Show HN: My First iPhone Game – can you beat it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mgw.us/penguin-plunge/?c=2

<comment><USER2> Just a tip: the validation on the SMS phone number should really be a lot nicer. I tried AAAPPPNNNN (Area code, Prefix, Number) first, and it said I needed the international code. So I tried 1AAAPPPNNN and it still complained. So I tried 1-AAA-PPP-NNNN, and after getting the same message for the third time, I realized that the message was _very_ literal, as in, I _had_ to type +1-AAA-PPP-NNNN. Requiring a format that virtually 0% of people will type the first time isn't a great idea.

Humorously, the success message then says "Success! SMS sent to +1AAAPPPNNNN."

<comment><USER3> Hey, thanks for the feedback! We (MakeGamesWithUs) are just rolling out these landing pages and when building this we were not 100% sure the best way to implement the phone number validation. About half the people downloading our games are outside the US, so it seemed relevant to address international numbers. The dashes don't actually matter, but without forcing the '+' it wasn't clear how to figure out what country the number is from. If the '+' is optional, we could assume any 10 digit number is from the US, but I think this would cause problems for a few smaller countries. We could check your IP and prepend if the correct country code wasn't present in number, but my instinct says this would cause unforeseen issues. Alternatively we could simply give inline feedback (instead of the notification at the top) to specify you need the '+'. I agree it sucks that most people won't get it right the first time, but I'd also like to guarantee nobody gets a success message when the SMS wasn't sent to their number, any suggestions on how to fix this?

<comment><USER4> Ashu! Your friends at iCracked would love to help... reach out to me anytime man! Rachel, I feel it'd be nice to have a visual indicator as I touch the screen, right now if you can press anywhere and it just seems unresponsive. Also, for a while I didn't realize you could move obstacles so the "get a hint" constantly resetting the level was a little confusing. Finally, undo occasionally crashes the app. Overall, great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone else also mentioned getting feedback when you touch the screen. That seems like a great idea and I'll try to update the app to respond to touches immediately.

And thanks for letting me know about your confusion. I'll try to update the tutorial so it's as easy as possible to figure out!

As for the crashes, I am aware of users encountering a few issues and I'll work on fixing those problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think I'll have enough interest to beat all 1000 levels, but I can crash the game reliably:

      1. Slide a block off the board where it starts wiggling.
      2. Attempt to slide it back.
      3. Press Undo.

Crashes the game every time for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for letting me know, I'll try to fix this issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great game. I also appreciate your positive attitude as you handle the feedback in the comments.

Do you have any ideas for how to incorporate multiplayer gameplay into Penguins? It's generally harder to do (or not as fun) with puzzle games, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Keep up the great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! One of my ideas is to let people design their own levels and challenge their friends with the level they wrote. This is something I've thought about implementing in a future update. If anyone here has any thoughts, I would love to hear them.

<comment><USER3> Rachel, we're beta testing a new 'hub' feature of our SDK that allows users to create and share levels, Elemental Fury ([http://mgw.us/ef](http://mgw.us/ef)) will be using it in a future version. The hub behaves similarly to a social network, where every level created is a post that can be liked, completed and commented on. You can view the feed of levels that everyone you're following has interacted with, or look at lists of top, new and trending levels. We're curious to see whether it can become an fun multiplayer mechanic for puzzle games

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nicely done, I'm on level 11 and having a good time with it so far. A question and some feedback:

I've always wondered how people do level design for puzzle games like this. Is there a formula or is it just experimentation?

I think the feedback when sliding the penguin could be improved. Sometimes it doesn't respond at all and when it does it either goes or doesn't move at all. I think it would feel better for the user if the penguin slid with your finger but would pop back into place if you don't pass a threshold.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your feedback.

I designed the first 50 levels by experimentation. There are a total of 1000 levels, so the last 950 were computer generated.

That's a really great idea and definitely something I would love to implement in the next update.

<comment><USER8> 1000 levels! I think I'm going to call it a night at level 21 in that case. Enjoyed it so far. Well done :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You should change the title, I thought it was iPhone only but then I went to the website and realized you have it for Android as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is available for android too. Thank you for pointing this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No. I don't have an iPhone.

\-----

And unless I clicked to see if there was an android version, I never would have known.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know, sorry about this. Someone else mentioned that the title of my post should include android, but I don't think I can change it at this point. I'm glad you clicked the link anyway and found it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> .99 for random access to all levels would be a no-brainer purchase. My other suggestion is to allow sub-optimal solutions, while letting the user know that they are sub-optimal. You could show the best solution so far, in blue if it's optimal.

If you're unaware of them, check out Lunar Lockout and/or Pete's Pike.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=lunar+lockout](https://www.google.com/search?q=lunar+lockout) [https://www.google.com/search?q=pete's+pike](https://www.google.com/search?q=pete's+pike)

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are really great suggestions. Thanks for posting, I'll try to include those updates soon.

And I'll look into those!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The site is so simple I'm going to feel like an idiot if missed it, but is there a video of the gameplay? I'd rather see that before I give you my email/phone number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, there is currently no video of gameplay. There are images on the app store info page. You could search for "Penguin Plunge: Stuck in Antarctica!" on the app store to see the pictures of gameplay and then download the app.

<comment><USER3> We're definitely planning to add gameplay videos to these pages down the road. If you don't want to give your email/number you can also click the "Download on the app store" and "Get it on google play" buttons to go directly to the app store

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could someone please give a summary of the game play and what makes it hard? The description of the game doesn't reveal much. (not able to try it at the moment)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a puzzle game in which you're able to slide objects (one penguin and a few ice blocks) around a 5x5 grid. The objects will slide off if they are not stopped by anything else, and the goal is to get the penguin to a waterhole in the center of the grid. It's difficult also because you get limited number of moves on each level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Love how great apps like this make it to the front page. This under-the-radar game deserves more attention! #downloaded

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I hope you enjoy the game and let me know if you have any questions or comments about it.

<comment><USER14> =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought I was stumped at level 23, but I feel like I got smarter and figured it out. I love that it challenges me, but if I focus I can solve the puzzles. The artwork is really cute and I like the way the penguin slides on its belly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, most people I know that play the game find that as they play longer they get better. There are patterns in different levels and users learn how to see the solutions more quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sidenote: It looks like the sms link routes through a linksynergy url. Is that a reliable monetization scheme for free apps? Does apple provide affiliate revenue if I end up buying a paid app after clicking on the link?

</comment><comment><USER17> The name of the game on the landing page, "Penguin Plunge", is the name of a different game in the iOS app store.

I liked the gameplay. The game would be a bit better if you could undo more than once.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there is another game named Penguin Plunge. This is the free app and the full title is "Penguin Plunge: Stuck in Antarctica!".

I agree being able to undo more than once would be nice. I'll look into changing this in a future update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really like how you send a link to the game via SMS. May I ask which service you're using to do that?

<comment><USER19> Yes, great idea. I'm guessing Twilio?

<comment><USER3> Yup, twilio for sms, mailgun for emails

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me Zelda and the puzzle blocks you need to move on the ice : )

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool, I hadn't made that connection before now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love this game--it's totally addictive. I agree with some of the other posts about wanting the game to be more responsive, but overall this is a well done app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'm glad you like it!</comment></comment>


The Hard Math Behind Bitcoin's Global Warming Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-global-warming/ <comment><USER2> "As the price of bitcoin stabilizes, then the net worldwide energy because of the block reward will start to decrease rather than increase."

I don't think so. As long as PoW is in place, the level of work required to create a block must be high, no matter what the reward is. If the blocks are too cheap, then a determined attacker with the incentive to destroy, control or harm bitcoin (a state actor who loves capital controls and hates money laundering perhaps?) could easily buy enough hashing power to squeeze out the honest miners, who need to be profitable to stay in business, and eventually control a majority.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite some typos and inaccuracies (SHA-286? confusing power (in Watt, W) and energy (in Watt-hours, Wh, or Joule, 1 J = 1 Ws), and/or hashes and hash rate).</comment>


Ridgecrest Aftershocks Move Toward Dangerous Faults - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-aftershocks-ridgecrest-earthquake-movement-danger-20190716-story.html <comment><USER2> For anyone else interested in becoming more acquainted with earthquake events and learning about faults near you, I suggest checking out:

[https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/)

If you click the gear icon in the top right, a menu will pop up on the right. You can scroll down on there and click the checkbox next to "US Faults" to see specific faults, or "US Hazards" to see a general color guide indicating earthquake risk. Everyone should be aware and have basic preparation tasks done if they live in a risk zone. We all know about "the big one" expected in California or Washington state, but even states like Missouri have high risk areas and have produced some powerful earthquakes!

<comment><USER3> > California or Washington state

Western Oregon, too.

