducing it to more acetate, was obviously more efficient than printing it hundreds of times.

The old listings would be burnt to recover the silver.

<comment><USER22> One not need to have even worked on old computer systems. I'm not even retired yet, and I've gone to the library to look stuff up in old newspapers that were on microfiche. When I was a mechanic back in the day, parts listings were on "fish", too.

I think the author read "microfilm" and instead of hearing a synonym for the thing car parts are listed on, I'd bet the immediate thought was little micro spy cameras to put your microfilm in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Where TFA goes from talking about punch cards to 35mm film with audio track to 4:3 film and CRT aspect ratios, there's a disconnect: there's nothing to tie film/TV aspect ratios to punch cards. TFA then tries to construct a tie from:

> Fascinatingly, the early versions of the ECMA-48 standard specify that this > standard isn't solely meant for displays, specifying that "examples of > devices conforming to this concept are: an alpha-numeric display device, a > printer or a microfilm output device."

TFA should know that terminals evolved to be a keyboard + printer before they evolved to be a keyboard + CRT. I'm not sure that there's any link between paper size and CRT size. Most likely the only connection would be number of columns (of fixed-width text), but not lines.

My guess is that in the end there's no connection between punch cards and terminals being 80x25, much less between Civil War Demand Notes and terminals being 80x25. 80x25 was just convenient for all the independent reasons TFA lists. Any similarity to punch cards was almost certainly coincidental, and perhaps convenient.

<comment><USER28> > I'm not sure that there's any link between paper size and CRT size. Most > likely the only connection would be number of columns (of fixed-width text), > but not lines

I haven't got a solid answer here, but I do know from experience that your average typewriter does about 80 characters across a page once you account for margins.

Now clearly that'd not be much of an argument if margins are arbitrary but I don't think they are. On a typewriter your can more or less freely choose the top, left, and right margin. The bottom margin is however limited by the mechanism: by the time the bottom of the page is under the striking area the paper is flopping in the breeze since the roller isn't holding it anymore. If you set the left and the right margins (and the top margin) to the same size as the minimum workable bottom margin you end up with roughly 80 characters across the page.

Seems as likely a link as any: typing out tabular data from a punch card would be limited to the same width as common on typewriters.

<comment><USER27> Sure, but all these links (like the 2KB link) seem a bit coincidental. Of course, 2KB would fit other combinations of columns and lines, and typewrites (I think? I don't have one at hand!) probably do manage to fit more than 25 lines of single-spaced text with normal margins... My _guess_ is that matching typewriter (and/or punchcard) width was more important than matching length, so with 1KB and 2KB, terminal manufacturers used as many lines as they could fit while using 80 column lines. Display width is probably more important than display length for us humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is this another variant of space shuttle SRBs being the width of two horses arses?

</comment><comment><USER30> I designed and built an ASCII terminal as a college project. The 25 lines was set by the number of lines a standard monitor could display, given a certain number of scan lines needed to make the font legible.

As monitors that could display more scan lines became available, people instantly used them to display more rows.

</comment><comment><USER31> A related post about software development, history, surveillance, knowledge, weaving looms, terminal sizes, and more:

[https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of- knowledge/](https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Hugged already? Archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20191024002534/http://exple.tive...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191024002534/http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/10/23/80x25/)

</comment><comment><USER33> While I greatly enjoyed the article and its effort at historical synthesis, the author cites a fact that's not _exactly_ true:

> Then in 1983 the Apple IIe was introduced, the first Apple computer to > natively support an 80×24 text display, doubling the 40×24 default of their > earlier hardware.

My family had an Apple IIe in 1984. It only showed 40 columns until my fater went out and bought an "80 column card" to upgrade it. He also sprang for a second floppy drive. So "natively" is a bit of a stretch there.

</comment><comment><USER34> I can't get the page to open but the title of the HN submission is nonsense.

Terminal is 80x25 because that's how big terminals were back in the day (for very long ago values of back in the day and for purely bandwidth driven reasons).

Pre-Mac (technically pre-Lisa) Black and White CRT displays which were made using then-current CRT TV technology which had just enough analog bandwidth to show 80 columns of 5 pixel by 7 pixel characters, with one pixel separation (480 pixels horizontally [edit added: those are US numbers, European TV's had slightly higher bandwidth but that's a different topic]) and most could only show 24 such characters vertically due to the 4x3 aspect ratio used in essentially all CRTs of the day. 24x80 was the industry standard for a screen of text for purely CRT bandwidth reasons. So why 25 lines? Because a few super cool terminals allowed you one extra line for showing status below a conventional 24x80 layout, hence 25x80 (vertical squeeze didn't pose bandwidth or pixel separation problems on black and white displays of that era). Terminal naturally went with the cool kid size of 25x80. No civil war bank notes involved, just the bandwidth of then-current generation TV display technology and a fortuitous coincidence that punch cards had 80 columns.

[edit added] Apple][ and other similar era devices had even lower character counts because they hooked up to color TV's which had roughly similar bandwidth but needed to spread that bandwidth across three phosphors per pixel so far fewer pixels available on screen.

<comment><USER35> Your being downvoted but you have a valid point. People should look up the NTSC/PAL standard for how analog TV screens worked. There were only ~560 scan lines in the raster pattern (vertical and horizontal blanking intervals notwithstanding). With a character height of 7 pixels/scan lines + one for spacing that gets you 70 lines of text on screen. Even if the punch card machines gave you more memory, actually using it would have required buying a special purpose TV. Eventually we did get CRT monitors which were specific for computers instead of television, but that wouldn't be economically viable at the time.

<comment><USER14> The downvoting is likely because 80x24/25 happened well before home PCs that displayed via NTSC/PAL. And many of those early terminals also supported a 132 column mode.

<comment><USER35> What were the earlier non-home computers displaying on?

<comment><USER14> CRT, but not via RF modulators, NTSC, PAL, etc.

<comment><USER35> That's very odd. Why did they invent a new CRT format and spend the cost of the hardware to implement it instead of using an off the shelf TV?

