Dow Jones CEO: Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts  - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/article/419-world-newspaper-congress-dow-jones-ceo-beware-of-geeks-bearing-gifts/

<comment><USER2> "algorithm and blues" - the entire article's only redeeming point. But the content itself is the same old. Professionally produced content costs money, he says, and you will pay for it. Fine, I say. Pay for whatever you feel like paying. I'll keep ignoring things I can't find. The best quality material is no longer exclusively at high-reputation big-name sources. As soon as the distribution is more level, and the major differentiating factor is what can be easily found, searchable online content will win. No matter how many CEOs claim otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rupert Murdoch has already made many of the points that Les Hinton discussed in this speech, but I think the most interesting item was his claim that click-oriented ads are relatively worthless, compared to simple display advertising on quality news sites like the WSJ.

Another thing that's apparent from reading this is Dow Jones believes Fair Use and weak enforcement of copyright laws are impediments to their operations. It wants to set back the clock to the good ol' days of the news media oligopoly, when information was controlled by a small group of very profitable publishers. But as long as Twitterers, bloggers, and aggregators are able to talk about/reprint small excerpts of news reported by MSM outlets, that will lessen audiences dependence upon the large outlets and keep ad rates down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think there's a fundamental misalignment of interests in the news business between 1) readers who want high-quality, unbiased reporting, 2) advertisers who want to sell something to the readers and are thus biased, and 3) the news companies who want to satisfy both readers and advertisers. The problem is similar to the interaction between a customer seeking financial advice from a financial consultant who makes money selling securities: a consumer can't know whether he's being given unbiased information or a sales pitch.

Perhaps people don't pay for "news" because they don't usually pay for sales pitches.

One way to solve this is to openly declare one's identity. Consumers of unbiased news or entertainment are willing to pay; but the consumer of unbiased news will be more intolerant of paying for the news by seeing ads: how can someone deliver the unbiased news while at the same time being a salesman?

Providers of unbiased news should sell their service, unbiased news, to their customers. Consumer Reports does this very well. They stress the fact that they don't sell advertising and that therefore, their only aim to please their only customer by providing unbiased information.

Most other media have a hard-time selling non-bias because they're not really in the non-bias business. They want to have it both ways: they want to sell unbiased news to readers while at the same time pitch their readers on behalf of their other customers, vendors. To do this they have to sell (perhaps implicitly) their readers on the proposition that bias doesn't matter. At this point most media companies have already lost the customers who understand and value unbiased news. The customers that are left are really looking for entertainment.

If this analysis is right, you should not expect to see the most successful ad-supported news media be unbiased.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone seriously think these folks don't know about robots.txt?

Folks, it's clearly a form of institutionalized trolling. Various of the folks involved are clearly piling onto the best troll since, well, since the marketeers of some movie managed to get their 2012 troll onto HN.

Like spam, trolling is now a business model.

Please don't feed the trolls.

<comment><USER5> While I agree that they know about robots.txt and are trolling, these are not your average trolls. They are able to get serious traction because they control a lot of the more traditional venues for information, it's a little more important to call them out.

While a bunch of people at HN saying "robots.txt, duh" will not directly communicate the idea to said CEO, perhaps at some point someone doing research on the topic will go searching for information on the topic. The more counter- FUD we put out there, the better.

<comment><USER4> These folks +know+ about robots.txt stuff. If not directly, then because some staffer and most any sycophant in range has already pointed to it.

The folks have almost certainly explicitly told the staffers involved not to enable robots.txt, too. (If they truly were fools, they've have already enabled the robots block.)

The point is to trigger the response to the troll, and the hope that the CEO will be able leverage the response to better their own business position. Some trolls deliberately stick typos or errors in their posts. Some folks show their naughty bits. Some make outrageous statements.

The point is not the tech. The point is not the truth.

The point is the the schtick, and the profit potential.

This is the basis of modern media.

It's an effective form of attention-seeking spam.

This doesn't mean I don't think Google should just "accidentally" drop one or two of these organizations from the search indexes. "You're not listed? Whoops. We thought you wanted out of the Google indexes. Our bad." But that'd be both juvenile, and would serve only to get the regulatory folks and legal teams involved all spooled up.

<comment><USER6> _The point is to trigger the response to the troll, and the hope that the CEO will be able leverage the response to better their own business position. Some trolls deliberately stick typos or errors in their posts. Some folks show their naughty bits. Some make outrageous statements._

I've always felt that News Corp was the journalistic equivalent of Mr. goatse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So for years most newspapers have been little more than AP aggregators, offering local opinion pieces and a few local stories. Then the journal comes in, with a bunch of specialist content, and respected editorial bits, makes a profit selling this, and somehow is in the same market? Isn't that like saying Google and Dell are in the same business because it is computers?

Vaguely related: what ever happened to the micro-payment idea?

<comment><USER8> At a higher level, even the specialist journals are still essentially performing an aggregator function. The most well-researched, insightful reporting is still just a recapitulation of something else, some a set of facts or opinions that exists independently of the reporting. Journalists do not create content in the same way as authors, musicians, software developers, etc. They go out, gather information of interest to their audience, filter it, repackage it, and distribute it to their readers.

Traditional journalism is effectively information retail. The internet threatens it not by making content free - there is no copyright on reality; the content is already free - but by connecting audiences directly to primary sources. The main advantage that journalism still maintains - a critical and thorough filtering function - is now being challenged by new infrastructure developments, social networking platforms, Twitter, increasing maturity of the blogosphere, etc. These factors diminish news reporting as a packaged product, and return it to the context of an open conversation.

What I think Murdoch and Hinton are really attacking is not news content being made available for free, but the internet revealing that news isn't actually "content" at all. Their business model isn't undergoing a paradigm shift; it's simply going away. Apart from shifting their operations to an entirely different industry, fighting this battle is the only option they have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Message to pointy-haired executive: Google robots.txt

Ironically, not only does the foxnews.com/robots.txt not block search engines, it has sitemaps for helping them.

<comment><USER10> I don't see what the relationship should really be with robots.txt. Block their site will not make them profitable, it doesn't provide a source of revenue.

<comment><USER11> They claim to be generating the revenue, only to have it stolen by Google and others. If this was the case, /robots.txt could go a long way towards preventing billions of dollars from "leak[ing] onto the Internet" each year.

<comment><USER10> I had a different understanding of what the core point was, the google part felt more like a sub point.

My understanding was that since the content is freely accessible on the internet, people don't need to subscribe to newspapers, and that online advertising can't cover for the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Geeks Bearing Gifts"

This was funny the first 7,000 times I heard it, but it's lost its lustre since. Can we call a time-out on this phrase?

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how much their advertising teams cost and if wouldn't it render better results just to fire them and replace all banners with AdSense (or something like it) and live off their ever elongating tails. Those teams are pure overhead - news companies are in the business of reporting news. They should get rid of their fat. This world does not tolerate it.

<comment><USER14> my guess is that they've run this calculation and have decided against it. or there are top level execs that are in charge of the marketing divisions who don't want to lose jobs and learn something new.

<comment><USER13> I bet on your #2. There is a lot of money being pocketed in the media market in form of incentives. It's only natural they want to hold on to their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In general, I'm a fan of this talk. I think these guys are arguing these things for the wrong reasons and don't understand the tech. At its core, they should be playing hard ball. We're becoming a society that just expects everything to be free (in price) and as cheap as possible. Mark Cuban said it best: you live and die by free.</comment>


Google Acquires Nik Software - <AUTHOR> http://education.niksoftware.com/2012/09/17/google-acquires-nik-software/ <comment><USER2> Pretty sure they didn't purchase Nik Software to compete with Instagram and Facebook; I think the iOS app was secondary.

Looking at the history that Nik has, as well as the other products they acquired, it seems like photo editing in general was the target. Something to make Picasa a (hopefully) better product in the long run.

<comment><USER3> Snapseed is probably a _huge_ part of it (and it's already very much cross- platform). For the other aspects, there are a number of other companies Google might have chosen to acquire instead (Topaz Labs — which would be my choice as a scrappy, lightweight, innovative photo-centric company — Alien Skin, etc.), but they're absent in the mobile space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this just a new Google strategy lately to buy up awesome iOS apps and kill them off, death by a thousand aqui-hires? Let's hope they don't kill off Snapseed.app, I will be extremely annoyed if they 'Sparrow' or 'HTML5-crapify' it.

<comment><USER5> I think it is funny you mention that in light of the recent comments on HN about how html5 isn't the problem but the implementation that Facebook took.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats to Nik Software.

Google -- if you let Nik's "non-sexy" non-mobile plugins for Photoshop/Lightroom, etc die on the vine I will never forgive you. Either commit to them or sell them off to someone who will keep them maintained.

<comment><USER7> Oh no. It took me a minute to realize why their name sounded familiar. I will be unbelievably pissed if Google kills off their Efex Pro products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fingers crossed for this to provide a foothold for a GOOG San Diego campus :)

</comment><comment><USER9> With android in cameras now, that already have bracketing, together with the increasing focus on camera performance in mobile phones, having HDR expertise would seem to me to be highly valuable as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like google +, I really do, but look at your google + feed, then look at your facebook feed. They are both vying for the time. Its clear as to who is winning that war.

<comment><USER11> You're only as good as your network. Your social feed is different than mine.

My Google+ feed is way more useful to me. I follow a lot of fellow developers & tech personalities who post long-form content that can't fit on Twitter.

My Facebook feed has too much personal/trivial posts that I value it less. Not to mention the endless political rant.

