Livegrep: Live searching the Linux kernel source code - <AUTHOR> http://livegrep.com/search <comment><USER2> <http://livegrep.com/search?q=fuck>

<comment><USER3> That was my first search too. I think it'd be interesting to see a list of the most searched terms.

<comment><USER4> Hey there. I built this. Top 10 queries, all lengths:

f,s,fu,fuck,fuc,a,c,p,d,t

Top 10, >=4 characters:

fuck,shit,peni,penis,linu,craz,cunt,linus,test,hell

I weep for humanity :)

<comment><USER5> Bug report: when you have multiple instances of a word in a single line, your service returns the line twice, and in both cases it only highlights the first found term in the line, instead of the second on the second pass or instead of consolidating the two results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any chance of the backend source for this being released? It's 2012; I shouldn't be stuck with `grep -r` and OpenGrok on a good day.

<comment><USER7> Take a look at <https://code.google.com/p/codesearch/>.

<comment><USER8> Yes, Russ Cox's codesearch is great, I use it to search in around ~50 millions lines of code. A query is so fast I never bothered to measure it, and reindexing the whole thing only takes a minute or two on a 5 year old laptop. It's so fast I reindex everything at every shell login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there an equivalent CLI tool? (Preprocess a tree of files, possibly keep it in RAM as a daemon, and answer queries in realtime.)

<comment><USER8> Russ Cox's codesearch: <https://code.google.com/p/codesearch/>

Russ Cox wrote the old Google Code Search, codesearch is an implementation in Go based on the same ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are they really searching the static source in real time with the threads? This is what I understand from the description. Why don't they use something like Lucene, I believe the searched content is pretty much static, so why wouldn't just index? Wouldn't that be much faster?

<comment><USER4> Lucene, and most other indexing solutions (to my knowledge) index based on _words_ , not arbitrary substrings.

So they can efficiently answer questions like "Give me all documents containing the word 'Linus'", but not necessarily "All documents containing the string '#def'".

That said, I am indexing -- I have my own custom backend that stores an in- memory index that lets me do arbitrary substring search (and more complicated queries, such as most character classes) much faster than a full search.

That said, the backend will fall back on a full regex search if necessary.

<comment><USER10> Do you use anything like a trigram index (see rsc's wonderful posts about how Google Code Search worked, and <https://code.google.com/p/codesearch/> for a Go implementation) to speed up the regex codepath?

<comment><USER4> I'm using a different data structure -- a suffix array -- but the concept is pretty similar. I started work on this before Russ released his codesearch implementation, but I did read his blog posts while I was working on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like this search: <http://livegrep.com/search?q=is+a+hack>

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://livegrep.com/search?q=bastard>

</comment><comment><USER13> fun stuff - [http://livegrep.com/search?q=%5Cb(fuck(ing%7Ced)%3F%7Cshit%7...](http://livegrep.com/search?q=%5Cb\(fuck\(ing%7Ced\)%3F%7Cshit%7Cbloody\)%5Cb)

</comment><comment><USER14> How is it so quick? I attempted writing a similar thing in node to grep the Rails source code, but it was far from real-time.</comment>


Dataminr Confirms $130M Raise - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/17/dataminr-confirms-130m-raise-to-take-its-social-media-data-analysis-to-new-verticals/ <comment><USER2> In the promotional materials I see the alerts they have spotted, but what about the false positives, that is the big question.

Of course, most of financial advice/alerts/tips/et al industry is similarly wishy washy, that is everyone touts their successes and discounts their misses.

Let's not even go into larger scale economic forecasts, those have similar problems. An economist can build a whole career of a single successful forecast.

So Dataminr should feel right at home in this niche.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks like Dataminr has had a different experience than Meerkat when building businesses off access to others' APIs.

I also think this is interesting in that an ecosystem company, Dataminr, has raised just as much money as the company that created the ecosystem (Twitter). Of course, this is a bit of stretch in that Dataminr is more than just interpreting tweets.

<comment><USER3> Dataminr also uses the Twitter API very differently from Meerkat.

I believe when you depend on another company's API, you have to think very hard about what value you provide them, either monetarily or otherwise. If you're not providing value, what incentive do they have to keep providing you with access?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty sensible rule of thumb, but even safer one would be not build any products around other service's API unless you are explicitly paying them money for access.</comment></comment></comment>


BUI: The internet's dirty little secret - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/the-internets-dirty-little-secret/2008/09/11/1220857702243.html

<comment><USER2> I must admit I've done this a couple of times.

Going out with mates and getting hammered on a weekend, then a couple days later getting several emails from ebay informing me I've won some stuff that I really didn't know I'd bid on.

So far I've purchased a hula hoop, a giant talking ET doll, several pairs of marvin the martian socks, a replica hanzo sword from Kill Bill and a tupperware set.

Luckily I have cheap (and tacky) tastes it seems, so the damage has so far been relatively contained.

<comment><USER3> How good was the hanzo sword?

<comment><USER2> Umm, not half bad actually - definitely works as a display piece.

That being said, I don't forsee myself becoming a ninja anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _At online boutique shopbop.com, traffic doesn't spike after happy hour. In fact, the online research company ComScore says purchases made by women during the evening total only about 22.6 per cent of all online retail sales. But internet sellers know all about consumers who click on a Marc Jacobs dress and slur, "Hey there, frock. I want to take you home tonight."_

In other words: after discovering that there is no evidence of this being a signficant phenomenon we decided we were going to write this article anyway and pad it with quotes from some friends of ours who would admit to buying stuff online while plastered.

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to do this all the time, but I solved it by switching my search bar to cuil. Now when I get hammered and search for electronics or movies to impulse buy, pictures of naked people pop up instead and I get distracted.

</comment><comment><USER6> I once woke up after some late night computer operating (under the 'influence') and thought my webserver had been hacked. It turns out I half- installed several scripts the night before and gave up before completing leaving a mess of non-working scripts on my webserver. I spent 60 minutes changing all my passwords before I realized what I'd done (still don't remember why or what I was trying to do that night)

At least I didn't waste any money on crap from Ebay.

</comment><comment><USER7> Meh.

I never buy anything drunk. When I'm drunk in front of my computer (rarely), I either sleep, waste time on Reddit, or talk crap on IRC.

I doubt this is a widespread problem.

<comment><USER8> >I doubt this is a widespread problem. I think you're the wrong gender. Apparently, for females it is. All the interviewed subjects were females, after all.

<comment><USER9> All the people interviewed were female and worked in media in one form or another.

If that is the only demographic where "BUI" is common I can't say it's widespread. Difficult to know from this article.

<comment><USER10> I sometimes wonder how prevalent selection bias is in articles like this and the demographics they feature. If you're a magazine writer in NYC writing an article like this, how do you find people who buy under the influence? Stop people on the street? Go to a crowded bar and chat people up? It seems likely that a decent percentage of your interviews are with friends and friends of friends. It also seems likely that many of those people would be in similar careers.

<comment><USER11> _99.52% of statistics are made up. The rest is irrelevant._ </quote> <http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-05-08/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill I think The Onion covered this several years ago...

<http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39045>

</comment><comment><USER12> I've bought a domain name while under the influence. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

<comment><USER13> I'm guilty of this. Luckily the domains have worked out (either having a use or a friend who wants them).

I was thinking a good iPhone app would be a domain searching/purchasing - specifically because I've had friends call me to purchase names for them when they are out drinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I'm drunk (or buzzed) at the computer, which used to be a lot of time, I'm just working :\

</comment><comment><USER15> I've picked up a few programming books on amazon sometimes, stuff that'd been sitting on my wishlist for a while.

<comment><USER16> " _Practical Brainfuck_?! What was I thinking?"

<comment><USER17> ->+>+++>>?</comment></comment></comment>


HOWTO: Convert (now obsolete) HD-DVDs to Blu-Ray - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Convert_Your_HD_DVDs_to_Blu-Ray

<comment><USER2> Buying a blu-ray burner and all that jazz might not be worth it...might as well repurchase the HD-DVDs you bought, in Blu-ray.

<comment><USER3> Or download pirate versions. Can anyone see any moral problem what so ever with that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They don't mention how hard it is to find an HD DVD drive for a PC.

