Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45664640 <comment><USER3> His feelings about two of the "sides" of this argument are so recognisable. I'm generally in favour of going out of my way e.g. to make minorities feel more welcome to compensate for the natural tendency to make them feel less welcome. However, the nastiness of some of the people in "my camp" pushes me away from it and makes me reluctant to openly support that cause.

In effect, they're really counterproductive, and the only reason Linus is now openly on "their side" (for lack of a term that better describes what I mean), is because the "other side" __also __was really nasty, pushing him away from them.

It took a while for me to realise what privileges I have had that some others have not. The first step to realising that was being open to that even being possible, and shouting contests do not encourage that.

I'd love it if Linus' approach here would lead to less-heated discussions and actual insights on the subject, but the hate and vitriol I've seen spewed in his direction after his announcement doesn't make me hopeful...

<comment><USER4> There will always be garbage people in "your camp", whatever that camp might be. Hell, for some people in "your camp" you'll be the nasty one.

The big problem with the internet and modern social networks is that they suck at filtering the noise and getting the interesting bits. In the end if we're not careful we only hear those who shout the loudest and most provocative things. A well researched essay on gender studies will have a hard time getting traction, however a single "I drink white male tears" tweet is sure to get a ton of attention from people on either of the fence even though it's effectively void of meaning.

My solution is to spend less time focusing on people and more time focusing on ideas. You'll find that the vast majority of people are vastly less extreme than what twitter and reddit would have you believe.

<comment><USER5> > for some people in "your camp" you'll be the nasty one.

I'll go one further. "The nasty one" is a role that usually begs to be filled, even in a good cause. Sometimes it's even essential to progress. "Good cop, bad cop" works. I'm more likely to play "bad cop" myself, though at least I'm usually aware of it being a situational role. I've definitely said things that would have violated a CoC if there had been one in those situations, so I do understand the fear of them, but here's why I chose that particular metaphor: even the bad cop is usually working within limits. That dynamic can still exist, and still be effective, even within the limits of a CoC. People can still be demanding, critical, even abrasive ... and they will. They just can't be bigots or harassers and expect to keep getting away with it.

<comment><USER6> The problem with your metaphor is that "good cop, bad cop" is something you do to someone you're trying to deceive in order to further your own agenda at their expense. It's a way to behave toward an adversary, not someone who you're trying to work with.

<comment><USER5> > "good cop, bad cop" is something you do to someone you're trying to deceive

That's funny, because the goal is often to get at the truth. Is that an agenda you find objectionable? Do you see something noble in people who are harmed by the truth becoming known? "Bad cop" is not far from "devil's advocate" and the tension either creates is often useful to all involved. Is role-playing the same as deception?

> It's a way to behave toward an adversary

"Adversary" is very situational, and doesn't necessarily imply ill feeling - certainly not to the game theorists or jurists who often use the term. It's pretty common to have someone you generally want to work with be an adversary in a particular context. It's a role, and civil people get over it. In fact, codes of conduct - formal or otherwise - are often the very thing making that possible. They keep the adversarial role "in scene" and prevent it from turning it into permanent antipathy. Again, consider the "adversarial" nature of our justice system, one of the most formal and rules-bound environments most of us will ever see, whose participants are often on quite cordial terms outside the courtroom.

<comment><USER6> > That's funny, because the goal is often to get at the truth. Is that an > agenda you find objectionable?

Yes, I think that's the wrong agenda to have when you're collaborating on software. A pull request shouldn't normally be an interrogation to figure out whether the person who wrote the code is lying.

<comment><USER5> Is lying the only alternative you can think of in this context? What about "truth" meaning the source of a bug or the best solution, with the alternative being merely ignorance of same? Seems like you're stretching pretty far to make this point.

<comment><USER6> How does playing bad cop help you find the best solution to a bug? To me it seems like you're stretching here, so how about we just assume we're both operating in good faith?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        > I'm still not exactly the most empathetic person.
        > But I'm hoping I can at least 'fake it until I
        > make it'.

This is great!

If you ask me, "faking it" is really just as good as "actually" being a more helpful or empathetic person.

What do you think "actually" being a helpful or empathetic person is like? It's basically just continually expending the effort to be helpful and empathetic.

Let's say my brother calls me up on a Saturday morning. He needs help moving some furniture. Do I really feel like doing that? Fuuuuuuuuuck no. Will I say "yes" anyway? Probably, because even though I'd rather play tennis or sleep or play video games I want to help him. So I will consciously expend the effort to go do the good thing for him.

Am I being "actually" good there or am I just "faking it"? I don't really think there's a difference. Nobody really wants to spend a day off moving furniture for free.

Same thing with reviewing a pull request. I am not known as a caustic reviewer, but that's because I spend the effort to try and make sure I'm not caustic. What is the difference between me consciously expending the effort and Linus consciously expending the effort? (I mean, y'know, besides Linus being 1000x more productive and talented than me) Is one of us more "authentic?" I would say there's no difference.

<comment><USER8> Depends entirely on how good you are at faking it. That is, if it can be easily seen that you are faking; then no, it is not as good. Not even close.

Your brother scenario is silly. If someone calls and I don't want to help, but can. I'll be honest and make my own choice. If they ask if this is what I'd truly like to be doing, I'll always say no. However, in most cases, I don't actually care what I'm doing. Could I come up with something more fun? Maybe, but just being social in any way is typically its own ends.

<comment><USER9> On the far end of the scale, if you always answer, "Would you like to help us carry this heavy stuff down these stairs?" with "No, in fact I would loathe that, but I will comply in order to maintain the social bonds that are necessary to sustain my chemically-driven life functions for the long term."... then that will be problematic for your relationships.

I'm like you, I say yes often, and I'm honest about how excited I am to do it... but it comes at a social cost.

Sometimes its better to fake it and be nice, even when you're bad at faking it.

<comment><USER8> I think I misrepresented. Most people just ask, "can you come help?" To that I'll answer how long it would take me to get over there if I can, and start heading that way. Few people ask "would you like to help me" do anything. The answers really are different.

That is, you aren't faking it by being nice. You are just not bringing in extra crap to the discussion. Can you do dinner tonight? Yes or no. Not, I'd rather go do something with someone else, but if I have to be social with you, I can.

It is tough, because society is actually highly rewarding on bringing extra crap to the discussion many times. In humor situations, everyone actually enjoys it. And for situations where there is a jerk, society actually rewards it by putting up with it.

Linus has been a tough one. Often the community has relied on his behavior to help keep other jerks in check. People like to talk about how he is abrasive to nvidia, but they really are somewhat abusing the spirit of the crowd, as well. Problem seems to be that it is tough to know when to use a tool in your disposal.

<comment><USER7>
         People like to talk about how he is abrasive to nvidia

That's a really good point. Overlooked in this discussion over Linus' manners are the times when he was abusive toward people who arguably deserved it, like nVidia who has historically not been a great community member.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm probably a person with not so great social skills. I'm a person of color.

I do not need SJW's to defend me. Please do not destroy our culture.

All of a sudden this movement to add "diversity" and other crap is just not right. I agree there is some casual racism/racism for the sake of racism in the community, but I am personally not even bothered and it has never affected me (I ignored them and they stopped and some of them now are my close friends). When I joined the industry, I felt a bit unwelcome, but just in a months no problem was ever there. I saw that people had a different culture then me, so I just over few months I adapted the same culture subconsciously.

The maintainers should always value merit over "diversity" or "women in tech" agendas and other stupid similar things. We're not a playground for your political agendas.

My personal contributions have been blocked several times, but it never bothered me. I did what I loved, and my contributions were committed after trying for a few times.

Instead of wondering why my commits weren't merged and blaming on xenophobia/racism/fascism/blameism/bla bla bla , I decided to look at the patterns of commits that were successfully accepted.

Every community has a different culture so if you cannot adopt what everyone is following, maybe this industry is not right for you.

<comment><USER11> >I do not need SJW's to defend me. Please do not destroy our culture.

All the SJW issues are like that, a group of people who feel they need to defend someone else. Like these people have solved all their own problems and can move on to "helping" everyone else.

I'm not going to get too fired up about it. But... I really cringe when I read _" We're trying to change the predominately white face of programming"_. But, they aren't saying they'll do that by promoting people of color, or by opening a new distro that designed to be contributed more by people focused on social justice.

IDK... At some point I wonder why the color of my skin is so important to the people "trying to help".

 _edit: LOL shy downvotes. Because you can 't tell me my skin color or physical features are important to my work - but you can't say that's not what this is all about either. Hackernews is becoming more and more like reddit :(_

<comment><USER12> The problem is this entire ideology is paradox.

Improving inclusivity through exclusivity filters.

Being accepting of everyone by closely monitoring all parameters of all individuals to determine if they should be accepted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IMO the most interesting part - especially relative to the discussions I've seen right here - is near the end.

"But if people at least realise that I'm not part of the disgusting underbelly of the internet that thinks it's OK to show the kind of behaviour you will find if you really have been reading up on the 'discussions' about the code of conduct, then even that will be a really good thing."