I actually think that Facebook & Google+ comparison is not right.

The people I follow on Google+ are more similar to the people I follow on Twitter. But Google+ has an advantage because it has no 140-character restriction & displays media (video/picture) better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 17 years! That is some serious dedication, kudos to the team.

</comment><comment><USER13> I hope the products aren't discountinued. I use silver effex quite often, it's the best back and white converter I've tried yet.

<comment><USER14> Sadly, given Google's history, all of the extremely useful Nik plugins are now living on borrowed time.

This (acquihire? patent-grab?) is a gut-punch to photographers, if nothing else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So Picasa might actually support Nikon RAW files? (They currently sort of work, but look like crap and don't format correctly)

</comment><comment><USER16> So why didn't they just buy Instagram? They had plenty of opportunity to do it. I hope it's not just because they didn't realize its potential _against_ Facebook and its potential to enhance an already very photographer-friendly Google+, because then Google has a problem spotting the high potential businesses.

<comment><USER17> Given the price Facebook paid, I think we can be quite sure that there were other interested parties. I can imagine that Google was one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, have you checked out the comments on that page? Virtually zero congratulatory messages, just many, many self-entitled people bemoaning the "downfall" of the company. Good on Nik Software I say, they worked hard for this, let them enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Let's just hope that they won't stop developing all of their products!

</comment><comment><USER20> Mhh, given that G+ hsa an awesome photo community, and the awesomeness of the Nik Tools (love them).. Hopefully they build that stuff into picasa and make it free for all!!</comment>


We Don't Need to Go to Space to Save Humanity - happy-go-lucky https://earther.gizmodo.com/no-jeff-we-dont-need-to-go-to-space-to-save-humanity-1834668636 <comment><AUTHOR> I think this article is very short-sighted.

Furthering space technology involves developing and investing in better solar, more efficient closed-loop environmental systems, waste management, low-impact food production and a zillion other things that seem to me that would absolutely help improve conditions on Earth.

</comment><comment><USER2> I have always wondered what we plan on doing to Earth that will make Mars more hospitable.</comment>


REST and Stateless Session IDs - <AUTHOR> http://appsandsecurity.blogspot.com/2011/04/rest-and-stateless-session-ids.html <comment><USER2> I'm sure I'll get flack for this but isn't a session cookie passed with every request essentially the same as passing an Auth header with every request? In either case HTTP is still stateless.</comment>


Are we really so modern? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/05/the-dream-of-enlightenment-by-anthony-gottlieb <comment><USER2> People like trusting their intuitions. In many cases, they trust them so much they even deny that there's an argument to be made about their content - especially if people surrounding them share them.

This leads to people being ignorant of and confused about philosophical issues, but more importantly, it leads to them dismissing them without looking at them. Which doesn't make a worldview void of philosophy, instead it makes one with an unquestioned amateur philosophy.

It's a lot like many in politics assuming that our time is different, and historical examples are irrelevant, even when there is no good reason to believe that. Our modernity is a lot like that.

<comment><USER3> It pays to keep this in the context of the events in our recent history which some argue have lead to a certain stripe of ideological stagnation in America, not just in the way we perceive modernity but in also their debilitating influence on how we perceive actual technological progress itself.

Peter Thiel has been steadfastly vocal on this :

      I think one of the … you know, the counter-cultural in the '60s
      was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969.
      Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of
      hindsight, that's when progress ended, and the hippies took over
      the country.

      Today the counterculture is to believe in science and technology.
      You know, our society, the dominant culture doesn't like science.
      It doesn't like technology. You just look at the science-fiction
      movies that come out of Hollywood — Terminator, Matrix, Avatar,
      Elysium. I watched the Gravity movie the other day. It's like you
      would never want to go into outer space. You would just want to be
      back on some muddy island. And so I think we're in a world where
      actually believing that a better future is possible that you can
      have agency and work towards a better future, that is actually
      radically counter-cultural.[1]

[1]

Peter Thiel and Glenn Beck discuss what the counterculture looks like.

[http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/10/21/could-this-be-the-new- co...](http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/10/21/could-this-be-the-new-counter- culture/)

(or if your political persuasion forbids you against patronizing Beck)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX- FuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM)

<comment><USER4> IMHO, the space example is bad. I have no interest in space travel. Not because I don't believe in technology, but because I don't think there's anything appealing about going to space. Yeah, I think living on some cool Star Trek planet would be fun, but we're talking about the moon or Mars. They are, well, rocks. For a lot of people, like Thiel, space is like Plan B, where we go to after we blow up the earth. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. And should it happen, the earth during a nuclear winter will still be infinitely more hospitable than some plastic pod on Mars.

Space-stuff is a cerebral pleasure. As an astronaut you can feel in awe as you experience the sum total of human technological prowess. But space is a horrible sensual pleasure. Mindnumbingly dull, ugly, and most of all, shackled. No personal freedom, fully a slave to the overlords in Houston.

Let space to the robots. They can go mine ores, take pictures, and putz around in the dust. But that sounds like a terrible way to spend time as a human.

<comment><USER5> Given what we know about the asteroid probabilities, space, preferably very far space, should be a quite big priority. Or at least a sensible asteroid defense system, but colonies are potentially more resilient if self sufficient.

<comment><USER6> The odds of a medium sized impact in the next few thousand years are very small. Still, an advanced asteroid defense capability should be prepared, since even the small-ish bolides that we expect to hit with greater frequency should be eliminated. This should reduce the risk from catastrophic impactors even further.

Settlement of e.g. Mars will never be needed in the time frames we should be thinking about. If asteroid defense is developed, then for thousands of years that will not be a concern at all. And if in 2,000 years they need a settlement on Mars, the people in 1,800 years can prioritize doing it.

In other words I don't see it as a priority. Material conditions on Earth are not great, and we are threatened by catastrophes in the atmosphere, oceans, and tectonic plates. Earth and its cities are infinitely more responsive to our efforts and investment than Mars or elsewhere. There is so much that we can do here in this century, while settling another planetary body in this century seems basically impossible.

<comment><USER5> I like the base rate fallacy committed there. In recent history, there have been at least 5 sizable asteroid impacts, each of which would evaporate a big city. Just lucky those didn't hit any. In longer term, two of those triggered mass extinctions.

<comment><USER7> If a "evaporate a big city" or "kill all humans on Earth" asteroid strikes, the existence of a Mars colony doesn't help my personal survival or well-being in any way whatsoever unless I'm there.

And if I'm _there_ , odds are that it made my personal survival chances worse, since they're mostly determined by the many "normal" causes of death and being a pioneer in a world not really suited for humans is likely to be worse than Earth.

You could make an argument that it's not wise to put all your eggs in one basket, and it has some merit in this discussion, but when all I have is one egg, the only thing I can do is to pick the safest basket I have - and for now it's Earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the same argument made by Bruno Latour in "We were never Modern", that modernity is marked by the insistence on split between science, politics and philosophy - but this split cannot hold up, and we get "hybrids". Science is not a separate domain, but treads in politics and so on.

My wife is fond of "The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosopher", which argues the Enlightenment wasn't new, either, it was just pouring religion (the thirst for god) into new cups.

Modernity, to me, is a more complex attempt at the same, to find a new source of unambiguous authority, a method by which the world makes sense. Again a futile gesture, but still it takes hold.

<comment><USER9> > Science is not a separate domain, but treads in politics and so on.

How does science tread in politics? I'm actually honestly wondering.

<comment><USER8> Scientists make guns, rockets, energy technologies, robots, all of which have political and social consequence. Scientists produce models of human identity and behavior which have the same. See the other thread about machine learning and inequality, e.g.

<comment><USER9> I see this point, but I thought you meant that aspects of science mix with political thought. I can definitely see that science has consequences and influences on all kinds of things, including politics. In that case, every field is connected or related to another in some form or fashion.

<comment><USER8> I also mean that, science is deeply fucked by the political prejudices of its practitioners, and not in some trivial "all scientists are Democrats" sort of way. Science, no different than any other form of human knowledge, involves construction of narrative, and is subject to all of the same constraints that narrative prejudice yields. What you study and the methods you use are an obvious place we might find this problem.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't say it's as messed up as that. You make it sound as thought scientific institutions suffer from systemic corruption. Yes, narrative is involved, but humans are storytellers. I don't think science is limited or hindered by the way people process information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article isn't bad but this part made me shake my head:

> Gottlieb writes, "physical bodies are . . . not quite what they seem, but > are only appearances somehow thrown up by monads" seems less extravagant in > the light of contemporary string theory, which holds that everything that > exists is the product of vibrating one-dimensional objects

Poor string theory used to justify such nonsense..

<comment><USER11> String Theory is probably nonsense, so it's in good company.

<comment><USER5> Mostly not nonsense, since it fits most or all experimental physics, just the mathematic description is quite extravagant and interpretation is even more alien than quantum physics or general relativity, which are already highly mind-boggling.

<comment><USER12> I believe they were inferring that string theory isn't exactly falsifiable which teeters on the edge of poor science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wonderful exploration of many similar / related / intellectual / belief / explanation systems regarding human existence! Coming across a lot of those names and concepts what feels like a decade ago (probably was, during graduate school and supplementing my Education track with hybrid Philosophy & Anthropology snippets) but they're very nicely presented here in my opinion. The sticking point is treating each as a belief structure, and looking to the human condition and our primal tendencies (e.g. "reasoning") as to why they have appeal.