<comment><USER2> True. And coastal Oregon has a legitimate threat of tsunamis triggered by earthquakes as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There was a 3.5 magnitude quake in the South Bay Area Monday.

<comment><USER5> I felt this one 7/16 1:11pm:

[https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73225421...](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73225421/executive)</comment></comment>


Microsoft provides legal Vagrant box for Windows Server 2012 R2 Data Center - <AUTHOR> http://vagrantbox.msopentech.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand the how and why of this, I guess. I have two "issues" with it:

1) That's a large, 8.3GB download - how are they making money if "anyone, anywhere, even if they aren't logged in" can download it? I could imagine their bandwidth bills would be big from regular users downloading the image but their bandwidth will be MASSIVE with bots/etc downloading.

2) _90 days, until June 28th_

It's a VM that is hard coded to die within the next 90 days. Is the plan to then have them rebuild/re-host a new version on June 29? Then I'll download it, and use it for 90 days? What value is this for people who reach this page on June 14, for example?

This has to be MSFT licensing driven. "We don't _really_ want to support this sort of thing but we do want people to think we do. What we'll do is release time-bombed versions and then hope folks will hate it so much that they decide to spin up an instance on Azure."

I just don't understand how this fits into Microsoft's "Let's move everyone who wants to 'test' our software to the cloud" movement that they've been on about for the past year or so (with the cancelling of Technet, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> Setting up automated testing for a Windows application is an excruciating manual process of installing the OS in a VM and periodically manually installing updates, multiplied by 15+ OS flavors. It's a big waste of time that Microsoft could solve by simply releasing images periodically. I hope this release is the first step in that direction.</comment>


Learn programming by playing games - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4kyfz7/learn_programming_by_playing_games/?ref=share&ref_source=link <comment><USER2> This is simply amazing stuff :)</comment>


Show HN: CSS Quality Guide - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bevacqua/css

<comment><USER2> Great guide. I'd suggesting adding a bit more about the "why?" if the goal is compliance. In some cases, there are performance benefits to the stated approach (like not deeply nesting classes or avoiding tag based selectors) but some readers may not be aware of this and may assume that it's entirely a style based preference which is easier to ignore due to personal preference.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ignore ID's? What? The point of an ID is it is a selector used to identify only one element on a page - A header or a footer for example. You can't replace that semantic meaning with classes, if you're only going to be using the style once on a page then change it to an ID.

Example:
 or

The difference is the second option shows at first glance what the element is supposed to be representing to someone reading your code.

<comment><USER4> This is pretty common advice and not a point of contention for front-end folks.

> if you're only going to be using the style once on a page

Herein lies the the problem. You now can't use that header anywhere else, meaning the it's non-composable. You end up writing less, and more maintainable CSS when you treat components as immutable and composable.

Most people consider the additional readability of separating out the `id` to be negligible.

<comment><USER5> It's not composable if you only write raw CSS, they're perfectly composable via @extend's and @include's, e.g.

       #login-widget {
          @extends widget();
       }

Best of both world's, the semantic meaning of id's with the composability of classes, plus, the compiler is smart enough to reduce duplicity to it's bare minimum

<comment><USER6> But it's still not a good idea to use IDs. Why not:

       .login-widget {
          @extends widget();
       }

The specificity that ids bring alone are good enough reason to avoid them forever. They're a sledgehammer that can pretty much only be overridden by `!important`.

If that somehow sits fine with you perhaps consider the rule the rest of the software world has accepted long ago -- 'this code will be changed'. The fact you think you will really only have one of these things on a page at once (hence making it suitable for an ID) ... that WILL change.

There will come a day when you have a login-widget in your sidebar, yet at some obscene last-minute moment the customer will demand a dedicated login page too, your developers will want to use your base template (which has your login widget visible in the sidebar) creating 2 login widgets on-page, cursing your assumption that you thought you knew better.

Ignoring that, you could forget my example above (I'm sure there's a way you could dismiss it as contrived) and learn a lesson from the OOP crowd and just never write singletons [0] ever. It's just a really bad assumption to think you'll only want one of a thing.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree on what this says about frameworks. I think frameworks are great. They are specially great when you come to really understand one and how it works and how it can be customised.

The major problems I've seen with frameworks is that people just use the default look or try to add customisations on top of the default CSS, overriding styles. I mean, that is just setting yourself up for a world of pain.

But most CSS frameworks are really, really flexible in the build stage. You can tweak a few variables that can dramatically alter the appearance of a stylesheet and give you an awesome base to build on. Pretty much for free.

If you do all the CSS from scratch you're anyway going to write at the least a reset, some base typographic styles, responsive stuff, and some kind of grid system. Why not use something that is widely used, peer-reviewed, and very customisable?

<comment><USER8> Do you have a particular framework you'd recommend?

<comment><USER9> It must really depend on what you're looking for/doing. My favorite is [http://getskeleton.com/](http://getskeleton.com/). I'm a noob, but I like that I can understand and completely customize the 400 lines of code ([https://github.com/dhg/Skeleton/blob/master/css/skeleton.css](https://github.com/dhg/Skeleton/blob/master/css/skeleton.css)) easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like how he explains separating layout from presentation. When writing the layout code, keep in mind how its coupled to the HTML.

This link mentions how "layout" like z-index is coupled to the structure of HTML, because nesting elements creates new stacking contexts (Z-index is hierarchical - an element's z-index only controls it's depth within the current context, not the overall document). [http://philipwalton.com/articles/what-no-one-told-you- about-...](http://philipwalton.com/articles/what-no-one-told-you-about-z- index/)

This one advises using "js" prefixed classes for JS, so the JS is only coupled to the HTML & not the CSS: [http://philipwalton.com/articles/decoupling-html- css-and-jav...](http://philipwalton.com/articles/decoupling-html-css-and- javascript/)

</comment><comment><USER11> " _Frameworks and Vendor Styles: Stay away from frameworks_ "

I disagree - frameworks are awesome.

I guess it's all contingent to the project you're working on though. For small projects, it speeds things up and stops you from reinventing the CSS wheel. With large projects, even if you don't use a framework, you [should] end up making one with a style guide (eg: [http://walmartlabs.github.io/web-style- guide/](http://walmartlabs.github.io/web-style-guide/)).

Either way, to completely rule them out is not the best advice IMHO. Other than that, pretty great post/share.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not look at BEM?

[https://en.bem.info/](https://en.bem.info/) [http://csswizardry.com/2013/01/mindbemding-getting-your- head...](http://csswizardry.com/2013/01/mindbemding-getting-your-head-round- bem-syntax/)

Harry Roberts really simplifies the idea of it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This was very helpful. One thought on your "Mobile first" media queries segment. While absolutely correct in principle, those of us who unfortunately have to support IE8 should make sure to have a default style set at the "Desktop" level (ie. desktop-first) and have the @media breakpoints kick in at lower resolutions. Otherwise, they may figure out the hard way (as we did) that their webpage looks like trash on browsers that don't support media queries.

<comment><USER14> One philosophy is that if the browser is old enough to not support media queries then they should deal with the stripped down, mobile-first version of the site that they get anyway.

At that point, just create a separate IE8 stylesheet loaded with conditional comments to fix the most annoying issues so that the site is at least functional for that type of visitor. There's no reason to bloat the main stylesheet with useless crap for old versions of IE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Most style guides say to use namespaces for everything. I've never used them. What do I have to be worried about?

<comment><USER16> If you have say a post entry:

      .post {
        border: 1px solid #000;
      }

      .post .title {
        font-weight: bold;
      }

And you want to put it into a sidebar

      .sidebar {
        background-color: #ccc;
      }

      .sidebar .title {
        text-decoration: underline;
      }

That post's title is now going to be underlined. That's one of the reasons for namespacing. If the classes were `.post--title` and `.sidebar--title`, this would be avoided

<comment><USER17> Wouldn't you just instead write the CSS as follows?

      .sidebar.title {
        text-decoration: underline;
      }

<comment><USER14> That likely wouldn't have the intended effect as I find it doubtful that the element with the sidebar class would also be the title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is so bad about frameworks? Isn't a simple framework with good standard classes a good thing?

<comment><USER19> The author probaly never worked with a deadline before, where there is no time to build everything custom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lots of guidelines, many without an obvious reason.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised how much the personal standards I've built up working solo for many years align with these.

Regarding "Presentation-Specific vs Layout-Specific Styles," the way I've come to organize things is roughly "outside-in" i.e.: position, margin, border, width/height, padding, font/line-height, text styles. I also always put "display" and "box-sizing" first, if they're present, since they change the effect of several things that follow.