Yes indeed, if you look at many of the anti-CoC comments (e.g. in the "killswitch" thread) you get to see a lot of that underbelly. There are people who will oppose any kind of general rule restraining behavior, because that would prevent them from exercising their own more personal and arguably more subtle kind of coercion against those they don't like for whatever reason. The other alternative is for an even bigger bully to keep them in line, but I shouldn't need to explain how "might makes right" is even more problematic. Linus is deliberately stepping away from that bigger-bully role to give the alternative a try, but in the above excerpt he makes it pretty clear that he thinks there's a problem to be addressed. The creeps should consider themselves on notice, whether there's a CoC or not.

<comment><USER13> >There are people who will oppose any kind of general rule restraining behavior, because that would prevent them from exercising their own more personal and arguably more subtle kind of coercion against those they don't like for whatever reason.

Do you really, truly believe this is the reason why so many people are against Codes of Conduct in open-source projects? Can you point me to this mass of disillusioned bigots, expressing frustration at their inability to continue to act bigoted while within proximity to open-source?

Either you've been going to wildly different parts of the Internet than I have recently, or your understanding of the side of the argument opposite you is based on a practically-nonexistent strawman, which is causing you to be completely unable to understand where "the other side" is actually coming from.

<comment><USER5> "Do you really, truly believe this is the reason why so many people are against Codes of Conduct in open-source projects?"

I think there are many reasons. This is certainly not the only one, but it's one I've run into quite a bit. Keep in mind that people usually don't _realize_ how their behavior, or their acquiescence to others' behavior, is harming or excluding others. They feel no need for a CoC to support their side in any dispute, because the in-group already supports them. If any piling-on occurs, it's on their side. Thus they see only how a CoC might inhibit them in some (usually hypothetical) scenario, while remaining blind to how it might enable others. They oppose it "on principle" but it's a flawed principle.

But the point is not that _I_ believe that. The point is that _Linus_ clearly does (see quote) and he's willing to do something about it. If a CoC doesn't work, then I would expect to see him coming down personally on some of the worst offenders. I've known and worked with a few of them, so I for one would welcome that.

<comment><USER14> I truly believe you are misunderstanding Linus' email.

He is referring to overt white nationalists and racists. Like storm front types.

You seem to be referring to subconscious bias, which seems to be literally an endless accusation.

<comment><USER5> I truly believe you are misunderstanding my comments. Linus himself might indeed only be concerned with the extreme "Storm Front types" as you say, but the topic for the last three comments prior to yours was the people who act offended by his actions. Subconscious bias is relevant to them, even if it's not to him.

<comment><USER14> You literally wrote an assertion regarding what Linus thinks in the original comment.

<comment><USER5> Yes, and that assertion had nothing to do with subconscious bias. You're conflating statements made in different contexts. Why? What useful outcome do you expect from that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone else get a chuckle that out of the myriad of relevant quotes, the author selected, "He... once [described] an Intel fix as 'complete and utter garbage'".

Good for Linus, I'm happy that he's not looking to adjust his technical expectations:

"technically wrong is still technically wrong, and I won't start accepting bad code just to make people feel better about themselves."

<comment><USER16> They could have taken a quote from 2012:

" _"...should be retroactively aborted. Who the f+ck does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?"_"

<comment><USER17> That is just super funny. It always will be.

<comment><USER16> It is, absolutely.

If you view software development as entertainment.

If you view it asa profession, maybe not.

<comment><USER17> Not true. The fact that professional software developer sometimes uses profane language does not mean it is not funny.

I think Linus was actually trying to be funny with those statements. Some of us understand that humor, some of us don't.

<comment><USER18> I understand the humor, I just don't appreciate or see the value of "being funny" in a personally insulting way to a code commit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting that Torvalds describes himself as "not a people person", when he's a gifted communicator who has been tremendously successful at managing the community around Linux over many years. His current refinements are making a great thing even better.

<comment><USER20> This is more of a question than a critique on your comment, but:

Couldn't he still not be a people person _(perhaps a poor communicator)_, and still manage a successful community? I say that because historically it's been a bit of a meme around how forceful and abrasive Linus is. Yet, he's often right, or at the very least very informed.

He's a very smart man who has done very smart things. I'm not sure if the Linux community inherently means he's a gifted communicator. Eg, I don't think I could behave like Linus and make a Linux-like community - I think his talent and intelligence carry his lack of communication skills. Which is not a discredit to him, we're all different.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER19> Torvalds' written communications are incredibly well-composed, full of information and get his point across well. On the basis of his emails alone, he's a "gifted communicator" in my view. Not everyone who is as logically brilliant as him can write like that.

Despite that, I'm sure that when he says he's "not a people person" there's something to it. Maybe a certain difficulty reading people or anticipating their responses?

That those two things live together side-by-side, that's what I personally meant by "interesting".

<comment><USER21> IMO, the thing that he doesn't seem to understand is the difference between criticizing the implementation and criticizing the person. Pointing out flaws in the code is not the same as calling a person stupid. If he could just learn to explain why the code is bad most of his people problems would disappear.

Not all, since some people take criticism of their code poorly, but if you aren't committed to the highest quality code possible then you probably shouldn't be working on something like kernel development. There are some ways to reduce problems with those kinds of people though. Asking probing questions to get the person to think through the problems on their own to fix them for example. Or having a standards document that all kernel code is expected to conform to so you can just point out parts that don't conform to the standard.

<comment><USER22> "Asking probing questions to get the person to think through the problems on their own to fix them for example."

My impression that most of his blow ups happen after he has tried this approach unsuccessfully.

I am just a little tech lead but over the years I have found that with some people you have to yell at them from time to time because they don't understand feedback that was given nicely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If not for this guy - we wouldn't have Linux. I'd much rather work with honest person that can tell me how he really feels then nice spoken liars.

<comment><USER24> That's essentially a cliché false dichotomy. Wouldn't it be even nicer to work with someone who can express how they feel in a constructive and helpful manner?

<comment> rooam-dev Sometimes "constructive" requires more effort, which for an engineer could mean "overhead". Especially if communication is text based (email, chat, etc.), it's more difficult to express your emotions.

My imho of course.

<comment><USER4> As far as I can tell Linus's feedback is almost always constructive in that it generally points out precisely why he thinks something should or shouldn't that way. The problem is that he sometimes splices personal attacks and uses an overly aggressive tone which doesn't really help anything.

I can somewhat justify using a very corrosive tone if you're not in a place of power and you want to be sure that you're not ignored (I'm not a fan of it but pragmatically it sometimes gets the job done). However it's clearly not the case here, he has the power to reject any contribution he doesn't fancy. And his developer clout is huge enough that he'd still be heard if he criticized third party projects he doesn't maintain.

From a purely pragmatic point of view I don't see what his corrosive tone gets him. Actually I can easily see what it cost him, some devs have resigned from their maintainer position in the Linux kernel and probably many more who gave up contributing at all because they were worried they were going to be shot in flight.

<comment><USER25> You are highlighting the false dichotomy that a lot of folks in this thread-- and, if I'm being frank, not for good, decent, or ethical reasons--are piling in on.

You can do something that makes people upset without being an asshole.

It's really that simple.

"No, I won't merge this pull request because of X, Y, and Z." Somebody's probably not going to be happy. But you have not needed to _stoop_ to insulting them. You have not been an asshole. You have done your job, you have kept whatever level of high technical quality you care about. But you have not been an asshole.

It is not hard to do both, and if you are but-forring Linus's decision to maybe be less of an asshole it's probably look-in-the-mirror time.

<comment><USER26> Is it better to train myself to not be affected with insult ? If some one say to me "No, you stupid pile of sheet, I won't merge this pull request because of X, Y, and Z." I'll just ignore the insult part or at very least to not let myself negatively affected and move on.

<comment><USER25> No, it's not.

It is better to respond coolly to assholish behavior. But it is not better to allow it to remain unchallenged. Not challenging assholish behavior means that it becomes a community norm and is then incumbent upon everybody else to "train" themselves, as you say, to ignore the behavior of a minority of assholes. It hands the responsibility of defining what the culture _is_ to those assholes.

Letting the assholes normalize the culture is bad. It decreases uptake. It increases, even if people "train" themselves, the likelihood of burnout and of departure. And it makes the world, even if incrementally, a worse place.

<comment><USER26> Isn't is easier to change one person namely myself, rather than try to change one other person, let alone many?

The culture and the world always evolving and changing, it can be worse or better or whatever, most importantly for me is how can I make myself adapt to the every situation and make the best of it.

<comment><USER25> I don't care about "easier" and I don't think you should either. Why would "easier" be even on the radar?

"Changing yourself" and letting rot fester is of little value to anyone. Be so mildly discomforted as to push back on other people's nasty behaviors and you make the world a better place.

Do what is right.

<comment><USER26> Because is practical, obviously changing myself to adapt to every situation has value for me, it makes a world a better place for me. what is right is relative, this is what I think Right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _> But if people at least realise that I'm not part of the disgusting underbelly of the internet that thinks it's OK to show the kind of behaviour you will find if you really have been reading up on the 'discussions' about the code of conduct, then even that will be a really good thing._

And here is a perfect example of why so many people are alarmed by his CoC adoption. This. The idea that community leaders must make _institutional_ changes to signal that they - personally - arent's "the disgusting underbelly of the internet". Pause and think about it.

