New Product From 280North: Atlas - <AUTHOR> http://280atlas.com/

<comment><USER3> These guys are awesome and I feel kind of bad to say this, but it's the perferction of a failed idea. I've been trying these kinds of GUI builders for almost 20 years, starting with VB and PowerBuilder, and I always ended up not actually using them.

The usual criticism is that they generate awful code, but that's not necessarily the case. The problem is really that these tools ask you to keep clicking on lots of little sliders and lines and bars and shapes and then click over there in that text box to enter a name and then select this or that from a list or menu, wait until that three pixel graphic changes its shape into a handle so you can drag that line over here, etc, and there's no way to automate this.

It's a matter of taste whether you like to do it that way when you create _one_ form, but once you create an application or two or three you have to abstract from the repeating patterns and you can't do that with the GUI builder.

GUI builders make you stay on the same level of abstraction forever because they don't have the equivalent of meta programming or even just plain procedural programming.

The reason why code built with GUI builders is so awful is not so much that they necessarily generate bad code. It's that developers who can put up with repeating the same clicks and drags on the same level of abstraction for years and years are in the wrong profession and create bad code regardless of the tools.

Programming is all about abstracting and automating stuff. The pinnacle of GUI builder based abstraction is what Microsoft calls "user controls". All they abstract is a bunch of widgets statically glued together on a panel. Great, but that's like 5% of what you want to do.

I'm afraid GUI builders are hopeless for any serious programming.

<comment><USER4> You've got some good points, but Interface Builder (and I imagine Atlas) departs fundamentally from VB and PowerBuilder in that the code doesn't live directly behind the GUI elements. Instead, it's connected by a series of inlets and outlets that are designed to allow for reusability and model-view- controller disconnect.

You can also define UI things in code in Cappuccino (as well as Obj-C).

IB is optional with Obj-C, and I imagine Atlas will be optional with Cappuccino.

<comment><USER5> To be precise Interface Builder doesn't actually generate ANY code at all. You are manipulating in-memory objects and setting their properties. When you save your UI it's effectively just a serialized form of the objects you were playing with.

<comment><USER4> The key point that I was trying to make is that IB is fundamentally separate from the code that is running in the application. In traditional RAD tools like VB, Delphi and Powerbuilder the interface and application logic are one and the same, you literally have code behind each form and each UI element.

I didn't say anything about IB generating code.

<comment><USER5> Apologies - I read "in that the code doesn't live directly behind the GUI elements" as an inference that it lived somewhere else. I just wanted to add a clarification in case others read it the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's pretty amazing. It's like Interface Builder but for Cappuccino ... and as a web app.

I can't believe how awesome these guys are, I hope Apple acquires them and starts using their technology for MobileMe + iWork.

<comment><USER7> If you knew anything about what happened to WebObjects, you would be hoping that such a scenario never occurred.

<comment><USER8> A summary of that would be great....

I know that Apple pushed WebObjects to the back burner when they acquired NeXT in the mid 90s but I'm not sure why it would be bad for them to buy 280 North today.

<comment><USER9> Unless there's a clear way for something to shift hardware, Apple isn't really interested in it. WebObjects has languished, despite being killer in more than one respect. An update (and de-java-ing) of WO tools with something like Atlas integrated would be absolutely killer, but unless it helps them shift more Macs in big numbers, I don't see it going anywhere.

<comment><USER4> My punt is that Apple is going to make a big enterprise play in the next 2-3 years. Time is ripe, and it can be done without a big investment in capital.

Wait until Steve Jobs publicly denounces enterprise IT as a business with no future. He'll be right, in more ways than one.

<comment><USER10> "-enterprise IT as a business with no future. He'll be right, in more ways than one."

Can you clarify? Because that seems very misinformed. Unless you mean on- premise deployments, which has been on the way out for years.

With SaaS + cloud computing, Enterprise IT is just starting to get interesting again.

<comment><USER4> I can't give this topic the justice it deserves in an HN comment, but yes I'll clarify.

In 10 years time, the "IT Department" virtually won't exist at most small-mid size businesses.

I think a lot of business software is going to be taken off-the-peg, or plug- boarded from open source software as interfaces approach ubiquity and organisations like government, banking and b2b start to expose consistent "APIs". It's already happening now.

We also have gen X and Y moving into senior management and the internet generation actually moving into work. Computer skills are getting to the point of being virtually innate.

Acquiring computer equipment will be analogous in business to buying a photocopier or some other office equipment.

</crystalball>

<comment><USER11> Seriously? I hear this all the time; do you guys work in IT or in web development? The web people are way over on another page. ERP is primarily the reason IT exists and ERP packages take _DECADES_ to change - witness the MASSIVE amount of COBOL still around (including here). ERP deployments are complex and almost always customized.

I suspect Gen X and Gen Y (which includes me) generally doesn't have a clue at what goes on in a "real" IT center - meaning one that is not (a) some awesome start-up that will be forgotten dust tomorrow or (b) a web oriented consumer- facing business. Nothing in IT is anything like "buying a photocopier" nor will it ever be. The company that takes that approach will be run into the ground by its competitor that innovates.

<comment><USER4> Apologies in advance if this is rambling.

I'm an IT contractor (never done web for money). My opinion was formulated based on my experience managing an IT division over 5 years or so and also doing various PM and architecture roles.

You can more-or-less validate the first 50% of my claim by giving a bunch of computer literate people some brand new boxed PCs or Macs, and an internet connection and telling them to go for it and set up their environment. They'll be able to get things up and running, and if they have a little bit of nous they will usually come up with something workable.

Of course, it won't be engineered. I did some work for a fairly big manufacturer about 10 years ago that opened a small office on the east coast of Australia. The small office got absolutely no IT support as it was off the radar, and because of the corporate structure Finance left them alone too.

They managed to brew up the essentials of what they needed using Access for sales/marketing, MYOB for the books and corporate webmail and hotmail. When IT found out, they went spare and "fixed" everything. The office suffered in both performance and morale because instead of their terrible (but working) homebuilt CRM and accounting systems they had to use a set of ancient AS/400 apps that were about 1000ms away (no problem for interactivity because they were on 5250 screens, but very slow turnaround). The PCs were useless too, IT made them log in to Netware and do file/print over an 8kbps CIR Frame Relay connection.

Government (and to a lesser extent business) exposing and unifying APIs and SAAS probably means that in 2009 situations like the one I messily chronicled above will scale, because the IT development and infrastructure component just isn't required. Someone somewhere else who knows all about scaling, security, DRP and backup has done it for them and is happy to charge a per-user-per- month fee.

If this happened now, they might have used a 37Signals product and Salesforce for example (no idea about the ERP side).

My current contract is a guerilla finance project to build some analysis tools for SOX compliance that they haven't been able to get corporate IT to deliver on for 3 years. We built a small app in Python with a web front-end (Django). It was quick, it worked, and it's a manifestation of people realising that IT has become commoditised and that IT doesn't have to be hard. I guess IT wanted to do something like build some ABAP programs in SAP using consultants that charge £800 a day on a 2 year timeline.

There's a lot of law firms, design offices and small practices that just go out and buy some macs and never even call in IT help. It's going to happen and keep happening, and it's difficult to see how the shift away from corporate IT could happen if you're focussed on changing the VAT rates in FORTRAN, applying PTFs to the iSeries, or keeping the active directory backed up. Shifts aren't usually obvious when you're in the thick of it.