I disagree with "Prefer nested selectors ... _only if both .foo and .foo .bar need styling_." I prefer nested selectors always, mostly because it's annoying to have to go back and nest something later when you realize the container needs rules, too. Also I sense that there's something beneficial about the nesting of the (in my case) scss matching the nesting of the HTML, but that might just be aesthetics.

Also disagree with "Settle for a few (2-3) breakpoints and use those only," at least for the types of designs I have to work with nowadays. The prevailing style seems to consist of a series of striking, highly independent sections with their own internal layout (think the landing page of a typical, new open source project or startup, with a hero unit or carousel, a list of features in some number of columns, testimonials in some [other] number of columns, etc.). If you make each of those sections adhere to the same handful of breakpoints, either you carefully limit your design or you risk ending up with strange looking layouts in certain sections at certain "in-between" viewport dimensions. I tend to treat each such section completely independently and use as many or as few breakpoints as necessary for that particular internal layout. Sass definitely helps with this, since nested media queries get hoisted to the top level automatically, so you can put them in a natural context.

As for mobile-first, I always work desktop-first. Part of that is that mobile- first is pretty much impossible when all you're given is a psd with a full desktop design. But I also find it completely natural to start with the desktop design, narrow the window until something looks off, throw in a media query to fix it, and repeat. And as someone else has already said, when you have to support IE8 to some degree, it's nice to have desktop as the default.

I find most of the claims in the linked article about mobile-first [1] to be hand-wavy (you don't want to include "large heavy modules by default," or in other words, you must assume that desktop-first is going to end up slow and clunky on mobile) or contrived (the actual CSS example, where you can eliminate a selector because on small devices the element in question happens to have default styles). In my experience, in fact, things are usually "heavier" on mobile, specifically because you tend to need a bunch of javascript to deal with flyout menus and things having to expand and collapse that can just be there on desktop. In any case: I don't see how the supposed benefits of mobile-first can't be had desktop-first if you just take a modicum of care in your work.

[1] [http://bradfrost.com/blog/mobile/the-many-faces-of-mobile- fi...](http://bradfrost.com/blog/mobile/the-many-faces-of-mobile-first/)</comment>


Tor developer dodges FBI, leaves US - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/17/technology/tor-developer-fbi/ <comment><USER2> What's wrong with this country, that nowadays people are so afraid of being disappeared that they run away to Russia, Ecuador, and Germany. We're doing something wrong.

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with her you mean? The type of people affected by rendition or hit teams are a rare breed. Ultra-rare. The typical method is arresting, optionally a high bail, plea offer, and then rough time in court. If convicted, you're in a prison where you usually get to at least talk to outsiders and maybe get out early for good behavior.

Quite the opposite of people disappearing you. Now that she's in Europe, the CIA's jurisdiction, she's at greater risk of this happening in form of thug violence against Americans, tourists, whatevet. I'm guessing that's uncommon to rare step, too, so dont know risk level

<comment><USER4> > Now that she's in Europe, the CIA's jurisdiction, she's at greater risk...

History has shown that geographic location is no protection from the CIA. MKULTRA being a clear example of obviously illegal activity. But I really doubt that the CIA would be interested in a TOR developer, that is NSA territory. While the NSA has a much less colorful history, they do burgle when they feel they need to.

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

<comment><USER5> The only thing protecting you from the CIA are nukes. So what you need as a hacker is some really good zero-days and some excellent viruses - leashed to your survival. If that would be done by a lot of people, backing each other up, keeping the digital backbone of society as hostage, something like a justice system could be restored.

<comment><USER4> Or go with the more direct route, ala Snow Crash, and drive around with a nuclear motorcycle sidecar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Again, let's not forget that the US government explicitly funded development of TOR: [https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en) and [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/29/us- govern...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/29/us-government- funding-tor-18m-onion-router) (and many more) as a way of helping people avoid the depredations of oppressive governments.

<comment><USER7> Let's also not forget that the US government employs well over 1 million employees and several million contractors. They don't all move in the same direction or have a hive mind.

The Department of the Navy developed the original Tor.

The State Department helped fund it (because it can be used by dissidents in countries with authoritarian governments).

The US intelligence apparatus has allegedly funded ways to analyze and/or sabotage anonymous usage of Tor.

<comment><USER8> Are the Department of the Navy and the State Department still funding it or did they came to their "senses"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A thing one should clearly understand, if the FBI is looking to "talk" to someone in this manner, it is because they ALREADY have the warrant in the 'oven' and ready to go. They are simply attempting to chat to SIMPLIFY their work in hopes the subject of the warrant voluntarily or inadvertently incriminate oneself.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly what they're doing. Worse, fleeing after a visit make average jury think she's guilty.

<comment><USER9> Worrying about the jury should be the least of her concerns at this point. If she does not have the resources (millions) to mount a vigorous defence it does not matter. And even if she does have the money, the prosecution will try to take it away from her via asset freezes, large bails, etc. Awhile in jail, she won't be able to work effectively with limited phone calls and monitored attorney visits.

<comment><USER3> Juries are a double-edged sword: they can be the end of you or your only hope. Plenty of people go free in trials despite odds against them. Certain things you do upon encountering the police can greatly increase or decrease your odds of winning in court. It's imperative to behave in a way that minimizes risk immediately and long-term. Fleeing a country when a cop merely asks you to talk to them will look guilty to almost every judge or jury out there. There's a small subset you can convince given circumstances but this is a big no-no in general.

Regarding the rest, that might happen, it might not happen, and yet people still get off with decent attorneys. Again, police investigations involve lots of probability. You play the odds to your benefit. If you're worried about that stuff, then leave America for some country that has no problems in its judicial proceedings plus whatever freedoms and economic opportunities you need. Do it _now_. Don't wait till a FBI agent is interested in you or you're on their List.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It took Apple, a multi-hundred-billion dollar corp., all its legal force to fight against being forced by FBI to crack the phone. A person being forced to do similar stuff (like backdooring Tor for example) by way of NSL wouldn't probably be able even to involve his/her lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember reading another article on HN a few weeks ago (maybe, time flies) where she was planning to go to Berlin. Feels disingenuous for CNN to state she was dodging the FBI if she's been planning to go there.

<comment><USER12> The quote from the developer, in the article, makes it look like she left to avoid dealing with the FBI:

> "I was worried they'd ask me to do something that hurts innocent people -- > and prevent me from telling people it's happening," she said in an exclusive > interview with CNNMoney.

This is also fairly convincing:

> Lovecruft had intended to move to Germany someday, but she put those plans > on overdrive. She booked a flight to Berlin that weekend, including a return > flight she had no intention of taking -- just to avoid raising suspicions.

<comment><USER7> From the top of her original article:

> I had already been in the process of moving, permanently, to Germany, and > had retained a German immigrations lawyer several months prior to these > events. [1]

It's not like she just impulsively thought about Germany and left that week. Yes, it was a catalyst, but it seems to me that she was already on the fence, ready to leave. She even said she was waiting for her visa approval to be accepted after the FBI had made a request to interview her.

[1] [https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi- harassment.html](https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi-harassment.html)

<comment><USER12> It has been established that she had already been considering a move to Germany. That is not at issue here. The issue is whether or not she timed her departure to avoid contact with the FBI. If she did, the article's premise is justifiable.

She bought a return ticket she did not intend to use, to throw the FBI off her trail. She would not have done that if not to avoid the FBI. Given this, and her own statements in the CNN article, the evidence that she timed her departure to avoid contact with the FBI is overwhelming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Highly doubt she'd be escaping FBI in Germany. If SHTF and there's an actual federal warrant issued she'll get extradited back to the US of A in a hurry. At that point she could of course try escaping to Russia for example but that's a whole another can of worms altogether.

From what I read in the news the EU is tightening their borders quite a bit and is reinstating intra-EU border control to deal with the refugee crisis so that won't help either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ok, tired from work, but on a laptop finally. Here's a try at an assessment of the situation tying it all together.

Ok, Tor's success & team's safety is often brought up in NSA, FBI, & so on discussions but shouldn't be. It's exceptional. It was created to protect military comms. CIA-connected and State Dept found great use for it. Plenty of support from powerful groups just as much as opposition from NSA and FBI. Harder to attack legally as crypto-export exempts apps for resisting censorship, it's non-profit, and source is out there. Technically, it will stop opponents government fans use it against but often fail in reality against NSA or FBI. Potentially. Concept is called NOBUS and they like those things. So, Tor is exceptional in the sense that it's unlikely to get strong, legal or technical attack... destructive attack... by U.S. government's scariest. Less, but some, risk for its developers as well.