Also, why do disks at all? Why not rip and put them on a Mivx? Or can Apple TV play ripped movies in HD? (Mivx can!)</comment>


Jeff Jarvis: Rupert Murdoch doesn't understand how the Internet works - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/16/rupert-murdoch-internet-google

<comment><USER2> I actually think he probably grasps it well enough, but he doesn't like what it implies and ergo he goes down the track he does out of preferential hope that he can influence his way backwards. He is indeed against "the fundamental architecture of the web and the net" since it's not that he doesn't see past the old models, it's that he can't see a way to make the margins he has previously enjoyed, with the control he usually exerts. His one stab in the dark was purchasing MySpace arguably, and that did not turn out terribly well.</comment>


ARM's new Cortex A7 is tailor-made for Android superphones - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/10/arms-new-cortex-a7-is-tailor-made-for-android-superphones.ars <comment><USER2> Same as <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3134327> which was on the front page.</comment>


The NSA's Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/

<comment><USER3> _the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata._

"I've got nothing to hide..."

 _The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that its operations kill terrorists with the utmost precision._

Note that "accuracy" and "precision" aren't the same thing. A sharp knife is precise, but if you slice in the wrong place, it's not being used accurately. Noting that the language here isn't a quote but a description from Scahill and Greenwald.

<comment><USER4> > Note that "accuracy" and "precision" aren't the same thing.

Drilled into us early in freshman engineering classes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      "turns out I'm really good at killing people."

      The president added, "Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine."

Ironic words for a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

<comment><USER6> Another huge piece of news from this article:

\- "The [SHENANIGANS] operation – previously undisclosed – utilizes a pod on aircraft that vacuums up massive amounts of data from any wireless routers, computers, smart phones or other electronic devices that are within range."

\- "The operator describes how, _from almost four miles in the air,_ he searched for communications devices"

\- "VICTORYDANCE, he adds, _"mapped the Wi-Fi fingerprint of nearly every major town_ in Yemen."

This is something we didn't even know is possible: drones are cataloguing the MAC addresses, BSSIDs, ESSIDs (unique identifiers for things like your iPhone and the wireless adapter on your PC, laptop, or tablet) of people's personal electronics, __at the scale of cities __, from _so high up in the air you can 't even see the drone_, and they're creating "fingerprints" from it. That means what devices "belong" in what city.

They don't suspect these people of any wrongdoing or criminal activity - <USER2> could they? They're monitoring entire cities. This is exactly what Snowden warned us about: the untargeted mass surveillance of entire populations.

The next time you hear about domestic drones for police and "homeland security," remember this article.

[The Day We Fight Back rally]([http://www.thedaywefightback.org](http://www.thedaywefightback.org)) is tomorrow.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, we did know that was possible. It's well reported and obviously possible. Search even for amateur cantenna ranges and you'll see how far you can easily pull an SSID from (hint: many kilometres).

If the above was news to you, then get more worried: Google catalogues SSIDs versus GPS from hundreds of millions (billions?) of client android devices. Even ones that aren't logged in. This is why geolocation is fast with android devices. Unsure, but it's quite likely that Apple does the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >>"The NSA geolocation system used by JSOC is known by the code name GILGAMESH. Under the program, a specially constructed device is attached to the drone. As the drone circles, the device locates the SIM card or handset that the military believes is used by the target."

>>"The agency also equips drones and other aircraft with devices known as "virtual base-tower transceivers" – creating, in effect, a fake cell phone tower that can force a targeted person's device to lock onto the NSA's receiver without their knowledge."

This is unsettling! I always suspected this technology was used by law enforcement but equipping killer robots for live missile guidance?!?!?

<comment><USER9> Within a few years you will probably be able to buy such a drone for $1000 on the internet. Everyone is going to want one.

<comment><USER10> We're going to enter into an interesting new phase of spying and counter- spying efforts if drones-as-faux-cell-towers are widely available.

"Citizens of [major urban area]. Do not use your cell phone, rogue foreign agents are spying on us with a drone cell tower. Please wait until further notice - the bogey will be shot down shortly."

Or perhaps more likely:

"All employees are advised to use landlines and encrypted channels for the foreseeable future instead of mobile devices, we have reports of drone cell towers for industrial espionage."

I'm exaggerating, but only slightly. There's been enough Orwellian nightmares come to fruition lately to make these projections seem sane.

<comment><USER11> > drones-as-faux-cell-towers are widely available

I'm pretty sure you could find a VoIP-backhaul femtocell light enough to mount on a drone with enough battery to power it right now. They are used to provide cell service aboard ships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _According to a former drone operator for the military's Joint Special > Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often > identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone > tracking technologies._

Well, it's not like they believe their targets are human, anyway. Their lives are worth nothing to those analysts, innocent or not.

<comment><USER13> I don't think it is analysts that make such a call.

<comment><USER14> I don't know anything about how they target their victim, but I am assuming the have very little time between seeing the victim and deciding to execute him/her/them. So I suspect an algorithm makes the call.

<comment><USER15> None of it is "seconds", it's all minutes or higher, and there is almost certainly at least a Colonel (20+ years experience), or a General, making the call. Every shoot probably goes through >20 people -- legal, various types of targeting, and technical/tactical "can the shot be made at all". The whole process is designed around getting approval for things like this rapidly. UAVs have many-hour loiter times, vs. combat aircraft which are usually minutes on station (due to fuel, since they're often based far away from the combat).

You can legitimately criticize a lot about the program, but it's not understaffed. At some level the military likes to retain "person in the loop" on things where automation is technically more appropriate, as it's a way to train people for other roles later -- i.e. pilots who eventually become USAF top brass.

My problem is with the over-use of drones in operations where we'd otherwise not get involved (Yemen, etc.). Drones themselves probably centralize decision making with more senior people, and the cost of not taking a shot is just having to wait for the next one, so unless it's a shot in support of a unit already on the ground, theoretically drones will make the military _more_ restrained in the shots it takes. If there are friendly forces on the ground nearby, you end up with things like the "Reuters Journalist/Collateral Murder" situation -- a lower level of evidence to support a military decision than you'd ideally have.

<comment><USER16> Most everything you wrote makes intuitive sense, even for myself, with no military experience--which is why it is so hard for me to believe that many of the other comments in this thread are being made earnestly.

Perhaps there is some philosophy at work that is just foreign to me?

Even the basis of this article strains credulity--the authors editorialize that any reliance on signals intel is bad. Assuming that drones are a useful military tool, wouldn't we want maximum information to improve targeting, leading to reductions in collateral damage?

<comment><USER15> I think people are much better at evaluating whether the totality of a situation is good/bad, vs. why specifically that situation is bad.

There's no question much of the US response to 9/11 has been bad -- internationally (wars...) and domestically (perpetual state of war, civil liberties losses, etc.).

Articulating which changes, particularly technological, are good and bad individually is a lot harder. And it seems to be harder for people the closer they are to the situation emotionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> some of the problem...

Right now I get texts and voice mail from people attempting to contact the former owner of the SIM Identity I have..it happens any time you buy a prepaid phone..sometimes you get a previously owned SIM id..

Guess where this most active as far as buying a prepaid phone?

Developing countries such as Africa and Middle East..

This is a very highly political volatile situation waiting to blow up in a Presidents face.

Its not will it happen but only a matter of when

<comment><USER18> > This is a very highly political volatile situation waiting to blow up in a > Presidents face.

You have to look at this in the overall picture of military size and spending though as well. Since WWII, with a few blips, the size of our armed forces (in the US) has been slowly decreasing, while military spending has been increasing at a relatively steady rate (outside of actual war-time expenses) regardless of who is in office.

But the spending isn't equal. It is going up in critical areas, including tactical aircraft at an exponential rate. At current projections unless something changes, in 2054, the entire defence budget will be enough to buy one tactical aircraft. Norman Augustine pointed that out in the mid-1980's, but we are still on track.

So here's what I see, and it is genuinely scary:

I see a shrinking US military armed with ever more-effective force-multiplying weapons (but insufficient _people_ ) trying very hard to maintain control over key strategic areas they see in the world, while the weapons are getting stronger and the human side is getting weaker. There is _no way_ this will continue for very long. It will stir up more and more justified resentment in the world which will face a country less and less prepared to deal with it.