<comment><USER28> Actually, is this an example of what they call "virtue signaling"?

<comment><USER29> It's not virtue signaling because there's actually action behind the words. If there was just a statement without change or action, it would be virtue signaling.

<comment><USER28> Thank you. I get it now. It's one of those terms I'd heard often but never completely understood.

<comment><USER14> Virtue signaling can involve action. I disagree with the above definition.

Actually a really strong signal is an action that is a sacrifice, regardless of whether it has a real positive impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I question the professional experience of those suggesting that continuing to be an asshole is the preferable situation here ("but at least he's _HONEST_ "). That would simply not fly at my company.

It is absolutely possible to be kind when giving honest and constructive feedback and criticism. Empathy is a skill this industry needs to develop.

<comment><USER31> Are there more Europeans here in HN? Because this hard push for empathy and stuff it just feels... weird to me. Empathy as the ability to see through your own biases and understand others POV is good in every setting. Empathy as a way to not communicate directly is just a waste of time.

Most malicious people I've encountered in my career are the types that comes with smiles, corporate language and all that stuff.

<comment><USER32> 'Empathy' in most of these cases mean: don't act like a vitriolic douche.

Don't insult or belittle the person. Learn to critique without being an asshole about it.

On the other hand: _take_ criticism of your work without taking it personally. That's arguably a lot harder than the former, but it's gotta be done. It helps a lot when the person isn't being an asshole about the criticism though :)

<comment><USER30> It is indeed a two way street.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would like to see a scatter diagram with 'technical contribution' on one axis and 'CoC contribution' on the other axis, for all people involved.

<comment><USER34> If an improved CoC means that more people feel able and encouraged to contribute, does that then count in favor of the 'technical contribution' axis for the people who wrote it? If not, your plot isn't all that useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't need my computer tools to define my political/spiritual beliefs. In fact, I think Torvalds adopting something like this in relation to Linux is a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos.

I will be keeping my eyes peeled for alternatives that understand the division between spiritual beliefs and "forced agreement with an assertion by participation" that uses religious terminology that has quite a different meaning to me. So far, hurd and is promising.

<comment><USER36> It is indeed a deep betrayal of _a_ hacker ethos: in particular, Geek Social Fallacy #1 (Ostracizers Are Evil). And you know what? That's probably a good thing.

The radical inclusivity (i.e. exclude no one, for any reason) of the geek community led to some beautiful things. We took in the people nobody wanted around, and with their help, we built something special. But in our reluctance to exclude anyone, we forgot something important. We were all accused of dragging things down and ruining things for other people -it's part of what bound us together- but we neglected to address the fact that for some of us, _that was true_. And we became their enablers, and they _did_ drag us down and ruin things for everybody, because that's what they _do_ , and we did not insist that they change or leave. Many people preferred to just leave themselves, rather than confront the manchildren in our midst: a _de facto_ exclusion, rather than mandated by any sort of rule. We were, in essence, abused and manipulated by the people we should have kicked to the curb, and because of this, they took over.

This is ending. And that scares some people to death, and not even unreasonably so: these are people who were rejected by their societies all their life before finding geekdom, which they clung to because, in its refusal to reject anyone, it could never reject them. Anyone who remembers being an outcast would be scared by the possibility of geeks beginning to cast people out, because it opens the potential that _they_ might be cast out yet again. Who wouldn't fear that? Especially after years of growing unused to outcast status?

And yet, it has to be done. It should have been done a long time ago. Those who get cast out because of this still have the option that has been facing them since childhood: they can change. Because sometimes, the ostracizers are right.

<comment><USER37> Who, or what exactly are you talking about?

<comment><USER36> People are afraid of being cast out of the community because of the CoC, are they not?

<comment><USER37> I guess for what they'd consider unjust and bullshity reasons that have nothing to do with the project, yes. Publicised instances such as donglegate, opalgate, drupalgate, Brendan Eich all fit that mold.

But really I'm just wondering when you say things like "they did drag us down and ruin things for everybody", who exactly are you talking about? Examples? Every group will have its pariahs but I don't see hacker culture as being "ruined for everyone". Quite the opposite. They do eschew social norms, which I guess is more of a problem since open-source has been taken over by big business with the usual endless need for bureaucracy and PR.

<comment><USER38> In the "dongle" incident, both the men who made the jokes and the woman who tweeted about it were fired. People in the community seem to think it was badly handled all around. Someone on HN recently mentioned that the jokers found new jobs right away but the tweeter didn't.

If "Opalgate" means the attempt to remove Elia Schito, it failed.

If "Drupalgate" means the removal of Larry Garfield, he insisted on bringing elements of his fetish subculture into technical events.

Brendan Eich remained CTO of Mozilla even after his material support for discrimination became widely known. People opposed his promotion to CEO because his actions cast doubt on his ability to represent Mozilla's values and to look out for the interests of LGBT employees. He chose not to distance himself from his past decisions and eventually to resign. According to Mozilla, he declined to stay in another C-level role. He's currently the CEO of another company in the same market.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the history lesson. Yea, all seems pretty shitty, whether any incident succeeded or failed, or someone got kicked out or just put in the basement.

Interesting that all of these seemingly sprung out of some private action becoming publicly known, rather than the person's behavior on the project/job itself (as for Drupalgate, you claim he brought his fetish into technical events, but nothing I've read about it corroborates that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Here we go normalizing verbal abuses to just "not being polite enough". This culture is now so pervasive in our industry that people are wearing their rudeness to their fellow coworkers as a badge of honor. I have seen incredibly meek guys on the outside turn into monsters as soon as they get into their roles of lead devs or tech leads. Repeat after me - "Kindness is cool."

<comment><USER40> There's a huge difference between being 'very frank' and being a true douche. Both can be perceived as jerkoff but I think only the later really counts as that.

As far as 'meek guys' turning to jerks with a taste of power - it's very common for all types.

Without going into my background I had a chance to witness 100's of young people come into, and go out of power. Almost everyone 'over identifies' with their power when they first get it. It takes 'coming out of power' to have self reflection and awareness about it.

Tragically - so many people in their careers just go 'up' the power ladder and never develop any awareness. It takes going 'down' or 'laterally' a few notches to really internalize the lessons.

The situation I was in, I witnessed a lot of 'power rotation' i.e. people taking turns being lead/manager. It was a really, really powerful thing. Though this was not in high tech and a completely different field, not sure it would work in tech.

<comment><USER41> I'd love to read more about what you've seen with power rotation, with any specifics or stories you could give. It's not something I've heard before.

<comment><USER42> It's a feature of Boy Scouts and the patrol method, in which youth are encouraged to take on leadership positions for six-month periods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is something that has always bothered me about Linus. There are other extremely gifted programmers out there that don't seem to need to resort to this kind of persona. I always enjoyed hearing John Carmack speak because he is extremely smart and knowledgable and he doesn't look like he has a superiority complex.

But the real problem with Linus is the example he sets. I am not a kernel dev, so I don't know the validity of his rants but I assume he is mostly right. But this certainly sends a message to less-talented developers that it's okay to be a dick when you are right.

Ultimately I feel that the most important thing I have learned as a developer is to never associate your ego with your code. I've done that in the past and take great pains to not repeat it. Don't look at your PR as some great work of art that should be perfect. If both sides of the code review treat it as a collaborative process then you can both learn something from it.

<comment><USER44> What really bothers me, it when people start to speak about someone who "sends message", "sets wrong example" and so on.

It bothers me, when people think about others, like they are less intelligent. If you can see, that Linus's behaviour is wrong and shouldn't be followed, why do you think, that other could not see it? It is because all others are stupid children and they need to be led to the right direction, isn't it? You know, I'm russian, and I see a lot of this thinking around me, all the deeply patriotic and deeply religious people around me thinks like that. "We should restrict access to internet, for others do not get information they are too stupid to understand _properly_ ". I hate it, and probably extra-sensitive for such a thinking, and it really bothers me when I see it.

I can suggest different way of thinking: if Linus's behaviour is wrong, then it gives you endless opportunity to illustrate your point with real world examples. You can compare Carmack with Torvalds because Torvalds exists and being himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The idea of faking it until you make it is exactly what Linus needs. Most of the point of communication is for the other person, especially giving feedback on patches. We all need to vent but we shouldn't vent at the people below us in an organization. Venting is for a counselor, and maybe a close peer? And it's ok if he's frustrated with people, he just shouldn't take it out on them.

Maybe he could find someone to get his own frustrations out to, while only sharing the productive, practical code related aspects with his developers.

<comment><USER46> Personally I consider fake it until you make it an incredibly dangerous ideal. That is how you get the Great Leap Forward, Banzai Charges, and Theranos. It leads to far too many delusions that become the seeds of downfall.