In a world were there are so few answers to genuinely big questions, seeking explanations or making them up seems reasonable and, as history seems to show, kind of inevitable. Interesting to keep in touch with, diversity I think helps understanding and/or appreciation (and also the ability to discuss in polity, heady company where there may be disagreement to chat about).

</comment><comment><USER14> As an aside, I found Neal Stephenson's historical fiction the Baroque Cycle, to be a wonderful exposition of the invention of the modern in the 17th and 18th century.

Apart from the swashbuckling, romance and intrigue what makes the books so compelling is the idea that so much of what we take for granted with respect to our worldview and our mindset was created at this time.

<comment><USER15> How so? I'm kinda going through the lead up and fall-out of the Peace of Westphalia right now and would love to know your opinion of Stephenson's work.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure I understand your question.

As an undergraduate history minor I took electives all over the place, including 'The Glorious Revolution', 'The Scientific Revolution' and 'The Rise of Financial Capitalism'. Even though I kind of knew it, reading the Baroque Cycle it really hit home that all of these things were happening at the same time, and over the course of a generation or two, the world, and in the West the worldview, was really, fundamentally changed

(WRT, the Peace of Westphalia - not sure where you're writing from -- but if you're ever in the neighborhood visit Muenster and check out the room where it was signed, as well as the cages for the Anabaptist leaders still hanging from the cathedral steeple.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lately I looked into writing history (and desire more) and was surprised one "fact" \- many more people read than people who wrote (as centuries went on). I suspect the total number of studied writers is quite small wrt the articles mentioned sources.

To compare to today, the keyboard and vocal cords afford many more authors. History is not taking the "average" of philosophical thought but if it was I wish there were more writers centuries ago.

<comment><USER17> That will certainly offer cultural insight, which is valuable, but I think you'd find essentially the medieval equivalent of the YouTube comments section.

<comment><USER16> Just thinking... I've never read you tube comments. I'll try next time. Ty

<comment><USER17> Trust me, you're not missing anything. You've been warned :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Among other things, I would judge how modern a community is by what their solid waste disposal facilities look like. All those plastic toys, furniture, building material, packaging, etc, being pressed into a mound! Or, head down to the cancer treatment facility, and imagine what Dr. McCoy would have to say.

<comment><USER19> Imagine what people who grew up watching Dr. McCoy would say. This isn't the future we were expecting. If you were born 100 years ago, you might think the world has changed dramatically. However, if you were born 50 years ago, the future has been slow to arrive.

<comment><USER20> I was born nearly 50 years ago. The only reason it may seem "slow to arrive" is that the dramatic visuals are absent, and that some of the expected technology proved a lot more boring/problematic than expected. Instead of rockets taking the staggeringly long time to reach staggeringly boring destinations (Moon & Mars are dead rocks), we've brought most of human knowledge & communications from racked hidden ink-on-paper to instant access anywhere on the planet via a pocket wireless supercomputer - something so amazing that most people spend much of their time staring at it (mostly for porn & cat videos...ARGH!). 5-minute food is the norm. Electric cars are on track for massive market penetration. Nearly-free worldwide-coverage videophones are available (just nobody actually wants to be _seen_ ). A lifetime of cinema, much in 3D, is available in your living room for an hour's pay per month. A couple days' wage can fly you to the other side of the planet in a few hours. 72 _F indoor temperature is so ubiquitous it 's practically illegal to not have it. Thousands of books are trivially stored on a $35 e-reader weighing ounces.

Heck, as an middle-class kid growing up back then, we had wood-fired heat (no A/C), well water, grew half our own food, walked miles to town, and 4-digit phone numbers. Home computers didn't exist early on, the closest being hobby kids with _maybe* hundreds of bytes of storage; when "personal computers" finally appeared (Apple II and IBM PC) they were, well, paltry. I don't remember a milkman delivering, but do recall returnable glass bottles.

We _could_ have rockets and Moon bases etc as the norm, but when we got to the Moon early on we realized it really wasn't that interesting. Infinite cat videos in your pocket - _that 's_ what people really wanted.

<comment><USER21> "the dramatic visuals are absent"

Some examples:

My mother is active and healthy and doing the grandma things after her heart operation instead of being a tombstone, and after the laser operation my MiL is not blind. I'm mystified how you'd even visually express that, but it is a pretty big change over the last 50 years.

Modern cars are horrifically ugly and character-less compared to my grandpa's cars, but they last roughly 10x as many miles and require far less than 1/10th the maintenance and get about twice the MPG and I'm almost certain to survive most car crashes (whereas in my grandpas day, a car crash was only about as survivable as an airplane crash). Its easy to express the bland ugliness of modern commuter cars visually, but how do you express that the hood may as well be welded down compared to the bad old days?

<comment><USER20> I was referring to decades-past "artist's rendition" pictures depicting the future. Scenes of dramatic rocket launches and moon hotels, exotic-looking personal vehicles, surreal attire, and sporadic inclusion of alien life forms.

You're making my point. Your mother is simply alive. Your MiL sees like anyone else might. Cars are kinda ugly, but in a character-less way instead of "OMG that's butt-ugly", and simply travel farther and kill fewer people.

The reality of being in the "future" is that it's not visually a dramatic difference ... yet it _is_ dramatically "futuristic" precisely because percentage-wise more people are leading normal lives, living on the Moon isn't interesting to most, and instant access to the near-sum-total of human knowledge just means more porn & cat pictures to amuse oneself with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure I see the value in this article's protracted digression into a bestiary of philosophers. There is, though, much truth in the statement that to conceive of ourselves as detached from history is to conceive of ourselves inaccurately.

<comment><USER23> The article is, at it's base level, a review of a book called 'The Dream of Enlightenment'.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. If it told me it would be that in the title, I would be fine, but it didn't, so now I'm left yearning for thoughts on how or why we think of ourselves as being so modern, or how we aren't all that different at all. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> With the idea that knowledge is an act of remembering, consciousness is a matter of matter, and gods/natures role in creating, seems to me that humans creating concious AI would potentially create that third era of modernity.

</comment><comment><USER25> Of course not. We tolerate mass injustice and violence (even state perpetuated, both at home and abroad), and racism, and misogyny. We think vengeance is justice. We savor "redemptive violence". We routinely believe that mercy is weakness. We harbor numerous misunderstandings and superstitions on vitally important subjects ranging from relationships to economics to science to mental illnesses to sexual orientation and gender to recreational drug use.

Modern? We're practically medieval. But at least there is some glimmering of hope that we understand our problems and are working to fix them.

<comment><USER26> Where (in the Western world) are racism and misogyny tolerated?

<comment><USER27> Just have a look at Europe. Discussions about migration here go from "complaining about genuine policy problems" to "blatant racism" in the span it takes people to get slightly drunk, and that's just the start. If I had a nickel for every time I hear random people insulting others as "fucking Jews"…

Misogyny is definitely not as bad as it used to be, but it's still everywhere. And in many cases the victims don't report it for whatever reasons.

<comment><USER26> That's an issue vastly more complicated than "racism". No matter what "migration" you mean (intra-European or non-European), that's mostly Xenophobia, not racism. Furthermore, often times people have legitimate concerns, such as job losses and incompatible cultural norms, if anything I'd say that these legitimate concerns often get unfairly branded as "racism" just to silence them.

Finally, you're probably right that insults and intolerance of religions is common, although I don't see why that should be discouraged - after all, religion is a choice, and disliking it is just as valid as disliking e.g. neo- Nazis and white suprematists.

<comment><USER28> _religion is a choice_

In many parts of the world it really isn't. If your parents where catholic then you are catholic, if your parents where jews then you are a jew, if you parents where muslim then you are a muslim etc. What you (or your parents) actually believe and don't believe in is rarely factors into it.

<comment><USER26> Well, they could start by e.g. proclaiming that they're atheist, not wearing religious symbols/clothing and stopping the religious traditions (e.g. prayer, dietary prohibitions, etc.). At least, that's what many European catholics did in the past century.

<comment><USER5> In certain countries religious dissent is considered grounds for extermination. Up to about 18th century this was practiced in Europe. The converse is still being practiced, even as recently as 20th century.

No, we aren't that much more modern when tribalism is still rampant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think people greatly mix up how advanced "objects" are, and how advanced people are. The true test is if you take away objects from a person, and then test their reason. Key word being reason, as the tests which are called iq tests do not test reason. What they do test, is how well a person is able to perform in a relatively small aspect, of a subset of American culture. Again what I just described are two separate things.

</comment><comment><USER30> While I generally don't comment on the appearance of sites, the font The New Yorker uses makes the text very hard to read, at least on my screen. Simply using Times New Roman or something similar would already be an improvement.

<comment><USER31> Not sure what you mean. The typeface is much larger than the type right here, and serif typefaces are more readable than sans-serifs.

<comment><USER32> Maybe serif fonts are more readable on a high-resolution phone screen or "retina" display, but not on my monitor.