All of this is a proxy for having real strength in arms.

<comment><USER19> Or maybe there will be a world war to reset the cycle, kill off tons of uppity civilians and let those that can reap astounding profits and lock down more control over the experience of the civilization we have...

<comment><USER18> Do you really think, after our experience in Iraq, that we could win a world war? Our armed forces have been moving slowly away from a world-war type force since WWII. Fighting a world war requires having lots and lots of boots on the ground and vast quantities of manpower. A few robots can't match that.

<comment><USER19> Winning schminning....

War is never about winning anything. It is about profiteering off death and destruction and paying sacrificial homage to the god of chaos to whom all politicians worship.

<comment><USER18> But if you look at it that way, our military-industrial complex has become so efficient at waging war as a means to profiteering, that all we need are very tiny wars we can continue to wage forever. In fact this is what is happening.

But this continues to bolster my point, which is that our military is less and less prepared to fight a major war. The scary thing is that if a major conflict comes, we are totally unprepared _and_ that's not fixable without rethinking the basics of military equipment and such.

Of course this is possible to turn around. The Byzantines managed to do so by cutting military spending during a series of wars they were losing. I think we need to follow their lead but that has tremendous implications on issues like gun control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some unnamed source says that targets aren't double checked and that maybe innocents that have been lent a phone have been killed. This article is extremely light for such length.

<comment><USER21> I think the point of the article was how they are doing the data collecting and making the decisions (for which they provided statements from a named source as well as the leaked documents).

The thought that targeting a 'cell phone/sim', as opposed to the actual person, could cause unexpected deaths seemed to be more of a 'logical next step' rather than a substantiated claim (although it has been shown elsewhere that unexpected deaths are happening with some frequency due to drone strikes/targeting).

<comment><USER20> > that unexpected deaths are happening with some frequency due to drone > strikes/targeting

No doubt. The behaviour is extremely troubling, and the "collateral damage" should be considered war crimes IMO.

I'm doubting the authenticity of the source and that geolocation _alone_ is being used for targeting, without any secondary confirmation. I find that very difficult to take at face value, although in our current climate I wonder why I should.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Jacob Appelbaum has been saying this for a while already. They use NSA's data to do "signature strikes", i.e. strikes where they may assassinate someone only based on the "harmless metadata" they have on him. Talked to someone who may have talked to someone else from a "terrorist organization"? Well, you may now be on a drone target list.

This is going to get exponentially worse as they move to automated drone assassinations, where they just create an "algorithm" that's supposed to decide who is going to die next.

This is going to be their next logical conclusion, and to them it's "inevitable". Of course, it will be done in secret, too, probably for years before there are even leaks about it. Going by how "accurate" their algorithms are for determining who's American and who's not (there has to be only a 51 percent chance, which is almost like flipping a coin on whether someone is American or not), I imagine this algorithm on who to kill will be pretty loose, too. Better safe and kill more innocent people, than sorry and not kill the right target, is what they will choose for that algorithm.

You could say the rules for killing are already very loose right now, but the killing itself is done manually, and they are somewhat restricted to how many people they can hire for this. Once it's automated, expect the assassinations to rise by an order of magnitude, because it will just be "so easy", and also sending a drone should become much cheaper in 10 years.

Drone assassination defenders have been saying "but would it be any different if they just sent some guy with an F-16 in there to attack the target?". Well, even if such an attack wouldn't be anymore precise and it would still kill a lot of innocent people in _that_ strike, the difference between killing people like that and killing them with automated drones or even manual ones, is about as big as spying on highly expensive targets, and doing "mass collections on everyone". It becomes so easy and so cheap technologically, that their rules for doing that action become radically more loose.

Just as for spying, they will do it simply because they can. Instead of attacking Osama's #2 with an air strike, they will be attacking a lot more people who are just very remotely associated with an organization, and in many of these cases, the decision to kill will be done by loose understanding of what is a target from the NSA mass spying (whether it's the understanding of the people deciding the drone targets now, or the algorithm for the automated drones in the future).

Recommended watching: Daniel Suarez on automated killer robots:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI)

<comment><USER9> War will always lead to the death and injury of people who do not fit within the political motivation of the action. By removing the passion of soldiers we see how bad a lot of the data is. The data was always bad, but that was overshadowed by the suffering caused by actual malevolence. If a war is justifiable for humanitarian reasons the risk to civilians is probably worth it. Soldiers have lots of unintended consequences to civilian populations which drones effectively remove; this could be a good thing. Of course people said similar things about area bombing in WWII so I wouldn't bet on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is plenty of precedent for strikes based on hunches and guesses. For example, they confirmed OBL was in Abbottabad only after killing him,

"no U.S. spy agency was ever able to capture a photograph of bin Laden at the compound"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden)

</comment><comment><USER24> Was it really an accident, when Google also mapped radio networks and captured data. While they were collecting street view information. Or if it was done on purpose.

<comment><USER18> I think that would be hard to do by accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The oscar nominated documentary Dirty Wars is good background on this program (basically about Jeremy Scahill & his investigation into JSOC).

</comment><comment><USER26> This is all very depressing.

OT: Same picture used in FAZ-article in 2012 [1]. Can you search stockphoto dot com for "Predator drone"?

[1] [http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/obamas- drohnenkri...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/obamas-drohnenkrieg- lizenz-zum-toeten-11843805.html)

</comment><comment><USER5>
      Error 503 Service Unavailable

      Service Unavailable
      Guru Meditation:

      XID: 1422544503

      Varnish cache server

Hacker News Effect?

[edit] Scratch that, the page finally loaded for me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting how so many people now know so many things about the most secret organization in the world. There must be a lot of money in writing stories about it.

<comment><USER28> There's a difference between secretive and secret. The NSA existence is no secret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm personally torn. It's asymmetric warfare. They didn't care about the thousands of innocents in the towers. If we let the Taliban regroup, another 9/11 is probable and the next strike (imo) will be at least a dirty bomb and possibly nuclear so I don't think we can afford to fight cleanly. You can be righteous as you want but if Manhattan gets nuked, the economic cost to the US is incalculable.

<comment><USER30> "In bin Laden's November 2002 "Letter to America",[3][4] he explicitly stated that al-Qaeda's motives for their attacks include: Western support for attacking Muslims in Somalia, supporting Russian atrocities against Muslims in Chechnya, supporting the Indian oppression against Muslims in Kashmir, the Jewish aggression against Muslims in Lebanon, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia,[4][5][6] U.S. support of Israel,[7][8] and sanctions against Iraq.[9]"

To me, the current series events looks like this:

\- U.S. Assisted or condoned a bunch of violence against muslims (including civilians)

\- A group of radical muslim terrorists decided to retaliate with violence against U.S. civilians

\- U.S. retaliates with a full scale invasion of the countries most likely inhabited by terrorists and proceeds to kill civilians through incompetence or lack of care

\- U.S., unwilling to declare war against countries that aren't overtly hostile, proceeds to repeat killing of terrorists and civilians through incompetence or lack of care

I hate to say this because I by no means condone civilian deaths but the U.S. has been the one escalating this war and a dirty bomb or somesuch seems like a balanced (although by no means just) response to the actions of the U.S..

Just compare the numbers:

\- American civilians killed by terrorists: 2977 [1]

\- Middle eastern civilians killed during the Iraq invasion alone: 120,976 – 134,149 [2]

That's 40 middle eastern civilians killed for every American.

I think the longer this war continues, the more enemy combatants you're going to find and the more desperate and bitter they'll become. How many of these terrorists do you think are fighting against the U.S. out of insanity or blind religious fervour? I think the majority of them will have been created after seeing their families, friends and countrymen killed by western forces in their homelands and by continuing such strikes, you're only creating more of them.

I can't see any clean way out of this other than pulling out completely and trying to make amends for the atrocities the U.S. government has committed.

Now you're encouraging the U.S. to kill more of these people on the grounds that they might retaliate for the people you've already killed. Doesn't this seem wrong to you? The more people you kill, the more people are going to fight you.