Better to say in the case of Theranos state that the initial idea is proving non-viable but we have assembled a good talent base in biotech. We technically could liquidate the existing investment but that wouldn't work well for recovering the assets. We can pivot to find tests that do work on fingertip blood other than existing glucose or other areas of research instead would have kept Holmes out of prison and potentially gotten a success out of it. Failure happens and an honest postmortem with a way forward is better than going ponzi.

<comment><USER45> It is quite a stretch to compare making yourself be kind to a colleague or underling despite your own frustrations with defrauding investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I feel that Linus makes a good role model in the sense that he has real-world communication problems that he both recognizes and is attempting to overcome. This is not an easy thing to do and a lot of people undermine this reality.

</comment><comment><USER48> "fake it" isn't even necessarily. Just finding new ways to express the same thing that is received differently and a different approach the sender takes when sending. It's all about learning skills and how to deploy them best.

That's not to say it is EASY, but it isn't a monumental change IMO. It's just a personal API change ;)

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm all for civility, but we (tech culture, primarily Silicon Valley) are starting to move past civility, towards expecting everyone to self-censor and walk around on eggshells in order to avoid even potentially offending someone. I've worked with my share of unpleasant assholes, and am glad that professional, civil conversation is back on the menu, but the pendulum is still swinging. Worried about where it will end up.

</comment><comment><USER50> There are a lot of us like Linus. The easy solution is not emotional counseling, it's an assistant/editor who can tone down his public comments. This is not a new problem.

<comment><USER22> True. Have someone do a quick check before sending. "Do you really want to say it that way?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think this comes across as incredibly nuanced and thoughtful.

Often we only see the outer surface of what people are actually like, and make judgments on their character based on that.

</comment><comment><USER52> To the person who said (since deleted or moderated) that Linus changed because "they" had dirt on him : his daughter signed the "Post-Meritocracy Manifesto" and is into "intersectional feminism" so I think a more pragmatic answer is that she convinced him to change.

<comment><USER40> There's no need for intersectionalism in this at all.

In fact, I'd argue it's wrong.

Intersectionalism would argue that peoople of different backgrounds must have special treatment.

There's no need for that whatsoever.

All we need is for people to not personally attack or demean others.

After that ... people should be free to be more 'candid' at the possibly cost of upsetting someone, or more 'sensitive' at the possibly cost of the message being lost in sugar coating as they feel suited.

Linus can be harsh as long as it's valid criticism of a subject (or maybe big corp), not a person.

Beyond that he's fully within his rights to say whatever. He does not need to treat people different given whatever background they have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't understand, what forced him to have to change his behavior? As far as i know he has the highest authority of linux kernel. To me he his kind of guy who can say fuck you, my way or highway. Which i admire that.

<comment><USER53> Because he knows it's only a matter of time until someone grabs an email of his from 1998 and uses it as the centerpiece of a twitter shitstorm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> As someone who doesn't give a damn about other people so I treat everyone (except family and the few friends I have) with the same curtness, here's hoping what Linus said here is just an "extra mile" thing (but even that sets a not necessarily good example). I never insult anyone, but I'm also never friendly to anyone, beyond a perfunctory smile when buying something from a cashier for example.

I'm similarly short on text. Linus saying that he could be more polite tells me that even that is not "PC" enough and, if so, that's a problem. Nobody is owed any friendliness or niceness, just acknowledgement, and even that only if the other person needs us.

In short, I thought he just needed to stop insulting people, but that that aside, there was no problem with his communication, apparently that's not the general consensus. Or I'm hoping I'm reading the situation wrong.

</comment><comment><USER55> Something I don't think he has internalized yet is that it's not about "politeness" or "cursing." It's about _abuse_ , which is still possible while being polite and without cursing.

<comment><USER17> Have you internalized that cursing is not necessarily abuse? Linus has basically just being angry to people and cursed.

<comment><USER55> Insulting people based on the work they produce is abuse.

<comment><USER17> Dictionary definition for abuse is: "treat with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly."

I don't think Linus has ever treated anyone with cruelty or violence.

Saying to someone "shut up" or that their specific work item is garbage, is not abuse.

<comment><USER55> Linus regularly and repeatedly was cruel to people when he perceived they made mistakes. Examples of his behavior are easy to find, and widely cited in any discussion on HN about it.

<comment><USER17> No, he wasn't cruel to people. If someone makes a mistake and one reacts to that with strong language is not cruel. It's actually love. People make stupid mistakes. Making them and everyone else understand that certain stuff is not acceptable is important.

Was it absolutely necessary or optimal to react that strongly? No. But not cruel.

<comment><USER55> _Insulting_ people is necessarily cruel. It is done to make the one saying the insult feel better at the expense of the one insulted. And insulting people is not necessary when correcting them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Adding to the drama, I wonder what Stallman has to say about all this...

<comment> DC-3 He wrote a very brief email.

[https://i.redd.it/1lbta0g910n11.png](https://i.redd.it/1lbta0g910n11.png)

<comment><USER57> That email is just so Stallman. You have to enjoy his single-mindedness.

<comment> DC-3 The world could descend into apocalypse and he'd still be typing curt dispatches about terminology from his libreboot thinkpad.

<comment><USER58> Strangely, that's a comforting thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I remember looking at Linux's angrier style maybe 15 years ago (I would have been 22) and not being bothered. Someone made a stupid mistake and was getting a bollocking.

Looking at it as a 37 year old last week, I'm surprised a grown man needed to be so aggressive. You can destroy the opinion or the behavior using reason without the aggression, which distracts.

I like that Linux is changing this, though I do have concerns about the CoC being used for political purposes (eg, recent harassment of Ted Tso).

<comment><USER60> > I do have concerns about the CoC being used for political purposes

That's the CoC's entire purpose. Its author (the same person behind the post- meritocracy manifesto) has said that yes, the CoC _is_ a political document.

<comment><USER61> Being political isn't a problem. Free Software is political.

mjg59 put this far better than I could:

> A reminder that free software is fundamentally about breaking down barriers > preventing people from participating in a social endeavour that grants them > more control over their computers, and anyone who argues against that > process is not helping the cause of free software

> Some of those barriers are technical (DRM, proprietary software, > undocumented hardware) and some are social (unwelcoming communities, abusive > maintainers). You don't get to focus on one category and deny the other.

> Alleged free software advocates who defend abusive individuals aren't > helping the cause of free software by doing so. Push back.

> "If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution" \- the GNU > manifesto by Richard Stallman, 1985.

[https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1042709376442687490](https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1042709376442687490)

<comment><USER59> mjg's quote was concerning ethics and abuse, and does not mention politics.

The concern is that the CoC itself may be used to abuse individuals.

Asides from the Tso example, there was someone else harassed because, outside of a project, they expressed a sexual preference for male dominant/female submissive roles.

<comment><USER38> Can you explain what you mean about Ted Ts'o? I know there's a story going around that people are calling him a rape apologist because he didn't endorse the CoC. People have called him a rape apologist for years because of arguments he made about rape.

If your other example is Larry Garfield, he's part of a subculture that's controversial even in BDSM circles, and he insisted on bringing elements of that subculture into technical events. Also, the official position seems to be that he didn't actually violate Drupal's code of conduct, but they removed him anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> > That has now been replaced by a more detailed Code of Conduct - <USER2> > retains the acronym, but attempts to be more inclusive and eliminate > insulting and derogatory comments and behaviour.

To include only this short paragraph about the new CoC and omit any reference to the huge controversy this have generated in the community is extremely biased reporting on BBC's part.

<comment><USER24> _omit any reference to the huge controversy this have generated_

That's something that hasn't happened, though. It's a storm in a teacup, like all this stuff is.

<comment><USER25> Yes, and this is important to understand for those who happen to be browsing by: there is a political faction on the internet who really would like people to believe that there is some Huge Controversy about the Contributor Covenant or about any of the principals involved or this or that.

But there isn't. Sure, there are some mad people. But they are a rounding error of give-a-shit and their political position, for it is a political position--specifically, status quo regressiveness camouflaged as neutrality[0]--depends on manufacturing consent that does not exist.

[0] - I have yet to see someone claim that they're "not being political" who...isn't. Or somebody claim that somebody else is "being political" when that claimant is not advocating for some nasty stuff. The world's political and somebody trying to frame "politics" as a negative is trying to get you over a barrel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I think the explanation for Linus' behavior is this: when he looks at works that he believes are technically wrong, he's probably displeased, frustrated and afraid that other contributions with the same technical issues might go through unnoticed.

As a result, he sometimes insults the code and the person, probably because that relieves those negative emotions, "compensates" for the pain he had to endure reviewing the technically wrong work and makes his opinion as loud as possible so that the likelihood that other contributions have the same issues is minimized.

The solution is for him to be more emotionally accepting of the fact that some people are technically less skilled and some contributions are not well done and just accept the negative feelings without having to insult others to compensate, while also expressing better when he feels that a mistake should be carefully avoided in the future as it might otherwise happen again.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm far from perfect and have made plenty of poor comments.

IMO, these happen when there is an underlying organizational problem. It's not tolerance of bad behavior that's the problem, tolerance of bad behavior just means that the organization is unwilling to address the real problems.