The edges of the serif font on the New Yorker's site just look blurry to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you get multitenancy right? - <AUTHOR> Hello, HN! I'm currently maintaining the backend of a "job board" application. This application allows nonprofits to register and publish free volunteering opportunities, and lets volunteers search and apply for jobs. The thing is, some companies want their own platform for their employees to do volunteer work. Sometimes we also fire up platforms for specific volunteering events/dates. We want to keep every client/platform on their own server, with their own database. This would be perfect for us except for one thing, sometimes we want to integrate two or more platforms.
Eg: There's a client who has a country wide platform, but he also has 2 platforms specific for two cities/communities(cities A and B). Projects hosted on the country-wide platform that are on city A, should show up on the A-city platform. Also, all projects on the A-city platform should show up on the country wide platform.
So, basically what we want is to have multi-tenancy but allowing data to flow freely between multiple platforms/websites. Our current solution involves sharing a database between all the platforms and every table has a 'channel' column, where we tag which site the row is from. Using this we can design content flow rules between the channels. The downside is that all the data is cramped together now, with unrelated clients sharing the same database and this will be hard to scale, insecure and hard to maintain.
With this being said, we are looking for a solution that allows us to integrate multiple tenants data, we've been looking currently at stuff like PostgreSQL dblink and at the idea of duplicating data but every solution we see seems to have huge flaws.
With all that being said, how did you solve your multitenancy problems? What should we consider? <comment><USER2> Separate VMs per customer with encryption at rest. It requires automating everything as every action has to be done per customer. Perhaps the least cost effective, but easy security and billing--if they want more capacity scale up their instances and bill.

There's also a central db that handles routing.

</comment><comment><USER3> for multi-tenancy users(=customers) there are 3 main solutions,

1) Single DB with a) dedicated table per user or b) shared table with column that identify the user 2) Dedicated Schema for every user. 3) Dedicated DB for every users.

there is no good answers and you'll find everyone have solved it differently as they scale... few biggest names i can think of my haed are SalesForce, Workday and ServiceNow</comment>


VirtualBox 5.0 officially released - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/oracle_vm_virtualbox_5_07

<comment><USER2> As a fun experiment, I do my day-to-day computing entirely in a Virtualbox Windows VM guest that I've given 2 cores, 150GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. I'm about a year and a half into the experiment and still chugging along.

It's a surprisingly performant day-to-day system, which I can snapshot to try out things, move to other machines if I need to, make backups etc. About the only thing it doesn't do well is really CPU intensive or GPU intensive operations.

But it works fine for 2 monitors, web browsing, watching videos, etc.

It's kind of surprising actually.

From time to time I'll also spin up some Linux VMs and do various dev activities in a real Linux, which I usually just background and ssh into from my Windows VM. It's kind of nice having a virtual rack of machines to monkey around on.

Less impressive has been trying to get Ubuntu to not feel terrible, but Centos works fine.

If I need better performance, I'll dive back to the host OS and do those things, but it's mostly just for gaming or music production.

Bonus, my host OS has stayed relatively free of junk and stays really snappy, even all this time later.

My only recent problem is that the Windows 10 updater won't qualify the VM guest for the upgrade. So I'll probably have to grab the ISO and try it that way.

<comment><USER3> I do this because my employer has some silly policies and it was the only way they would let my run Linux on my localhost. Really I forget that I'm in the VM.. RAM is a little scarce, but all in all it works surprisingly well.

<comment><USER4> i've tried doing the same but the performance hit is unfortunately too big for me to find it acceptable. silly policies.

<comment><USER5> You should try it in Hyper-V. GPU-accelerated desktops are still no good, but everything else performs really well.

<comment><USER4> from what i understand it, hyper-v is only supported by a couple of distros and even then, the performance gains are not that noticable. definitely worth looking into none the less, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you are using Vagrant: Wait for the 1.7.3 release before upgrading [https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572) . How to upgrade Vagrant: Just install newest version. ETA: Tomorrow most likely [https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/619163221992189952](https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/619163221992189952)

<comment><AUTHOR> And it's out: [https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/v1.7.3/CHANGELOG.m...](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/v1.7.3/CHANGELOG.md#173-july-10-2015)

[https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html](https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the biggest features here, the virtual USB 3.0 controller, is closed source (as well as USB 2.0!). See:

[https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro- installing](https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-installing)

While it's available for free, the license only allows personal and educational use. Bleh.

<comment><USER7> To be fair, one should mention that the license of the extension pack allows you to install it at work and "run your multi-million euro business with it", without having to pay anything.

[https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Advise caution if you are a windows 8.1 host. Besides still having to deal with [https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13187#comment:178](https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13187#comment:178) this new version completely disabled networking, even after a reboot.

Oracle has done a very good job of ruining VB for quite a few users.

<comment><USER9> Meanwhile, performance (on an OS X host) compared to Parallels or VMWare is horrid. I ended up buying a Parallels license for when I do VM/OS install testing, which saves me hours a week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "HiDPI!support"

Does that mean Virtual Box will no longer look ridiculous on my 3840 x 2160 laptop screen?!

Downloading....

<comment><USER11> Yes, that is absolutely what it means. Works beautifully on my Retina Macbook Pro.

<comment><USER12> Been waiting for this since I bought a MacBook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the changelog[0]:

Make more instruction set extensions available to the guest when running with hardware-assisted virtualization and nested paging. Among others this includes: SSE 4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX-2, AES-NI, POPCNT, RDRAND and RDSEED

This makes me incredibly happy.

[0] [https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why do I get this from [https://www.virtualbox.org](https://www.virtualbox.org) when I access from Chrome? The site works from curl and Firefox.

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 436, in send_error data, 'text/html')

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/chrome.py", line 803, in render_template message = req.session.pop('chrome.%s.%d' % (type_, i))

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 212, in __getattr__ value = self.callbacks[name](self)

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/main.py", line 298, in _get_session return Session(self.env, req)

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 162, in __init__ self.get_session(sid)

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 189, in get_session self.bake_cookie()

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 170, in bake_cookie assert self.sid, 'Session ID not set'

AssertionError: Session ID not set

UPDATE: same error from www

UPDATE: curl --header "Cookie: trac_session=" [https://www.virtualbox.org](https://www.virtualbox.org)

The issue seems to be that some plugin in Chrome erases my trac_session cookie, and the website cannot handle this. I am running Disrupt, uBlock, and PrivacyBadger.

(1) Why does vbox need to track my session?

(2) What python framework are they using? App should not fail in this case.

<comment><USER15> > (2) What python framework are they using? App should not fail in this case.

from the stacktrace and the cookie name, they are using trac[0][1]

[0] [http://trac.edgewall.org/](http://trac.edgewall.org/)

[1] [http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/TracSession](http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/TracSession)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've used Xen, VMWare workstation 9/10, but primarily Virtualbox since 2008, on linux and windows hosts and linux and windows guests.

Virtualbox has really never let me down, I don't see any reason to use VMware workstation over it.

<comment><USER17> Last time I checked the seamless mode of VMWare was VASTLY superiour to the VirtualBox one. While VirtualBox did not much more than hide your desktop- background and make it transparent, VMware integrated the window manager of the guest OS into the host OS (i.e. guest-windows would appear in the host-OS window manager's window list). Furthermore it overlaid the screen with a button with an applications menu (native to the host-OS) sourced from the guest OS.

Nowadays I am without a WMware licence, and I found that KVM and its frontends are enough for my use cases right now because I do not rely on Windows-VMs for my day-to-day work so I can always use X forwarding for an integrated experience.

<comment><USER18> Extensively evaluated Vmware player vs virtual box for Ubuntu 14.04 desktop on W8.1 on my Thinkpad. Vmware might be a touch faster but too many things are broken - touchpad scrolling doesn't work - requires hacks to get this running ineffectively. Suspend and resume doesn't work..etc. Went back to Virtualbox since the experience is smoother.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this still require its own crashy kernel driver on Linux?

<comment><USER20> Yes. They should find a way to make it work with KVM. Although I don't claim to understand how the new KVM/Hyper-V PV support is implemented, at least on Linux the 5.x RCs loaded the dreaded VBoxDrv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The detached start option is very nice. Also the vm group things, as tiny as it is, really helps when you setup multi-VMs netlabs.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hmm getting a hash sum mismatch when doing an apt-get update. Anyone else seeing this?

</comment><comment><USER23> Installed it for USB3, did not manage to make it work, although I configured it.

<comment><USER20> It requires installation of the Extension pack - make sure you got that updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I might need to try this before my next upgrade to Parallels. If it works for what I need why spend the 100 bucks for each upgrade.

<comment><USER25> I agree, I previously ran Parallels for Coherence; but found that some apps just didn't perform well.

This, coupled with not being simultaneously able to run Vagrant/Docker while using Parallels will likely cause me to switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Windows 10 support? Anyone tied it yet?

<comment><USER27> Yes, did you read the linked Data Sheet PDF from the article?

> _Improved Huge Range of Guest Platforms – including the very latest Windows > 10, Windows Server 2012 R2 and leading edge Linux platforms too._

[http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclev...](http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/oracle- vm-virtualbox-ds-1655169.pdf)

<comment><USER28> Well, in theory, given several other comments / complaints about things not quite working right (USB3, and the like), there is a difference between:

"is it supported?" (yes)

and

"does it work well?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sadly, boot2docker 1.7.0 doesn't [yet?] work with VirtualBox 5

<comment><AUTHOR> boot2docker is not connected to Vagrant, it speaks directly with Virtualbox. Maybe watch out in the boot2docker github repo when they gonna update it [https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/979](https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/979) My advice also: Avoid the official docker installation. It will downgrade your Virtualbox 5.0 pretty sure!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Plx – React parallax component - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-plx <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN,

I got tired of making react parallax components over and over again, so I ended up creating what I think is pretty robust and performant solution. Most of the code is based on the production projects I've done in the past.

Demo: [https://stanko.github.io/react-plx/](https://stanko.github.io/react- plx/)

How it works: [https://stanko.github.io/plx-react-parallax- component/](https://stanko.github.io/plx-react-parallax-component/)

It has multiple optimizations described on the links above.