Another background is U.S. legal system. Ours is an adversarial system where anything you say to cops can be ignored or used against you as highest form of eyewitness testimony (confession) for conviction. What you say that assures innocence is hearsay and tossed out. Feds and prosecutors can use any number of lies and scams... including fake jobs or deals... to trick you into confession. The result is that around 97% never make it to trial: plea bargained as they appear to have no hope of winning. Prosecutors especially like to make severe examples out of hackers with Aaron Schwartz a recent example. Defense attorneys advice: never talk to the police or consent to searchers. Repeatedly ask for lawyer.

So, we have a woman... idk her so going by the article... that works on Tor project or software. Implies she might be a hacker or possess such skills. An organization that absolutely hates hackers, activists, and Tor contacts her needing help. She and her lawyer agree to meet them to see what's up but they want her alone. They try to contact her directly despite her insistence on a lawyer. At this point, it's either a legitimate request for assistance on a case or they're building a case against her while trying for an early confession or strong evidence using a common tactic. She can't know since they won't tell her. And can legally lie.

She decided to flee to Germany. They'll at least have to present some evidence to get her extradited. She feels she might avoid the NSL's or any forced backdoors over in Germany. She was also going to go over there anyway. So, that's her decision.

Now, it might be a bad idea. One, if FBI's interest was good or small bad, her running to another country just put her on a bad list they keep. Two, running when cops show up indicates guilt to many judges and juries. Three, any protections she has if FBI or NSA target her within American jurisdiction disappeared the moment she left. She can now be targeted by German authorities, NSA, CIA, and Army. It's unlikely outside of electronic eavesdropping or extradition given what I said about Tor being special. So, likely outcomes are that they'll ignore her or we'll find out what they're wanting with higher odds of conviction if it's a charge since she fled.

That's the situation as I see it after studying these organizations for a long time. I'm also operating with very limited information about her and her situation. So, I only have so much confidence in the conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER14> what's the point of going to Germany; might as well have stayed and faced the music. Germany would extradite her immediately. seriously, FBI probably has offices there.

<comment><USER7> > stayed and faced the music

What "faced the music"? That idiom implies she did something wrong. She's fearful of gagged coersion, not necessarily of being charged with a crime.

All she has to do is stop contributing to the Tor Project if she is coerced, but apparently she is more interested in moving to a country that has values more closely aligned with the Tor Project. Yes, the German government could potentially use similar coercive means, the CIA could do it while she is in Germany, or the US judicial system could extradite her (but AFAIK that would require charges being brought).

<comment><USER14> I was being sarcastic with "faced the music", sir

<comment><USER15> You seem to have paid for it in downvotes. People are really sensitive to that phrase after it became a political sound bite regarding Snowden.

<comment><USER14> I see. I didn't know it's associated with Snowden.

<comment><USER4> FYI:

"He stole very important information that has fallen into the wrong hands so I think he should not be brought home without facing the music." \--Hillary Clinton

[http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/13/clinton- sande...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/13/clinton-sanders- snowden-nsa-democratic-debate)

<comment><USER15> It became something of a meme.

John Kerry: "Edward Snowden is a coward, he is a traitor and he has betrayed his country, and if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so"

Nancy Pelosi: "I think he should come back and face the music for what he did … [but] the music shouldn't be the death penalty or life in prison."

All Democrats, I notice.

<comment><USER4> Well few statists like whistleblowers, because they share the Sgt. Barnes philosophy of "when the machine breaks down, we break down". Republicans expressing the same sentiments are more likely to be pandering, because the demonstration of failure on the part of the state is more in line with their platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a non-story. Nobody knows what FBI wants. It may actually be for legitimate reasons or not. It seems before FBI just wanted to ask questions, but since Isis didn't want to be asked any questions the FBI now went and got a subpeona. That's it.

<comment><USER17> _Nobody knows that the FBI wants. It may actually be for legitimate reasons or not._

Which is precisely the point -- Lovecruft, justifiably, had no way of knowing what the government operatives had in mind, and wanted from her; whether it was something comparatively insipid and harmless (just some junior investigators throwing darts, and checking boxes on a list someone gave them); or something all-out insane and pernicious, like what they did to Swartz.

Would she be woken up at 6 a.m., and made to watch as agents ransacked her apartment, confiscating anything that looked like personal notes, and anything that looked like a digital device? Would she be strip-searched, and held in solitary confinement for hours (even after family and friends posted bail), or longer, with no explanation? Would she face the prospect of _indefinite_ imprisonment if she refused to disclose the passphrases to any of her encrypted devices?

Would she be pressured into providing testimony against her friends and collaborators -- and/or "turning" outright, and becoming a paid informant? Would she hold her ground? Would she break?

Any of the above was a very real possibility. Which is why this is anything but a "non-story."

<comment><USER18> > Would she be strip-searched, and held in solitary confinement for hours > (even after family and friends posted bail), with no explanation? Would she > face the prospect of indefinite imprisonment if she refused to disclose the > passphrases to any of her encrypted devices?

Has the FBI done this before? I could see the CIA doing this to foreign nationals, and obviously that's horrible, but has the FBI done anything like that? I'm not saying they haven't, I would just like an example or two.

<comment><USER19> Yes, it was yesterday on HN but I cannot seem to find it.

<comment><USER20> I suspect you are referring to this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712035)

<comment><USER15> Slight nitpick - they're asking him to _enter_ the password, not _disclose_ it. I'm not sure how much difference it makes but the distinction is specifically mentioned in the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'The Interview' now available to rent - k-mcgrady http://seetheinterview.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Asinine how much free publicity Sony is getting for their own IT blunders.

<comment> k-mcgrady Victim blaming. Very good.

<comment><USER2> Sometimes, the 'victim' really does ask for it. Leaving passwords around in plaintext, all the other massively not-even-close-to-best-practices behavior on Sony's part, all this mess could have been easily avoided. At what point does personal (corporate?) responsibility to not be completely incompetent come into play?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Teaching my sister how to code by building "Food with a Friend" - <AUTHOR>

My sister just graduated from college. She's working for a print design company but is more interested in the web. I'll be seeing her over the holidays and want to teach her how to code, so we came up with the idea for foodwithafriend.com. We'll try to build it over our vacation - hackathon style.
Here's the pitch:
It can be hard to keep up with all your friends.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to catch up with a different friend each week over some delicious food? Food with a Friend will automatically match you up with one of your friends each week for a tasty meal at a local establishment.
You tell us what days you're generally free and we'll match you up. Then all you have to do is pick a restaurant!
--
What do you think of the idea? Is it worth pursuing as strictly an educational project or do you think it would be a useful apart from my goal of teaching her web development? <comment><AUTHOR> link to our launchrock page: <http://launch.foodwithafriend.com/></comment>


Oklahoma legislature will fix sodomy law, lawmaker says - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/29/us/oklahoma-sodomy-laws-inebriation/index.html <comment><USER2> The submitted title was "Court: Oral sex not rape if victim is drunk or unconscious". That breaks the HN guidelines about titles, which ask you to use the article's own title unless it is misleading or linkbait. Rewriting the title to make it more misleading and/or linkbait is exactly the opposite of what we want here, so please don't do that.</comment>


What's happening with Arc? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448613/whats-happening-with-arc

<comment><USER2> <http://www.arclanguage.org/item?id=8854>

<comment><USER3> Other than news.arc, is there any particular aspect of the language you're focusing on?

<comment><USER2> I don't like to talk about stuff in advance anymore.

<comment><USER3> I understand why. Thanks for replying.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mastodon makes the internet feel like home again - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/2689/mastodon-makes-the-internet-feel-like-home-again?zd=1&zi=rjumdqkj <comment><USER2> "It's gotten to the point where my Twitter and Mastodon accounts, side-by- side, look like they were written by different people."

This is a very interesting point. As much as many of us would like to think that we'll just be ourselves wherever we are, we will conform somewhat to the culture of our group to varying degrees. It may be the culture at work or in hobby groups or social media. I suppose we all may have jumping off points as well. I left facebook because my peers evolved into parodies of the grumpy old man, bashing "kids today" and millennials, and toxic political ranting. It certainly didn't seem like home to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> So it's the same concept as reddit having subreddits?

<comment><USER4> If you're looking for a reddit alternative in the fediverse, I can't miss the opportunity to toot my own horn: I'm working on a federated link aggregator that you can try at [https://littr.me](https://littr.me).

Currently it's missing exactly the federation component, so people on Mastodon can't interact with it yet, but it's getting there. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is neat. There is another one one there called Prismo, but I'm not sure if it's still being actively developed or how far the author got with it:

[https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo](https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo)

<comment><USER4> There are multiple ones actually.

On prismo I haven't seen any work being done in a while (more than half a year according to the repo you linked :D). I think the dev got a bit discouraged after his instance had a data loss problem. It used to be at [https://prismo.xyz](https://prismo.xyz) but seems to be down.