In my direct experience, I was part of an organization that didn't train newcomers in process or define clear divisions of labor. The organization made no effort to accommodate it's need for uninterrupted programmer time.

As the organization fixed its _management_ problems, I got less feedback about these kind of remarks. It also helped that when these kinds of remarks happen, management realized it is not doing its part to direct the organization well.

</comment><comment><USER14> The article literally quotes him out of context, then prints his full email showing they quoted him out of context, and hopes you won't notice????

He didn't call the Linux community "a morass of nastiness" ... he was referring to Twitter mobs.

How could the article get that so wrong?

</comment><comment><USER65> The only functional change out of this whole drama is that now every project will eventually come to be run by SJWs.

Looks like the main change that the COC will introduce from previous status quo is that anyone anytime can be Brendan Eiche'd out of an open source project whereas previously the understanding was that you could accept code contribution from Alex Jones himself as long as the code contribution to project itself was reasonable.

Edit: I should add that I'm a non-white person. Shameful that adding this piece of information might bring some more credibility to my input.

</comment><comment><USER66> Fair enough, honestly. As someone who's broadly sympathetic to his managerial style, I totally understand the desire to distance himself from those in the 'underbelly of the internet' who use an 'anti PC / SJW' stance to (poorly) mask their own bigotry.

</comment><comment><USER67> tl;dr

> "Will everybody be happy? No. People who don't like my blunt behaviour even > when I'm not being actively nasty about it will just see that as 'look, > nothing changed'. I'm trying to get rid of my outbursts, and be more polite > about things, but technically wrong is still technically wrong, and I won't > start accepting bad code just to make people feel better about themselves."

</comment><comment><USER68> Its confusing. Linus is ok to have the post-meritocratic COC at the same time will not accept the code that is low quality code. So he is saying you can have all the COC but i will not follow it.

</comment><comment><USER69> Does anyone else find it weird how so many people can think Linus is utterly brilliant and thoughtful, can agree with him on almost everything he's done and said up to this point, but fall back on the belief that he's been conspired against and corrupted when he says things like:

> "...I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but > honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as > the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white > nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or > transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much > political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance > look bad.

> "And don't get me wrong, please - I'm not making excuses for some of my own > rather strong language. But I do claim that it never ever was any of that > kind of nastiness. I got upset with bad code, and people who made excuses > for it, and used some pretty strong language in the process. Not good > behaviour, but not the racist/etc claptrap some people spout.

> "So in the end, my 'I really don't want to be too PC' stance simply became > untenable. Partly because you definitely can find some emails from me that > were simply completely unacceptable, and I need to fix that going forward. > But to a large degree also because I don't want to be associated with a lot > of the people who complain about excessive political correctness."

I dunno, maybe if he was being brilliant and thoughtful for all those years, he's still... being brilliant and thoughtful now?

<comment><USER70> Unfortunately, we've come to the point in online discourse where any form of self-restraint or politeness is seen by some as excessive political correctness, and accepting any form of nuance is giving in to SJW propaganda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> We couldn't have hoped for a better outcome, I think. This is the perfect outcome.

</comment><comment><USER72> His quotes about political correctness are pretty interesting. Basically that neo-Nazis have tried to brand themselves as "just practical people against excessive political correctness," but really that's just a facade covering their true hate and racism. But now, if you're ACTUALLY just someone who's against excessive political correctness, you risk being associated with neo- Nazis.

I'd consider myself pretty left-wing - for compassion towards others, very strongly against racism, sexism and homophobia, very pro immigration and multiculturalism. Still, I do often find current levels of political correctness a bit much - like if someone uses he/she, they're almost never intentionally being anti-trans, so who cares? Or simply many on the left flying into outrage too easily. But it's hard to express these views now, because neo-Nazis have been putting up this facade of "just against political correctness," when in fact there's real hate behind it. And now many on the left take any deviance from political correctness to indicate a neo-Nazi. Not a great situation, and certainly not one that encourages people to have productive conversations/disagreements.

<comment><USER64> > Basically that neo-Nazis have tried to brand themselves as "just practical > people against excessive political correctness,"

Don't conflate the alt-right with neo-nazis. Neo-nazis are people who explicitly define themselves as such. Other people who have the mindset that leads to things like nazism don't realize it. They really aren't trying to hide anything; they just have certain fears and concerns that the left isn't empathetic enough to address.

<comment><USER72> FWIW, I was referring to actual neo-Nazi types, people with a real hatred for other races, who try to put it behind a facade of standard conservatism. Similar to what Linus was talking about here:

> Because I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, > but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp > as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white > nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or > transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much > political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance > look bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> damn. we need more linus, not less.

</comment><comment> another-cuppa I guarantee this will not increase kernel quality, nor will it increase the number of contributions from women.

<comment><USER74> Why not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> How will Linux ever recover? I want kernel to be based and red-pilled.

</comment><comment><USER76> > Because I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, > but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp > as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white > nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or > transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much > political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance > look bad.

> ...

> But if people at least realise that I'm not part of the disgusting > underbelly of the internet that thinks it's OK to show the kind of behaviour > you will find if you really have been reading up on the 'discussions' about > the code of conduct, then even that will be a really good thing.

So the obnoxious Manosphere who are the most (only?) vocal critics of the new CoC forced his hand in the first place. How fittingly ironic.

</comment><comment><USER77> Some people are true leaders; some people are true bullies. This is a free world, you can choose your role. I'm choosing to stay away from bullies.

<comment><USER78> > I'm choosing to stay away from bullies.

Who are the bullies in your opinion? Don't be shy, name and shame!</comment></comment>


A new JavaScript pattern that saved my project - <AUTHOR> http://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/namespacing-in-javascript/

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't really consider this as a "new" pattern, it's been around for as long as I can remember. It's pretty popular in jQuery plugins.

I would recommend, however, against declaring the functions directly on the object you're putting them into. Declare them somewhere else in the closure and just assign them by name on the object you're creating. This way at least the functions are shared instead of being created every time a new object is created.</comment>


Fear Not Deflation - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/12/23/fear-not-deflation/

<comment><USER2> I hope there are better arguments for the deflationary nature of Bitcoin than this article.

The author uses the utterly senseless definition of deflation as a change in the _total_ money supply, instead of _per capita_ money supply. If Bitcoin becomes more popular, its asset value increases because demand for it has increased, not due to "political numéraires" (whatever those are). Increasing the population but keeping the money supply fixed is fundamentally deflationary, and Bitcoin's "population" has the potential for large growth.

Second, it's astonishing that the author would approvingly quote a passage like this:

 _Deflation rewards the prudent saver and punishes the profligate borrower. The way a society, like an individual, becomes wealthy is by producing more than it consumes. In other words, by saving, not borrowing._

This is naive bullionism taken to a whole new level of insanity, with physical gold replaced by numbers in a file. Saving is equated with producing, as if putting my bitcoin wallet on a thumb drive and stuffing it under my mattress starts up a factory. Entirely absent from this morality play is the prudent investor, who borrows or spends out of savings to buy capital goods with the hope of increasing production, and is punished.

</comment><comment><USER3> Deflation is a disaster for anyone with debts as the value of them grows rather than being inflated away. So while it may be OK in the bit coin world (as I don't believe there are any significant bit coin denominated debts) deflation would cause massive economic contraction in the real world as debts would grow reducing spending and there is reason to believe it would not converge rapidly to an equilibrium (certainly not one that people would like).

<http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs> <http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/vol06/keen/keen.html>

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't this be compensated for by lower rates for lending?

<comment><USER3> Interest probably wouldn't fall below zero. Also no incentive to lend money rather than hold so not so much incentive to offer good rates anyway.

Savings rates might well go negative though.

Steve Keen as linked to is well worth a read rather than my first approximation guesses.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't inflation just encourage a different type of hoarding (ie. in physical assets like real estate or gold)?

<comment><USER3> Well when you buy real assets someone is selling and they are left with inflating cash they need to spend on something.

If someone is investing in productive assets (companies, rentable property) for their sustained revenue potential that isn't a bad thing. Spending on goods and services will add demand to the economy and money will circulate.

There is also more reason to borrow in an inflating economy which adds money and demand to the economy. Obviously borrowing can get too high and needs moderation if bubbles are to be avoided but gentle adjustment is needed to prevent massive swings in aggregate demand.

Also I'm not arguing for high inflation just that even a couple of percent deflation could be really bad.

<comment><USER4> Ok. Thanks. One more question.

Isn't there some circular logic at play when you say that deflation would cause people to simply hold onto cash rather than invest in productive enterprises. Because if nobody invests in productive assets, then there will be no more goods entering the economy, therefore there will be no deflation of the currency to worry about in the first place...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since neither Forbes nor the author, Jon Matonis, saw fit to point this out, I will.

This is an op-ed piece, written by a board member of the Bitcoin Foundation. Regardless of the merit of the article, it should have been explicitly stated in the piece.