I don't think the quickest typists in the typing pool ever thought that the managing director would type his own memos 30 years ago, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic. RAD tools for the web haven't ever been done properly.

This could be huge.

The funny thing is, it actually looks quicker and easier than IB - <USER2> because Objective-J is interpreted and runs in the browser, and it has the controllers in Atlas.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love what these guys are doing - I'm just not sold on the whole Objective-J thing.

<comment><USER13> Does anyone know of any large projects using Objective-J / Cappuccino besides 280North?

<comment><USER14> Were currently using it:

<http://stylous.com/>

<comment><USER15> Cool. I browsed some of the products. Is it possible to browse by sex? When I was looking at shoes, I saw stilettos, even though I'm not shopping for my weekly drag show in Las Vegas.

<comment><USER14> Sorry just women's accessories for now :-P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fascinating... though I now feel like an old assembly programmer saying things like "In my day, we wrote Javascript by hand, and it only consumed suchandsuch memory and was blazing fast... now you with your newfangled GUI builders..."

</comment><comment><USER17> Very snazzy!

I don't know how y'all plan to make money, but don't get too caught up in dev tools! They're fun, and might be good marketing, but be sure they're actually saving time against making the thing that people with money actually want.

</comment><comment><USER18> This really is amazing. But it makes me nervous. I'm open to the idea, but just as I prefer using a text editor to write my HTML code rather than Dreamweaver, I'm concerned that this can take me too far away from my web app code.

Like any other tool, in order to use it effectively you have to master the tool just like you'd master a language. Hopefully what's under the hood here and the code it generates makes it easy to do that.

<comment><USER15> In order to build views with Cappuccino today, I'm doing it by hand (i.e. subclassing for example a CPView and constructing child visuals) - this means instancing elements such as CPTextField, CPButton, etc. and adding it to a view.

But being able to do it visually ala Interface Builder with similar semantics around delegates, subclassing, IBAction and Outlet concepts will rock - speeding up development time tremendously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's fascinating to watch the re-invention of the browser as a NeWS server (client in normal terminology) from nearly 20 years ago.

Postscript imaging model == HTML5 Canvas, Postscript == Javascript.

Hmm...

<comment><USER20> But was NeWS a good idea? It seemed excessively complex to me, just like AJAX.

<comment><USER19> I didn't mean to imply it was a good idea, just that this model, like X Windows, has already been tried before (and found wanting?).

<comment><USER21> The one difference is that everyone has and knows how to use a browser, or what to do if you tell them to open myfoo.com.

What percentage of the computer population knows what X Windows is, much less has any idea how to use it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very nice, although the demo seems a bit overly-staged. My prediction: the quality of their debugger will make or break this company.

</comment><comment><USER15> Übercool. Can't wait to no longer have to build views in code.

Seems like there is a good text editor being used in Atlas, hopefully this will make its way into Cappuccino soon!!

</comment><comment><USER22> Mind blown.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm using a lot Interface Builder to generate my Capuccino views using their tool nib2cib.

Atlas is going to save me a lot of time.

Sure you can still edit the plist by hand or programatically but I don't find it more efficient neither easier.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is incredible, excellent work guys

</comment><comment><USER25> So, when do we get to play with it??

</comment><comment><USER26> I think this has some potential to allow more developers to publish a web app with at least a decent looking ui. There are a lot of good backend developers who happen to be bad at ui, this might allow more potential customers to view the product instead of being horrified as soon as they saw the ui.

</comment><comment><USER27> wish sites would put a textual description below videos.

</comment><comment><USER28> A visual IDE in a browser. Very cool.

Is it fast/responsive enough to not be annoying? No demo yet.

And I wish they had a one-line pitch.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tried to get to it last nite and this morning. No luck. Is it the "slashdot" effect, or is something else going on?

<comment><USER30> Sorry about that. We're still in a hotel in Miami with shitty Internet. Will be back in California tonight and everything should be smooth sailing after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> absolutely stunning!

</comment><comment><USER32> Borland cbuilder meets the web, very impressive.

</comment><comment><USER33> can't seem to get on right now.

<comment><USER23> You can watch the video there: <http://www.viddler.com/explore/boucher/videos/1/>

<comment><USER33> Thank you very much</comment></comment></comment>


Jeong Kwan, the Philosopher Chef - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/t-magazine/jeong-kwan-the-philosopher-chef.html <comment><USER2> a beautiful piece

the major takeaway for me:

        If you wander the grounds of the monastery,
        it becomes clear that Jeong Kwan has another rare
        ingredient in her larder, one that rarely comes up
        in discussions about the latest hot chef: time.

universal application</comment>


Ask HN: What does it mean to be a product owner? - <AUTHOR> More than the obvious wikipedia definition, what really is a product owner? What skills should one work on to be a successful product owner? <comment><USER2> Varies, but generally a product owner is focused on taking the strategy and translating it down into actionable tasks. They work across teams and roles to make sure the team is executing properly. It tends to be more tactical than strategic. They don't have to know how to sell or market products well, or how to get those products into the market successfully. On paper (a narrower scrum view) they are responsible from sprint planning, to daily stand ups, to review, to retrospective. Not the larger backlog prior to sprint planning, and not what happens after some software is accepted as done / to be shipped.

Some links: [https://www.productplan.com/product-manager-vs-product- owner...](https://www.productplan.com/product-manager-vs-product-owner/) [https://blog.aha.io/the-product-manager-vs-product- owner/](https://blog.aha.io/the-product-manager-vs-product-owner/) [https://blog.aha.io/product-manager-vs-product-owner-vs- proj...](https://blog.aha.io/product-manager-vs-product-owner-vs-project- manager/) [https://www.productplan.com/glossary/product- owner/](https://www.productplan.com/glossary/product-owner/) [https://blog.aha.io/the-product-vs-project-vs-program- manage...](https://blog.aha.io/the-product-vs-project-vs-program-manager-role- confusion/) [https://www.mironov.com/?s=product+owner](https://www.mironov.com/?s=product+owner)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google in their interviews for product owners are testing for such skills: \- creativity (ability to looks from different angle) \- estimation (possibility to estimate something with minimal information, e.g. "how many gas stations there are in Germany?") \- communication (ability clearly articulate what's in your brain and set bigger tasks in smaller pieces) \- knowledge on subject (technical skills in Google's case, they have one coding session with product owners during their interview)</comment>


Fitbit Blaze - <AUTHOR> https://www.fitbit.com/blaze <comment><USER2> There are some companies that take their customers seriously and others do not.

I bought a Coin on kickstarter and they got blindsided by the EMV transition and rather than shipping me a piece of junk on time, they shipped something that addressed the major problems later.

A lot of people complained but I felt they acted with the highest integrity and if they do another startup or come out with another product I will want to do business with them.

I have bought products and been contacted sellers who had sincere desire to have me be happy with the product and encourage me to return the product and get a replacement if I find any defect at all. You can find these people in Peoria and you can find these people in Shenzen.

I bought products from Fitbit which all had some problems and found that the people there would try pretty hard to not give you an RMA.