<comment><USER14> Because TVs didn't have high quality video inputs. Old Apples, C64s, etc, came with a "tiny tv broadcaster" (RF modulator) that broadcast the signal on channel 3. In shit NTSC or PAL quality, which is lower resolution than what the CRT can display.

<comment><USER35> I understood that. I'm old enough to remember VCR's / game consoles required you to turn to channel 3 or 4. But what were the older, non-personal terminals using? Was there some sort of RF modulated raster pattern optimized for displaying text? Were they drawing everything as vectors? Did they use off the shelf CRT's?

<comment><USER14> Direct manipulation of the beam with analog voltage to a CRT driver for the x and y axis. Same as what the TV does inside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> from the same author, why arrays are zero-based [http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2013/10/22/citation- needed/](http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2013/10/22/citation-needed/)

</comment><comment><USER37> This article is complete nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER38> I thought this aside about how Wikipedia has been taken over by extremists was even more interesting:

> _It's difficult to research anything about the early days of American > currency on Wikipedia these days; that space has been thoroughly colonized > by the goldbug /sovcit cranks. You wouldn't notice it from a casual > examination, which is of course the plan; that festering rathole is tucked > away down in the references, where articles will fold a seemingly innocuous > line somewhere into the middle, tagged with an exceptionally dodgy > reference. You'll learn that "the shift from demand notes to treasury notes > meant they could no longer be redeemed for gold coins[1]" – which is > strictly true! – but if you chase down that footnote you wind up somewhere > with a name like "Lincoln's Treason – Fiat Currency, Maritime Law And The > U.S. Treasury's Conspiracy To Enslave America", which I promise I am only > barely exaggerating about._

<comment><USER39> For obscure conspiracy topics, the only people who care enough to edit the pages are the true believers. Today arguments about which occult order is descended from which happen on Wikipedia talk pages.

Look at this nonsense:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:A%E2%88%B4A%E2%88%B4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:A%E2%88%B4A%E2%88%B4)

> _I am an initiate of the A. '.A.'. and the Golden Dawn. If anyone would like > to challenge the factual basis of my claim that the System of the A.'.A.'. > is based on the Merkabah Seven Palaces rather than the Kabbalistic Tree of > Life, then please provide your reasons for doing so before demanding book > citations be produced for initiated and previously secret knowledge. Prove > the A.'.A.'. is based on the Tree of Life or be Silent._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hermetic_Order_of_the_Gol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hermetic_Order_of_the_Golden_Dawn/Archive_5)

> _The registered trademark should remain on the Hermetic Order of the Golden > Dawn, the outer order of the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega entry in > the contemporary orders section, as they own the HOGD trademark in Europe > and Canada. Recently the HOG /A+O settled litigation victoriously preserving > their perpetual and irrevocable right to use the name of their outer order, > the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, without interference in the USA. The > registered trademark rightly and properly distinguishes the HOG/A+O from the > exorbitant number of -unlicensed Golden Dawn based study groups and should > NOT be removed. The registered trademark is a distinguishing character > integral to the association of, and a privilege entitled by law reserved > exclusively for the HOGD/A+O as the owners of the Hermetic Order of the > Golden Dawn in the European Union and Canada as aforementioned. It is > certainly improper and somewhat unlawful to deprive the HOGD/A+O of using > that privilege of the registered trademark they reserve the right to fully > represent themselves therewith. Please do not remove the trademarks from the > HOGD/A+O entry again._

> _Furthermore, as the A+O's outer order is named the Hermetic Order of the > Golden Dawn and they reserve all rights to that mark in the European Union > and Canada. It should be correctly stated in the contemporary orders section > that the HOGD /A+O is: "a modern order headquartered in the European Union > using the same name being also the outer order of the Rosicrucian Order of > Alpha et Omega®. This is paramount, as it distinguishes the HOGD/A+O as a > completely separate entity from the independent organisation which is the > HOGD, Inc. who are a modern independent order of the same name._

<comment><USER40> "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." \- Alberto Brandolini

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I couldn't finish reading it, but something about a printing press, typewriters, paper size and the max characters that can fit with a 20 pt font.

</comment><comment><USER42> > It's not entirely clear if this is a deliberate exercise in coordinated > crank-wank or just years of accumulated flotsam from the usual debate-club > dead-enders hanging off the starboard side of the Overton window. There's > plenty of idiots out there that aren't quite useful enough to work the > k-cups at the Heritage Institute, and I guess they're doing something with > their time, but the whole thing has a certain sinister elegance to it that > the Randroid crowd can't usually muster. I've got my doubts either way, and > I honestly don't care to dive deep enough into that sewer to settle them. > Either way, it's always good to be reminded that the goldbug/randroid/sovcit > crank spectrum shares a common ideological klancestor.

Is this the kind of tinfoil hattery that is acceptable now?

<comment><USER26> It is off topic, but worth mention.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pretty Web and PDF Resumes with Bootstrap 3 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bliti/resume

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is my own resume showcasing the project:

[http://bliti.github.io/resume/](http://bliti.github.io/resume/)

 _By the way, I 'm available for hire..._</comment>


Leap Motion Has Launched - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leapmotion.com/post/56148436879/leap-motion-has-launched <comment><USER3> I have actually developed on the Leap Motion device and here are my few critiques:

1\. There are way too many gestures and motions available. The SDK needs to provide a solid framework for fewer gestures/motions and the company needs to make sure that consumers readily understand them. Unless there is a whole lot of standardization of the platform it will become hard for developers/other companies to produce a consistent and coherent experience.

2\. I do not like the strategy of lets-throw-it-in-the-wild-and-see-what- other-people-come-up-with; the tech has loads of cool factor that you will get people to make interesting stuff with it. However, will that translate into useable and effective computing software? From my point of view, I have not really seen a single application on Leap which does something 'better' than a touch based or mouse-based interface can do. Better meaning more intuitively and/or more productively

3\. I think one of the biggest challenges for any gesture controlled device is the shoulder/forearm/wrist/palm pain that is inherently going to be the result of prolonged gesture-driven interface use. Maybe applications have to use gestures sparingly?

On a broader note, I still think humans have an inherent desire to touch/feel interface elements. Being able to directly touch a screen and manipulate it means I can easily manipulate visual behavior through an actual/physical connection. Interfaces which disconnect this physical medium seem more alien to me at least. Maybe I am less evolved as a neanderthal but I don't think we are ready for a gesture driven interface.