<comment><USER6> The prominent author bio in the right column discloses his Bitcoin Foundation affiliation, and as a signed 'contributor' piece, it's 'opinion' by format and convention. (They also include a "The opinions expressed are those of the writer" note under the bio.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Personally, I don't consider mild deflation to be any worse than mild inflation. A stable currency is better for everyone. Things get increasingly bad as the rate moves away from 0% in either direction, especially, if it occurs in an unpredictable way.

As it happens, most central banks aim for a stable currency with a slight tendency towards inflation. My policy change would really only be minor: make the inflation target -1% to 1% rather than 1% to 3% (I didn't completely pull that number out of my ass; apparently, that is the Bank of Canada target range).

<comment><USER8> The advantages of monetary stability come with a stable growth rate, because contracts are bets on the future growth rate of money and stability means those bets can be made reliably.

You have proposed a stable CPI growth rate of 0%. There are two problems with this: the first (more important) problem is that arguably stable money supply is more desirable than stable CPI. During a downward supply shock, tightening the money supply can lead to a financial crisis by causing contracts made before the shock to fail. In that instance, rising CPI is good because it reflects a real fall in supply (prices _should_ be higher).

The second problem and the reason why they shoot for 2% CPI inflation is that many prices are sticky downwards so an average CPI growth rate of 0% leads to problems. For example, people are known to find a paycut of 1% under 0% inflation more aversive than a pay increase of 1% under 2% inflation. As a result, during deflationary periods wages are often frozen at levels higher than equilibrium, leading to greater unemployment.

Despite these reservations, I agree that 0% CPI growth would be an acceptable policy, particularly as opposed to erratic policy as we saw in 2008–9. But you should recognize that moving from 2% to 0% would itself be a strong downward demand shock that in most countries would likely cause a recession.

<comment><USER7> <quote>But you should recognize that moving from 2% to 0% would itself be a strong downward demand shock that in most countries would likely cause a recession.</quote>

Any sudden policy change is going to lead to turmoil and a likely recession. I did not suggest the change should be sudden.

Also, a target of 0% does not prevent appropriate price increases or decreases any more than a target of 2%. It is a goal not a mandate. As long as everyone knows what to expect, plans can be made reliably.

<comment><USER8> > As long as everyone knows what to expect, plans can be made reliably.

Expectations are the flaw with CPI targeting.

Toy example: imagine NGDP is $100 and the CPI is 100. Fed guidance says 0% CPI growth. I have income $10 (note that NGDP is aggregate nominal income). I sign a deal with you for you to finance my house and promise you for $7 next year, assuming I"ll live off of $3.

Now a supply shock hits, with enough pressure to raise CPI to 110. The fed responds by dropping NGDP so now national income is $90 (I know the math here isn't exact but it's irrelevant to the point). If I'm the average person, I take a 10% income hit, dropping me to $9. I still owe you $7. My consumption now has to drop from $3 to $2, a 50% drop! I might not be able to do it so I might default on my loan. In any case I'm really screwed, and if I do default (and many other people also default) we'll have a financial crisis _on top_ of our supply shock. One way to think about this is that the debtor has to eat the creditor's consumption haircut. Europe, cough cough.

In contrast, under NGDP targeting, NGDP remains the same, prices rise 10%. Now my income will still be $10, I will pay my creditor $7, and my only hit is the 10% inflation. My creditor has the same exposure.

I'm not trying to create sympathy for debtors, of course you could argue that they were over-leveraged and deserved what they got. But under NGDP targeting, debts will always be repayable in principle (because enough money will exist in the system) so systemic risk is minimized; minimizing that systemic risk is good for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sorry for off topic but I must say I'm shocked at how bad is the experience browsing forbes site - popup, ad redirect page, ridiculously overcrowded article page (<http://i.imgur.com/uARSR.jpg>). Just wow.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really wish Ripple got more press. Instead we get stupid articles like this that is downright painful to read. Eli explained why it was stupid way better than I ever could, so read that comment for motivation.

Basically Ripple is the anti-thesis of bitcoin as it works solely on trust between the participant and does therefore catch the essential mechanism of how all fiat economies work.

</comment><comment><USER11> This has got to be one of the dumbest fucking things I've ever seen. Its only real point is that commodity-based currencies and deflations weaken government.

Furthermore, its idiotic praise of _societal-level saving_ is pure nonsense. My income is someone else's expenditure, my credit is someone else's debt. Money can obscure this fact, not alter it. In order for me to save, someone else must spend.

Do they _have_ to spend beyond their means and go into debt or reduce their own savings for me to save? Well, _that's_ where the issue of money comes in.

If we have a standard-issue modern currency, ie: slow but steady rate of inflation targeted by a central bank, then some amount of _new money_ enters the economy each year. As long as total new savings in the year don't exceed this amount, _then and only then_ can everyone save at the same time.

In a gold-backed inherently-deflationary currency without fractional reserve banking or government fiat to create inflation.... all savings is zero-sum. Such a currency is indeed inherently deflationary, and the deflation _spirals_ as those who can actually afford to save come to own larger and larger portions of the total bullion supply -- which they are of course saving!

You end up with only one way to put aggregate demand back into the system: credit. Which is exactly what has happened to our real societies in the past three decades of anti-inflationary, anti-labor public policies! Problem is, that makes the deflation truly become a _crisis_ , because even a 2% annual deflation is in fact an extra 2% interest compounding on any and all nominal debts.

Deflation is bad for the same reason inflation is bad, namely that an unexpected change in currency value alters the real terms of almost all business contracts _ex post facto_. But deflation is also _distinctly_ bad for _another_ reason: once it kicks in, there is no incentive for net creditors/savers to engage in _any_ real production of _anything_. Their biggest incentive becomes the generation and continuation of nominal debts (whose real value accumulates a deflation bonus). Worse, as the deflation happens and alters contracts ex-post-facto, people's debts become unpayable. So now the _creditors_ go bankrupt too, and the only people left safe are the savers who _literally_ stored physical bullion in a physical location. Anyone with so much as a _bank account_ finds out they were actually a creditor, and are now _completely fucked_.

Deflation is a wet dream of survivalist "gold, beans, and ammo" nutters, and the world's worst preventable nightmare for everyone else!

<comment><USER12> _> This has got to be one of the dumbest fucking things I've ever seen._

It's pretty dumb. Really, thoroughly dumb. But you've added some real bloopers of your own:

 _> If we have a standard-issue modern currency, ie: slow but steady rate of inflation targeted by a central bank, then some amount of new money enters the economy each year. As long as total new savings in the year don't exceed this amount, then and only then can everyone save at the same time._

This is not true. Not even close. First, you are conflating two different concepts: (a) an increase in the money supply and (b) inflation. Inflation is often the result of an increase in the money supply, but that's not what it is: inflation is an increase in how much stuff costs. That is, it's a general increase in prices.

And prices can move broadly in one direction or another for many reasons other than a change in the supply of money; the price-level depends also on how fast money circulates, on the level of supply and demand for goods and services, and on all sorts of related factors.

Second, the possibility of saving does not depend on an increase in the supply of money. Doubtless you are thinking of saving in accounting terms: to save means to have more money later than you have now, so in aggregate that must mean that there needs to be more money in the economy tomorrow than there is today.

No. Saving is one side of the saving-investment process, which is about doing useful work and creating new things. That work and those things are abstractly called _wealth_ and have _value_ ; wealth and value can be denominated in money, and people use money to facilitate the transfer of different sorts of wealth. But wealth is not money, and saving is about accumulating wealth, not money.

You're absolutely correct that if saving were merely about financial wealth, about increasing one's "value on paper", then we would need more money to gain wealth as a society. But it's not, and we don't need more money to accumulate wealth as a society precisely because it's not the money we value, but the _things_ and the _results_ of useful work. And so people trade their money for new things and results, and we can grow wealthier without increasing the money supply.

 _> In a gold-backed inherently-deflationary currency without fractional reserve banking or government fiat to create inflation.... all savings is zero-sum._

On the savings part, see above. On the part of about a gold-backed currency, or really any commodity currency, here's the thing: they're not inherently deflationary, or even fixed in supply. It's just that growth of the money supply is tied to things like improvements in mining technology or the results of prospecting. What I find really funny when I hear Ron Paul or somebody advocate a return to the gold standard and the abolition of the Federal Reserve is that they're really arguing for handing over monetary policy to the mining industry!

 _> Deflation is bad for the same reason inflation is bad, namely that an unexpected change in currency value alters the real terms of almost all business contracts ex post facto._

Yes, right. (Though it's really _uncertainty_ about changes in the price level that inhibit useful economic activity. Change itself is not bad, but its unpredictability is.)

 _> ... But deflation is also distinctly bad for another reason: once it kicks in, there is no incentive for net creditors/savers to engage in any real production of anything._

There is less incentive, not none. Deflation represents a real income stream (that is, a constant potential accumulation of goods and services), but just as you might choose to work more (or harder) to increase your income, so you might during a deflationary period.

<comment><USER13> > What I find really funny when I hear Ron Paul or somebody advocate a return > to the gold standard and the abolition of the Federal Reserve is that > they're really arguing for handing over monetary policy to the mining > industry!