Maybe other people have different experiences and I don't know much about their situation, but I did buy a Withings scale and it worked perfectly from day one and if I do get another fitness tracker it is going to be a Microsoft Band or one of the seemingly hundreds of other products in what is a crowded marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks like a rushed to market experiment. The same features as a much cheaper model, with most of the interesting features requiring a smartphone. If I have to carry a smartphone anyway, I might as well use it as my tracker. If this was 149.99 it may be justifiable but for now I'll stick with a standard 99 tracker. If anything I rather get a Withings Activite.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a ripoff at $199. Aesthetically it looks pretty nice, but it requires a phone for GPS and music. For people that run often or longer distances I don't think it makes much sense. For $50 more you can get the Tom Tom Spark, which has an internal GPS and internal MP3 player.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is more of a competitor to the Apple Watch than to the Spark or the Forerunner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They are going to start doing a better job of integrating with iOS / Android notifications if they are going to ask people to part with $200 for such limited functionality.</comment>


A little Chrome Store experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.mockuptiger.com/mockups-personal-edition

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is what we did

Modern browsers such as Chrome come with their own database system and one such system is called as "localstorage" "We singled out all the needed database objects that are needed to create projects and mockups We redesigned the system using only localstorage We kept the User Interface as it is. So now the entire MockupTiger application is bundled into a single HTML file. No need of a webserver or database system."

What do you think about the pricing?</comment>


Analyzing Who and What Appears in a Decade of US Cable TV News - <AUTHOR> https://tvnews.stanford.edu/data <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the actual paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.06007](https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.06007)</comment>


India school-leaving exam: A controversy that cost 23 lives - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48050020 <comment><USER2> This is horrible, but it's clear to me that this is just more than "a software error". Is being a student so hard in India that failing an exam causes people to commit suicide? In that case the problem is way bigger than "a software error".

Don't get me wrong, I understand that these deaths could have been prevented if the software errors hadn't happened; but the serious problem that should be addressed, in this case, is not the presence of these errors.

<comment><USER3> > Is being a student so hard in India that failing an exam causes people to > commit suicide?

The problem here is definitely bigger than a software error. For students from small towns or poor family, education is their only shot at a better life for them and their family. You grow up in an environment where failure is simply not an option. I was once one of them. The cost of failing is incredibly high. Kids at this age should not be under such pressure.

<comment><USER4> This. It is a massive cultural problem which the Indian society has perpetuated over the past couple of decades. This competition was so intense that kids scoring 94/95% were also not good enough. 98/100 or bust. Colleges in this country had cut-off lists at 99% for the first 4-5 lists. A vast majority of Indians who grew up and were schooled, till atleast as late as early 2010s, have faced this. I've seen kids as early as 5 taking extra classes after school to get ahead of others. I've heard of parents enquiring about "what" to do for their kid who will write a competitive exam 20 years later. Yes, they are panicking/preparing for something which is going to happen 20 years later.

Fortunately, winds are changing directions. Young Indians have come around to the prospect that engineering, medicine, law or civil services are not the only career options. Success of companies like Flipkart, Paytm have played a massive role in turning students towards entrepreneurship. People in major cities are open to pursuing unconventional careers on Youtube, Instagram, Blogs etc.

But there's still a massive way to go. I'd estimate it will take another generation or two to bring about this cultural change that marks are not everything.

If you need to grasp the intensity of the problem, be aware that multiple prime ministers have made multiple remarks over the years, telling the kids that the exams are not the end of their life[1]. Movies have been made to emphasize that skills/passion is way more important and valuable[2]. To see the after effects of such an education system, read The Made-In-India Manager[3]. Some positive effects are that you get really ambitious and competitive people out of such a system. On the negative side, you'd see that many Indian workers do not really have a hobby or life beyond work.

[1] [https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/board-exam-is- not-...](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/board-exam-is-not-the-exam- for-life-modi-tells-students/story-mey38ekYP46ou8mID71qrI.html)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots)

[3] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42611062-the-made-in- ind...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42611062-the-made-in-india- manager)

<comment><USER5> > People in major cities are open to pursuing unconventional careers on > Youtube, Instagram, Blogs etc.

Given the inane (at best) nature of most of what appears on youtube, instagram, blogs, etc., I'm not sure that's especially positive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even in Nepal, many students committed suicide every year when they failed the SLC (School Leaving Certificate) exam. Since a few years ago the education board changed the grading system from percentage based to grade based. Previously the results would be published on a national daily, and only the symbol number of students who passed the exam would appear. AKA public humiliation of children of the age 14-17 mostly.

Now the system has changed; no student fails, they only obtain certain grade. If (s)he would like to increase their grades in certain subject they can re- appear the exam and increase their grades. This has been a successful change, saving probably hundreds of innocent lives.

</comment><comment><USER7> The standard deviation combined with a large population means any automated system targeting the populace is ethically bound to increase the number of nines it must put in to ensure quality. This means having the necessary checks, balances, redundancies. 23 out of 320000 is still too many.

Abstraction - in this case the govt wanting to offload the logistics of exams - requires the govt to retain sufficient visibility and checks into the process. I believe the education board isn't that naive to not do that.

The issue is that in India, graduation can mean the difference between poverty and at least a modest livelihood. Sometime ago I read an article where the journalist argued that that motivation for going to college in the US isn't high 'cos you can have a middle class living without a degree. In India, and perhaps in China too, that doesn't happen.

The eye to see potential in people and invest in them instead of using metrics like exam marks would go a long way. As another poster noted, the new India isn't that naive to think that marks are the end all, but for many it continues to play a significant role in their aspirations. The more examples of independence that get publicised, the more our young will be inspired.

Edit: fixed total number.

<comment><USER8> I would say the US is becoming more like India/China given what Americans are willing to do to get into their choice schools and graduating even if it means borrowing unreasonable amounts of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know if I would say it caused them. There are many complex and massive problems that are far more to blame for these suicides. This is like saying WWI and II were caused by Gavrilo Princip.

<comment><USER10> It would be unfortunate if it turned out that we software people have a responsibility towards those that are affected by our product. /s

Yes, there are many complex and massive problems, but whether or not they are 'far more to blame' is an open question, once you are operating in that particular environment you decide to take on the responsibility that goes with it. These structural problems also need taking care of _but until then the people who write such software need to be more careful to limit the impact of errors they make_.

Quote from TFA:

"At the heart of the controversy is a private software firm, Globarena Technology, which in 2017 won the government contract to conduct the exam across the state for more than 970,000 students. It is also responsible for processing the final scores to announce results.

The state education board, which outsourced the job to Globarena, has said the suicides were not "connected to mistakes due to technical and result processing errors".

Globarena conceded there had been errors.

"We follow the process prescribed by the board. The incidents that have happened are unfortunate. Initially there were technical errors. We have made the corrections," VSN Raju, the company's CEO, told the BBC in April. "

Endquote.

In such circumstances it should be a requirement to get stuff like this right, apparently peoples lives depend on it . This is as mission critical as it gets. See also: software is eating the world. That comes with a responsibility.

<comment><USER11> > These structural problems also need taking care of but until then the people > who write such software need to be more careful to limit the impact of > errors they make.

"People who write such software" are probably some developers who either deliver before deadline or get fired. Who knows, maybe they are even the future versions of the students - struggling to support their families.

I don't think it's realistic to expect they can shoulder the responsibility for ethics in developing software. Something needs to exert pressure at businesses not to deliver crappy software. Unions? The law? I don't know, but not individual developers.

<comment><USER10> Their managers and everybody higher up are just as culpable if not more so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it hard to blame the software error for this. Of course it's tragic that these kids killed themselves over a wrong result, but what about the kids who do the same after actually failing their exams?