Feedback and contributions are welcome.

Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER2> I was looking for something like this a while ago. Not to be used with react though. Is the coupling necessary ? I would be sweet to have it as a vanillaJS lib + a react wrapper if it makes sense to you (I didn't look deeply at the code).

<comment><AUTHOR> Atm I have no plans of rewriting to vanilla, as it is really cumbersome to maintain two parallel libraries. But the most of the code can be reused to write vanilla solution if you want to give it a try.</comment></comment>


Blender 2.57 released (first stable release with completely new UI) - <AUTHOR> http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-257/

<comment><USER3> Found this on the site, thought it was rather interesting:

The Evolution of Blenders User Interface [PDF] [http://download.blender.org/documentation/bc2008/evolution_o...](http://download.blender.org/documentation/bc2008/evolution_of_blenders_ui.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Other improvements include a new file browser

Oh thank god. I want to tear my hair out whenever I use Blender just to view or convert a file. The file browser is nearly unusable.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have to say, Blender has come a long way. Big kudos. Python scripting is a major plus for me (Maya uses Python too).

<comment><USER6> I took a second look at Blender, and I have to agree with you 100%. I'm astonished at how much python is incorporated into the "little things" like help-text and api. And the scripting! And the keyframe interface!

Many kudos are in order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used it for a few years about 10 years ago, and I loved it at the time - <USER2> stopped largely because the software itself was just overwhelming. The new interface looks promising, it's great to see Blender still being developed.

</comment><comment><USER8> How does it compare to the commercial competitors (Maya, 3DS Max, Softimage) in terms of features & usability?

<comment><USER9> This is a generally well respected feature comparison chart: <http://wiki.cgsociety.org/index.php/Comparison_of_3d_tools>

Blender is generally feature rich, but has a fairly different UI than other products. People vary on whether or not they find that a good thing, Blender was originally built in an animation studio, for the most part, the interface prioritized ease of use for the knowledgeable user over ease of use for the new user whenever there was a conflict and sometimes neglected the latter altogether.

The project has since put in a lot of work to try and make the interface a bit easier to pick up without compromising on the speed with which current artists who use Blender heavily rely on. The 2.5 series of releases is the latest attempt at making this better.

<comment><USER10> Very good point regarding the UI.

I find it quite annoying when people complain about Blender's UI. VIM's UI is also not "new user" friendly but VIM's UI itself is very powerful.

Blender and VIM are made for speed with familiarity.

<comment><USER11> I agree with you to an extent but one important difference between VIM and Blender is that VIM tends to be the only tool a VIM user will use for editing code/text while a 3D artist will often use half a dozen or more tools to create a finished product (using focused tools in different areas of the pipeline -- it is not uncommon to use a focused modeller, say, even though technically you can model in Blender or Maya).

When you're using half a dozen tools and all of them either ship with or can easily be configured to handle Maya-style camera/mouse movement and Blender alone uses some wacky non-standard interface, it can really be jarring to context-switch to the Blender UI even if you are already familar with it.

I believe this lack of following de facto standards (and prior to 2.5 having no way to really configure to these standards) is a bigger factor in the rejection of Blender's legacy UI than the fact that it is hard to use for a beginner was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is not the first release with new UI. 2.5 series all had this new UI.

<comment><USER13> I am not sure if this means the python API is stable, too.

Quote:

        For the next 2.58 release the API will be completed
        with access to internal notifiers and events to track
        data changes or UI refreshes.

<comment><USER14> I thought 2.6 was suppose to be the stable release.</comment></comment></comment>


Consumer Safety Notice for Nest Protect - <AUTHOR> https://nest.com/letter-from-the-ceo

<comment><AUTHOR> I was a little disturbed to get the email telling me there was a potential problem with the smoke detector at exactly the moment you need it.

I don't envy the engineering challenge at Nest - designing a product that is only really tested when a house is burning down.</comment>


Ask HN: Why was my Google cloud trial extended? - awinter-py I'm hosting a small project on G cloud and just got an extension of their free trial. Is this normal?
FWIW, it's a single 8G box and it's serving the landing page for a few hundred dollars a week of adwords traffic.
Text of the email below:

  As we continue to enhance our platform, we want to give
  you more time to build with it. We've extended your trial
  period from 60 days to 12 months.

  Nothing has changed with your credits or project settings,
  so all you have to do is keep coding.
 <comment><AUTHOR> Yes[1].

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13832519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13832519)</comment>


Go, Racket and other languages: A comparison - <AUTHOR> http://cxwangyi.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/chinese-whispers-in-racket-and-go/ <comment><USER2> > Weeks earlier, Rob Pike gave a talk Go Concurrency Patterns in Google IO > 2012

That is over a year old.

Since then Go has moved up one (minor) version number and by all accounts it is now 20 to 40 % faster.</comment>


Intel 2020s Process Technology Roadmap: 10nm+++, 3nm, 2nm, and 1.4nm for 2029 - <AUTHOR> https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/3127/intel-2020s-process-technology-roadmap-10nm-3nm-2nm-and-1-4nm-for-2029/ <comment><USER2> Other discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21770622](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21770622)

</comment><comment><USER3> Meanwhile, in reality, Intel rerelease 22nm chips.

[https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-resuscitates-22nm- ha...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-resuscitates-22nm-haswell- pentium-processor)

<comment><USER4> Revive your brand through wild slides and sell high profit old products. Interesting strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "WikiChip is happy to see Intel remains committed to furthering Moore's Law for the foreseeable future with an ambitious roadmap."

What is Wikichip? Some sort of Intel mouthpiece? How can anyone belive an Intel roadmap at this point. At best it's fiction, at worst security fraud (according to the Matt Levine definition)

<comment><USER6> Literally. What even is 10nm+++?

Only thing that needs to matter anyway is performance in a suite of benchmarks

<comment><USER7> don't forget powerdraw.

<comment><USER5> With Intel it is always important to ask if the powerdraw includes or excludes the fridge hiding under counter*

* [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-28-core-cpu-5ghz,372...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-28-core-cpu-5ghz,37244.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 14, 10, 7, etc do not matter anymore [1], because there is no metric that could correspond to that number directly. It's all marketing nanometers. I'm all intel, but how does one estimate bs like "1.4nm for 2029"? By dividing 14nm by years passed since 2019?

[1] [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/10_nm_lithography_process](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/10_nm_lithography_process)

</comment><comment><USER9> "Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?"

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't that just marketing and wishful thinking? Not that long ago they were "predicting" 10nm process for 2016 [1].

[1] [https://mr- uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2016/02/Series-6...](https://mr- uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2016/02/Series-65-A4.png)

</comment><comment><USER11> Thank you, based-AMD.

</comment><comment><USER12> Once you can process high-definition video there is little need for further performance in mass-market processors. Progress thereafter would be mainly in lowering power consumption, reducing cost, and greater integration of more functions on chip to lower parts counts.

Therefore, the business drivers must be mainly server applications in the data center.

<comment><USER13> > Once you can process high-definition video there is little need for further > performance in mass-market processors.

In the grand scheme of things high-definition video is an extremely low bar for consuming and archiving content. It's totally flat, distorted, has a fixed viewpoint, a tiny field of view, super low dynamic range, etc. It doesn't match what you would see if you were there in the slightest. It's closer to looking at a photography than to being there. We should strive to do better than that. Decoding high-def video is mainly done on the GPU nowadays anyway.

<comment><USER12> Current video is a pretty good match for the needs of advertisers, who are the major source of funding for video. There is relatively little market for video that is not either free or heavily subsidized by advertisers.

TV manufacturers are counting on 8K, OLED, and "smart TV" functions to keep volumes flat by encouraging replacements of what is a durable consumer good. LCD TVs seem to be quite long-lived.

<comment><USER14> Production costs go up a lot when you increase the resolution because then you can see all the details they don't want you to see.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Productivity - Are you the Hare or the Tortoise? - <AUTHOR> http://www.totaltab.com/2011/06/28/startup-productivity-are-you-the-hare-or-the-tortoise/

<comment><USER2> a tortoise. just like totaltab's web server :-P</comment>


Show HN: Instrumenting an emulator using JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://arcanis.github.io/pokelib/example/

<comment><AUTHOR> The emulator itself is Virt.js[1], which is another project of mine. The linked page and its underlying library[2] have been made as a demonstration of what can be done using the emulation library.

[1] [https://github.com/arcanis/virt.js](https://github.com/arcanis/virt.js)

[2] [https://github.com/arcanis/pokelib](https://github.com/arcanis/pokelib)</comment>


Is money a good success measure for a startup and its founders? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexanderpeiniger.com/2013/01/is-money-a-good-success-measure-for-a-startup-and-its-founders/

<comment><USER2> PG's recent answer to this is that Startup=Growth <http://paulgraham.com/growth.html> and that revenue is the best way to measure that. In the same article he says that funding helps start ups grow faster (and presumably since that's what a startup is, a growth machine, they will always take it).

I'm ok with pg's definitions, but I do think there are a huge number of tech businesses, that aren't first and foremost about growth* that encounter a large of the same technological, and even business challenges as "startups" as defined above. And for those companies, cash probably isn't a very good measure at all.