One which is pretty active (development wise) is [https://dev.lemmy.ml](https://dev.lemmy.ml). But they don't have federation yet either.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apocalyptic Ice Tsunami Rips Through House In Minnesota - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqptbtwXUCs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

<comment><USER2> Here's some raw footage of this "Ice Tsunami" without the annoying ABC News anchors, but instead with an annoying cameraperson.

[http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b3a_1389351942](http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b3a_1389351942)</comment>


Show HN - My stupidly simple RSS reader - <AUTHOR> http://newsyndicated.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's something really cool about this:

if you click the "crowd" icon (which is next to the links in the feed view), it will save the link, if you point an RSS reader at:

<http://newsyndicated.com/r/$your_username>

you will get an RSS feed of links that you have "Favorited".

for instance, here is a feed of me:

<http://newsyndicated.com/r/Ryan>

I made this because I found that I was bouncing around the same handful of sites every day...and because I wanted a new side project to work on. I hope you like it :).

</comment><comment><USER2> Your HN submission link is broken, at least for NYT. It strips GET parameters.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out...fixed it :).</comment></comment>


Microsoft wasted 'millions of watts of electricity' to evade power usage penalty - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/24/3381238/microsoft-power-waste-quincy

<comment><USER2> >> Microsoft, on the other hand, worked out that going through $70,000 of unnecessary power by running "giant heaters" would put them in the clear and save $140,000 from the $210,000 fine.

Times must be pretty tough at Microsoft if they are prepared to do something as stupid as this to make a minuscule $140,000.00 in savings.

<comment><USER3> They could have at least donated the excess energy to finally breaking SHA-1, Folding at Home, SETI, or Bitcoins for Babies, or whatever.</comment></comment>


History of Logo - <AUTHOR> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1623m1p3 <comment><USER2> There's a StrangeLoop talk about teaching programming by Felienne Hermans ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ)) that claims that all fields have an "exploration vs instruction" debate on how to teach their field, but this debate is apparently absent from the field of programming for the most part, wherein the "mess around and figure it out" exploration style of LOGO and Papert ("every time you teach something, you deprive a [student] of the pleasure and benefit of discovery") is the predominant unquestioned wisdom. Felienne wants more pedagogy fights. It's a worthwhile talk. I love LOGO and I think our generation of programmers are very sympathetic Papert's philosophy due to most of us being self-taught to some degree (you can see the fond nostalgia already on display in the comments here), but Felienne made me think about it more critically.

<comment><USER3> OT, but Felienne has a great talk on functional programming in Excel (thanks for reminding me of her name): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yKf8TrLUOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yKf8TrLUOw)

<comment><USER4> This is worth watching even if you hate Excel and FP. It's a view of a different way of thinking. Good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is the source code to LLogo in MACLISP, which I stashed from the MIT-AI ITS system. It's a fascinating historical document, 12,480 lines of beautiful practical lisp code, defining where the rubber meets the road, with drivers for hardware like pots, plotters, robotic turtles, TV turtles, graphical displays, XGP laser printers, music devices, and lots of other interesting code and comments.

[https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp](https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp)

Lars Brinkhoff got some of this code to run in MacLisp on an emulator! (I don't know how much of the historical hardware the emulator supports yet, but he's probably worked on some of that too. ;) )

[https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/620](https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/620)

Thanks to Lars, here are two revisions of an AI Lab memo about LLOGO:

[http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-307.pdf](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-307.pdf)

[http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-307a.pdf](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-307a.pdf)

And a Logo manual and glossary of PDP-11 Logo:

[http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-313.pdf](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-313.pdf)

[http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-315.pdf](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-315.pdf)

[http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-315a.pdf](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-315a.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Also running on the emulator: PDP-10 Logo, PDP-11 Logo, Applle II Logo.

The emulator doesn't support the robot arm yet.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for doing this, Lars, and thank you for all the amazing historical research and preservation you are doing on the PDP-10 and the origins of operating systems, Lisp, Logo, symbolic math Macsyma, and all of the software and system zeitgeist that produced Logo. We always felt like we were packaging up what our AI lab hacker culture was like, in "mind-sized bites" as Seymour said.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the kind words! I'm grateful for the quirky, fun, and interesting work and research that was done, and glad it much of it has been preserved. (Also sad some of it has been lost.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was in elementary school in the 80s, someone in our district retrofit a school bus with two rows of computers running along the sides. The bus would travel to each school in the district once a month or so. We would all walk out to the parking lot, board the bus, and use Logo. It was probably the first exposure to a computer most of the kids in my class had, and I have never forgotten it.

<comment><USER5> A Logomobile!

[https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Bus-Window-Sticker- Decal/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Bus-Window-Sticker- Decal/dp/B013F0JQYM)

Could they program the computers inside the bus to drive it around, like Robot Odyssey? ;)

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

[https://slate.com/technology/2014/01/robot-odyssey-the- harde...](https://slate.com/technology/2014/01/robot-odyssey-the-hardest- computer-game-of-all-time.html)

[https://www.robotodyssey.online/](https://www.robotodyssey.online/)

I suppose there could be a downside to that:

[https://www.vaildaily.com/news/photos-turtle-bus-rescued- by-...](https://www.vaildaily.com/news/photos-turtle-bus-rescued-by-crane/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> LOGO changed my life! When I learned it as a kid, it made me realize that software was "castles in the sky" and you could do anything you want. 41 years later and a career programmer, I'm now using Lisp in our most modern product. :-) I'll always be grateful to Papert for his work in creating and teaching LOGO.

<comment><USER7> Which version of Logo and which Lisp? Have you read SICP? Hal Abelson is responsible for getting Logo out of MIT and into the world of the Apple II, and with GJS for SICP. Logo and Lisp connections go way back though, to it's inception with BBN and MIT people.

<comment><USER9> As a kid, the library had a TI-99/4A with its LOGO and a book by Papert included. I remember it had the most documentation of any piece of software for the machine, which intrigued me. They also had a Coleco ADAM that had LOGO, too, so I used both.

Today, we use SBCL to power a Lisp backend for our product that communicates with an Electron HTML/JS frontend via WebSockets. (See Nebula[0])

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23043417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23043417)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Logo was a hard pill to swallow in the 1980's. It had some neat features 'on paper' but it was hard to appreciate them because it was agonizingly slow on the computers of the day.

It was the first programming experience I ever had where I'd type in my function, and then had to wait a while for the computer to do something to it (it never used the word "compiler"), and then it could run. I remember thinking: this makes programming not-fun. I could write it in assembler faster than I'm waiting for the "...." to dance across the screen.

<comment><USER4> I honestly can't think of anything more "missing the entire point" of a language like Logo than "I could write in assembler faster...".

<comment><USER10> I was maybe 8 or 9 at the time. I guarantee I missed 'the point' of a lot of things at that age! Shoot me.

Even today, though, if you told me there was a great new programming language, but I had to wait _a minute_ every time I made a change before running my program, I don't imagine I'd be terribly excited to learn it.

Right next to this on HN is a 2014 article by WalterBright that reports "compiler speed matters a lot". What's the last compiler you used that spent 60 seconds compiling a single file?

<comment><USER5> >What's the last compiler you used that spent 60 seconds compiling a single file?

Unity3D C# => CIL => il2cpp => emscripten => WebAssembly. ;(

Nowadays, we compile a single file with many compilers. And you change one line, then you have to recompile and repackage the whole chain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seymour Papert, introducing "The Turtle":

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTO-Ruby- Uo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTO-Ruby-Uo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJlRGe5QGhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJlRGe5QGhs)

<comment><USER9> Just that first video alone introduces and explains several key programming concepts: imperative programming with its hidden state and implicit instruction order, procedure calls with parameters, and operator-operand syntax -- all without ever having brought up any of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aaaand once again Gary Kildall gets left out of history. While CEO of Digital Research, the largest software company in the world at the time (besides IBM), he did an entire implementation himself! DR Logo had some innovative graphical features.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4P6MDuk3Zk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4P6MDuk3Zk)

<comment><USER7> Gary Killdall tried to buy Terrapin. It was unfavorable terms and I didn't agree. He went away mad and wrote something in C an implementation of what looked like Logo but I don't know how he choose to implement it. I remember him talking about structs of various sorts at one point, instead of using lists so I assume he was concerned about efficiency. I never had a discussion with them about their interest in pedagogy so I can't comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In 1983 I and Fabio Cunha designed a Logo computer with the 6809 processor: [http://www.merlintec.com/lsi/pegasus.html](http://www.merlintec.com/lsi/pegasus.html)

The project evolved into a more advanced 68000 based Smalltalk computer, but I regretted not finishing and releasing the original machine as years later I saw what schools in Brazil were doing with MSX Logo and such. The big mistake in the design was using the same chipset as the TRS-80 Color Computer which had a bunch of needless text and low resolution modes but no nice high resolutions ones.