Blaming the software for the extreme pressure and stress feels like a cop-out to me, especially after reading that (at least) this one student had the option to redo the exams.

Software can have bugs, people can make mistakes, mistaken bad grades happen regardless of whether software is involved or not. The real cause for the deaths of these people is the pressure put on them/they put on themselves, and the value people assign to these grades.

<comment> em-bee the problem was not bad students failing, but good students getting a failing grade in error.

the bad student knows what's coming and can emotionally prepare for failing the exam. the good student can not do that if they get a result that wildly differs from what they should have gotten. not in a system where they believe they have no chance for appeal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I went through this Telangana's educational system mentioned in the article, but before the "software upgrades", they used to whoop kids asses even in 11 and 12th grades, somehow I got through the system without much psychological damage.

Apart from than test pressures, there is also tuition pressure, our family was too poor to pay the fees on time, so they would ask whoever is not up-to-date with fees to stand up in the middle of class and ask us when we will be paying. Me and my other friends dealt with it by using humor to deal with poorness.

</comment><comment><USER14> People working on automation systems have a special responsibility, because any small mistakes can be multiplied by the scale the system is used at.

Programming should have a code of ethics.

<comment><USER11> Without unions the management can pressure you into breaking the code of ethics.

<comment><USER15> Enron had union workers. Volkswagen has union workers. Boeing has union workers. I'm not sure that unionization is the silver bullet to ward off unethical behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We need to build a world without exams. A world where curiosity is encouraged and rewarded. A world where all school lessons start with a goal of building something tangible and relevant at the end of it. Something a student can care about and be proud of.

<comment><USER17> > _We need to build a world without exams_

Tests are fine. If you can't pass a written test, you'll likely make a lousy lawyer. But a written test would filter poorly for a world-class designer or dancer or developer.

The solution isn't in banning exams, but in ensuring they aren't a single point of failure for a student's prospects. Beyond being humane, it also improves the quality of the education system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In India, the identity of a student is defined by his grade. It's too bad students score grades that are not sufficient to satisfy the ego of their parents/relatives/society. It takes a lot of time for people to discover that they are not limited by their grades. People who never discover that, define their children using the same yardstick.

It's really sickening. I really wish the parents understand that the real world is more about collaboration than competition.

Anyone interested in truly understanding what education is - please read this book "totto-chan , the little girl at the window".

</comment><comment><USER19> India has an often criticized reservation system where 50-60% of seats in colleges/universities are allotted to people from lower castes. This puts enormous pressure on economically backward kids from upper castes who have to score upwards of 98% to get admitted whereas a person from a lower caste can get admitted by scoring just about 50%.

</comment><comment><USER20> The comments here would have been completely different had the software been developed by the government.

<comment><USER18> The problem isn't remotely related to automation system.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Open source GitHub client built with Flutter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pd4d10/git-touch <comment><USER2> Would love to see this on [f-droid]([https://f-droid.org/en/](https://f-droid.org/en/))</comment>


UK ISPs censoring Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16569

<comment><USER2> Make sure to scroll right down to the bottom. For most of the page it feels like it's just some transparent proxying - which sucks but is fair enough.. but at the bottom an actual example of censorship is shown - specifically for <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer> (probably because someone complained about the non-pornographic but contentious image on that page)

<comment><USER3> Is there a more coherent definition of "pornographic" in UK law than there is in US law, or is it approximately the same "I know it when I see it" as we have?

<comment><USER2> In the UK the term "indecent" is used instead of pornographic.

The Protection of Children Act 1978 ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Children_Act_1978> ) says:

      The Act defines an indecent photograph broadly without defining the term "indecent"

It is possible for pornography to be considered indecent and _not_ indecent in multiple cases - just because of the opinion of the judge and/or jury (where relevant).

On a _personal_ level, I would consider "pornographic" to be something that's intended or designed to arouse sexually (in either a normal or perverted individual). Regarding the Virgin Killer cover, it appears to be a simple nude - no worse than paintings or sculptures of cherubs, though certainly contentious in our panic-driven culture.

<comment><USER4> not much different than communication law in the United States really

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HTTP Proxies are evil, and stupid. Good thing there are thousands of ISPs to choose from in the UK.

Shame <https://www.wikipedia.org> doesn't work.

<comment><USER6> No, but <https://secure.wikimedia.org/> does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has openly admitted adding a URL from the Wikipedia domain to their blacklist [<http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.249.htm>]. From the IWF news release:

"The specific URL (individual webpage) was then added to the list provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector to protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child."

Sounds like censorship to me, especially since the linked Wikimedia bug report lists instances of fake 404 pages being served in response to requests for <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer>.

</comment><comment><USER8> The BBC have picked up this story:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7770456.stm>

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems like nothing is actually getting censored. Wikipedia was flagged as a possible source of child porn, probably because of the Virgin Killer's LP.

I would suspect the proxy the ISPs are routing the site through is to monitor the use and log the IPs of the individuals using it. That's pretty funny for wikipedia given the scale of use and it's search rankings.

I wonder what % of the UK broadband connections have been tracked now.

<comment><USER10> \</comment></comment><comment> Comment #16 From Gurch 2008-12-06 17:08:01 UTC </comment><comment>-

The transparent proxies have been put in place in order to allow the ISPs to selectively censor Wikipedia pages.

Currently the pages [[Virgin Killer]] and [[Image:Virgin Killer.jpg]] are censored for myself and users of the other UK ISPs mentioned. The technical details vary; in my case, I get a fake 404 page.

<comment><USER11> It's great that you have people that watch over you in case you would consume the 'wrong' information... Now let's hope their definition of 'wrong' matches yours.

Is there anybody in the UK challenging this stuff ?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.openrightsgroup.org/></comment></comment></comment>


Data Privacy Protection: Why Tutanota Is in Germany - <AUTHOR> https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/data-privacy-germany <comment><USER2> "In Germany there is no law that could force us to submit to a gag order or to implement a backdoor."

meanwhile

"Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces"

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/cock-li-e-mail- se...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/cock-li-e-mail-server- seized-by-german-authorities-admin-announces/)

-edit- to: all

yes I realize seizure is not a gag order nor a backdoor. but the whole article spends thousand word praising how privacy is so much more safe in Germany and how all the other states surveillance operations are so bad , which was kinda ironic.

<comment><USER3> Seizure can be made public and email server provider take actions to protect against seizure. This is how it should work.

Ability to force gag order or implement a backdoor is really disgrace in democratic society.

<comment><USER4> >email server provider take actions to protect against seizure

And how might that be done. The obvious answer would be encrypt the hard drive but what's preventing law enforcement from doing a cold boot attack?

<comment><USER5> _but what 's preventing law enforcement from doing a cold boot attack?_

Not using ancient DRAM would be a great start. Remanance characteristics of DDR3 makes cold boot attacks extremely unlikely to be successful.

ref: [https://www1.cs.fau.de/filepool/projects/coldboot/fares_cold...](https://www1.cs.fau.de/filepool/projects/coldboot/fares_coldboot.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aaah, Germany - the leader of privacy across the globe, the country where you're legally required to give up all your personal information in order to call someone from a prepaid phone card you just bought for 5 euro. And where you're not allowed to open up your wifi hotspot because someone might download an mp3 with it.

<comment><USER7> > give up all your personal information in order to call someone from a > prepaid phone card you just bought for 5 euro.