*Perhaps they are building a tech, or a lifestyle, or even short term profits. I would argue that a good number of startups get started NOT to to produce giant growth, but rather because the founders had another goal (usually to build something) and culturally, in tech, the funded startup seemed like the only route forward. And once you are in it you find you are building growth, not the thing you thought you where.</comment>


BitPay Integrates Bitcoin with Fulfillment by Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitpay-integrates-bitcoin-with-fulfillment-by-amazoncom-2013-03-06 <comment><USER2> For those who haven't noticed, a single bitcoin is worth almost 47 dollars now, over 30% more than two days ago: [http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg5ztgSzm1g10zm2g25...](http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg5ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzp)

<comment><USER3> I really wish it would crash already. I don't feel comfortable buying any right now for day-to-day purchases because the crash has to be coming.

<comment><USER4> ... and, back to $34.

<comment><USER5> and back to $43

this is not a market for weak hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> On BitPay site: <https://bitpay.com/amazon>

</comment><comment><USER6> Hummm. Does Amazon know about this? Are they likely to revoke access to anyone availing of this service?

<comment><USER7> It shouldn't really matter to Amazon. Their fulfillment service is just an API for saying "take this item from your warehouse and ship it to this address". Amazon doesn't know that you're shipping things in response to a BitCoin payment, versus goodies for KickStarter backers, versus holiday gifts for customers. All BitPay is doing is integrating their API with Amazon's API for you so that receiving a payment can kick off a shipment. It doesn't create any new potential liability for Amazon; they're not touching bitcoins and their payment for the fulfillment service is separate from what they're fulfilling.

<comment><USER6> Cool, thanks for the clarification. So I guess its only a matter of time there are electronics stores accepting BTC online

<comment><USER8> There are already many electronics for sale for bitcoins:

<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Electronics>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the best API for doing Bitcoin transactions from a web app?

<comment><USER10> To be honest, bitcoind, the original Bitcoin client has a very accessible json-rpc API [0]. This is the same daemon that runs behind the QT front-end of the "official" Bitcoin client. RPC is not my favorite (gotten spoiled by RESTful), but bitcoind's implementation is easy-to-use, and most languages have nice, easy-to-use json-rpc libraries [1]. You run bitcoind as a headless client on your server. It's pretty robust, and multithreaded. The benefit to that setup is that you are in control of everything, no need to depend on (or pay) a third-party. And there's no need to store Bitcoins on the server beyond what you need for your transactions, since you can set up a cron job to periodically forward x percentage of the balance to an off-site wallet with ease.

However, if you want something with a RESTful interface that you don't have to maintain yourself, ycombinator-funded Coinbase appears to have a nice API. But unlike bitcoind (which I've used for several small and one largish project), I've never used coinbase or any of the other third-party APIs.

[0] <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoind> [1] <http://json- rpc.org/wiki/implementations> [2] <https://coinbase.com/>

EDIT: Clarity, grammar.

<comment><USER11> That's the kind of set-up that has been hacked to high hell several times.

It's not that hard to understand why. Having a computer connected to the net to run bitcoind means that if you get it rooted by any chance, you just lost the entirety of your hot wallet.

Please, please stop doing that.

<comment><USER12> One of bitcoin's strengths is decentralization, and you just told people not to manage their own wallets.

How do _you_ accept bitcoin? Please enlighten us.

<comment><USER11> Non-hot wallets.

I didn't say you shouldn't use wallets, just don't use the naive approach of having a plain wallet in a computer that's exposed via bitcoind. That's asking for it.

Cryptography is hard, but you can use this for instance:

<http://bitcoinarmory.com/using-offline-wallets-in-armory/>

It's already prepackaged for you. Give it a good read if you don't know it. Free, Open Source, etc. And the author is a nice chap.

It's not the only way. But whatever you do, just don't keep a massive hot wallet in a server that's online. They will find it and if you move enough money they will put massive amounts of effort into hacking it.

<comment><USER10> Did you read my original comment? You basically just described a solution that mirrors my own, which was to send x percentage of your balance to an off-site wallet (maximizing x to the extent possible, obviously). I didn't get into how to securely store your coins off-site, since that wasn't the question.

EDIT: BTW, you do realize that Armory is a front-end to bitcoind, right? You still have to run bitcoind for Armory to work.

From their Github page:

" __ _Armory has no independent networking components built in._ Instead, it relies on on the Satoshi client to securely connect * to peers, validate blockchain data, and broadcast transactions * for us. Although it was initially planned to cut the umbilical * cord to the Satoshi client and implement independent networking, * it has turned out to be an inconvenience worth having. * Reimplementing all the networking code would be fraught with bugs, * security holes, and possible blockchain forking. The reliance * on Bitcoin-Qt right now is actually making Armory more secure!"

<comment><USER11> Yes, that's fine. But the rest of the elements are non-trivial and you left them "as an exercise for the reader". This usually means that the reader will just run the standard client with a full internet connection and get hacked to high hell.

You can have a computer with a firewall and a custom protocol connected to another system, and still get hacked, if you don't put in place the sort of measures Armory uses.

Read carefully what you quoted: "it relies on on the Satoshi client to securely connect * to peers, validate blockchain data, and broadcast transactions * for us" - that is not the actual problem when you have your server rooted. The problem is KEYS. Key generation, and key storage/management. Which no other common solutions that I know do in a way that won't get your arse robbed if the computer storing the wallet is compromised. Which I think is a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> By the way, BitPay is recruiting node.js developers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anybody trading bitcoins options or futures?

</comment><comment><USER15> Whoha, that's awesome!

</comment><comment><USER16> Where to buy BitCoins easily? CoinBase is useless since they've "exceeded their maximum daily limit", and Mt. Gox wants me to verify my home address, but I just moved and don't have any bills yet.

<comment><USER17> I've had good luck with Bitfloor. They let you do a cash deposit at Bank of America, and it goes instantly to your account. No ID or addresses or anything.

Yes, they've been hacked before and lost bitcoins. I figure 1. being hacked once probably makes them a lot more cautious now, and 2. what was stolen was bitcoins that were sitting in user accounts there. You're at very low risk if you don't leave bitcoins sitting in your account - transfer them to a private wallet or convert them to USD immediately.</comment></comment>


Rare look into a bible belt classroom - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/the_bible_belt_can_never_impro.php <comment><USER2> I don't believe in Creation, but my beliefs have nothing to do with it. The main problem with Creation being taught in Science class is that it is not science. If you want to teach Creation, teach it in Religion class.

</comment><comment><USER3> The link title is a bit hyperbolic. Looking into a bible belt classroom is as easy as interviewing (or simply just talking to) current and former students and faculty.

Having grown up in the bible belt I can attest to how backwards the approach to knowledge (not just science) is. Critical analysis and logic are far, far down on the totem pole compared to propping up incumbent biases. In fact critical analysis (and I use that term loosely) is often only viewed as valid if it supports a pre-determined viewpoint. This is probably not a surprise to anyone who has spent even a brief period of time in southern US, but it can be easy to forget how much of a real every day occurrence it is.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't there supposed to be some HN standard of keeping the original article's title? What's the justification for changing the post title in this case?

EDIT: I don't mean to pick on this poster, I just have been noticing changed titles a lot lately.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used the title of the video that the blog post embedded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's one thing to give both sides a fair hearing. Entirely different to not address science. Whether or not you believe in evolution, it's the popular belief, and on that virtue alone should receive an adequate explanation and hearing.

The arguments the students used also showed they have very little idea of correct argumentation. Maybe science isn't all they are lacking in ...

And to be fair, I believe in Creation, but that doesn't mean I think what was going on in that classroom to be good. It's unfair to the kids to teach either without proper evidence and backing.

<comment><USER6> Creationism doesn't get a say in Science class. It's _science class_.

And lets be honest here: When people talk about teaching intelligent design, or creator origin, or whatever, it exclusively focuses on the Abrahamic idea of the matter, paying no mind to the Dharmic or Taoic ideas on the origin. So not only is it completely out of place, but it's also grossly incomplete, biased, and serves no purpose other than the reinforce our society's dominant religious cultures, rather than to give students a better understanding of the world around them.

<comment><USER7> It also serves to further the lack of religious freedom in our nation; even though the Constitution grants us that freedom, our own people take it away from each other. We're just less aggressive about it than the catholic church has been during rougher times (e.g. inquisition, crusades).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was merely run-of-the-mill shocking until the very last student spoke.

<comment><USER9> His question is very telling:

Most Christian children are brought up without one particular, very salient point being brought up about the religion's origins. That is, nearly everyone in the Bible is _not_ white. That they are, in fact, of Arab or Egyptian descent. "White" people don't even enter the picture until the New Testament. So without this knowledge, kids grow up thinking that _Jews_ were Whitey McWhiterson of Northern Ireland, which is partially reinforced by all of the imagery of Jesus, etc. being of European origin, and the implied racism that often brews in their local community as a result. These kids are implicitly convinced that Adam and Eve were "white," though no one has even suggested the thought.

I'm starting to wonder if this is probably where the "white supremacy" ideology comes from.

So the kid is not merely misinformed about evolution; he is, in fact, misinformed about his own _religion_.

Oh, the disappointment I feel.</comment></comment>


Writing an OS in Rust, Second Edition - <AUTHOR> https://os.phil-opp.com <comment><USER2> Discussed 8 months ago (160 points/40 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16556481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16556481)</comment>


clib – C Package Manager-ish - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/clibs/clib <comment><USER2> I recently threw together a hello-world clib package and a project which depends on it in order to familiarize myself with how to use it:

[https://github.com/pepaslabs/hello.c](https://github.com/pepaslabs/hello.c)

[https://github.com/pepaslabs/clib-demo- helloworld](https://github.com/pepaslabs/clib-demo-helloworld)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if this is it, but C (and C++) desperately needs a good package manager if it is to be used and continue to be used for more then a relative few "core" projects.