</comment><comment><USER13> My first exposure to computers was through Logo in 1992!

Thinking back, it was really effective in grabbing your attention and making you want to experiment with different commands!

This is a good reminder that Logo is still a great teaching tool, especially for kids.

I suppose python + turtle can replicate the effect to some degree as well.

[https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Also thanks to Lars Brinkhoff's research:

Here's a video uploaded by Cynthia Solomon. Seems legit.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4kMzrDr4jQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4kMzrDr4jQ)

Definitely check out the rest of Cynthia Solomon's youtube video treasure trove, with lots of great stuff by Marvin and Margaret Minsky, Seymour Papert, and others from MIT and Atari Cambridge Research:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/cynthiaso/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/cynthiaso/videos)

Seymour Papert on Logo, Turtles and Giraffes:

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDyym_9-E-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDyym_9-E-g)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha8sTgtUejM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha8sTgtUejM)

A gestural programming system developed by Margaret Minsky, Danny Hillis, Daniel Huttenlocher, David Wallace (Gumby), and Radia Perlman at the MIT-AI Lab:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wq6SQTVM9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wq6SQTVM9M)

Marvin Minsky demonstrating a Logo Machine with an acoustic modem and cassette tape, talking about education theory, and showing a part of his first "thinking" machine: a simulated nerve synapse (1 of 40) with an adjustable knob that he built in 1951 out of WW-II surplus hardware, and discussing playing with Tinker Toys as a child:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4kMzrDr4jQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4kMzrDr4jQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S72xF3gd- mI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S72xF3gd-mI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZRQQl8mA0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZRQQl8mA0c)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfKRNHRyD64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfKRNHRyD64)

David Levitt demonstrating his musical improvisation software:

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

</comment><comment><USER14> One of Logo's derivatives, NetLogo [1], seems to be pretty popular among academics as an agent-based modeling tool. It also has a neat browser interpreter. Worth a look, IMO.

[1]: [http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/](http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/)

<comment><USER15> Santafe institute's 'Introduction to Complexity' online course uses NetLogo to run simulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was an interesting read. I grew up with early personal computers of the eighties and in the geographic area described in the history, so a lot of it is nostalgic. At that time, programming on early home computers generally meant using BASIC (and maybe poke'ing some assembly code) before getting into "real" languages like pascal, Fortran and c in college. I remember thinking logo was a 'baby' language and only for kids—-it wasn't until later on I appreciated some of its features and it's ties to lisp.

Programming languages like REBOL (or the modern variant Red [http://www.red- Lang.org](http://www.red-Lang.org)) seem to build on many of the same ideas.

<comment><USER17> Yes, REBOL was created by Carl Sassenrath, a fan of Lisp, who after writing much of the Amiga operating system, wrote Amiga Logo and then REBOL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Off topic: This site has a very nice UI. No frills. Almost soothing. Now i have to read that, and the rest of the site has moved to the top of my Tsundoku stack because of that. Does anybody else feel like that, too?

<comment><USER19> Thanks! My group at work produces that site [0], and our design group [1] worked on the UI too.

[0] [https://cdlib.org/services/pad/](https://cdlib.org/services/pad/) [1] [https://cdlib.org/services/uxdesign/](https://cdlib.org/services/uxdesign/)

<comment><USER18> I really like it. It is so unobtrusive. At first i've been surprised because i disabled in-browser Pdf-reading, but it almost looked like a pdf-reader. All proportioned and positioned just right, no fiddling necessary. And not laggy either. This is how it should be! (For me.)

<comment><USER19> it is a pdf reader, our own fork of PDF.js [https://github.com/eScholarship/pdfjs- embed2](https://github.com/eScholarship/pdfjs-embed2)

<comment><USER18> I wondered about that, since the original document obviously was a pdf. Anyways, doesn't matter because _your_ fork did the right thing for me on 24" @1920x1200, while i've been up for about 7 hours, reading and beginning to feel a little tired. When i came across your's it _eased_ me into focus. Again: This is how it _should_ be!

<comment><USER18> edit: i should add i know both the internal ones of Firefox, and Chromium. They usually don't work for me, that is why i disabled them, apart from the usual cargo-culting paranoia to only open documents with native applications ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Logo was definitely my introduction to programming. Never thought of it as programming. Lots of fun. We tried to make an animation with it as a kid.

</comment><comment><USER21> I love Logo. On of the best program was TLC Logo ( The Lisp Company 1983). They had added some extensions that made it even more powerful. The Book, Thininking about TLC logo with the Turtle cartoons (by Allen, Burke, Johnson) was super easy to learn. It's a shame it never made it to the PC stage.

</comment><comment><USER22> I couldn't stand Logo as a child--my entire childhood goal was to make a video game and Logo was just so slow. Turtle graphics made certain things easy (drawing circles) but there was no way to get some animated sprites on the screen. I pretty much instantly recognized this and stubbornly decided it was toy language for babies.

It wasn't until years later that I realized that Logo had a bunch of neat fundamentals (like functions, which were totally foreign to BASIC-fluent me). It's a shame it wasn't more attractive to a kid like me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Logo rules big times!

<comment><USER24> Even in 2020, I was pleasantly surprised that my kids school teaches Logo at the elementary school level! However, I had a hard time convincing parents who were suggesting it to be replaced with Python or a more modern programming language :(

<comment><USER25> There's some merit to both sides. As a kid in the eighties, I remember being annoyed by Logo -- it seemed a toy, and even as I child I wanted to learn the tools with which "real programs" (mostly games) could be written.

<comment><USER5> Snap! has the full power of Scheme (first class functions, user defined blocks, recursion, closures, continuations, JavaScript integration, etc), with a visual block syntax and playful graphical environment with turtle graphics like Scratch.

The following post is a couple years old, but maybe somebody can provide some updates and recent info!

Edit: I should have RTFA first, which is totally up to date, just published in 2020, from the turtle's mouth:

[https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1623m1p3](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1623m1p3)

>Brian Harvey's Personal Narrative on Snap!: Scheme Disguised as Scratch

>In 2009, the University of California, Berkeley, was one of several universities developing a new kind of introductory computer science course, meant for non-CS majors, to include aspects of the social implications of computing along with the programming content. Scratch wasn't quite expressive enough to support such a course (it lacked the ability to write recursive functions), soProf. Daniel Garcia and I thought "What's the smallest change we could make to Scratch to make it usable in our course?" After 20 years teachingStructure and Interpretation of Computer Programs[Abelson et al.1984], the best computer science text ever written, I knew that the answer to "what's the smallest change" is generally "add lambda." I joined forces with German programmer Jens Mönig, who had developed BYOB (Build Your Own Blocks), an extension to Scratch with custom (user-defined) blocks, including reporters and predicates. [...]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594403)

DonHopkins on July 23, 2018 | parent | favorite | on: Ask HN: Best Lego Mindstorms alternative for fun p...

One of the coolest ways to learn programming I've ever seen is the Snap! visual programming language, which is written in JavaScript and runs in the browser. [https://snap.berkeley.edu](https://snap.berkeley.edu)

It's the culmination of years of work by Brian Harvey and Jens Mönig and other Smalltalk and education experts. It benefits from their experience and expert understanding about constructionist education, Smalltalk, Scratch, E-Toys, Lisp, Logo, Star Logo, and many other excellent systems.

Snap! takes the best ideas, then freshly and coherently synthesizes them into a visual programming language that kids can use, but is also satisfying to professional programmers, with all the power of Scheme (lexical closures, special forms, macros, continuations, user defined functions and control structures), but deeply integrating and leveraging the web browser and the internet (JavaScript primitives, everything is a first class object, dynamically loaded extensions, etc).

Y Combinator demo:

[https://i.imgur.com/cOq8tvR.png](https://i.imgur.com/cOq8tvR.png)

[https://snap.berkeley.edu/snapsource/snap.html#present:Usern...](https://snap.berkeley.edu/snapsource/snap.html#present:Username=jens&ProjectName=y%20combinator)

Here's an excellent mind-blowing example by Ken Kahn of what's possible: teaching kids AI programming by integrating Snap! with existing JavaScript libraries and cloud services like AI, machine learning, speech synthesis and recognition, Arduino programming, etc:

AI extensions of Snap! for the eCraft2Learn project

[https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/](https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/)

>The eCraft2Learn project is developing a set of extensions to the Snap! programming language to enable children (and non-expert programmers) to build AI programs. You can use all the AI blocks after importing this file into Snap! or Snap4Arduino. Or you can see examples of using these blocks inside this Snap! project.