That is flat out untrue. I actually was surprised how easy it was to get prepaid SIM cards (just buy them at any shop/gas station, no info/ID required), load and use them however and whenever I want (also 15 Euros for 5GB 3G and works in USB data sticks, pretty nice).

Illegal to have open Wifi, that is true :-) (I think it's a 125 Euro fine)

<comment><USER8> >(just buy them at any shop/gas station, no info/ID required

By law, they have to request your name, adress and DOB before you can activate the card (usually not done in store, but online at home). They don't need to validate them though (no ID required) and it's not illegal to make false statements :).

<comment><USER7> Huh, they didn't ask me for anything, I just bought the card and it worked as soon as I inserted it into the phone...

<comment><USER8> The shop might've activated the card with their details for you. There are also a lot of preactivated cards for sale on ebay. But _some_ details were given to the provider, just not yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would not bet on German data privacy laws. Historically Germany was ok in that regard (not exceptional but I'd say squarely in the "one of the better places to keep your data" camp). However "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" was recently voted into action so ISPs have to keep personal information of their customers on file just in case some agency might need them. The law passed relatively smoothly and that's pretty much all you need to know about the general trend (less privacy, more state power).

<comment><USER10> As always in history it's about the question where do your rights get violated the least and Germany is among those places at the moment. Long time data retention is unfortunately very common in Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > In Germany there is no law that could force us to submit to a gag order or > to implement a backdoor.

Meanwhile, Germany's largest ISP (Deutsche Telekom) is handing over all data of its daughter companies in neighboring countries (in many of which Deutsche Telekom is in a monopoly position - handling most of the Internet traffic) to Germany's intelligence agencies and has supposedly been doing so for about a decade already.

Germany is doing a lot of the things its politicians have criticized the US for.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tutanota?

[https://tutanota.uservoice.com/forums/237921-general/suggest...](https://tutanota.uservoice.com/forums/237921-general/suggestions/7858974-tutanota- is-using-unauthenticated-aes-cbc-encrypti)

[http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2015/Jun/58](http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2015/Jun/58)

Emphasis on the "no".

</comment><comment><USER13> I guess this is relevant: [https://twitter.com/evacide/status/679117565411610625](https://twitter.com/evacide/status/679117565411610625)

</comment><comment><USER14> > In Germany we have learned our lesson, and we will fight for our privacy > online on all ends.

Except dick jokes, of course.

<comment><USER15> I haven't been following German news, lately; what did I miss?

<comment><USER14> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10774152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10774152) for details and analysis.

<comment><USER16> >Cock.li was reportedly used last week to send a bogus bomb threat e-mail from "firstname.lastname@example.com" to several school districts nationwide, which led to the closure of all schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

I don't see what that has to do with dick-jokes being the reason

<comment><USER14> Concern over privacy, which has been severely compromised by the confiscation of ~65k users' data (including stored email) in an investigation into the actions of one, seems not particularly on offer in this case, where the only significant departure from the norm is that the service is named after a shameless dick joke.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Seattle to permanently close 20 miles of streets to traffic - <AUTHOR> https://durkan.seattle.gov/2020/05/mayor-durkan-urges-residents-to-continue-to-stay-home-and-announces-stay-healthy-streets-pilot-will-become-permanent-bike-projects-will-be-expedited-in-2020/ <comment><USER2> I have previously described Seattle as "car hostile" and this is continuing evidence that this descriptor is apt. Anyone who has been to Seattle recently will probably attest to the serious quality of life improvements these moves create.

Next step: soak the hell out of Amazon for public transit. Seriously. They should go fucking nuts.

<comment><USER3> Any particular reason why you chose Amazon as the company that should be paying for a public utility for some reason? What about Microsoft, Boeing, University of Washington... what's the criteria by which a company becomes responsible for public works in your mind?

<comment><USER4> One potential reason to prefer Amazon over Microsoft and Boeing here is that Amazon is majority in Seattle proper, while the vast majority of Microsoft and Boeing are outside of the city (e.g. Redmond, Bellevue).

<comment><USER5> And if the city tries to "soak" Amazon too much, they will move outside of the city, too.

<comment><USER2> When has a tech company ever left a city due to taxes? As far as I can tell, sky high taxes haven't impacted the Bay Area one bit.

<comment><USER5> I don't think Amazon would leave the Seattle area entirely, just the city limits. And not even SF has imposed the level of taxation Seattle's local socialist movement keeps trying to impose on Amazon. (NB: I'm not using "socialist" as a slur; Seattle has an actual socialist movement with one council member openly affiliating with the "Socialist Alternative Party").

<comment><USER6> Sure, but Amazon can probably afford it seeing as how they pay $0 in federal income tax unlike a lot of other companies including those in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER5> Amazon pays $0 in federal income tax because they reinvest all of their profits into their own growth. Most of the tech industry does the same thing.

They "can afford" a lot of things, sure. But at some point it won't be cost- effective for them anymore, and I suspect they will reach that point long before the demagogues of Seattle's extreme left reach the limit of how much they want to extract from Amazon's coffers.

<comment><USER6> The fact that the Amazon executives are extraordinarily well paid seems to contradict that claim. Besides, saying there is "some point" at which the tax is too much is the same as saying "they don't have infinite money." Of course; no company does. Amazon has a limit to what it can pay in taxes, but the point is it's nowhere near $0.

<comment><USER5> > The fact that the Amazon executives are extraordinarily well paid seems to > contradict that claim.

Tell you what: you go and do a better job than Amazon of growing a large scale business year after year by paying executives less and maybe then your opinion will be worth something.

<comment><USER6> The funny thing about your comment is that it presumes we are talking about opinion, when really it's just a logical progression. Unless you can see a valid counterargument besides one that employs a logical fallacy [1].

[1] [https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-...](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal- to-False-Authority)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Portland is doing something similar: [https://beta.portland.gov/eudaly/news/2020/4/28/transportati...](https://beta.portland.gov/eudaly/news/2020/4/28/transportation- commissioner-chloe-eudaly-announces-new-slow-streetssafe)

</comment><comment><USER8> The fact that Seattle would close these streets as a "temporary" measure due to the coronavirus, and then change their mind to hastily make the changes permanent, is not okay. This gives residents and constituents no chance to understand the changes, evaluate the impacts, and voice their concerns. When traffic returns to normal, the lack of side streets to travel through is going to exacerbate traffic and worsen travel times on the already overloaded arterials. Most people in Seattle drive, and this is another hostile "war on cars" move that is really just "war on constituents" at this point. It is very unfortunate that the city's planning and governance is really driven by a loud minority of urbanist activists, while most constituents suffer through these changes.

</comment><comment><USER9> The article overstates the level of closure. These streets are still fully open with grub hub and Uber eats drivers zooming through. They just have been designed mixed use streets so now they see significant more pedestrian and bike traffic. Since Seattle has few sidewalks and many areas it kind of makes sense

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious what happens to people who live on the affected streets; do they now have to park a mile away from their house? Or if they were storing a boat on the side of their house, is that boat going to be trapped at their house?

<comment><USER11> I do not know what Seattle is going to do, but usually they only close the street for motorized through traffic.

If, say, you were to place bollards in the middle of a block, every home will still be reachable by car. But as only residential traffic uses the road, the volume is greatly reduced, making it possible to dedicate space for pedestrians and cyclists. Additionally, the bollards will still allow these to pass, so it can be a through road for cyclists.