<comment><USER4> I think there are a number of specific areas where Leap Motion can be interesting.

For example, there are some startups that use Kinect to let surgeon interact with a screen showing patient data during an operation. Some researchers have also proposed the use of gesture recognition in the context of a worker having to follow precise instructions for some complex task. Leap motion + Google Glass could be an interesting combo for interactive training.

I'm sure there are other areas. But I agree with your comment and I fail to see the mass market use case. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong :-)

<comment><USER5> Leap wants an unspecified cut if you make one of these:

"Specialized Application" means an Application which is: (i) sold, licensed, leased, or otherwise disposed of for a list price of more than US$500 or local equivalent, or more than US$240 per year or local equivalent if on a subscription, lease or similar basis; (ii) sold, licensed, leased or otherwise disposed of as part of, or for use with, another application, system, machine or device (other than a personal computer), having a list price of more than US$500 or local equivalent, or more than US$240 per year or local equivalent if on a subscription, lease or similar basis; (iii) designed for use, or that is primarily used, with or for control, whether direct or indirect, of industrial, commercial, military or medical equipment.

<comment><USER6> Suddenly, the device seems a lot less interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Their marketing worked on me. I pre-ordered one. Like many, I suspect, I ordered mine because it looked like a cool toy, not because I thought it filled a need.

I've only played with it for an hour or so in total, but so far I'm returning it. Maybe it's a training issue (on my part; the device doesn't learn, as far as I can tell), but it just doesn't work very well for me.

The demo apps suggest a severe lack of precision when I'm using it, and complain that the room is too bright. Coincidentally, it's a stormy, overcast day, and my office lamp burned out this morning. This is as dark as it'll ever be in here during the day.

I'll definitely give it some more time (you have 30 days from when it ships to return it), but I'm not that interested in learning how to move my hands in a Leap-specific way, or in permanently darkening my office.

<comment><USER8> > The demo apps [...] complain that the room is too bright. Coincidentally, > it's a stormy, overcast day, and my office lamp burned out this morning. > This is as dark as it'll ever be in here during the day.

Could it be that it's aimed too much towards the screen? I mean, that's the most obvious remaining light source.

<comment><USER7> Could be, it is in front of the monitor, but it's flat on my desk in more or less the same place shown in most of their demo videos.

<comment><USER9> I wonder if your monitor's backlight puts out an inordinate amount of infrared light. I've noticed interference with IR remote control reception when one of my LCD monitor's backlights is turned down close to minimum brightness; I'm assuming that the PWM dimmer frequency (or one of its harmonics) is making it through the filter used by the IR receiver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Engadget Review - [http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/22/leap-motion-controller- re...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/22/leap-motion-controller-review/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I am so looking forward to getting mine. I ordered the thing in August of last year. Guess they didn't like my application for a touch free interface for some hospital software I've worked on to get me an early development device. I thought the idea of the possibility of zero infection risk interface would be a great plus for this. But, they wanted apps for the masses I'm guessing.

<comment><USER12> My proposal was for a medical data manipulation tool for surgeons in an operating room, and I received one. Maybe I just beat you to it ;)

<comment><USER11> Well, congrats! I hope it's been fun! I'm excited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just tried mine out and am pretty disappointed. Mouse and keyboard seem pretty revolutionary after 15 minutes with the Leap.

<comment><USER14> Could a Leap be mounted on the side of a laptop looking sideways at whatever table surface happens to be there (if there is one), so as to functionally give the laptop a big touchpad off to the side?

<comment><USER15> Leap doesn't work (or at didn't work during beta) well or at all if you had solid object blocking it's viewport. Even if blocking object was behind your hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd be excited to try this if it weren't (as far as I can tell) another use- the-app-store-or-nothing setup. [https://www.leapmotion.com/developers](https://www.leapmotion.com/developers) points to a signup page with a lengthy contract.

<comment><USER17> They told me I'm free to distibute apps outside their store. They are some things in the sdk that are not redistibutable but I am fairly certain core libs required to run a program are allowed.

<comment><USER16> Thank you! I'll take another look now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Too bad a lot of people who pre-ordered via Kickstarter haven't even gotten their shipping confirmations yet.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I got an update yesterday that my credit card info was no longer valid and had to enter a new one. Guess I must have replaced the card since then. I hope I get mine in a timely manner. I'm glad I am not the only one who hasn't received a confirmation of shipment. Well, not glad... But, perhaps it's just the norm at the moment and that is somewhat encouraging.

Edited to say: "Man, I use the word 'I' enough in that post."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm was looking at the order form on their website, and then saw the URL: [https://store.leapmotion.com/(S(k0erjjqyuqwxmojbybjv6vpx))/P...](https://store.leapmotion.com/\(S\(k0erjjqyuqwxmojbybjv6vpx\)\)/Pages/LeapSolution.aspx) Is that a hash? It looks weird, and I have never seen anything like this before.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not surprised that many of the launch apps are wonky. I developed something using a Leap for a hackathon, and the Leap is _so_ accurate that significant time has to be invested to debugging and just playing around with the app to improve the user experience.

<comment><USER21> The accuracy is definitely a mixed blessing - interpolation, velocity awareness, and (screen-independent) gestures go a long way toward a good user experience.

<comment><USER20> Totally agree, but I just didn't realize how difficult it was to really master those gestures and harness their power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Used as a pointing device it will have the same problem as other mouse alternatives (and mice). The only way to get feedback is through rigid starting at the screen to keep track of the cursor. This breaks the relationship between physical action and computer action in the body. My theory theory is that this adds stress into the nervous system and adds to the muscular fatigue. If an interface is poorly tuned you can just feel the anxiety rising if you are trying to get work done.

<comment><USER23> Depends on what you mean by "feedback". The Leap Motion controller tracks fingertips and objects absolutely in real space. Applications can easily tie cursor movement (or viewspace/camera movement, or other interface elements) to absolute hand position or to spatial offset from an arbitrary position in three-space. This actually works really, really nicely for applications designed from the ground up to think this way.