Just think, pretend America was peaceful and didn't have a trillion dollar military. One day a few stupid Americans go and kill ~12000 Chinese civilians. China responds by launching a full scale invasion of the United States and kills over 480000 civilians, including a number of your friends and family at first you fear them. Over the years they start to get less discriminate because previously rational people have decided to take up arms against the aggressors. More and more of the people you know are dying around you because they were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe you're in a small town and half the people you know are killed by an indiscriminate robotic strike from above. Wouldn't even you be eventually pushed over the edge and want to start fighting back?

I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say but it seems to me the problem with this was is that the U.S. is _creating_ the terrorists they're there to fight.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks)

[2]: [http://www.iraqbodycount.org/](http://www.iraqbodycount.org/)

//rant

<comment><USER29> You're assuming innocent people like myself actually have a say in US foreign policy, so I guess middle eastern people should kill me? I _hate_ US foreign policy, example 1, Cuban embargo, how's that working out? Or invade Iraq when we need forces in Afghanistan, so instead of 1 effective war, let's fight 2 ineffective wars. Guess what? I always vote against the sitting congress and I haven't voted for a sitting president. I have as much say an Iraqi. So yeah, kill me and see what it does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Error 503 Service Unavailable

Service Unavailable Guru Meditation:

XID: 1198255034

Varnish cache server</comment>


Supreme Court chief sells Microsoft stock, then takes on case involving MS - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPREME_COURT_JUSTICES_INVESTMENTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-02-04-03-23-50 <comment><USER2> That sounds like the right thing to do?</comment>


Adding features doesn't move the needle - <AUTHOR> https://snaphabit.app/blog/your-feature-wont-move-the-needle/ <comment><USER2> So true. Adding features just makes more work for you. It doesn't mean more users or more active users. See I think when users request features the subtext is they're actually giving you an excuse for why they don't use your product more or don't use it at all. Features won't change lack of interest. And yet new features are so much fun to add when you enjoy your work. Just don't expect users to care. And don't expect to get paid.</comment>


Fast-SRGAN: Deep learning model to convert low res pictures to high res - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/HasnainRaz/Fast-SRGAN <comment><USER2> I looked through the GAN paper that this idea uses, and it seems that they generate training data by downsampling high res images. So you can presumably create large amounts of high quality training data for problems like this.

Do such methods introduce any problems in terms of e.g. overfitting (say, overfitting to the method that you use to degrade images)? Also, do fields tackling ML problems such as this where you can generate perfect training data tend to have faster improvements over problems where you can't (i.e. where you need to manually label training data, or where the target is ambiguous like sentiment analysis)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for the question.

Regarding your first question: that was exactly what I wondered, and I found out that they don't necessarily overfit to the type of degradation (the repo shows a section called "extreme super resolution" where the input is already high res, and the output shows no artifacts). But they do tend to overfit to the domain of images. So you would probably observe artifacts running this on pictures of...curcuit boards? But those are also functions of batch norm, as some literature points out, and I tried to mitigate this problem by not using batch norm layers in the end of the network. I always welcome people testing it out and reporting any problems they observe though.

For the second question: I would say definitely. You don't need to waste a lot of time worrying about data quality, or even annotation in this case. Also, ground truth to the model is actual, real, without noise ground truth, so they may be able to learn better features representative of the distribution of data. I'm sure there's an argument to be made here about the generalization capability of models being trained on noisy data being higher, but I personally think cleaner data = better data. Especially for a GAN where the goal is to learn the distribution of your input space. Noise would only hinder that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there something similar which works with video?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the goal of this repository but the code base doesn't support video atm.

You could theoretically use OpenCV to extract video frames and upsample them one by one through this model in real time (384 -> 1024 upsampling runs at 30fps).</comment></comment>


Some graphs: 10 years security holes - <AUTHOR> http://www.s21sec.com/prensa.aspx?sec=4&ntc=1669

<comment><USER2> There's an "English" link at the top, but it doesn't seem to work on this page. Perhaps the link should be edited to use the following:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.s21sec.com%2Fprensa.aspx%3Fsec%3D4%26ntc%3D1669%231669)

<comment><USER3> Try this: [http://www.s21sec.com/prensa.aspx?sec=4&ntc=503#503](http://www.s21sec.com/prensa.aspx?sec=4&ntc=503#503)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Michal Zalewski already explained in detail why this is a horribly broken methodology: [http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2010/05/vulnerability- databases-...](http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2010/05/vulnerability-databases- and-pie-charts.html)</comment>


Bug Ninjas – Community for Bug Hunters and Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://bugninjas.netlify.com <comment><AUTHOR> Bug Ninjas are the hackers who dedicated their life to Bug Hunting & Hacking in fields of Computer Science and Information Technology.

It's a new small startup just for fun.

Join us by submitting a bug/exploit/build.</comment>


Terminated .gov Domain Names - <AUTHOR> https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/terminated-gov-domain-names-14875/#files

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing.

Here is one interesting domain from that list: AfricalBurialGround.gov

Any idea as to the reasons behind the registration and subsequent deletion of this domain name?

<comment><AUTHOR> No idea, I'll file a follow up. Very weird.

<comment><USER3> It's available on the Internet Archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20120913081458/http://www.africa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120913081458/http://www.africanburialground.gov/ABG_Main.htm)

Looks like it was moved to the National Parks Service website: [http://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm](http://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, so the mystery is solved. A 200-300 years old historic burial ground in Manhattan - very interesting!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Haskell In New Clothes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/serras/hinc <comment><USER2> I love seeing new Haskell projects, though I personally would rather just stick with Haskell's clean syntax:

      data Maybe a = Nothing | Just a

...over this:

      data Maybe<a> {
        Nothing,
        Just(value: a)
      }

I understand that programmers coming from mainstream languages might feel uncomfortable without all those angle brackets, curly braces, and parentheses (why do C-like languages have so many ways to syntactically group things?), so if this project helps them ease their way into Haskell I totally support it. However, a small part of the joy of Haskell is freeing yourself from the arbitrary syntactic boilerplate that most languages have.

<comment><USER3> > freeing yourself from the arbitrary syntactic boilerplate that most > languages have.

And coming up against arbitrary three-four-character combinations people come up with for their operators.

Terser does not automatically mean better (or J and K would've won that argument a long time ago).

At least mainstream languages are usually _consistent_. A method call is a method call. A structure is a structure. What is this ungodly mess?

        type API = "polls"                                           :> Get  '[JSON] [Poll]
              :<|> "polls" :> Capture "question_id" Int              :> Get  '[JSON]  Poll
              :<|> "polls" :> Capture "question_id" Int :> "results" :> Get  '[JSON]  PollResults

<comment><USER4> > What is this ungodly mess?

        type API = "polls"                                           :> Get  '[JSON] [Poll]
              :<|> "polls" :> Capture "question_id" Int              :> Get  '[JSON]  Poll
              :<|> "polls" :> Capture "question_id" Int :> "results" :> Get  '[JSON]  PollResults

Delightful :D

      The API is the route "/polls" accessed via GET, returning a list of Polls in JSON format
              or the route "/polls/question_id" where question_id is an Int, accessed via GET, returning a Poll in JSON format
              or the route "/polls/question_id/results" where question_id is an Int, accessed via GET, returning PollResults in JSON format

<comment><USER5> Since we're discussing syntax I'd like to question the necessity of the tick preceding [JSON].

Could we leave out this tick given that the kind of this parameter is [*]?

<comment><USER6> For reasons that are not easy to explain, no.

[JSON] and '[JSON] have different meanings. Here, '[JSON] does not refer to a list of json files, but to a type-level list of the mimetypes that can be returned. You could see '[JSON, PNG] instead, which would make no sense in the context of a list type declaration.

The genius of Servant is that the DSL doesn't require you to know how '[] is implemented and why it's different from [], you just have to know the DSL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I personally prefer Haskell's syntax. I find myself using JavaScript transpilers like BuckleScript to take me into a typesafe land with ML syntax rather than using a language like TypeScript with Java like syntax.