Java became very successful in OSS due to Maven (or perhaps the other way around...in any case, it is essential to the large, high quality OSS community today). Similarly with Node.js and npm.

</comment><comment><USER4> Something seems a bit odd in this repo.

Should [https://github.com/clibs/clib/blob/master/deps/fs/fs.c#L145-...](https://github.com/clibs/clib/blob/master/deps/fs/fs.c#L145-L166) not be using stat and not seek?

<comment><USER5> fseek() is portable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The hardest part about using languages like C/C++ is people don't share. Everything seems to be a commercial offering. I'm not proposing that as right or wrong, just the way it seemed to be at the time.

<comment><USER7> I don't know, there's quite a bit of sharing, I think a large part is that bringing in a third party library tends to be a total pain, which silos code quite a bit. In my experience, excluding header-only libraries, you usually end up spending about half a day screwing with the build system to get a library entirely integrated if your build system is moderately complex (and it will be if you're cross platform). Most of it just has to do with the design of the language(s) -- linking is very complicated, there's a lack of a good module system, conventions range wildly, compiler support for modern things tends to be uneven, etc.

I think something that might make this project a bit more interesting would be an integration with CMake, which is becoming pretty ubiquitous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm using their hash and list in my project. Works fine.

<comment><USER9> How do you manage updates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why?

<comment><USER11> > From my experience C libraries are scattered all over the web and discovery > is relatively poor. The footprint of these libraries is usually quite large > and unfocused. The goal of clibs is to provide stand-alone "micro" C > libraries for developers to quickly install without coupling to large > frameworks.</comment></comment>


How to Scale React Applications - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/09/how-to-scale-react-applications/ <comment><USER2> I think I've been pretty happy with redux-think and async functions...</comment>


Show HN: Find SthgNw, Contribute SthgNw - <AUTHOR> http://sthgnw.com/about

<comment><AUTHOR> Why I created this platform: <http://bckmn.com/releasing-sthgnw></comment>


A Deluge of Devices for Reading and Surfing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/technology/personaltech/09reader.html?partner=rss&emc=rss <comment><USER2> This article has the first evidence I've seen that the Apple tablet will have a large gesture vocabulary. It will be derived from the FingerWorks technology that Apple acquired in 2007. I used the FingerWorks keyboard for a year. The gestures were highly productive, and I've been hoping they would end up in the Apple tablet.</comment>


Day 1 Of Unretina In The Mac App Store … Wowsers - <AUTHOR> http://bonobolabs.com/day-1-of-unretina-in-the-mac-app-store-wowsers/

<comment><USER2> _Imagine what it will be like in 12 months time._

Crowded with fluff, multiple applications servicing the same 'need', and lacking the novelty factor that drives day one numbers.

Of course, having said that, it makes even more sense that there's some kind of first mover advantage, and it's always great to read a positive story.

<comment><USER3> Didn't Apple say that they weren't going to accept apps that already do the same thing as other apps, at least at some point? And that there had to be a minimum usefulness to anything that's let in?

Of course, this will be arbitrary, but still.

<comment><USER4> _Didn't Apple say that they weren't going to accept apps that already do the same thing as other apps_

That would be very annoying.

Choice is good - and with proper categorization and search it would only add value, not remove any. The user-votes should bubble the good stuff to the top, right?

<comment><USER3> Theoretically. See section 2.8: <http://pastie.org/1236378>

> Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, > particularly if there are many of them

I've been kinda down on users voting on things, lately. I mean, on Reddit, does voting ensure that the best things actually go to the top?

Also, you're assuming that users actually want this; most people want a decision made for them. At least, that's what the data I've seen from a few different sites has shown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how applications in the $10-20 did. We are going to launch soon a couple of apps in that range, and priced at $15 those are definitely out of the impulsive/just-to-try zone.

<comment><USER6> Hmmm... I'm at $10, and I sold a whole 5 copies. YMMV.

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dubplate/id409514028?mt=12>

<comment><USER7> Well, to be fair, I'd be surprised if the number was any larger than that. Recording straight to CD in this day and age isn't what one usually calls a compelling proposition. Don't blame the store; don't generalize to others.

(NB, I'm sure the app is well-crafted and highly functional. But it seems fairly outdated, and the price point appears to be a little optimistic.)

<comment><USER8> That said, though, $35 a day after Apple's cut is $12775 a year for said app, assuming these scorching sales hold as average for the duration of the calendar year.

String enough of these apps together (or dust them off the archives), and you've got yourself a cottage industry. It's the iOS app store all over again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone else misread Unretina as Urethra?

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://bonobolabs.com/day-1-of- unretina-in-the-mac-app-store-wowsers/&hl=en&sa=G&strip=1)

<comment><USER11> Normally I would thank you for linking to a cache of an unavailable article, but this text-only cache is useless without the graph images they reference.

Anyone see what numbers they're talking about in the image?

<comment><USER10> Sorry about that, how's this:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fbonobolabs.com%2Fday-1-of- unretina-in-the-mac-app-store-wowsers%2F&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1)</comment></comment></comment>


GameStop considers installment plans for Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/09/gamestop-considers-installment-plans-for-playstation-5-and-xbox-series-x/ <comment></comment>


Building an extensible syntax - <AUTHOR> http://breuleux.net/blog/oexprs.html <comment><USER2> Didn't expect to see this here (I am the author). For the record, I implemented this syntax as a Racket #lang called LISO[1], and I also used a variant of that syntax for a language that compiles to JavaScript, Earl Grey[2]. It's fun to play with.

[1] [http://breuleux.net/blog/liso.html](http://breuleux.net/blog/liso.html)

[2] [http://breuleux.github.io/earl- grey/repl/](http://breuleux.github.io/earl-grey/repl/)

Edit: I forgot to mention I also based a markup language on operator precedence parsing: Quaint ([http://breuleux.net/blog/quaint.html](http://breuleux.net/blog/quaint.html)). It benefits from similar ease of extension.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's an interesting way to do operator priority:

Specify priority relative to other operators, including associativity, and let the language figure it out. If something is ambiguous or inconsistant, emit an error.

The nice thing about this is that it removes the entire concept of "first- class" operators. If you want to inter-operate with something, specify the relative priorities as needed and you're done.

The down side is that the worst case time to detect cycles is O(n^2) with the number of operators, at least if you include the relative priority of '!='. Although, that being said, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to include '!=' as a relative priority.

It also means that your parsing becomes... less than amusing. In particular, it suddenly becomes rather context-dependent. This breaks one of the "laws" described here. Still something interesting to muse about, however.

<comment><USER2> That's more or less what I meant by "priority graph" in the article: priority is defined using a directed acyclic graph. In principle, yes, you could have a way to add new nodes in the graph; you don't really expect n to be large in this case.

Parsing wouldn't necessarily be very complicated. An operator precedence grammar[1] can be fully implemented in about 50 lines of code. If you run a simple sequential algorithm, completed expressions could be executed immediately and could modify the precedence matrix dynamically. You do lose, however, the option of parallel parsing.

There's an idea I am toying with, though, which is to split source files in "zones". A separator, say, "=====", would act as a hard delimiter for parts of the file. The first part could define the syntax of the second part, etc.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator- precedence_grammar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator-precedence_grammar)

<comment><USER3> Again, you introduce context-dependance - which is something that you explicitly say you shouldn't have. What AST a <foo> b <bar> c is turned into depends on what priorities <foo> and <bar> are defined as.

This starts to get nightmareish very quickly, at least if you're trying to leave open the possibility of compilation as opposed to interpretation.

Zones are an interesting possibility to solve this, although it doesn't have generality - there's no way to express "zone C depends on zone B and zone A, but zone B doesn't depend on zone A, nor vice versa", for instance.

<comment><USER2> Well, the idea of zones is that the second zone depends on the first zone, the third depends on the second, and so on. It is meant to allow definition and use of a language within the same file, so there is little point in having a different dependency structure, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think things get a little lost here when you start treating infix operators as special. When talking about creating uniform syntaxes, I think people don't look hard enough at the basic structure of SmallTalk, where operators work mostly like you'd expect, are infix, and are uniform with all other kinds of calls because the convention is always (subject verb object) instead of the lispy (verb object subject). You don't get operator precedence, but I've largely come around to the idea that maybe we should be questioning if it's something we actually need.

Of course that leaves you with the problem of when a verb lacks a subject.

<comment><USER5> Honestly, most of the time I think we would be better off without operator precedence. It just adds another thing you need to keep in your head when reading code.

Unfortunately, nearly everyone -- even non-programmers -- learned the operator precedence for arithmetic operators, which means they might be confused if those operators in a language didn't use it.

<comment><USER6> A limited hierarchy like Go's could be OK:

        parens (...)
        paths  . [] and args (x,y)
        unary  ! -
        binary * / &
        binary + - |
        binary == != <= >= < >
        binary &&
        binary ||
        comma  ,
        assign = += -= *= /= &= |= :=

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it's even wrong to think about syntax at all when thinking about Lisp. It's a symbolic computational system. It's about anything. Other languages are DSLs with aesthetics. Whereas lisp is about semantics. Don't even think about syntax, think about meaning:

(<idea> <data>...)