Here, for example, is demo video of a three-space navigation app built on these principles that uses the Kinect: [http://vimeo.com/65937620](http://vimeo.com/65937620)

And a simpler demo using the Leap: [http://vimeo.com/66196803](http://vimeo.com/66196803)

There's no muscle fatigue or stress using these kinds of applications. You get muscle fatigue (gorilla arm, forearm pain, hand pain) when your ergonomic setup -- which includes both hardware and software -- forces your body to conform to motion patterns that are rigidly repetitive, forces you to position yourself in ways that are awkward relative to your joint kinematics, or forces you to over-correct inaccuracy or unpredictability in the interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> One of our HN Kansai members developed a few demo applications for the Leap Motion Controller: you can check it out here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b67QedK9jhA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b67QedK9jhA)

</comment><comment><USER25> Can the Leap Motion be used in addition to the MYO Armband, or would that not make sense?

<comment><USER26> My thoughts exactly! I've preordered my MYO :) Let's throw a Kinect in for body-scale gestures.

<comment><USER27> Don't forget WiSee!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder what cool things can be done with a Raspberry Pi and one of these motion controllers! Both are very small in size.

<comment><USER29> Hopefully lots someday. Nothing today. :-(

 _The Leap Motion Controller works with computers running Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8, or Windows 7 or 8. It requires a minimum Intel Core™ i3 or AMD Phenom™ II processor, 2 GB RAM and a USB 2.0 port._

<comment><USER29> Update: If you go to the SDK, they _do_ have linux support (version 0.8.0.5300) as a Debian package. From the release notes, it supports: _Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail_

I was able to install and run it on my Ubuntu 12.04 system. It had a dependency issue because I had previously upgraded to lts-quantal - <USER2> install did not recognize the OpenGL package because it was (from memory) "libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-quantal" instead of the expected "libgl1-mesa-glx", but I did a --force-depends and it installed and ran fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Amazing. I wonder if it's possible to read movements _away_ from the screen? One big drawback of touch/motion is that it covers the screen, but what if we put the detection device lower?

The feedback is tight as long as you can continuously see your input, and motioning lower could help with tiredness.

<comment><USER21> The device can be positioned anywhere you like, but I'm guessing there's a definite learning period if you have it somewhere other than under your monitor (sort of like what I imagine Wacom users have the first time the use a screen-mapped tablet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looked at the page they linked... still have no idea what it is they're launching, having never heard of it before.

Might be a good idea not to assume that people know what your product is when you write such a release page...

</comment><comment><USER32> This is only the beginning. We would have reacted the same way to the mouse. Keyboard shurtcuts is better, Mousearm problems etc.

</comment><comment><USER33> Looking forward to combining Leap with the Oculus Rift!

<comment><USER34> I tried to think of an application for that combo and all I could come up with is this:

You sit down at a virtual PC, and control it by waving your hands over a virtual Leap Motion. Which is very meta, but perhaps not very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Off topic: But I really like their site design.

</comment><comment><USER36> This thing is horrible for porn.

My web browser keeps scrolling up and down very rapidly.</comment>


Forget Homomorphic Encryption, Here Comes Functional Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://research.kudelskisecurity.com/2019/11/25/forget-homomorphic-encryption-here-comes-functional-encryption/ <comment><AUTHOR> Beware, here comes the machine learning on top of encrypted data using functional encryption: [https://github.com/fentec-project/neural-network-on- encrypte...](https://github.com/fentec-project/neural-network-on-encrypted- data)</comment>


YC-Funded Data Marketplace is an Amazon for Structured Information - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/18/yc-funded-data-marketplace-is-an-amazon-for-structured-financial-information/ <comment><USER2> One reason i-banks and academics pay top dollar for data is reliability and consistency. How does Data Marketplace address errors in user-collected data? Do they guarantee its quality? If I spend $10,000 on a quarterly update on CRSP and find a systematic mistake, they will fix it without charge. Such mistakes are hard to find because CRSP has a reputation to maintain. I wonder if users hired to collect data have the same constraints.

<comment><USER3> We want to be as transparent as possible about who is selling the data. Ultimately, it will be the reputation of the seller that determines how 'trustworthy' the data is (and how much you should be willing to pay for it).

<comment><USER4> Will there be bids for exclusive rights to a certain data source?

<comment><USER3> If users want it-- definitely. We'll need to see how many people contact us with these types of requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, it sounds like these guys would be a perfect customer for ITA's Needle. Needle provides a GUI-based way for nonprogrammers to scrape data, clean it up, and get it into a structured database where they can create views on it and all that databasey stuff. <http://www.needlebase.com/>

<comment><USER6> I hope this is at least a tenth as awesome as it sounds. Have you used it?

<comment><USER5> I watched an internal demo :) Where they scraped a table off an MLB site, live, using their GUI and prettified the data a bit. If you check the blog there's some demonstrations, and the Village Voice gave it a test drive: [http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2010/01/pazz_jo...](http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2010/01/pazz_jop_bonus_2.php)

<comment><USER6> I'm in Mountain View. Can I get a demo?

<comment><USER5> up to the team, if you email me I'll forward it to them. Or just use the contact email on the needlebase site, that goes right to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How funny! Right as I start talking about my startup to buy and sell datasets, it turns out YC had something like this in secret the whole time. At least I know I'm doing something worth while.

<comment><USER3> Let's talk! I like where you are going with Webscaled-- maybe we could work together. Shoot me an email me when you get a chance: matt @ datamarketplace.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds a little like Microsoft's "Dallas":

<http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsAzure/dallas/>

<comment><USER9> Reminded me most of Factual: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/03/factual-1-million-seed/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a pay-for-service approach, it seems reasonable: you say you need some data, the appropriate people come up with it in the format you want, and you pay and get the data. But the Amazon-like angle seems odder to me: How will each of the bits of structured information manage to be sold more than once? Since most isn't copyrightable, anyone can buy a copy and then put it up online for free. I could go buy that Wal-Mart Store Locations data set for $30 right now, and publish it on my blog. Are you hoping EULAs will be enough to prevent this, or just that in practice it won't happen enough to matter, or people won't notice that the data is free online and continue buying it anyway?