That said, I really appreciate seeing work like this. Haskell is super powerful and it's great to see transpilers like this that are lowering the bar of entry to Haskell to those more familiar with the traditional languages. Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER8> I dont think a lack of curly braces is whats keeping haskell from taking off. It's the "I need to go study category theory to be able to read the docs on any useful package" problem and the proliferation of language extensions. Taking some of the ivory tower out of the learning curve will do a lot more than adding some tokens.

</comment><comment><USER9> Contrary to the other commenters, I see this as a huge improvement. Maybe I'm more used to languages like C rather than what, ml, python, pascal?

</comment><comment><USER10> Whoa, this is amazing! I find this example much, much easier to read:

> For example, where Haskellers would write:

        f = average . filter (> 0) . map normalize

> in hinc the idiomatic translation would be:

        let f(lst) = lst.map(normalize)
                        .filter((x) => x > 0)
                        .average

These seems like very sane, pragmatic choices considering the massive segment of programmers used to C/Java/JavaScript derived syntax.

Now, if the currently top comment about category theory could be addressed, I think we'd have something.

</comment><comment><USER11> The thing that's always turned me off Haskell is language extensions and the associated fractal fracture of the language. Sorry, I don't want to learn a dozen different styles of a language.

PureScript always seemed a little more appealing from that perspective, but doesn't seem to have really caught on (eg; [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=purescript))

<comment><USER12> Sorry, could you provide an example of those different styles?

<comment><USER13> To reply to both of your respondents at once,

> Of course, each language extension changes the syntax and/or semantics of > the language, so in order to "learn Haskell" I'd have to learn one or more > flavors/styles of it – and there doesn't seem to be one standard set of > language extensions that are commonly used

> It seems like every Haskell project makes use of a different subset of 10 to > 20 language extensions, each of which requires some deep knowledge of type > theory to understand how it affects the language.

These comments are both pretty off the mark. It's unhelpful to think of language extensions (the most commonly-used ones at least) as _extending_ the language. It's more that there is one overall Haskell language and the _absence_ of a particular language extension _disables_ a particular feature. The language is, by and large, _more_ coherent with language extensions turned on, not less coherent.

<comment><USER14> Maybe it's more coherent, but the fact that, after learning the language, you discover that you have 20 more extensions to learn feels like a never-ending quest. I think that's what the previous commentators mean.

If the language is more coherent with the extensions, they should enable them by default.

<comment><USER6> Most haskell programmers I know don't know or use all extensions, and do just fine without them.

I personally don't know most of them, and I've been doing haskell professionally for years now. Once in a while, I will need to do a specific thing and will google up stuff, and the thing I'll write will remain contained in a couple files, and callers won't have to know about it.

It is absolutely _not_ a prerequisite to know all extensions to earn one's living doing Haskell, just like one doesn't have to know the JVM or the dozens of design patterns inside and out to program in Java.

<comment><USER11> > It is absolutely not a prerequisite to know all extensions

Which ones are a prerequisite? OverloadedStrings? TemplateHaskell? How many others?

If the answers to that list were enabled by default in the language, and most Haskellers agreed on them, there really wouldn't be much complaint – you'd reach for these fancy macros when you need them, like you say, and that'd be that. A newcomer wouldn't know that some of them are required reading and others aren't and not know which is which.

<comment><USER6> I have never touched template haskell.

OverloadedStrings is one of the few extensions you'll see everywhere, but there's nothing to remember about it. It's really the kind of thing you'll understand in 10s and find obvious forever after.

> If the answers to that list were enabled by default in the language, and > most Haskellers agreed on them, there really wouldn't be much complaint

Here is the thing: just moving all the extensions into the language and removing the pragma would basically mean there would still be the same amount of things in the language, but with no convenient way to know what's used in a specific file, and it would be hard to research that topic which you don't know.

Extensions are great in that they force devs to label files with searchable names for the concepts they use in the code.

> A newcomer wouldn't know that some of them are required reading and others > aren't and not know which is which.

A newcomer, just like a seasoned haskeller, shouldn't bother learning new extensions if they're not about to use them. That's the way to go forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As far as functional languages go, F# (and thus OCaml which is the parent language of F#) IMO has the best syntax. The code is actually readable even if you haven't ever written a functional program and everything feels super practical about it.

Its a shame that F# doesnt gets the attention it deserves.

</comment><comment><USER16> I want to like Haskell, but I think lazy evaluation is fundamentally broken. Haskell's facility for optional strict evaluation doesn't really repair the fundamental defect, which leads to memory leaks and unpredictable performance. And certain magic functions are strict anyway, and you just have to know what those are. I just don't see making lazy sequences easy as being worth the cost of making lazy evaluation the syntactic default.

Given that Haskell is fundamentally and irreparably broken (IMHO) in this way, it seems like a waste to devote effort to it instead of better functional languages like ML.

<comment><USER6> May I ask you what kind of "magic" functions you have in mind ?

<comment><USER16> && is always strict in its first argument. Pattern matching is strict. It's hard to predict when some random function you call with force a thunk you've passed it. My position is still that lazy-by-default is a really bad evaluation policy and that consequently, Haskell is a dead end in language evolution.

<comment><USER6> > && is always strict in its first argument.

Well, if you need to evaluate (&&) you will necessarily need to evaluate its first argument. Much like (||). This behaviour works similar in many other languages.

On the other hand, the first argument passed to (&&) will never be evaluated until needed, so it is still lazy as expected. A good way to test this behaviour is to try this in GHCI:

        let a = (length [1..] == 3) && False

Simply declaring a won't enter in an endless loop, but asking to show a will indeed loop endlessly.

Likewise, it is hard to understand how you expect pattern matching to not look at an expression's value when deciding which branch of the code it should use next.

> My position is still that lazy-by-default is a really bad evaluation policy > and that consequently, Haskell is a dead end in language evolution.

Yeah, I have understood that you have an opinion. Nevermind that people run it in production without issues.

<comment><USER16> People run Java in production without issues, but we know today that languages shouldn't have nullable-by-default pointers. Software is infinitely malleable: that you can make something work is no argument that it's the right thing.

<comment><USER6> People rarely call Java a dead end, or irreparably broken, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To me the biggest advantage of this that it's not whitespace sensitive, which makes it way easier to refactor and automatically indent/format code. Although I'd have preferred something more ML-like.

<comment><USER18> It's possible to write regular Haskell with semicolons and curly braces. White-space sensitivity is just a syntax sugar for that [1].

> easier to refactor and automatically indent/format code.

What are the advantages of white-space insensitive code for refactoring and formatting?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_features#Layout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_features#Layout)

<comment><USER17> With white-space insensitive code I can easily cut/paste code from one function to another, without having to potentially manually re-indent it afterwards. This makes refactoring easier.

For formatting, it means I never need to manually add any spaces or tabs: the formatter always knows exactly how to indent it. With whitespace-sensitive code, I have to manually pick the indentation, as different indentations could have different semantics. That's why if I hit tab in Emacs when editing a Haskell file, it will cycle through multiple possible indentions. If I hit it in a whitespace-insensitive language, it will just move it to the "correct" indentation straight away and I don't need to worry about it.

Using {} braces in Haskell seems less intuitive, at least to me. E.g. how would I use braces to avoid the need to manually indent a nested where statement?

<comment><USER19> I have to fix up the layout essentially manually every time I have to edit C in someone else's idea of correct layout when they haven't included C Mode rules for it. (That's assuming they want a consistent style for changes, of course.)

If simplicity of parsing, and cut-and-paste are important, we should be using Lisp, of course, but there are still different indentation styles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a Typescript developer, I really like this! Haskell has always been difficult for me to grok but this syntax makes bridging the gap really intuitive. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER21> It's a great attempt, just like ReasonML.

Maybe the 'data' could be called 'enum'? I believe Rust/Swift ADT definition use keyword 'enum' and it might make it more familiar to the mainstream.

While the 'await' is pretty recognizable, the word itself seems to be too coupled with asynchronous operation too much.

</comment><comment><USER22> This looks so noisy compared to normal Haskell syntax.

<comment><USER23> I'd call it verbose. In comparison Haskell syntax seems like a lot of meaning should be magically assumed by default. Sort of like mathematicians tend to do in their notation. Here it's spelled out.