Not really, mining industry still can produce only fixed amount of gold, while central bankers can potentially print infinite amount of paper money.

(I'm not advocate of gold standard)

<comment><USER14> +1...

And seen that unlimited QEs have been announced one can only conclude that our current system is deeply broken.

The probability that it ends up in a _really_ ugly way is far from zero.

I could tell that I'd take the "gold-backed, 5% inflation per year max no matter what" anytime over the unlimited QEs we have now.

We're sitting on a time bomb and it has the potential to change the western world as we know it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> tell it to the guy who goes from an 80% loan-to-value on his house to owing way more than the house is worth.

who's going to build a factory if building the factory is going to be significantly cheaper next year, not to mention everything it produces?

who's going to hire anyone if you can hire them cheaper next year?

especially in a country like the US, where everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs, deflation is a disaster.

<comment><USER16> "who's going to build a factory if building the factory is going to be significantly cheaper next year, not to mention everything it produces?"

That statement is true of just about any technology I can think of, and yet investment in tech doesn't seem to have collapsed as a result.

<comment><USER15> good point. but tech progress is fast, and tech margins for the leader are gigantic. so you recoup your investment in 3 years before the next generation. then the next generation is 10x better, so that motivates building the following factory with high margins.

you can't build a new power plant that makes 10x better power than the last one. and yet prices are falling. so basically you have to wait a lot longer until the old plant is obsolescent, or only build a power plant when the power shortage gets really bad and margins so high that you would recoup quickly.

falling prices mean high real interest rates, fewer projects meet high hurdle rates, less investment, less growth and employment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I agree with the author of TFA that Krugman is wrong. Just as every single Keynesians out there: they have never predicted anything more than short term (and what really hurts them is that there are economists from other school of thought who can repeatedly predict correctly over the long term. Ouch.).

And I also agree that we should not fear deflation.

However hoping that deflation will happen would be like waiting for some pink unicorn to show up: both the U.S. and the Japan have announced "unlimited QEs".

In order words: endless money printing to prevent the utter failure of the Keynesian system.

We'll not discuss the fact that if money is free to print this is not true capitalism at work (because the amount of new money in circulation doesn't correspond to the new wealth created)... But hey, this is a Keynes' world right, so what do you expect.

Could _anyone_ explain me how we'll anything other than inflation (and possibly a _very_ severe inflation) when, worldwide, the biggest economies are doing "unlimited QEs"?

If deflation takes place I'd be very surprised (and very happy too, because I'm a "saver"). I did hedge myself against inflation/hyper-inflation but I still do have lots of cash/savings.

I'd _love_ deflation to take place but with unlimited QEs it's never going to happen.</comment>


The badge of ignorance - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@emilepetrone/the-badge-of-ignorance-185c85ac9a30

<comment><USER2> The people who react that way towards not just ignorance, but inquisitiveness, are plainly assholes. If you do this, you are an asshole, too.

I experienced this sort of condescension all through medical school, and my experience is not unique. There is nothing more embarrassing, deflating, and discouraging than being made to feel like an idiot in front of your peers because you could not recall a piece of information, or because a question of yours was deemed too basic and simple for an expert to waste their time answering. That is how you stunt curiosity and instill destructive self-doubt. My most beloved teachers are those who exercised patience and did not treat any question as beneath them. I didn't take advantage of it. In fact, I was more motivated to learn and to return to discuss new ideas and concepts.

This reflects on a wider social view in which coming across as ignorant or not knowing the answer to a question is perceived as a sign of weakness. If you don't know something, you don't admit it and instead bullshit your way to perceived expertise.

My point is, people who do this are a net negative to your growth and society at large. It's taken me a while to grow comfortable with not knowing _a lot_ , and to accept that there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. When I encounter people like this, I view them as nothing more than assholes who are not worth interacting with, and move on to finding the answer I need. What saddens me is that there are many who are stopped dead on their path to learning.

/rant

<comment><USER3> >The people who react that way towards not just ignorance, but inquisitiveness, are plainly assholes.

Anecdotally speaking, such people know more than a beginner, but are very, very far from being an expert themselves.

On a board dedicated to learning English you can see people who can barely speak English scoff at "noobs" who can't tell the difference between "some" and "any". Math forums are full of people who never progressed beyond undergrad math laughing at those who have hard time distinguishing between contrapositive and contradiction.

It's a symptom of mediocrity and the vast majority of us, humans, are mediocre.

<comment><USER4> > Anecdotally speaking, such people know more than a beginner, but are very, > very far from being an expert themselves.

I've met some assholes who are experts. It's just that real experts are rare, asshole or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm saddened every time I see supposed experts or 'knowers' react with disdain to simple questions. Even if you've completely forgotten that you were once the ignorant one, shouldn't you at least be happy and helpful when somebody else wants to learn your craft? What is that makes some people so inclined to act as if they're the superior one?

<comment><USER6> It's the "Curse of knowledge" that haunts all experts, and which they have to consciously struggle against.

Our brains optimize very aggressively when it comes to mastery. Our old "the beginner's mind" neural connections are some of the first to go. The ability to empathize (via modeling said mind) is "optimized away" with them.

People say that "Those who cannot do, teach," but the corollary -- "Those who do, cannot teach" \-- often applies, as well.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure this explanation holds water. Plenty of experts have managed to keep their beginner's mind, and they are often the very best in their field. In lots of fields, keeping an open, learning mind is an important part of being considered a leader, so it should never be 'optimized away'.

I'm also not saying anything about empathizing, even just an intellectual appreciation for somebody learning your matter should be enough to not lash out and be a dick. And it surprised me that there are so many that fail to bring up even that little appreciation.

<comment><USER6> I agree: plenty of experts have done just that, and I would further posit that keeping that beginner's mind is one reason _why_ they're so good. It distinguishes them from the majority who go the easier, more natural route of letting their minds forget.

Ideally, intellectual appreciation would be enough. We're very complicated creatures, though, and the thing we called "empathy" is a complicated, multifaceted phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's my oh-so important and unpopular opinion, because I feel like wasting 10 minutes.

>If you've ever tried to learn a new skill, you've experienced that range of reaction.

I actually haven't, because in the case of let's say, programming, I learned most everything myself. I read and google'd instead of bothering other people for every little problem.

 _I 'm really not trying to be a jerk - honest - but hearing the same very simple questions asked again and again is tiring. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the "jack asses"_. Maybe they act like this for a reason, they are humans just like you after all.

I know that I don't mind helping but it sometime feels "like people never learn", imho that's often why others won't help you or will groan at your cluelessness. Most of the time you could google your questions and get an answer immediately, that's what I did and that's still what I do. This is especially true for Python, what you're learning. You can often just copy paste a working piece of code from the very first result, no thinking involved.

>The difference between the knowledgeable and the ignorant is that the knowledgeable took it on the chin, and kept going.

That's where I disagree. If you really need help, and if you at least tried to find a solution, mention it and people will help you. _I will personally go out of my way to help you if it looks like you actually want and try to learn._

Questions like "What's the difference between a list and a set?" and "A server does what?" show that you haven't done your homework ! _It 's a bit rude to expect people to spoonfeed you all the way and then call them assholes when they get bored of it._

>When people scoff at your questions, just move on until you find the answer. Know that up front, and when you see it, ignore it.

Or perhaps, try to understand why they scoff at your question in the first place. Calling them "ass holes" and ignoring the issue seems a bit short sighted.

>Just know when people balk at your badge, it's means you are on the right path. Keep pushing.

Maybe "Try smarter not harder" ?

I'll finally just point you to this thing ([http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart- questions.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)) which is a tad extreme in my opinion, but makes its point extremely clear if you can manage to read through it without calling the author a pretentious asshole and just closing the tab.

<comment><USER8> > I actually haven't, because in the case of let's say, programming, I learned > most everything myself. I read and google'd instead of bothering other > people for every little problem.

There are many ways to learn, and not everyone is capable of teaching themselves complex skills (even with access to Google). For many, social learning - _being taught_ \- is crucial.

> It's a bit rude to expect people to spoonfeed you all the way and then call > them assholes when they get bored of it.

Your opinions aren't unpopular because they're wrong, and I sympathize with some of what you're saying, but statements like this (the word "spoonfeed" to describe the answer to an uneducated question in particular makes me uncomfortable) do make you sound like an asshole and someone not to be approached by a social learner.

<comment><USER7> >There are many ways to learn, and not everyone is capable of teaching themselves complex skills (even with access to Google). For many, social learning - being taught - is crucial.

And that's perfectly fine, it's not my place to tell people how they should be learning. What I'm trying to say, is that the simple skills, the basics, the 101 is something you should be able to find on your own. Because often it really is the first result on Google, without exaggerating. I don't mind at all teaching and talking to people, that's much more enjoyable and does work better for some poeple.

>but statements like this (the word "spoonfeed" to describe the answer to an uneducated question in particular makes me uncomfortable) do make you sound like an asshole and someone not to be approached by a social learner.

I'm sorry about that. I'm being particularly blunt to get my point across, maybe I shouldn't.