<comment><USER3> This is an interesting question that we've been giving a lot of thought to lately. We hope that it won't be a big problem, but if it is we will need to implement public EULAs and a dispute resolution process.

In terms of multiple purchases, we suspect there will be some datasets that are more popular than others. A list of Wal-Mart stores for example could be useful to a number of different people, such as investors, real estate developers, business planners, marketers, etc.

<comment><USER11> I think you guys are doing the right thing by not worrying about EULAs and other protection mechanisms at this stage in the game. Stay focused on satisfying your customers and improving the product as much as possible until you start making major headway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me, or are more YC companies launching early this cycle? I can count 5--Etacts, Crocodoc, Cardpool, 140bets, and Data Marketplace--that have already launched.

Is this just a product of them having more companies this cycle, something they're stressing this year, or just a coincidence?

<comment><USER13> I think the competition to be a YC company is high enough now that most companies show up the first day with an actual product.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, it's true. We definitely felt like we were playing catch-up from day 1. Not that its a competition, but I think companies benefit more from YC having a working product earlier on.

<comment><USER13> I was referring to the competition to get in.

It makes sense that if YC is getting more applications than their applicants will be better and more prepared. Several companies in this round had already produced several products, were ramen profitable, and had been operating for sometimes years previous to becoming a YC company.

<comment><USER15> They will still get lots of help. Correct me if I am wrong. I think the biggest advantage of being a YC company right now is the kind of press, reputation, and trust of investors founders might get. PG's advice is certainly valuable but their connections are the biggest deal.

<comment><USER13> I don't think you can put the value of YC in one sentence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice - I already made a sale!

I didn't see it posted anywhere, but on a $4 sale, I received $3.68, so that's an 8% fee if it's a flat rate. (Or it could be something like $0.28 + 1%)

@matthodan, you might want to post that somewhere / make it more obvious.

<comment><USER16> [update]

A second sale of a $2 item brought in $1.84, so it appears to be an 8% fee collected off each sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm getting an error when trying to upload a CSV data set. :( Not very encouraging to be prompted with an error at my first attempt to use the product. Maybe TC jumped on the story a little soon?

<comment><USER14> Sorry to hear that. Would you mind emailing me the CSV file at email@example.com? I'll try and recreate the problem and let you know when it's fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like an awfully low signal to noise ratio in the requests at the moment. The vast majority of them are very unrealistic, in not outright spam.

"Request For Data List of all Assisted Living care centers in the U.S., including name, address, phone number, website and any photos on their website. There should be about 20,000 of them. Budget: $20.00 Deadline: March 25, 2010 10:40 PM"

Yeah... I'll get right on that...

<comment><USER19> Some data providers already have a master DB, so all they need to do is write a few queries and pull the info and sell it n times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks really interesting, though if one is looking for publicly available data, I think it's an open question of how much of the value is in providing a marketplace vs. actually doing the aggregation, organization and some analysis.

Two other interesting startups in this space that are focussed more on the data aggregation end are <http://www.AnythingResearch.com> and <http://www.AggData.com> (which has dozens of retail datasets just like the Walmart store example, presumably gathered by screen-scraping).

<comment><USER3> Data Marketplace can help people who are looking for data connect with people who are able to collect it. One of the problems with all of the data online is that it is in too raw a format to be useful. Someone must scrape/combine/clean the data before it can be analyzed. By connecting business people who maybe don't know how to scrape data with programmers/aggregators who specialize in it, we hope to make it a lot easier to find useful data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Such a simple idea, but very compelling and nicely executed.

How is the pricing determined? Simply based on what the data seller/aggregator thinks he can get?

The "requesting for data" reminds me bit of a more structured mechanical turk.

<comment><USER3> Pricing is set by the provider, but we don't mind haggling. We're trying to build a community around buying and selling data tables, so if the price isn't right, that's good feedback for the seller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm just about finished with a dissertation in Finance (teaching job starts in August). Obviously I'm very excited about this launch, I have a couple painfully acquired datasets I wouldn't mind seeing a dollar return from and it'd be great to save some effort going forward, especially after I have a salary to spend on that text box.

<comment><USER3> We'd love to help you get started! If you have any trouble adding your datasets, please send me an email at matt @ datamarketplace.com and I'll make sure they get added asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would love the ability to browse available datasets without having to register. And I'd really love to be able to request a dataset without having to register.

Structured datasets are hard, and the hardest part is finding one that updates as time passes and new data is available - how are y'all handling that?

<comment><USER3> You should be able to browse the data that is available without registering by clicking on "Buy Data" in the header. We make people register when they request a dataset because we want to be able to let them know once we've found their data.

We're working on an API that will allow sellers to programmatically refresh their dataset to keep it up-to-date with the source. We're also working on a search and filtering system that ranks datasets based on when they were last updated.

<comment><USER23> Ah, OK, I thought that was just a representative sample since there were only five datasets.

I'd recommend you find, package, and sell other datasets that exist out there (Freebase, etc.).

I disagree with the registration requirement - if I want to be updated, make that a opt-in box - but I acknowledge that it's a justifiable product decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is every grad student researcher's dream... data finding and cleaning is such a major hassle. If only I had this a couple years ago...

This is going to be great especially when the new Census comes out. Lots of data to be sifted through and organized in unique ways that the government never does for us.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback! We'll have to devote some resources towards reaching out to the academic population.

<comment><USER24> No problem. I think you can get A LOT of data from grad students. They hold the keys to a lot of it, and aren't held to some contract to never release it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm sure there's an opportunity here for someone to hook this up with Amazon's mturk and provide an "automated" data provider ...

<comment><USER3> We're working on it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would redesign the site to be more enterprise like than web-application- like. This is more b2b. I think I am going to buy or sell some data on this site.</comment>


Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is doing an IamA - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/t1ygb/iama_nobel_prizewinning_economist_and_new_york/

<comment><USER2> This post contains a table with all the questions that got answered:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/t1ygb/iama_nobel_prize...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/t1ygb/iama_nobel_prizewinning_economist_and_new_york/c4iwj60)

</comment><comment> why-el This got me thinking, I see this pattern a lot on Hacker News, where somebody important introduces themselves and then people engage in really thoughtful questions and answers. I would like to see something of this sort, but rather systematic, maybe a Answer HN type of thing? (like, Ask HN:) The only issue would be how to decide if one should (or good enough to) provide this service, in that case probably just answer to public demand?