Like in the example of

        f = average . filter (> 0) . map normalize

vs

        let f(lst) = lst.map(normalize)
                    .filter((x) => x > 0)
                    .average

In the second version I can clearly see that I'm creating a function that is supposed to take one argument. It even has a name that might indicate what I'm expecting.

Don't get me wrong. All the required information is there but some of it is "written between the lines".

Sort of like CoffeeScript which people tend to hate (and I love, just because I understand JS perfectly and in comparison to CoffeeScript it looks noisy for me).

<comment><USER24> Standard, base Haskell admits the following definition:

      let f lst = lst
                  & map normalize
                  & filter (\x -> x > 0)
                  & average

Which is barely different from your second presentation. (EDIT: just in case you think I'm ass-pulling here, this is fairly idiomatic code that I'd certainly write in prod! See another comment I posted earlier this week...)

<comment><USER25> I have almost no Haskell experience, but I was playing around in GHCI the other day and it seems you can add parens to function arguments if you want?

Nobody seems to add parens to separate arguments from function calls though in Haskell, never seen it but it works.

      let f(lst) = lst
                    & map normalize
                    & filter (\x -> x > 0)
                    & average

      Prelude Data.Function> let f(lst) = lst & map (\x -> x + 2) & filter (\x -> x > 4)
      Prelude Data.Function> f([2,3,4])
      [5,6]

<comment><USER26> > you can add parens to function arguments if you want?

Of course. This "(x)" and this "x" are the same. You can put any expression inside parenthesis. Haskell also has tuples, that you write as "(a, b, c)" and can use as a function parameter.

There is even some functions in base for converting functions that receive a tuple into functions that receive many parameters and the other way around.

<comment><USER25> It seems kind of weird coming from other languages to not visually distinguish the function call from the arguments if you have the option.

Nobody in Haskell does this (to the point I had no idea it could be done until I tried it) so clearly it's something you get used to, but boy does it look real alien to me.

<comment><USER26> Space is the symbol that denotes a function call in Haskell.

It is indeed different from other languages, that require an argument list in parenthesis. It can be different because values and functions are not ambiguous on Haskell; there isn't such thing as a function with no argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think there's a good use case for such a thing: make it as compatible with current Rust syntax as possible, including keyword names. This way you'd make use of people's familiarity with Rust, and give them "lookalike Lang with better types and a GC".

</comment><comment><USER28> Honestly the syntax of Haskell is unnecessarily weird and I think this project is proof that it doesn't have to be. Haskell's syntax has really put me off learning it. I'd even say some parts of the syntax are elitist - they are almost deliberately - and unnecessarily! - hard for beginners but great if you are a language nerd and understand currying, lambda calculus and so on.

This is way better, but to be honest I don't think I'll use it because the extra easiness of learning with a sane syntax is probably going to be not worth the extra hassle caused by not learning the syntax that everyone else uses.

Still, great job! Now do the git CLI. :-)

</comment><comment><USER29> C-like [http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete- and-m...](http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly- wrong.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER30> companion site, [https://serras.github.io/hinc/](https://serras.github.io/hinc/)

</comment><comment><USER31> I mean...why not just go full OCaml at this point?

</comment><comment><USER32> Without OO as main paradigm, and without being shoehorned into the JVM, Haskell has no chance to be mainstream. Stop trying to make it mainstream, it will only remove from Haskell what makes Haskell great.

</comment><comment><USER19> How do people who are thrown by juxtaposition as function application and point-free style cope with Unix shell pipelines?

</comment><comment><USER33> Improving Haskell with Javascript syntax is like improving a Mark Rothko painting by sprinkling glitter all over it.

<comment><USER23> It's more inspired by TypeScript I'd say and there are also features inspired by Rust.

I'd call it readable haskell not hinc.

Most popular languages created sort of universal visual language of what things mean when they look certain way and weird languages with very cool mechanics like Haskell, have much trouble with conveying this mechanic to the new user when they don't subscribe to this visual language (for historical or whatever reasons).

<comment><USER6> > Most popular languages created sort of universal visual language of what > things mean when they look certain way

python kind of ignored this "universal visual language", and the language seems pretty popular with newcomers.

<comment><USER23> Not really. Python has exactly the same structure as all other popular languages. Lack of brackets doesn't make it much different.

Ruby is weirder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Huh, this is like saying "who needs parsers?" Well, they've been invented for a reason. So after the NoSQL movement, we now have NoParser. I fear we might end up back at assembly or even microcode. Sure it will make life simpler, but it's the wrong kind of simple.

</comment><comment><USER35> oh god, no top level patterns

it's such a beautiful thing ..

<comment><USER36> I really like the Unison syntax:

      fib = cases
        0 -> 0
        1 -> 1
        n -> fib (drop n 1) + fib (drop n 2)

(drop is (-) for natural numbers, clamping to 0.)

<comment><USER24> The fairly popular `LambdaCase` extension gives

      fib = \case
        0 -> 0
        [...]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> well, it's cute trick - not sure what the utility is.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm looking forward to playing with this.

Coming from a C-style language background, I've always found the syntax of languages such as Haskell and ML to be alien, to the point that I can't get my head into learning one of them, despite their obvious power and utility.

I've been looking for some kind of C-style dialect for one of these languages for a long time, so thank you very much for creating this.

At the risk of hijacking this thread; is anyone here aware of other projects for Haskell or other languages that achieve a similar goal?

<comment><USER39> ReasonML is similar. What do you find confusing about the syntax? Imo, Haskell/ML syntax is more readable and lightweight than traditional C-style syntax.</comment></comment>


Can golang beat perl on regex performance? - <AUTHOR> http://crypticjags.com/golang/can-golang-beat-perl-on-regex-performance.html <comment><USER2> First of all, this is really comparison of regexp packages. PCRE (am I correct that it's used in perl?) written in C vs re2 written in Go.

On related topic, in this case utf8 is not needed so switching to []byte oriented api is good idea (and as an added benefit - slices are cheaper to copy then strings) - see comparison [https://gist.github.com/tumdum/83581aee2693a60f5133](https://gist.github.com/tumdum/83581aee2693a60f5133)

<comment><USER3> If I understand correctly, pcre = Perl Compatible Regular Expressions. While that library attempts to be able to do most of what perl regex can do (or could do a while ago as it doesn't seem to keep up with modern Perl versions), it doesn't implement the entirety. Perl itself doesn't use that library, but is an optimized engine built into perl that provides the basis that pcre is based off of.

It's not surprising that the Perl is faster, as it is all in C, and has had lots of optimizations over a few decades. I've had similar results between perl and things like grep, Ruby, python etc. Perl comes out on top!</comment></comment>


Hibernate should be what cake mixes are to bakers: beneath their dignity. - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/28885655

<comment><USER2> Hibernate is annotations gone wild.</comment>


A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120813/00081620002/fee-based-twitter-is-no-more-ideologically-pure-than-ad-supported-twitter.shtml <comment><USER3> Following the model from the article:

In the fee-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the users.

In the ads-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the advertisers, (3) the users.

By removing the advertisers from the equation, a _lot_ of resources are freed up to address the needs of the other two parties. It's kind of strange to say that "the company" is a party being serviced in this manner... they're asking for cash, and people are giving it to them for a service. Yes, they have needs that require resources (think administrative assistants, HR, sales, etc), but these people all exist to help service the user. To that extent, the majority of the company is now existing to create a better experience for the user. Their argument is that this is significantly superior to the model where a significant portion of the company exists to service advertisers, and not benefit the end user.

<comment><USER4> You're assuming that advertisers never meet users needs.

If I'm selling you a bike, and I also tell you about a good deal on bike insurance you can get, then I'm advertising at you. Maybe I get a cut of the insurance premium. BUT, I'm also adding value for the customer. It's a mutually beneficial transaction.

I know it's blasphemy to claim that advertising is sometimes pretty damn useful around these parts, but the fact is, it is useful for users just as much as it's useful for companies in search of revenue.

edit: Has no one here ever clicked on a sponsored result in google? If not, bear in mind you're the exception rather than the rule.