[https://github.com/ecraft2learn/ai](https://github.com/ecraft2learn/ai)

[http://lntrg.education.ox.ac.uk/presentation-of-ai-cloud- ser...](http://lntrg.education.ox.ac.uk/presentation-of-ai-cloud-services- integrated-with-snap-at-the-connective-ubiquitous-technology-for-embodiments- center-of-the-national-university-of-singapore-and-keio-university- on-16-march-2017-by-k/)

Use devices with Snap!:

Orbotix Sphero guide by Connor Hudson and Dan Garcia:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/11wR53OTnofRtTtxZCmxnCUjI...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11wR53OTnofRtTtxZCmxnCUjIlFQjnGewM21A0vmjtFw/edit?usp=sharing)

Lego NXT package by Connor Hudson:

[https://github.com/technoboy10/snap-nxt](https://github.com/technoboy10/snap- nxt)

Nintendo Wiimote package by Connor Hudson:

[https://github.com/technoboy10/wiisnap](https://github.com/technoboy10/wiisnap)

Finch and Hummingbird robots package by Tom Lauwers:

[https://www.hummingbirdkit.com/learning/snap- programming/](https://www.hummingbirdkit.com/learning/snap-programming/)

Parallax S2 robot package by Connor Hudson:

[https://github.com/blockext/s2](https://github.com/blockext/s2)

LEAP Motion by Connor Hudson:

[https://github.com/technoboy10/snapmotion](https://github.com/technoboy10/snapmotion)

Speech synthesis by Connor Hudson:

[https://github.com/technoboy10/snap2speech](https://github.com/technoboy10/snap2speech)

Arduino package by Alan Yorinks:

[https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm](https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm)

Arduino package by Bernat Romagosa/Citilab:

[http://snap4arduino.rocks/](http://snap4arduino.rocks/)

Fischertechnik ROBOTICS TXT Controller by Richard Kunze:

[https://github.com/rkunze/ft-robo-snap](https://github.com/rkunze/ft-robo- snap)

Snap! for Raspberry Pi by rasplay.org:

[http://downloads.rasplay.org/pisnap/](http://downloads.rasplay.org/pisnap/)

More Snap! extensions for CS education:

snap-apps.org provides Edgy for graphs, Cellular for multi-agent simulation, and more.

[http://snap-apps.org/](http://snap-apps.org/)

[http://www.snap-apps.org/edgy.html](http://www.snap-apps.org/edgy.html)

[http://www.flipt.org/#cellular](http://www.flipt.org/#cellular)

Netsblox for multiplayer networking.

[https://netsblox.org/](https://netsblox.org/)

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the kind words both about Logo and about Snap!. That article is in fact not yet officially published, but if I'm reading the ACM legalbol correctly, authors are allowed to put an "author's last draft" version on their institutions' web archives, so that's what you found.

The article has eight authors, and of course the time required to write something is \Theta(n^2) in the number of authors, so it was a long slog, although worth it because in between yelling at each other we had some great conversations about education and computers and Logo technology.

I am inordinately proud of Snap!, which is almost entirely the work of Jens Mönig. My big contribution was to talk him into lambda. (Coming in the next version: APL-style vector and matrix operations. After that we just have to find a way to shoehorn in Prolog and we'll be the unification (pun not intended) of all the good programming languages.)

<comment><USER5> Hey, how about throwing in a perverted, fetishistic, masochistic programming language like FORTH, too? ;)

Where do you think Logo and Snap fit into the three basic mental structures of psychosis, perversion, and neurosis, as W Watson describes in "The Pervert's Guide to Programming Languages"?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22910702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22910702)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZyvIHYn2zk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZyvIHYn2zk)

[https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/vulk- blog/ThePervertsGuid...](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/vulk- blog/ThePervertsGuidetoComputerProgramming-ThePaper.pdf)

I have hope that Snap! has transcended the self-indulgent Turing Tarpit of Melancholy Languages like Scheme, Lisp (which spawned Scheme during a hysterical event), Smalltalk, and languages that never were, as described on the penultimate page. ;)

Snap! strikes me more as a Hysterical language, frantically pursuing the object of desire, in pursuit of the perfect syntax.

>Hysterical Languages: Hysterical development lends itself to languages that facilitate endless refinements in the code base. The delivered code is never good enough, not merely because of pragmatic reasons but often because of ascetic reasons. The final goal of capturing the elusive domain jargon [59] seems just around the corner, where just one refinement may perfectly represent the domain. Within the hysterical languages there can be two extremes. One extreme is to work towards the capability to easily represent any aesthetic. In this extreme the work and enjoyment are in the development of the language itself [60]. The other extreme is to consciously implement the aesthetic using the language as is [61]. This extreme bends the language to look more aesthetically pleasing. Somewhere in between are refinements to extremely large code bases that must stay available.

>[59] "The overhead cost of all the translation, plus the risk of misunderstanding, is just too high. A project needs a common language that is more robust than the lowest common denominator. With a conscious effort by the team, the domain model can provide the backbone for that common language, while connecting team communication to the software implementation. That language can be ubiquitous in the team's work.", Evans, Eric (2003-08-22). Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software (Kindle Locations 829-832). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

>[60] "Also, I'm a great fan of evolving as opposed to just starting out new. You might fall in love with one particular idea, and then in order to implement it, you go create a brand-new language that's great at this new thing. Then, by the way, the 90% that every language must have, it kind of sucks at. There's just so much of that, whereas if you can evolve an existing language — for example, with C# most recently we've really evolved it a lot toward functional programming — it's all gravy at that point, I feel.", Biancuzzi, Federico; Chromatic (2009-03-21). Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) (Kindle Locations 7017-7021). O'Reilly Media. Kindle Edition.

>[61] "A big part of the modus operandi of the Ruby community is a more fluent approach— trying to make interacting with a library feel like programming in a specialized language. This is a strand of thinking that goes back to one of oldest programming languages, Lisp.", Fowler, Martin (2010-09-23). Domain- Specific Languages (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler)) (Kindle Locations 473-475). Pearson Education (USA). Kindle Edition.

<comment><USER27> Regarding hysterical languages and aesthetics there is the school of thought that small yet very expressive kernels are the most aesthetic. I recall a discussion in the early 1980s with Alan Perlis who claimed APL was a diamond and Lisp was a ball of mud. But it is easier to make things out of mud than diamonds. I also recall a discussion with Seymour Papert (circa 2005) about the next generation Logo. He claimed that one first needs to decide if the design should be driven by engineering or mathematical aesthetics. Sadly, there never was much progress designing the next Logo.

People's taste in programming languages is coloured by their first language(s). But Logo was designed to be a first language, so it shouldn't suffer from people's expectations that it do things like other languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lars Brinkhoff suggests that this thread comp.lang.logo with Brian Harvey and Leigh Klotz is required reading:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.logo/UqOvE...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.logo/UqOvEkZsJEQ)

Just a couple highlights from a detailed history of Logo that Brian and Leigh and others posted:

>From Brian Harvey:

>Many, many people have been involved in the development of Logo.

>Wally Feurzeig started the whole thing by organizing a group at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc., to study the educational effects of teaching kids a programming language. The first language they used, like most programming languages, was focused on numeric computation, and it was Wally's idea that kids would find it more natural to work in an area they knew better, namely natural language; therefore, he set up a team to design a language featuring words and sentences. Wally made up the name "Logo."

>The team Wally put together at BBN included Seymour Papert and Dan Bobrow. The three of them are credited as the designers of the first version of the language; Dan wrote the first implementation. In a BBN report dated August, 1967, credit for additional work is given to Richard Grant, Cynthia Solomon, and Frank Frazier.

>Seymour later started a Logo group at MIT, where Logo development continued. The MIT versions of Logo were substantially different from the BBN ones, both in the notations used and in the things the language could do. Most notably, turtle graphics was added at MIT.

>Among the many people who contributed to the development of Logo at MIT, at the risk of leaving someone out, are Hal Abelson, Paul Goldenberg, Dan Watt, Gary Drescher, Steve Hain, Leigh Klotz, Andy diSessa, Brian Silverman... oh, lots of people.

>I think that most of the early documents are out of print now, but whatever documentation there is of the early efforts will be in the form of technical reports from BBN and from MIT. You may have to visit Cambridge to find them!

>From Leight Klotz:

>In the mid 1970's, when the AI Lab Lisp Machine project was just getting underway, Marvin Minsky and Danny Hillis (later to found Terrapin, and still later, Thinking Machines) put together a project to build a Logo machine. It had two components: a PDP-11 processor (the 3500) and a separate vector- graphics display (the 2500). Guy Montpetit, a Canadian entrepeneur, funded development eventually, and a company called General Turtle was formed. General Turtle built and sold the 2500/3500 system. Henry Minsky, then about 12, worked on the design of the 2500, using the Stanford Draw program, one of the early electronics CAD systems. (The 2500 had this really great barrell shifter stolen from the Lisp machine design, but it was later found not to work, so it was never used.) [...]