<comment><USER3> I can't think of the name and some basic Googling failed, but there was a site where you created a profile and people could ask you questions. I'm pretty sure it was a YC company, and exactly what you're looking for.

I remember PG, patio11, Jason Shen and others on there.

<comment><USER4> <http://askolo.com>

<comment> why-el Yes I think he meant this one. But still, the comfort of not leaving HN is a huge plus for what I suggested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> C'mon now, there's no Nobel Prize in economics, only the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like he is done answering: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/t1ygb/iama_nobel_prize...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/t1ygb/iama_nobel_prizewinning_economist_and_new_york/c4iwpeq)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is Reddit at its best--good questions, good answers, and helpful citations provided by random passers-by.

</comment><comment><USER8> My dad loves his shit

Edit: that was a joke: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8ZHYhKV0Wo>

<comment><USER9> You should know better than to crack jokes on HN without carefully disguising it as a substantive comment. We like to laugh, but only if we can reasonably convince ourselves that we're actually engaged in serious thought.

<comment><USER10> They should also be funny and have some actual novelty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is no Nobel price of Economics, only, as cpach else states, a price that the Central Bank of Sweden created "in memory" of Nobel. Nobel did not consider economy a science.

Krugman is a shill of central banks, and in my opinion not very intelligent. He want everything to be central planned like in Soviet Russia by states, because people do not know how to spend their own money.

His ideas are:

States should spend without worrying about spending the money of their tax payers.

Once the money is gone continue spending with debt, don't worry about interest or inflation, as central bank you can create money out of thin air.

Continue "stimulating" the economy, raise taxes to 100% or declare bankruptcy of your debt if necessary, inflation does not matter, that people loose all their savings does not matter, that private economy disappears does not matter.

He is a neo-keynesian that says that the problem with Japan was that it stopped spending.

<comment><USER12> You know, that's not actually what he belives. In fact, I might go as far as to say, your entire argument is a strawman.

> States should spend without worrying about spending the money of their tax > payers I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. That government spending > is immoral? Yes I doubt he agrees with that premise, but I doubt many people > do.

> Once the money is gone continue spending with debt, don't worry about > interest or inflation, as central bank you can create money out of thin air.

Krugman is not calling for unchecked spending, as you appear to be implying. During the bush years, he frequently criticized policies that ran up debt. However, in his view the long term cost of a recession/stagnant economy is much larger that the amount of debt that might be bought to perform quantitative easing, or any other government intervention in times of financial crisis.

> Continue "stimulating" the economy, raise taxes to 100% or declare > bankruptcy of your debt if necessary, inflation does not matter, that people > loose all their savings does not matter, that private economy disappears > does not matter.

Complete hyperbole. Where on earth did you learn about krugman? Because frankly this comment is awful. You start by calling him a shill, which quite clearly shows your biases, and gives you a reason to dismiss his arguments without giving them proper thought. You then go on to call him not very intelligent which is frankly condescending and very arrogant. And then straight after that you have a sentance that sounds exactly like a libertarian talking point. It has all the markers of being a great political attack: comparison to soviet union, allusions to loss of liberty/totalitarianism, and most of all, factually incorrect.

You call him a shill yet you come off as one, and you give no indication that you have ever tried to understand his ideas with an open mind. I do not subscribe to the Randian ideology, yet I can see why a person might. Can you do the same for krugman? When children are young, sometimes they get told to name five good things about a person before they express their dislike for then. Can you do that for krugman?</comment></comment>


Real-time search engine Collecta (pre-launch) has a demo of their tech for flu news - <AUTHOR> http://flu.collecta.com/

<comment><USER2> It took 37 requests and 14 seconds to get me any kind of result. That needs to be about 13 seconds faster for me to actually use it more than once for novelty.

<comment><USER3> It's not yet fine tuned for that kind of speed. The real site will have these issues addressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We ran into some issues yesterday but they have been fixed. Try it again and you will get better results. Also this is just a preview demo. A new and better interface is coming soon. You can follow us on twitter (<http://twitter.com/collectadotcom>) for more announcements.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found via CEO's blog: [http://luckyrobot.com/2009/04/29/swine-flu-collecta- realtime...](http://luckyrobot.com/2009/04/29/swine-flu-collecta-realtime- search/)

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586445> In other news, truth still stranger than fiction.

</comment><comment><USER6> Broken? Just keeps reloading the search and telling me I'm disconnected</comment>


Reality check: You're not going to make money from your blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/04/21/8-reasons-why-you-wont-make-money-from-your-blog/

<comment><USER2> Seriously, Penelope Trunk on HN?</comment>


Boston Police use fake social media accounts to phish indie rock show info - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/03/boston_police_catfishing_indie_rockers_cops_pose_as_punks_on_the_internet.html <comment><USER2> Presumably you could give these folks disinformation and check to see if the cops show up. I am not sure why anyone would think police on social media would be any more suave than police in real life. As far back as high school the attempts by law enforcement to get a jump on where the 'bad thing' of the week was going to happen were pretty transparent. I could never figure out if that was on purpose to put people on notice they cared (like driving around a neighborhood to let people know they are watching, showing the colors as it were) or if they were just that clueless.

<comment><USER3> > ...was on purpose to put people on notice they cared (like driving around a > neighborhood to let people know they are watching, showing the colors as it > were

Police officers follow what is known as "force continuum". This basically outlines how much force they should be using in any situation. Without deviating from the topic, this is where the public gets upset when an officer oversteps their bounds to use excessive force on someone. The first 'level' of all continuum protocols is simply 'presence'. Knowing a cop is around does stop a majority of people who would do illegal activity. Think about how you act next time a cop is behind you on the road. It's a passive power-play move; they need to keep up this presence to ensure the public knows they'll be a moment's notice away if something happens.

Moving cops to social media sounds perfectly logical to me. A lot of none-the- wiser people put this information on the internet, thinking its safe. By making an online presence known, they look to quell some people's actions.