<comment><USER5> Advertising _can_ add value when it transmits novel information that would be hard to get some other way. But it usually doesn't.

It's mainly an arms race to distort natural market outcomes. Coca Cola doesn't spend over a billion dollars a year advertising because they want to make you aware of some new fact. They just think they can make much more than that billion back by manipulating you.

<comment><USER6> Part of that is due to distortions caused by tax regulations. Advertising spending is basically a tax writeoff so effectively costs nothing.

<comment><USER5> I'd love to see some evidence for that.

As far as I know, it's just another business expense, which means you deduct it from your profits. Coca Cola paid about 17% in taxes for 2010 [1], so if you squint hard enough I guess you could look at it as a 17% subsidy. But since that's true of any reasonable business expenditure, I don't see it as a significantly distorting incentive.

[1] [http://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NYSE/Company/Coca-Cola- Co/F...](http://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NYSE/Company/Coca-Cola-Co/Financial- Statement/Income-Statement)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a bit surprised the comments here are so overwhelmingly critical. I think there's a legitimate point here, which is that the users paying money is not a silver bullet. It's not as if paid services don't make decisions that end up screwing users one way or another, not to mention the fact that subscription fees and ads are not always mutually exclusive (witness cable TV, newspapers, etc). In fact Twitter toed the line for years, building developer confidence and providing a solid platform. This is precisely the problem that App.net is addressing: Twitter appeared to be trustworthy but when push came to shove they decided to throw the developers under the bus because they had enough normals that they figured the developers and early adopters weren't necessary anymore.

The reason App.net is more trustworthy is because its founding principles are a direct response to this existential threat of advertising dollars subverting the platform. The paying users part is merely the explanation of how to make this company work, not the guarantee that they will do no wrong.

<comment><USER8> My only potential gripe with App.net is that they can't protect their users after the company is acquired. The Instagram/Sparrow problem combined with tendancy of almost every company to kowtow to the advertising industry is a valid concern for me.

<comment><USER9> They should follow an IRC or Jabber model. Anyone can host an IRC/jabber server. Maybe App.net can make an industrial twitter server to be hosted on windows, *nix, etc.

But of course, that's not what App.net is going after. That is what I think would be a lot better. Or maybe an industrial Facebook-ish server, too. Would be helpful to run in-house in giant organizations, I bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Point 1 is complete hogwash. Users don't want to keep their money. Money is worthless if you don't spend it. Users want to get equivalent or better value for their money. If App.net wants the user's $50, the user wants to get at least $50 worth of value from App.net. So yes, their economic incentives are definitely aligned. If App.net wants to get more than $50 from their users in the future, then they damn well need to provide more than $50 worth of value to their users.

And Point 2 is pretty bad as well. Yes, you can't degrade the service so badly that users leave. But you can still degrade the service to a certain extent. Since the users aren't paying anything for it, they don't expect much more than $0 worth of value from the service. So you can end up with a pretty bad user experience in the name of satisfying your advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER11> Fee-based Twitter vs. Ad-Supported Twitter is a false dichotomy. This smells like a PR stunt.

How about an open-source Twitter-like service that can run on your own server and federate with others? <http://www.Status.net> has offered this for several years now and they have done an outstanding job of creating a free and open alternative for status-feed based communication.

<comment><USER12> Twitter's functionality is basically email+listserv. I've often wondered why the big email players (Google in particular) didn't field a competing service simply built on top of email. You could still use your email account as usual, but using a special client you could use the same account as a Twitter clone.

<comment><USER13> Wasn't that Google Buzz?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The key to a company providing good service is competition.

Look at Comcast, one of the most hated consumer companies, it charges for service but its interests are not aligned with its customers because it operates regional monopolies so their interest is in extracting as much money for as little service as possible from the locked-in users.

Compare with Apple, it operates in the highly competitive consumer electronics industry and that helps make it a world leader in customer satisfaction.

Now look at American mobile phone service operators. There exists a decently competitive market with 4 main companies, but the standard 2-year contract lock-in means all the competition happens mostly at customer acquisition where you see big deals on discount phones. But after the customer is locked-in they operate more like monopolies with hidden charges and poor service.

As for social networks, the network-effect lock-in is a huge impediment to good market competition. Once someone has their social network in place it makes it very difficult to switch. So I would think the incentives are more similar to the mobile phone market, pro-consumer at acquisition and then not so much afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is such muddled thinking there isn't much there there. You can't just drop a word like "ideological" into a debate as if there is one uniform definition. As near as I can tell, the only way to be ideologically pure for Mike Masnick would be for no money at all to be involved, but once you spell that out, it becomes obvious that this is hardly an uncontroversial definition on its own. It also means that "ideologically pure" is pretty much impossible by definition at any scale. I for one tend not to worry too much about the fact that someone has not reached a standard that was impossible to reach in the first place.

If I am wrong about what it would take to be ideologically pure according to Mike Masnick, well, chalk it up to the fact he never saw fit to spell it out.

I could pick further, but it's so mushy there's hardly any point.

</comment><comment><USER16> The service should be pay to publish, free to consume.

You should let people follow anything they want for free, but if they want to turn on the ability to publish content into the service, then they pay

<comment><USER17> But doesn't that get rid of the social aspect of "Social Media"? People like being able to comment on things - but why should they have to pay to do so? Just because someone isn't willing to pay doesn't mean that what they've got to say isn't worthwhile, and vice versa. I think a pay-to-post/free to consume setup would result in a spammy, advert ridden service, that would quickly die.

<comment><USER18> I thought all conversation between people moved to Facebook and Twitter is basically used to pimp stuff and beg for retweets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The element that techdirt overlooks, and that I think they did their community (and themselves) a disservice by not mentioning, is the privacy element.

Because selling your personal details is a (relatively) invisible intrusion (unless the provider really screws up, ala Beacon) - there is a significant cost to the user (that cares about privacy) that is not visible to them. App.net is aligned only with the users from that position. There is _no_ incentive for them to resell their user's private information.

With regards to advertising - clearly that has to do with your pain points regarding advertising. We've heard lots of feedback from people who say they don't mind the advertising on Facebook, or twitter. These people also might even watch commercial television.

For those of us who stopped watching commercial television a decade ago (before "cutting the cable" was in vogue), who run ad-block religously, and are offended by "kmart specials" appearing in our twitter stream - we clearly have already reached our pain point, and are looking for something new.

For those people - App.net will be a consistent, long term, ad free, communications infrastructure.

There may only be 10,000 or so people there, and the other 5million (50 million? 500 million?) people may be on twitter. But, unlike Facebook, where it's important that all of your high-school friends, ex-girlfriends, aunts, nieces, classmates, and party-goer-chums are on the same site - I'm quite happy to leave them all behind and follow a small core of interesting technical people without distraction.

<comment><USER20> Have app.net people clarified if _they_ would be okay if the service only had 10,000 users at its stabilization point?

I know you'd be okay with it but so far, we don't have much from them stating the same. The default of course is that a service that peeks at 10,000 users is headed to dead pool. This is a bit different with 10K paid users but that is still not much in terms of providing financial security to the company to not require funding or other creative ways to monetize.

So my question is simple to app.net folks: if two years from now your service has 10,000 paid subscribers AND you know that that is the peak, will you be content running the company?

<comment><USER21> > if two years from now your service has 10,000 paid subscribers AND you know > that that is the peak, will you be content running the company?

This is entirely dependent on opportunity cost--ie, whats their take-home pay, and whats the real commitment?

<comment><USER22> I'd they are just in it for the ideology, then I fully expect then to run the company as a non profit. Oh, they aren't are they? They want to make money too? And they're trying to convince people that they're in it for openness and all that? If they made App.net into a Wikipedia style foundation, I would have gladly jumped on board. But instead they're just trying to create an angle to justify a twitter clone. I can build my own twitter clone. I don't need to pay App.net for that. I have yet to see anything original about this idea. They're just trying to profit on a rather limited crowd of tech people. If it was such a great idea, then the VCs would be throwing money at them. And no, they didn't turn it down-- it isn't there because their business model won't scale. There's only a limited amount of social network inbreeding that can happen before a niche paid network runs out of cousins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I take issue with the author's point that:

"A free-based service, supported by advertisers, has tons of incentive to keep its users just as happy as a fee-based service. Why? Because if it doesn't, people go elsewhere and the advertisers go with them."