So, if anything, it is a net positive for the residents.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Writing my first Android app – should I use Material Design? - <AUTHOR> It seems like a big PITA, but I'm being told it's worth it.
I understand that if I use a MD style, I also need to create a backup <v21 style for older devices. It seems like a lot of work for a beginner.
So, is MD worth it? <comment><USER2> Use AppCompat, and you'll get native MD on >= SDK 21, and an emulated MD on < SDK 21 devices.

[http://android- developers.blogspot.com/2014/10/appcompat-v21...](http://android- developers.blogspot.com/2014/10/appcompat-v21-material-design-for-pre.html)

It's a bit of a hassle (you'll need to use compatibility facades vs the real thing, which are sometimes a bit inconsistent), but it's not too bad.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't worry about MD right now. Get your first version out there, asap first.

MD can be adopted later.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes.

It's in the app templates you should start with in the SDK, and, as kpgx points out on this thread, you can use the Support Libraries for back- compatibility.

</comment><comment><USER5> MD is not that hard to implement. And you can use Support Libraries to maintain the compatibility for older devices.</comment>


Ask HN: What side projects are you working on? - <AUTHOR> Doesn't even have to be anything profitable (but hopefully covering your hosting costs at least).  I'm just interested to know what others are working on in their free time. <comment><USER2> I've been dabbling with the idea of taking Awk style patterns and translating them to JavaScript to run in Node.js (with the intent of allowing Awk style programs that also allow higher-order programming constructs). At this point I've got the translation working for some simple cases.

I've been pondering whether to trying to generalize the concept to work on http requests instead of just files, at which point I think a fairly elegant micro web framework could be made that applies Awk style pattern / action pairs to the incoming http requests.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://linkthing.co>

A delicious replacement that uses twitter syntax to organize stuff - i.e.: hashtags and @people. App integrates with twitter for both tweeting bookmarks that you add, and importing links you've tweeted previously as bookmarks.

Not at all complete (both features and fixes to be done), but solid enough that I use it every day for myself to organize links that I use for references, collect things that I'm researching, to create a "to-read" list, and so on.

It was learning foray into bootstrap and jquery, and has gone pretty well.

Right now, its sign in through Twitter only. I'll add native account creation at some point, but you're more than welcome to try it out in the meantime.

Edit: Screengrab of Linkthing in action <http://imgur.com/Rrr0g>

<comment><AUTHOR> Love the look and the concept. I'll have to check it out.

<comment><USER3> Right on - thank-you! Be warned - its incomplete! You'll probably bump into what you consider to be missing key functionality, broken things, etc.

If you do go in and try it out, I would love to hear your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working on tubalr for 2 years this september. It's allows you to take advantage of all the great music content on YouTube.

I'm out of features for now, been improving on UI and design lately.

<http://www.tubalr.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> Writing a program that analyzes traditional Scottish music and composes new tunes in the same style. Right now I'm in the careful planning phase--reading up on LSTM recurrent neural networks and such, but I should be able to start coding shortly (at the very least I can do all the software engineering parts while I figure out what the best algorithm to use is).

I'm not deluding myself about its long-term non-profitability...I'm just doing it because I find it fascinating. At least there's no hosting cost--I already have a laptop running SBCL and Emacs, which is all I need.

<comment><USER6> That's really interesting. Will you be open-sourcing this?

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I am planning to open -source it once I start coding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my free time I'm writing an alternative firmware for chumby devices (and possibly similar devices, if I ever get my hands on a Raspberry Pi or alike) that focuses solely on streaming radio services (ones which have usable open APIs) with no dependence on the chumby backend servers.

All of the app layer is written in Go with a custom widget set and pure Go rendering right out to an mmaped /dev/fb (the rest of the firmware is a lightly customized openembedded build).

This won't make any money but it is teaching me a lot of Go.

</comment><comment><USER8> C# / Asp.net pays my bills, but I've been playing with node.js lately. Just to kind of see what the hubbub was.

I took Ryan Dahl's chat room demo and added a database for validating users & message logging. I've added a couple commands that allow users to change their nicknames on the fly and some other feeble functionality.

I think eventually i'd like for users to be able to run javascript across all sessions, which could be a complete mess or kind of cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been looking into node myself and this seems like an interesting application. I'm hoping for the "kind of cool" option for you when it's all said and done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A "daily photo challenge" iOS app. For those not in the know, it's sort of a sub-community of Instagram with over 1 million users (my wife is big on it). (see <https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23photoadayjuly>)

So, for kicks, I thought I'd try and build an Instagram-like app that is just for a daily photo challenge.

If anyone wants to be a tester, let me know.

</comment><comment><USER10> Been working on and off on <http://mtransit.herokuapp.com/> \-- a mobile optimized site for looking up transit schedules for the Minneapolis / St. Paul bus system. It's built with Flask and a sprinkling of JQuery. I am hoping to factor out some code into a standalone lib for others to build competitor apps with.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been looking to do something like this myself. I go to school in Bloomington, IL, and for the large amounts of students and their tech savvy, the bus system is still very low tech. Would love to hear how the development turns out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://VentingPost.com> and <http://Nurdology.com> and <http://QuasiPreneur.com>

Gotta spend more time and energy into Nurdology.

And I have more but.. realizing.... stupid me.. I'm spreading myself too thin...quantity != quality! :(

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm building a platform where non-profits can host virtual garage sales, so their members can buy/sell stuff and donate a portion of the proceeds back to the NPO. Think of it as an Ebay for Charities. It's a side project as of now. Would love your feedback :) <http://shruffle.com>

<comment><USER13> Do you realize that all your "poor third world kids" are asian/brown/black and the donors/buyers are white? Maybe there is some correspondence with reality, but this just reinforces the streotype IMO.

<comment><USER12> Being South Asian myself, I can strongly say that is purely a coincidence. Good observation though, I didn't catch that myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm working on <http://callmemae.be> \- originally built it at an 8-hour Hackathon in SF and now working on turning it into something a bit more robust so it can be properly used for introductions and a demonstration of my technical abilities.

<comment><USER15> Before I log in, can you explain the service a bit more?

<comment><USER14> Improving the landing page is high on the list of priorities. Have an incredible designer onboard now, so look for improvements and a ShowHN soon :) Non-FB login will come at that time as well.

Essentially, It lets you share a virtual business card via email or SMS (see: <http://callmemae.be/nb>). Essentially it was created because I can never remember my cards when I go to events, but always have my phone.

Some of the features I'm in the process of writing are:

* Bump two phones together to exchange contact info (all JS/HTML5) * Share contact info with an entire group at once * Customize your card background and choose your own fields * Analytics surrounding sharing (who's opened your card, clicked the mailto:, etc...)

<comment><USER16> Isn't this what Bump is doing too? Or am I wrong?

<comment><USER14> bump requires a native app, we're all HTML5 - someone can navigate to our site and be sharing in two clicks, not 10

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am writing a search engine. The main purpose was to work on a large project to give myself exposure and polish as a programmer (sysadmin by trade). The crawling and indexing systems are done now. I am finding the ranking to be the most challenging part but it is quite fun overall.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://secretify.herokuapp.com/> it's like the iPhone app Snapchat. It's used to send images in a more secured fashion. Working on making it more secure but it's fully functional as it is .

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://deductivepolitics.com/> Not making any money off of it, just an experiment I'm doing. I try to predict who people will vote for in November based on Facebook likes.