That's it. Now you can focus on ideas instead of looks. (but yeah the added bonus of self-similar representation is a pretty large one too, both in expressiveness and in concepts reduction)

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a library for lisp called readable lisp. It has three features ([http://readable.sourceforge.net/](http://readable.sourceforge.net/))

1: Indentation instead of parentheses

      (defn [a b]
        (+ a b)
      )

Becomes

      defn add [a b]
        + a b

2: Function names before the parens instead of after

      (add 3 5)

Becomes

      add(3 5)

3: Infix operations

      (+ 3 5 6)

Becomes

      {3 + 5 + 6}

(Note the curly braces instead of parens)

These combined make Lisp code a whole lot more readable:

      (define (factorial n)
        (if (<= n 1)
          1
          (* n (factorial (- n 1)))))

Becomes

      define factorial(n)
        if {n <= 1}
          1
          {n * factorial{n - 1}}

To me, this made common-lisp python-like readable. Now to get it working in Clojure

<comment><USER9> Except it doesn't stop at 3. Then you have (copying from [http://sourceforge.net/p/readable/wiki/Solution](http://sourceforge.net/p/readable/wiki/Solution)):

 _4\. A \\\ (aka SPLIT) starts a new line at the current indentation. If it 's immediately after indentation (aka GROUP in that case), it represents no symbol at all (at that indentation) - this is useful for lists of lists.

5\. A $ (aka SUBLIST) in the middle of list restarts list processing; the right-hand-side (including its sub-blocks) is the last parameter of the left- hand side (of just that line). If there's no left-hand-side, the right-hand- side is put in a list. This useful abbreviation from Haskell simplifies many common cases.

6\. A leading traditional abbreviation (quote, comma, backquote, or comma-at) or datum comment "#;", at the beginning of a sweet-expression line, and followed by space or tab or end-of-line, is that operator applied to the following sweet-expression. Otherwise, it applies to the next neoteric- expression.

7\. The markers "<∗" and "∗>" surround a collecting list, and MUST accept a list of 0 or more un-indented sweet-expressions. The "<∗" and "∗>" represent opening and closing parentheses, but restart indentation processing at the beginning of the line. A collecting list is only terminated by its matching "∗>" and not by a blank line. These are valuable for defining libraries and for short let-style constructs.

8\. The marker "$$$" is reserved for future use._

Got all that? I sure didn't. I spent some time on the mailing list a couple of years ago and grew frustrated with this gradual creep of operators, which led to absurd code like this (from [http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-110/srfi-110.html](http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-110/srfi-110.html)):

      let
        \\
          c $ cos a
          s $ sin a
        body...

I mean, would it hurt to add a couple of parens here and there?! Even _Java_ has a few of them.

(My competing proposal, which wasn't hampered by all the bending-over- backwards to preserve backwards compatibility and get merged upstream that did them in: [http://akkartik.name/post/wart](http://akkartik.name/post/wart). The final straw that pushed me to find my own syntax was this example from SICP: [http://arclanguage.org/item?id=16699](http://arclanguage.org/item?id=16699))

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm going to have to reread this to really understand it, but it prompted me to imagine the possibility of a simpler antidote to parentheses than described here. If the tokenizer generated INDENT and DEDENT tokens as in python, then the combination of those tokens and the spaces and parens that lisp already has could be translated to other paren patterns and then interpreted as in normal lisp. (Of course strictly speaking even parens are already translated into hierarchical cons-pairs, but that just proves that this sort of translation is not foreign to lisp.) Hmmm, something to think about.

<comment><USER9> I did this last year: [http://akkartik.name/post/wart](http://akkartik.name/post/wart)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps I'm missing something: In Iteration 1, it says juxtaposition has higher priority than any operator. In that case, how is the lambda declaration (x y -> (...)) _not_ interpreted as a function call to the function x with the argument y?

Or is the author simply saying that this will unambiguously create an AST of ((x y) -> (...)) regardless of what -> does?

</comment><comment><USER12> Post it to Lambda the Ultimate if you want the serious language designers to take a look at the ideas and make suggestions.

<comment><USER13> That's such a good idea that he did it 9 months ago: [http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/4879](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4879).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why parser extensions are opposed to AST transforms? They work together well, see an example implementation here: [https://github.com/combinatorylogic/mbase](https://github.com/combinatorylogic/mbase)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've had very similar ideas in my language Ivy: [https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/lang/ivy](https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/lang/ivy)</comment>


Lyft to offer 45 percent discount during presidential election - <AUTHOR> https://thetechgraph.com/2016/11/05/lyft-offer-45-percent-discount-presidential-election/ <comment><USER2> The tech industry (please spare the arguments about whether Lyft is a tech company for a moment) getting into elections can be scary.

Facebook would help you register, and is now offering to find your polling places. Suppose they only offered this for people their data mining suggests are of a certain political persuasion, but not others.

Or suppose Lyft only operated this in cities that primarily matched their views (SF yes, but San Diego no, because it leans slightly more conservative because of the military population).

Should we expect big data to be neutral in how they make elections friendlier?

<comment><USER3> What if one party offered to pay transport costs for people voting for them? Would that be classed as bribery?

<comment><USER4> Don't US parties routinely give lifts to people to the polls? They do in the UK.

(They're not allowed to pay transport costs, but they are allowed to organise transport)

<comment><USER5> Yes, they do. I was at the University of Florida for the 2008 election. The Democratic Party arranged for shuttle transportation from campus to early voting locations.

You didn't have to be or vote Democrat to use the service, but they were helping college students in their early 20s vote...the proclivities were obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Will the drivers be paid less?

I was under the impression that the prices are already quite aggressive.

<comment><USER7> Usually when Lyft does these kinds of promotions they take the hit, not the drivers. It's the main reason why Lyft isn't profitable.

<comment><USER8> They offered me ~10 free rides during a trip I made to Boston. All paid for by them. You could even tip 20% on their dime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How are they planning to ensure sufficient capacity for that? Uber and Lyft both have a system in place where if the demand for rides exceeds the supply of drivers by too much, they can use surge pricing to get more drivers active and lessen the demand. If they're promising a specific reduced price, they won't do that; and if the demand is going to be very high (which seems likely), they might not have enough drivers to satisfy it.

<comment><USER10> Lyft is likely absorbing the extra cost of maintaining an adequate supply of drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the significance of 45 percent? Why didn't they go all the way to 50%?

Does any area offer free public transportation on election days? Recently in Atlanta, public transportation was free on certain holidays to promote mass transit...haven't heard about election day.

<comment><USER12> Obama is the 44th US president. I think 45 because Hillary or Donald will become the 45th.

<comment><USER13> This sounds so plausible I will accept it as fact without reading any further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So what's the difference between paying someone $10 to vote and deducting $10 from a commercial purchase to vote?

<comment><USER15> As sibling comments note, it's not a crime to provide material rewards (probably including cash) to vote, so long as it's not for voting a _specific way_ (e.g. show me a trump ballot and you get a free coffee). EDIT: see response thread, that's illegal too but IMHO doesn't affect the point.

I still see it as a loophole for getting money into politics: if a maybe- voting demographic that leans toward party X also shops at Y, then Y's reward for voting is going to differentially help party X.

E.g. since Starbucks patrons probably lean Democrat, Starbucks's free-coffee- for-voting probably does have "disparate impact" favoring Democrats, even if the free coffee is not conditional on who you voted for.

Then you can go one step removed: if rich billionaires want the Democrat to win, they can approach similar establishments and offer to pay for the cost of their "free X for voting". Boom, a money vector that will survive a Citizen's United reversal.

Then what? Do you require such efforts to bankroll similar offers at coffee places with opposite demographics? Or prohibit any rewards for voting?

<comment><USER16> The way I read the statute I linked, paying someone to vote is illegal.

But Lyft isn't paying people to vote, they are making it cheaper to gain proximity to the polling place. If they made the discount conditional on voting, it would be illegal.

<comment><USER15> Ah okay I had remembered Starbucks doing this promotion but it seems they pulled it back due to election laws: [http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/11/03/starbucks-offers- fr...](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/11/03/starbucks-offers-free-coffee- to-voters-on-election-day/)

It's kind of a distinction without a difference though: like in the Lyft case, you can give a material reward for going 90% of the way to a vote, and the influence on the election is the same.

<comment><USER16> _It 's kind of a distinction without a difference though_

I disagree. Whether the offer is conditional is a simple and effective test to catch all the problematic cases, it just happens to erroneously catch free coffee if you have a sticker. So the difference is that one of the activities falls on the wrong side of the test.

<comment><USER15> I meant it made no difference with respect to influencing election outcomes because of how you can make close-enough legal offers, not that the law is hard to apply as written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Because thanks to the electoral college, voter turn out in the US matters outside of the dozen contested states. /s

<comment><USER18> Problems we have and may never be able to solve until a collapse:

\- Electoral college - YES only a few states decide the president! Everyone else should just stay home!

\- 2 Party system - LOOOOONG campaigns flood money into the two major party candidates - no one else will ever have a chance

\- Term Limits - they would have to vote for it themselves when they ALWAYS significantly increase their net worth while in office

\- Open primaries - If we could all vote for primary candidates REGARDLESS of party, we would have more centrist choices and not lunatics.

Thanks for your comment.

/endrant

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Too bad it's not everywhere; a cheap ride home from the bar after this all blows over would be quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER20> Except in Austin, where they're still keeping their ball at home because we voted the wrong way, according to Lyft and Uber.

<comment><USER21> Exactly, one of the problems of democracy is that it can make the wrong decision. And there's no accountability.</comment></comment>


The Limits of Science—and Scientists - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/09/07/the-limits-of-science-and-scientists/

<comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I wrote the opinion piece.</comment>