What bothered me is that it seemed to me, and perhaps I'm wrong, that the author was being unfairly aggressive and judgmental without trying to understand the position of the very people he's insulting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find that I sometimes act like the 'assholes' in this essay. However, the attitude of the person asking the question seems to affect me a lot: I tend to be a lot more of a jerk to people who have a very high opinion of their skills and ask beginner questions than to people who readily admit that they're just learning.

Why? Because I like the implicit acknowledgement of my superiority? Because people who think they're great when they aren't are annoying? Who knows. Note that I'm not condoning my own behavior here, just observing it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess I see both sides of this. A Python programming group isn't necessarily an intro to programming group and may expect people to come in already knowing general programming concepts. On the other hand there are a hundred good ways of dealing with a beginner that you can use rather than making them feel like human garbage. I recognize this as a very real problem so I sympathize with the author.

</comment><comment><USER11> as a founder at an early stage hwstartup, we have already helped other founders figure out the pieces that we are a few weeks ahead on. In a world full of open software and hardware, its nice to see a call for open mindedness.</comment>


Store files in your Flickr account - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ricardobeat/filr

<comment><USER2> As someone stated in the other HN thread, this is a bit of a dick move.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5741905>

<comment><USER3> I read the flickr TOS. I don't think this violates it.

How is this a dick move? Get over yourself. They're valuing the company at $1.1 Billion. If you can actually drain any significant amount of their resources then sure it's a dick move, but crazy impressive.

Besides, you really think Yahoo! would be so upset that hackers are using their site for a public CDN? Sure they might make a big fuss, but they probably would think it's cool too. Afterall, flickr started as an online game. Who's to say they won't pivot again?

Further, as much as anyone wants to complain about the downfall of hacker news quality, this has made me more cynical than anyone's nit or snark or trolling.

<comment><USER4> You can't use Flickr as a public CDN AFAIK. Their terms require if you use flickr to host an image displayed in another page that page must provide a link to the photo's page on flickr.

Flickr also only allows photos, illustrations and screenshots. (and video). Nothing else.

These terms are not spelled out in the ToS but in their community guidelines and faq

There are plenty of examples of people having their accounts closed for not following these rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I definitely thought this was going to be storing data as the image.

I'd be interesting in the (computational) detection for that. Of course, if you just encode/decode it, Yahoo could do the same.

If you encrypt the data, they could just check to see how high the entropy is. If it's higher than what's plausible for a real photograph, they'd delete it. (using ent [1])

Else, you could use good ole stenography. In researching this response I came across the term Steganalysis[2]. Pretty interesting!

[1] <http://www.fourmilab.ch/random>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganalysis>

</comment><comment><USER6> Already done 7 years ago :)

<http://search.cpan.org/dist/Net-FS-Flickr/>

Stores versioned files by encoding them in the lower order bits of PNGs in a Flickr set.

Example stored file: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonwistow/sets/72057594097765...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonwistow/sets/72057594097765821/)

</comment><comment><USER7> This starts to get my imagination going. What if you would use all kinds of websites, which allow user-submitted data, and encrypt and distribute the content. You could create an underground internet hosted unknowingly by other people. You could even encode your data so it looks like real image or natural language data.

<comment><USER8> Well, yes. The fact is you would be at the mercy of minor changes in that data which would make your 'data' worthless. As simple as, for example:

'Next month we are going to transform all our utf-8 fields into utf-32 and we are going to add some padding to your data, for analytics'.

You would have to cope with that.

Which, honestly, would be a lot of a mess. Distributed mess, also. Something like the proverbial fan & sh*t thing.

<comment> mike-cardwell Not really. As long as you build in redundancy. Ie, automatically distribute multiple copies of the same files or blocks over multiple different sites. Yes, all of the sites could make breaking changes at the same time, but then all of the disks in your raid array could die at the same time too... Hence backups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I would like is a program for uploading RAW files to Flickr, but clearly Flickr is opposed to this.

</comment><comment><USER10> It was only a matter of time before someone did this, wasn't expecting something so fast though. I bet Yahoo! aren't anticipating people using that whole 1TB, but with something like this I could easily fill 1TB in music/videos very quickly.

Now if someone takes it one step further and creates a Site44 for Flickr: <http://www.site44.com/> — we'll truly have it all.

<comment><USER11> Isn't videos is perfectly allowed so long its self-produced?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're unable to use zTXt, you could store the bytes in the RGBA pixel values. Those are compressed, and you get some interesting images as a bonus :)

</comment><comment><USER13> It was only a matter of time until someone came up with something like this. Use at your own risk, and make sure you don't have anything you wouldn't mind losing on the Flickr service since Yahoo can just arbitrarily close your account at any time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Well that didn't take long.

I figured this would happen eventually, obviously yahoo will spend a considerable amount of time trying to detect this and remove it...

</comment><comment><USER15> I knew something like this was going to pop up. Now we just have to wait and see how long people can get away with it.</comment>


The rolling shutter on a digital camera can give interesting effects - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/01/13/cheap-camera-interesting-shot/

<comment><USER2> I found this MatLab visualization of what happens inside the camera very helpful in understanding how it works: [http://scalarmotion.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/propeller- image...](http://scalarmotion.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/propeller-image- aliasing/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The article mentions that this is true of cheaper digital cameras, but in fact SLRs have a similar effect. At high shutter speeds, the back curtain closes shortly after the front curtain opens, causing the exposure to happen as a slit of light that passes across the sensor or film.

<comment><USER4> Actually I am not sure you can get this effect on cheap camera. Which cheap camera uses curtain shutter? And I would be _extremely_ surprised to see that kind of shutter on the cameraphone.

<comment><USER5> That was taken on an iPhone. It happens in camera phones not because of a physical shutter, but because the entire frame isn't captured at once.

<comment><USER6> Two examples of deliberately abusing this effect on a static subject (house and church) by pivoting the iphone while taking the shot:

[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3158/2421813332_3c36b3b808.jp...](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3158/2421813332_3c36b3b808.jpg)

[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3187/2421813434_dbdc309901_b....](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3187/2421813434_dbdc309901_b.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is a video of a plane propeller filmed with an iPhone 3GS, showing pretty cool effects due to the rolling shutter: <http://vimeo.com/5934808>

</comment><comment><USER8> There's some exciting work being done in our lab with a "coded" rolling shutter, where you change the readout times on individual rows to give you better pictures or videos -- high dynamic range, super-fast capture, etc.

There's no project page up yet, but this video explains most of the key parts:

<http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~jwgu/crsp_video.mp4>

If you want full details, here's the paper:

<http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~jwgu/crsp_final.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER9> Could this be used to send 'secret' messages only visible to camera-shots of certain specs/orientation?

<comment><USER10> Yes. This could be an example of steganography, the art of concealing that you are sending a message: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> On the other extreme, there are cameras that take 70 thousand frames per second. Yikes.</comment>


Re: Inequality - <AUTHOR> In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.<p>- Hunter S. Thompson <comment><USER2> This was a daring post. Kudos.</comment>


Appium: Drive iOS Apps from Any Test Framework - <AUTHOR> http://appium.io/

<comment><USER2> Interesting; recently wanted to get into iOS automation testing and we also have an Android product so a unified test framework would be great.

I notice from the screenshots it takes a while to get through each step, is this due to the simulator, Appium itself, or for demo purposes?

Cheers

<comment><USER3> This is a delay built into Instruments. Most of the UI actions in an app take some time, so it's not that bad. There is also a way around it; one mode of Appium skips the system clock forward to get around the delay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, can I use Cucumber with Appium, like I can use with Frank?

<comment><USER3> I'm not familiar with cucumber, but if it can be used with the selenium- webdriver gem, then it can work with Appium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> looks good, I'll give it a try, for testing I've been using <http://testingwithfrank.com/>

<comment><USER6> (disclaimer: I'm an appium committer) While Frank and Appium provide a similar set of solutions to a similar problem, we're driven by slightly different philosophies. Two of Appium's core tenets are (1) you shouldn't have to modify your source code or add 3rd-party libraries to test, and (2) it's better to leverage existing successful "driver" protocols. To that end, we've designed things so that all of the interaction takes place between Appium and your un- modified app, whereas Frank requires compiling in its own libraries for testing. Likewise, we opted to make Appium a Selenium WebDriver-compatible server, so that the thousands of developers who are already familiar with using their favorite WebDriver library can jump in and start writing tests without having to wrap their heads around a new automation model. Frank is an extremely impressive piece of technology, but we felt the need for an approach born out of a different philosophy.

<comment><USER7> Very cool. With Frank, Calabash and Zucchini already out there (to name just a few), the iOS UI automation space is getting pretty crowded. Having said that, it is definitely nice to see something that is not based on Cucumber. Any ETA on the Android?

<comment><USER8> No ETA for Android, but it's very high on our list.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Running a Bitcoin full node on $5 a month - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zorinaq.com/full-node-on-5-dollars/ <comment><USER2> Obviously there are some, but what would the benefits (both personal and public) of running a full node be summed up?</comment>