You could argue people will just find other ways to circumvent the system, but I'm reminded of the constant rat race between White and Black Hat security specialists; each party trying to top the other.

<comment><USER4> At least in activist circles, this kind of situation has been around for years, and security culture evolves to deal with it. Of course, that's a bit more serious then a show, but it's the same basic problem.

<comment><USER5> In NYC becoming an undercover activist for the purpose of spying on lawful activities is illegal, as it should be, because of the Handshu agreement: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handschu_agreement>

<comment><USER6> I'm sure DAs around NYC will be prosecuting this with the full force of the law. /sarcasm

<comment><USER7> They are, but you don't see it because they send cops undercover to police stations to impersonate police impersonating activists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The same thing happened years ago to New Brunswick, New Jersey, a college town that produced some very successful artists in the past 2 decades: Lifetime, The Bouncing Souls, Thursday, Gaslight Anthem. Around 2006, the cops started scouring Myspace for shows and permanently shut down a number of popular house venues. Since then, the punks have responded by moving all info to the sneakernet; you can't find out any show details unless you're actually friends with someone who already knows a band or the house owner. Even physical flyers don't have addresses or exact times. It's effectively killed most of the output that this cultural hotspot used to produce.

<comment><USER9> Hey There! I live in New Brunswick, NJ. Sounds like you were around a few years ago. I live in a show house and also put together a little show calendar app at <http://nbshows.org> which has been up for over a year now. It gets about 100 unique hits a day.

There are never any address posted on it. Whenever someone emails email@example.com and asks for address's I am always careful about giving out info, I always google the email to make sure its not a throw-away.

I am really excited that this topic is on HN today, because I am working on a personal project that will be at <http://diyshws.org>. Basically it will be a site where people can create show calendars for the small city that they live in if there is no central way to find out about shows. (other than Facebook)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It should be known that most of the places in this article are in densely packed, residential neighborhoods. (I've been to them) Some of these places share walls with their neighbors, so sound isolation is non existent at some 'venues'. Also no attempts are made at controlling sound levels outside.

Also keep in mind many young punks are not exactly respectful of others. The word entitled comes to mind with a lot of their behaviour.

I say this as an aging punk who had a basement where we held 50+ shows with nationally touring bands playing. We never had a problem with being shut down.

<comment><USER11> If the noise levels are too high, why not let the neighbors call it in? It seems like a waste of time to proactively try to find parties when they could just wait around at night for people to call in the noise violations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> msisto, you appear to be hellbanned.

> I remember being at a basement show in Allston when I was 18 that was broken > up by the cops and thinking "This is so fucking cool". I mean, it's a pain > in the ass and sucks for the bands. It can totally ruin your night, but for > me it totally fanned the flames and made me love it even more.

> What this article doesn't mention is that the cop who was using the > Lemmingtrail board to find out about house shows kept posting even after > being outed, eventually being somewhat-ironically accepted into the > community. I regularly saw him at shows after he'd been exposed and he was > always friendly.

<comment><USER13> does anyone know if you can just ask them if they are a cop; with them having to respond truthfully? or is this just idiotic folklore that i've somehow heard.

<comment><USER14> > does anyone know if you can just ask them if they are a cop; with them > having to respond truthfully?

Of course police can lie about being police officers. Another person kind-of answered already, but this apparently needs to be stated unambiguously: _A police officer can lie to you about being a police officer and get away with it._

<comment><USER15> <http://www.erowid.org/freedom/police/police_info6.shtml>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of throwing raves in the 1990s. At first, we had a culture where the DJs or promoters would invite you to the (usually illegal) location of the party. In response to busts, that evolved to where the DJs or promoters would invite you to a pick up point where someone would drive you to the actual (still illegal) venue. As promoters started making serious money, real entrepreneurs emerged and started booking big shows at legal venues. That increased costs, so promoters started charging for water and getting sponsors.

Long story long, kids will always throw renegade events and police will always use whatever tools to stop these events. And, in response, kids will keep changing their tactics until they either find a line that police won't cross, or until they turn legal! :)

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Congratulations, now you're officially worse than USSR.

In USSR, independent bands had very hard time recording or playing on stage, but they could always gather on some flat and play music and nobody bothered them. (Don't know why, maybe it's actually illegal for police to enter your home, maybe it's just decency)

And now it's illegal in the USA.

All this does is destroying all the new music that isn't profitable/hot enough to afford real venues yet. Talk so much about innovation and garages.

<comment><USER17> This isn't new. Depending on the town, time of day(or night), and whether you take money, house shows are often illegal. Not entirely unreasonable, if you think of it from the perspective of the neighbors.

Of course, kids should always be trying to throw them, and cops and narcs should always be trying to shut them down. It's the natural order of the world:)

<comment> guard-of-terra Did neighbors complain? No they didn't, or the police would not need their lame social networks act.

<comment><USER17> Not yet, but it might be illegal because they're charging for a show without being licensed, or a myriad of other reasons. There have always been narcs, though. The kids may find @notpolice funny because of their experiences online, but in the 90s I ran into that guy a lot on the street.

<comment> guard-of-terra "it might be illegal because they're charging for a show without being licensed, or a myriad of other reasons"

That's exactly what's the "worse than USSR" part is about.

<comment><USER17> What I'm saying is if that makes the US worse than the USSR, then the US was always worse than the USSR. If the legality of urban house shows is your key metric for freedom, then maybe reconsider using the USSR as your baseline.

<comment> guard-of-terra I highly value legality of doing anything not immediately life threatening in my house because it's my last line of defense. Last line of privacy.

Even if you take the street, the workplace and the indoors away (by the means of tight and hostile control) your home is still your home. And if you gave up your home as a step one you will not have a place to fall back, a place to default to.

You can no longer say "Screw you guys I'm going home".

Now all your life depends on others (authorities) agreeing to let you do whatever you are doing, because you don't have one place where you are that authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is wrong about this is not that the police are on social media (I expect them to be), but they are assuming a crime will be committed before the fact. Playing music in your house with a few friends over is not illegal. If there are too many friends or the music is too loud, then shut it down after a crime has been committed.