>[...] Like Brian, I've left out many people who worked on Logo over the years: Brian Fox and Flavio Rose worked for me at Terrapin on a contract basis briefly, as did vagabond programmer Devon McCullough (who used to dial in with a 300 baud modem he'd written in entirely software using the parallel game port, with an 80-column mixed-case display done with 3x5 pixel characters; when the modem detected the call waiting click on the line, it would make the Apple II speaker make the telephone ringing sound -- a feature which I just saw a US patent filed on, not by Devon.), and the frustrated Sinclar QX programmer, who I suspect doesn't want his name used. Of course, there were tons more people at the AI Lab in the pre-commercial days...

>From Lars Brinkhoff

>Hello,

>I'm mostly researching PDP-10 software, especially MIT's Incompatible Timesharing System.

>I have recently stumbled across some of the LOGO group work. I have a copy of the Dazzle Dart game that ran on their PDP-11/45\. It uses the Tom Knight vector display controller, so it's not easy to run it.

>Maybe it would be possible to get the original MIT PDP-11 LOGO running.

>[...] It's running now.

>[...] Now also BBN PDP-10 Logo, MIT CLOGO, MIT Lisp Logo, and hopefully soon MIT Apple II Logo (direct ancestor of Terrapin Apple II Logo).

</comment><comment><USER5> Terrapin Logo for the Apple ][ and C64 came with a 6502 assembler written in Logo by Leigh Klotz, that they used to write Logo primitives (for controlling the turtle, etc).

It would be ambitious to make a self hosting 6502 Logo meta assembler, by porting the entire 6502 assembly language Logo source code to the 6502 Logo Assembler!

Leigh, wasn't the assembler that you used for the original Apple ][ version of Logo written in MacLisp running on a PDP-10?

The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found (adafruit.com) 379 points by mmastrac on Oct 4, 2018 | hide | past | web | favorite | 89 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18142287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18142287)

[https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/10/04/the-apple-ii-source- cod...](https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/10/04/the-apple-ii-source-code-for-the- logo-language-found/)

Lars: The link in the article to the code from [https://github.com/PDP-10/its](https://github.com/PDP-10/its) is broken. I found a few references to it in the repo. Did you have to take it down, or did you move it somewhere else?

[https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/a5694acbf9b6185a36d18d226...](https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/a5694acbf9b6185a36d18d22631914ac40605d6b/doc/logo.md)

>Logo

>"I too see the computer presence as a potent influence on the human mind. I am very much aware of the holding power of an interactive computer and of how taking the computer as a model can influence the way we think about ourselves. In fact the work on LOGO to which I have devoted much of the past years consists precisely of developing such forces in positive directions."

>Seymour Papert

>"Logo is the name for a philosophy of education and for a continually evolving family of computer languages that aid its realization."

>Harold Abelson

>"Historically, this idea that Logo is mainly turtle graphics is a mistake. Logo's name comes from the Greek word for word, because Logo was first designed as a language in which to manipulate language: words and sentences."

>Brian Harvey

>Logo was initially created by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, Daniel G.Bobrow, Cynthia Solomon and Richard Grant in 1967 as part of a National Science Foundation sponsored research project conducted at Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1969 Dr. Seymour Papert started the Logo Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. Throughout the 1970s the majority of Logo development was conducted at MIT in the Artificial Intelligence Lab and the Division for Study and Research in Education, using large research computer systems, such as ITS powered PDP-10.

>Our goal is to make that early Logo systems available to a wider audience of enthusiasts for exploration, experimenting and, of course, hacking.

[...]

>MIT APLOGO

>In accordance with Leigh L Klotz Jr., Hal Abelson directed the Logo for the Apple II project at MIT.

>MIT APLOGO was developed by Stephen Hain, Patrick G. Sobalvarro and Leigh L Klotz Jr. It was developed and cross-compilled for the Apple-II-Plus Personal Microcomputer on PDP-10 at the MIT LOGO Group. It is direct predecessor for Terrapin Logo. We have a source code for assembling an improved version from 7/9/81 at its/src/aplogo

<comment><USER7> Quite the resource list, Don! You should put in links to the Adventure game you wrote for the C64 Logo, and we listed you by name and age.

The assembler was already chosen, probably by Steve Hain or Gary Drescher. I believe it was CROSS. It annoyed me that I would get phase errors if I edited during the first pass which was like 10 or 15 minutes at night so I wrote a one-pass assembler in MacLisp, but it was slower to finish than the first pass of CROSS so I translated it to Logo and Hal said to put it on the utilities disk. I can't remember who added .output and .input but Logo had had them before the Apple II, I think 11Logo had it.

<comment><USER5> So CROSS made you so cross that you crossed the line by rewriting it in MacLisp, then double crossed it by rewriting it in Logo itself!

Logo Adventure for C64 Terrapin Logo

When I was 17, Terrapin published my first commercial code on their C64 Logo utilities disk: a Logo Adventure program, a simple non-graphical game that showed off Logo's list processing and functional programming capabilities.

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/logo-adventure- for-c64-terrap...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/logo-adventure- for-c64-terrapin-logo-4c684a240b53)</comment></comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg says Holocaust deniers are making an honest mistake - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/18/17587080/mark-zuckerberg-holocaust-denial-kara-swisher-interview <comment><USER2> The title of this article is pretty awful, Zuckerbergs position on the topic actually seems pretty reasonable - they don't ban controvertial opinions/falsehoods, they just limit their distribution through the news feed, unless they are actually advocating violence against a group (i.e. hate speech).

</comment><comment><USER3> "Facebook will continue to offer a platform to Holocaust deniers, Infowars, and other publishers of hoaxes on the assumption that they are sincere in their beliefs, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said."

Isn't this analogous to how internet service providers, water companies and electric companies operate? If there is an organization which is operating lawfully why should we shun them, unless there are special circumstances?

Or should we ask the domain registrar of infowars.com to shut down their site and revoke their HTTPS certificate?

<comment><USER4> > Isn't this analogous to how internet service providers, water companies and > electric companies operate?

If you mean, as a neutral common carrier (POTS telephone service in the US is a better example), then, no: Facebook _is_ actively fighting certain legal political content because it is judged by FB to be harmful (there was a fairly active thread on HN on this in the last couple of days.) It's just decided that the listed content doesn't meet the criteria for what is being targeted.

<comment><USER2> They are still fighting against the listed content, just not banning it. Just like, afaik, they don't ban political content, just make it spread less quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Zuckerberg is making a dishonest mistake</comment>


New open-source library enables building a Flutter app from an API in seconds - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMSokKmwp1U <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm the developer.

If you have any questions let me know...</comment>


Show HN: Open and simple interface mockup tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jdittrich/quickMockup <comment><USER2> Very clean, simple and easy to use, thumbs up.</comment>


The Creator of Bitcoin Comes Clean, Only to Disappear Again - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2017/10/10/the-creator-of-bitcoin-comes-clean-only-to-disappear-again/ <comment><USER2> What a fascinating read. I don't have anything to add.

The pursuit of Mr. Wright in Australia, I thought, was somewhat mundane. Evidently from this article my assumptions and his successful evasion of the Australian Police would show it wasn't just a simple raid-and-audit exercise, but something altogether more sinister.</comment>


Your thoughts about URL Shortener? - <AUTHOR> Hey Everyone! We are working on a URL shortener that enables you to offer your audience a custom message + opt-in form just before the content is shared. Would you be interested in this? Yes/No/Why not?  Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you! <comment><USER2> Can't really see the benefit here? For me, the point of a URL shortener is to reduce friction, adding an extra step just adds extra friction.</comment>


U.S. trade policies proved disastrous for Detroit, Flint - <AUTHOR> http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/03/05/us-trade-policies-proved-disastrous-detroit-flint/81339976/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Detroit Free Press endorsed Clinton last week. This is Sander's guest column response. Time to wake up and smell the NAFTA.

"The decimation of Detroit, Flint and communities all over this country did not happen by accident. It is a direct result of disastrous trade deals that have allowed corporations to ship our jobs to low-wage countries."

<comment><USER2> H. Ross Perot warned us about NAFTA and other foreign trade deals.

He said the giant sucking sound you hear will be jobs leaving the USA. It really happened just like he said.</comment></comment>


Exploiting Errors for Efficiency: A Survey from Circuits to Algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.05859 <comment><USER2> Increased efficiency at the cost of higher error rates should be of prime importance for cryptocurrency mining ASICs, something I didn't see mentioned in the article.</comment>