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://www.mappyhealth.com> \- tracking disease trends on Twitter (more data sources including CDC reports coming eventually) and trying to make sense of it all.

</comment><comment> adam-_- I'm currently at the validation stage of a social analytics and monitoring tool <http://twitcherhq.com> \- undecided whether to take it further yet.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm working on the One Platform.

One platform to rule them all One platform to find them One platform to bring them all And in the darkness bind them.</comment>


Ask HN: What side project are you working on? - <AUTHOR> There used to be these type of posts awhile back and people shared a lot of interesting projects that they were creating. So I wanted to ask again. What are you working on at the moment? <comment><USER2> I'm still working on the same thing I was working on last time this was asked, most likely. An AI / Machine Learning "as a Service" offering. The idea is to provide a hosted and API driven service for doing machine learning and other AI work using popular Open Source toolkits.

Right now we are doing a lot of work to support Spark / Hadoop and several associated libraries / frameworks - SystemML, MLLib, Mahout, etc. Eventually we'll add support for TensorFlow, CaffeOnSpark, Singa, etc.

Most of what we've done so far is around provisioning (we're building on AWS for now), but we've done some work on the service APIs for training models, making predictions, etc. Adding PMML support in in the cards for "real soon now" as well. Beyond that we have a whole laundry list of features to add.

Not quite ready to launch yet, but things are taking shape. I'm really hopeful that we can at least hit our closed beta launch sometime in the next month or two.

Oh and the other thing is, our platform itself will be Open Source software, and will be available for deployment into private environments if you don't want to use our hosted service.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm working on a deep learning library similar to caffe and mxnet in cpp and cuda.</comment>


Stop Using "Dropdown" - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/stop-using-dropdown/ <comment><USER2> I think you're already a little late. Most people have been using this term for almost two decades.</comment>


From Father to Son, Last Words to Live by (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/us/01charles.html <comment><USER2> We are about a year away from the first child born after September 11, 2001 being deployed to Afghanistan. The first child born after the second Gulf War began will be deployed to Iraq shortly after the next Presidential inauguration.

We are also less than three years away from the war in Afghanistan becoming longer than the Vietnam War.

<comment><USER3> Bush and Cheney promised war that would not end in our lifetime, or our children's lifetime, and I and many others took that to mean it's intended to be eternal. With varying intensity, but no moment of no war or potential external threat. Bush also said we're either cool with that, or we're with the terrorists. So while 1984 will not be _built_ in one day, but it was pretty much completely outlined in one day, and we're on track.

<comment><USER4> Nostradamus predicted it would last 27 years, with the "Union of the great Trumpet" eventually emerging victorious, followed by "1000 years of peace".

As a child I tried to decipher what the "Union of the great Trumpet" is, since it corresponds to no alliance I know of, and hypothesised that it would be the alliance of U.S.A., Europe and Russia. Since it's known that Nostradamus misspelled Hitler as "Hister", now I'm wondering if "Trumpet" isn't a misreading of Trump. Nostradamus was French, so Trump might easily be transposed to "Trumpet".

(I'm not in any way affiliated with the president of the United States.)

<comment><USER5> > Since it's known that Nostradamus misspelled Hitler as "Hister",

Is it known? Because that's a pretty big leap. Hister refers to a river in Germany. In fact in his actual passage it refers to 'Hister' as a place, not a person.

<comment><USER4> It's difficult to say; his quatrens leave much to interpretation. I remember this from a documentary.

<comment><USER5> Most are vague enough to be completely useless, I agree, but this is pretty clear. I guess your documentary wanted to have some sensationalist content, a-la 'ancient aliens', but no, it is not 'known' that Nostradamus predicted anything let alone WW2 after misspelling Hitler. In fact he references 'Hister' a few times in his writings, referencing a pretty large river in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin > ... giving their lives for their country

This is so surreal to somebody from Europe - how can you justify to be on the moral, just side (or even look at yourself in the mirror and call yourself a good christian or just a good person), when you go to place half around the world which did no aggression towards your home country, invade it, rape it, kill civilians left and right and utterly destroy it for generations to come. Without any proper reason whatsoever. "I was told to" can't be possibly enough.

He might have been a gentle loving person back home, but when deployed, he had to follow orders. He had to kill people in foreign land, people that were home there, defending their home country from foreign invasion. If foreign power invaded your home country/town, wouldn't you stand up to it? (I would probably just leave till all calms down which seems never for Iraq/Afghanistan, but not everybody wants to lose their only home or actually can leave)

No possible moral high ground there. Soldiers are hired guns who kill for the money (or the thrill of it), trying to add some higher meaning there is just unrealistic wishful thinking from army PR campaigns.

Yet another life with possibly great potential wasted on... nothing (actually worse than that - adding more 'evil' to this already messed up world). Serve your country by improving lives of your fellow citizens, however that might be, not by joining some amoral war machinery

<comment><USER6> Is being Europe really relevent? NATO forces were involved in Afghanistan... Are they different from American soldiers in this regard?

<comment> saiya-jin As other poster mentioned I meant mainly Iraq where situation is different, sorry for not being more clear.

In most European countries if not all, if politicians tried to sell some remote unjust war they want to start by striking patriotic tunes (so people would make similar ridiculous claims), they would get laughed at/outright rejected. Politicians would have to put in place mandatory drafts and even then a lot of people would run away/go rather to jail.

It just feels so surreal to be so much out of touch with reality in a modern western world in 21st century to believe in such lies and very much risk their lives for them.

Now if somebody couldn't care less about shooting kids, mums and old people and of course patriots and other random folks on the other side and wants to have adrenaline ride, that's another story. But lets be honest about this.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough. Even so, NATO countries still participate in other military operations such as the bombings in Syria and Libya - is the difference that those had the force of UN resolutions behind them, involved only air attacks and were not sold on the back of patriotism?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This man is a hero. Not only because he served his country so honorably, but for the time, care, and consideration he took to codify his values and morals in his diary. This one hit me hard, especially now that I have a son. To think, there are so many children out there who will never see or get to meet their fathers again. I know it's not the same as a father, but I hope these kids find mentors or guides to try and make sense of the hand they've been dealt.

<comment><USER8> Without judgment of this particular loving human; Why is it considered heroic to go to war without questioning the men sending you there? The war in Iraq was pointless and based on dubious logic which turned out to be a lie. Men considering going to another country far away to kill other men should think deeply about dedicating their bodies and family's futures to the fortunes of cowards.

I obviously do not know this man's mind, but it is just so painful to read about such pointless waste and consider it as heroic. He was brave, courageous, loving, compassionate, but ultimately his death was a huge pointless tragedy in yet another war fought for assholes.

Show me more heroes who stand up against this nonsense. Heroes who save lives by objecting to taking them. That's where our mindset needs to be to stop the horrors we constantly project to far shores to prop up our corrupt insidious military industry and line the pockets of dire schmucks.

</rant>

RIP, sorry for hijacking a sad story to vent.

<comment><USER9> > Why is it considered heroic to go to war without questioning the men sending > you there?

In the military, it is not your position to question the government. It is your duty to follow orders.

> The war in Iraq was pointless and based on dubious logic which turned out to > be a lie.

It was certainly not "pointless". It was based on the following:

\- Saddam was a bad actor who hated the US, and would readily provide materiel for use against the US

\- Iraq was known to have stockpiles of WMD

\- It was thought possible to transform Iraq from a dictatorship to a democracy that appreciated the US

None of those points is in doubt. Aside from a possible nuclear program, Iraq was known to have weaponized anthrax and various chemical agents. Our allies including Britain endorsed the same intelligence.