<comment><USER18> We're not talking about some kind of loitering with intent crap; these people had a clear, premeditated intention to break the law. If you announce publicly that you're going to commit a crime at a given time and place, don't be surprised if the police turn up to that place at that time and arrest you.

<comment><USER5> Did they say things would get unruly? Did they say minors would be drinking? Did they say the neighbors would complain because the music is too loud? Did they say they would be breaking fire codes? What crime did they publicly announce? The police are making a lot of assumptions (right or wrong) before the fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's more disheartening that this is what the police are spending their time doing. There seriously isn't anything more important they could be working on?

<comment><USER20> If you've ever tried to go to sleep and had loud neighbors you might feel differently...

<comment><USER15> Its one thing for neighbors to complain about loud and obnoxious people around them. Its a whole other thing for the police to preemptively break up shows. Some of the house spots that have been shut down in the past 6 months have been operating without complaint from neighbors for years.

Beyond that, the crackdown has been felt the most in the shutting down of art and show spaces in Allston warehouses which are zoned appropriately. Granted, the proprietors of these spots don't bother with permits from the city / following fire code, and often encourage or engage in illegal activity beyond simply hosting loud music, but these venues are definitely NOT disturbing neighbors (the neighbors in this case are generally rehearsal spaces for punk bands and other similar performance spaces).

<comment><USER21> _> Granted, the proprietors of these spots don't bother with permits from the city / following fire code_

The fire code is no joke. People used to die in batches of hundreds all of the time before those laws and reforms were put in place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> well, at least those indies bothered to hide their time and location. this is what happened to tuners/streetracers in Poland recently on fb <http://i1.minus.com/jbdZ3dwKcOnWYB.png> (translation: fb event "Nightly gathering of powerful cars. Tesco parking lot." Police: attending for sure :))

</comment><comment><USER23> But... why? First of all if it bothers the neighbours why can't they just arrive on the spot and bust the thing?

Also, all this planning ahead and resources, why instead don't they just create one or two halls per area that are soundproof etc and let people rock out?

Is the state really that stupid?

<comment><USER24> > First of all if it bothers the neighbours why can't they just arrive on the > spot and bust the thing?

Because these neighbors complained so loud that they passed a city-wide law on the matter.

> Also, all this planning ahead and resources, why instead don't they just > create one or two halls per area that are soundproof etc and let people rock > out?

You should itemize the budgets for both of these plans and compare them. I'm willing to bet that setting up "one or two halls per area" costs an order of magnitude more than what they're doing.

<comment><USER23> First of all I'm sure they could find an unused estate to convert into what they want. The dudes are used to playing in houses, I'm sure they wont mind if its not a perfect concert hall.

Also, taxes on tickets and stuff or other promotions or rent for the night could very much turn into a big profit.

About the law, I don't have anything against the law, just that I can't understand why would they be so obsessed with preemptive action instead of on- the-spot

<comment><USER24> > First of all I'm sure they could find an unused estate to convert into what > they want. The dudes are used to playing in houses, I'm sure they wont mind > if its not a perfect concert hall.

"The dudes" might be okay with it, but the city would own that venue and not only do they have to obey their own law on how it's maintained and regulated, but they'd be liable for anything that happened inside it. Further, if the city owns it, they're going to use it for more than just "the dudes", and _those_ people may have different requirements.

> Also, taxes on tickets and stuff or other promotions or rent for the night > could very much turn into a big profit.

You're assuming that (1) anyone will rent the space and (2) anyone will come if they do. These aren't minor assumptions.

> About the law, I don't have anything against the law, just that I can't > understand why would they be so obsessed with preemptive action instead of > on-the-spot

How much effort have you even bothered putting into stepping into their shoes rather than tyrannically deciding that your solution fixes all possible ills and should stand in for any agency on their part?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I suspect the phrase on the internet nobody knows you're a dog gets a new meaning now :-)

<comment><USER26> On the Internet, everybody knows you're a pig ;)

<comment><USER22> funnily, in my language we call policemen dogs instead of pigs, so it applies perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's always the clean shoes at 5am which give the game away.

<comment><USER4> Before others vote this down, many activists have been arrested by the pairs of shoes they're wearing, and many an attendee of an action has been deemed suspicious because of their shoes.

<comment><USER7> That has nothing to do with what JohnnyCache was saying. JohnnyCache was saying that cops put on a punk "costume" but forget to muss up their clean shoes, unlike actual punks who are out all night eating and drinking and running around and generally making a mess.

<comment><USER4> Ahh, that makes sense too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not being able to find any reference to understand why this is considered illegal. (DIY + music) sounds very cool!

Drugs? Too loud?

<comment><USER29> Too loud. (But if drugs were involved, that certainly wouldn't help.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is exactly the reason why pretty much every house show no longer gets its location listed on Facebook or on flyers where I live. Instead we just put "ask a punk" for the address. You have to be in the know or you won't find out. Unfortunately it's a bit of a turn-off for younger people and anyone who isn't good friends with someone already involved in the scene. The alternative is to have every show busted before it can even start.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder how this interacts with the right to peaceably assemble, especially given the often political nature of punk music.

Cities can police nuisances, sure, but they cannot craft statutes abrogating first amendment rights that are not narrowly tailored to the perceived harm.

There were a few laws against public dancing in the late 1800s that got struck down under this sort of reasoning.

I'm not sure what the current state of constitutional limits on nuisance laws are, but the Boston statute does seem very broad.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is one of the larger, emerging problems with social media. Interested groups can create large amounts of dummy accounts to manipulate the group discussion. This is already happening on a large scale on reddit.

What we need is machine learning systems to help us identify the astroturfers who run dummy accounts to influence the group discussion.

The question is, who is going to build it?

<comment><USER33> Sorry mate, it would be about one billion times more profitable to write a machine learning system to astroturf group discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wouldn't that violate Facebook's TOS and therefore the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?

<comment><USER33> No that's just for young adults downloading files that someone regrets making available publicly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Single page.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/03/boston_police_catfishing_indie_rockers_cops_pose_as_punks_on_the_internet.single.html)

It wouldn't be fun if the cops approved, would it?</comment>