You might remember the celebrations in Baghdad when the US forces arrive and Saddam fled. Or the jubilation Iraqis showed after voting the first time. Time will tell how things work out in the long run, but it's hard to argue that Iraq is worse off today than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Has everything worked out perfectly? No, but there have been many sub-optimal moves since the war started, including BO pulling out prematurely and on an announced schedule.

Just remember, it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback...

<comment><USER8> Where to start here. Well, let me preface by saying much of everything we are discussing is hugely influenced by what and individual's principles and beliefs are, I don't expect to change minds, and I accept other people have other opinions, I just want to defend mine.

First - it's well known that no WMDs were found in Iraq[1], and with the publication of the Downing Street Memo[2] there is evidence that Bush's presidency went in likely knowing that. Bush just wanted war, with whatever justification he could find.

Saddam and his hatred of the US is no justification of war. Plenty of nations rather dislike the US, but you can't just go in and 'make' them like you with guns. As bad as Saddam was, the death toll and utter hell brought upon Iraq's citizens by the invasion to 'bring democracy' is at best as bad as Saddam's regime. Some studies suggest half a million civilian deaths as a result of the war[3].

And let's be honest, Iraq was a huge catalyst for complete chaos in the middle east, which to this day is ongoing. ISIS grew out of the vacuum left by US forces 'liberation' of Iraqi's people.

Jesus, what a fucking mess. Seriously, why am I even having to spell this out?

Possible nuclear program??!!?! Give me a break. They found corroded, unusable chemical weapons which the UN mostly already knew about. And all that crap was probably best left rotting in Iraq than burning, and harming US forces as they tried to move it.

Celebrations in Baghdad? I want to puke. Those poor people sold another lie, they were destined to suffer more.

Now, down to following orders. I get that the military only works if everyone follows orders, I really do. However I will not be ordered to murder children for 'the greater cause', be that my country or god. There is a line any man/woman should refuse to cross, in my opinion, and as long as men do not question those who give the orders you cannot claim to have principles.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMD_conjecture_in_the_aftermat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMD_conjecture_in_the_aftermath_of_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo) [3] [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/iraq-death- toll_n_...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/iraq-death- toll_n_4102855.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Man, fuck war. I really wonder how much longer the majority of humans are going to keep swallowing the lines of bullshit from the few that somehow, war is a necessity. War is not all that hard to avoid, but I guess warfare is both financially and politically profitable.

Fuck everything about this. It is - literally - insane.

<comment><USER11> > Strikingly, no concern was voiced over the glaringly obvious fact that no > official reason was ever offered for going to war -- no reason, that is, > that could not be instantly refuted by a literate teenager.

\-- Noam Chomsky

<comment><USER12> What do you mean? The washingtonpost said that there was irrefutable evidence that hussein had WMDs and was working with al qaeda.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/irrefutable/e598b1be-a78a-4a42-8e1a-c336f7a217f4)

The same washingtonpost that recently got caught lying to the american people about syrian gas attacks and tried to dupe us into invading another country.

Next war that the lying media and politicians push, they and/or their sons should be on the frontlines and then the poor and downtrodden should be behind them.

<comment><USER13> We've banned both this account and the other one for repeatedly trolling HN.

<comment><USER14> I for one was glad to see this WaPo article linked. Good reminder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sad story. As a side note: After years trying to catch my thoughts on a computer, I've came to realize that handwriting is much more effective tool for me. My thoughts start flowing once I have a pen in my hand. Now I have a series of diaries that I use with several people, my wife, myself, my late mum.

<comment><USER16> When you say "with", do you mean you write a letter & other person writes an answer letter in that same diary? E.g. with wife; does that means letters between you both in that diary?

<comment><USER15> Yes, that's what we do, but not on a daily basis. Usually, when I'm on a business trip, I either take the booklet with me or I leave it with her and she writes her down thoughts.

Thinking of it, we had something like that in high school, where (usually girls) would use a single book with her best friend back and forth. We called it "Briefbuch" (letter book) in German.

<comment><USER16> Thanks :)

When I completed School & later College, our girl classmates had something called ScrapBook, where everybody will write in messages & good wishes for the owner of that book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I sometimes wonder about the hell my grandfather must have went through when his only child joined the Army Air Corps in WW2. (The airmen at the time had a terribly high death rate.)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how it can be reckoned, the loss of such a man to his country.

<comment><USER19> It can't. That's why it's important to remember.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the sentimentality of family needs to be removed from discussions of war. I'm sure there were plenty of devout family men taking part in every mass genocide in history. Violence sucks — full stop, especially controversial violence that half the nation was against from the beginning.

Sad that this woman lost her husband, and son lost his father. She clearly loves him too much to question his judgement, but maybe she could speak from the podium of loss against unnecessary war. I'm not a fan of sentimental personal anecdotes being shared to a mass audience like this, but alas emotions rule the world. Hopefully we can fight the politics that led to this tragedy rather than lionizing his martyrdom.

</comment><comment><USER21> > One day a couple of years ago, I pulled out a list of the traits I wanted in > a husband and realized that Charles had almost all of them. He rose early to > begin each day with prayers and a list of goals that he ticked off as he > accomplished them.

Only in the US...

<comment><USER22> What exactly is wrong with that?

<comment><USER23> Some people can't help but hate on all forms of religion, regardless of context.

<comment><USER24> I read it as how culturally distinctive her evaluation of a romantic partner is:

a) She actually had a list of the desired / required traits of romantic partners on hand.

b) Desired traits include morning prayer.

c) Said traits also seemingly included the romantic partner having a daily to- do list.

Taken together you do get an interesting cultural phenomenon being displayed here.

So in my reading of the original post I found it more interesting than just "hating on religion".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This website is so unusable broken on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER26> One can only hope that the child doesn't grow up to be a terrorist like his father. My thought are with the poor people of Iraq.

<comment><USER27> It's harsh, but I understand this sentiment. All truths are half truths.</comment></comment>


The .NET Process Class on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/10/29/the-net-process-class-on-linux/ <comment><USER2> Somewhat tangential, is anyone using .NET core on linux for serious production use that can comment on how easy it is to get working? Does Linux feel like a second class platform?</comment>


Can Dogs Really Show Empathy Towards Humans? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21557721

<comment><USER2> The article mentions 15000 years of convolution. That's on the low end of the probable range. There is some good evidence for dogs being domesticated at least 30k years ago, and even some for as far back as 100k years.

There's a very good "Nova" episode on dogs that is well worth keeping an eye out for.

<comment> excuse-me There is also a school of archeology that thinks the reindeer was the first domesticated animal - by Saami and Laplanders >50Kya

However I can assure you that current deer show no empathy for my garden

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting question and I'd say the answear is YES. Now can humans show empathy towards dogs? That is the question.

<comment><USER4> I had the similar thought that animals tend to be more empathetic and forgiving than humans. On many occasions I've seen my cats console each other. They have consoled me too.

The way us humans destroy the environment and wildlife with pollution, deforestation and urban sprawl, it's obvious we are unconsciously living out our nightmare on a global scale.

</comment></comment><comment> excuse-me >Similarly, apes have recently been documented consoling one another after conflicts

Apes have also been documented reading the Economist. Guess which family Homo Sap belongs to.</comment>