For the average consumer internet site, happy users does not equate to happy advertisers. As Facebook shows, you can have "happy" users -- in that they don't leave -- but create a dismal product for advertisers. They cannot optimize for advertisers without compromising the user experience. App.net will never need to optimize for advertisers, so they can focus completely on the user experience, or platform experience.

Edit: Removed quote from code block. PG - Markdown parser?

<comment><USER12> Yes, the goal of a UX designer in an advertising-supported context is to create a tolerable experience for the user while delivering maximum exposure for the advertiser, whereas a UX designer for a fee-based service is focused on delivering a great experience for the user, period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I dislike ads so much I would stop using your service if it wasn't possible to block them. I would much rather pay for all the ad-supported (well, not by me) service I use.

Everybody should be looking for ad-free ways to support their services.

If you are not paying for something the provider has incentive to sell your data, not so much if you paid for it. Example: I'm currently on a free Dropbox account simply because I don't need much storage. I would love to pay for the option to have my files encrypted. This would mean that Dropbox can't save space, thus it's alright I should pay for that.

</comment><comment><USER25> "First off, App.net's interests are not economically aligned with its users. It wants money from those users, and all things being equal, those users want to keep their money. So their goals are actually diametrically opposed."

After I read that, I didn't need to read anymore.. I, and I presume many others, are perfectly alright with the idea of giving money to a company that is providing a worthy product or service in return. I understand that it costs money to make a good product or to provide quality services of any kind.

<comment><USER7> Yes. He's essentially affirming the conclusion that users only want free services.

Of course more users want free services, but that doesn't mean that _some_ users don't want a premium service, and more importantly, that those users don't add a disproportionate amount of the network effect value to a microblogging service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't know why this is so hard or requires such significant investment up front. How is making a decentralized Twitter service more of a challenge than, say, IRC or Jabber? I know that the problems aren't exactly the same, but I would hazard to guess that they are on the same order of magnitude in terms of implementation difficulty.

<comment><USER27> So they have a runway before their maximum 10K paying users is only enough to keep a part-time operations team and servers up.</sarcasm>

I have to agree with you though. This may be more than <insert weekend project> we always hear about, but not _much_ more. I'd imagined the product would be mostly built already.

Maybe they wanted an injection of cash before getting a handful of servers, and we should see everything up and running within the week.

Maybe they think they need to be Twitter-sized day one, which would be a mistake on their judgement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why don't people who donated to app.net at least get an account to use the service? They paid $50 and they don't even get an account? In a way, by paying $50 or more, they are committing themselves to pay an unknown, perhaps greater amount to actually _use_ app.net.

$50 is a lot of money. Why don't funders get an account?

<comment><USER18> As the site says, the $50 is pre-paying for an account.

<comment><USER28> Am I reading it incorrectly? It says, "You'll be committing to prepaying for a full year of 'member-level' service."

That doesn't sound like, "You get a year of service."

<comment><USER29> Are you sure? Can somebody confirm this?

<comment><USER30> You pay $50. Email them asking for alpha access. They give you the account.

$100+ accounts are for developers & access to APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This article is hogwash.

(1) No. In fact, this _does_ make the user the customer, as opposed to free models that make the user the product. If the user is the customer it does impose somewhat of a guarantee that product development will be oriented around the user.

(2) Also no. Everyone by now knows that the value of a network increases very rapidly as a function of its users. Or, put another way, switching costs go way up. Knowing this, it doesn't take a PhD in Game Theory to realize that one potential strategy for a network like Twitter to stay free and attempt to achieve "lock in" (very high switching costs), and then impose tangential costs on the user (shitty advertising) that are less than the switching costs.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a nonsensical article. Ideology doesn't enter into it; say rather, a firm that sells directly to the user is open to market pressure from those users in a way that a firm that sells their users to a third party simply isn't.

<comment><USER33> Agreed. Instilling a price tag for users legitimizes its utility (to a certain degree).

However, what bothers me most about this article is that it's so black-and- white, alluding to the existence of only two pricing models out there: Ads or money up-front. No where does this article mention the possibility for a VRM- based (<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page>) revenue model, attribution-licensing model, etc.

[sad panda]

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Think of it like FM radio. It's free for us to listen but we have to sit through advertisements. XM and sirius said hey, let's have people pay to listen, so don't have to make them sit through ads. Basically just a different biz model. That model can work though because you don't necessarily need critical mass to have people consume your content. (Yes to a certain extent you do) But the critical mass needed for the next twitter like platform would require a huge critical mass for people to continue to pay for the service. Just my stupid opinion

<comment><USER35> But they're also SATELLITE radio. That is a huge value add over traditional radio service. I don't think users were only paying for sirius/XM because the services didn't have ads. It was because the products were technically superior.

<comment><USER34> What is the huge value added over traditional radio? That it's not FM? In terms of quality you mean? I thought when it first came out that their big pitch was no ads. But don't get me wrong, I also think satellite radio is better because of programming, sound quality, AND no ads.

Although I think they are running ads in some markets... Guess they couldn't survive on the no ads model and are going hybrid?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ads-based TV (networks) → fee-based TV (cable) → cord cutters

Ads-based twitter → fee-based app.net → social cord cutters

</comment><comment><USER37> "It wants money from those users, and all things being equal, those users want to keep their money. So their goals are actually diametrically opposed."

By this standard, aren't the goals of every party in a transaction where money changes hands "diametrically opposed?"

</comment><comment><USER38> "Ideologically Pure"? Link-bait much?

Apparently the author finds the notion of a fair-value exchange impossible to understand.

"First off, App.net's interests are not economically aligned with its users. It wants money from those users, and all things being equal, those users want to keep their money. So their goals are actually diametrically opposed."

I would bother with an introduction to the fundamentals of how economic exchange work.. but I honestly believe this was written with so much foaming froth on the lips of the author that he cannot possibly see sense enough to understand reason.

I hope he got the jacked up page view count he was hoping for.

</comment><comment><USER39> _> those users want to keep their money._

Well, no. Those users want a service. Nobody coerces anyone into giving App.Net money, so those paying users actually _don't_ want to keep this amount of money, in exchange for the service.

 _> A free-based service, supported by advertisers, has tons of incentive to keep its users just as happy as a fee-based service._

But for that it has to show ads, and the business is then to show ads in the most efficient way possible, which has a number of consequences we can readily witness today.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's all about profit. That is, when the transactions are all said and done (whether the user paid for the service, or the advertisers have bought their advertisements) how much good will is left over?

How much good feeling does each party how? Can the user say that they feel good about using the service, is the service provider satisfied with how the transactions lay?

With Facebook and twitter some people, users and advertisers alike, don't feel enough profit from the service. Maybe with App.net they will.

</comment><comment><USER41> They miss the point when they write "Who's to say that App.net will always cost $50 per year? What if, a year from now, it needs a lot more to keep the service going. App.net has incentives to figure out ways to raise the price to bring in more money."

If it turns out that the price charged is insufficient to maintain the service, I'd expect them to raise the price. The alternative is for the service to not exist, taking as an axiom an ad-free service.

</comment><comment><USER42> Money talks. Don't bite the hand that feeds ya. If users pay and there are no advertisers, the users are investors. If advertisers pay (or pay a heck of a lot more than the user) they're the investors.

Look at HBO, because they're not beholden to some lowest common denominator PC/right-wing/hypocrite relifreak agenda they produce awesome content. It's not a coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think if anything the best thing about having a paid system is that you have one less person to make happy. Unless your ads are just a dropin (e.g. google ads) you have to have a marketing and sales team, and presumably a bunch of coding work has to go into making a backend for advertisers to upload their ads and decide who sees what and so on.

</comment><comment><USER44> Nothing is ever free. Either we are buying a product, or we are the product.

In the real world, things cost money for businesses to stay open and sustainable.

I'll say it again, in a free system, we are the product that's sold to advertisers.

If I had to pick one, I'd like to be able to pay for such an experience. It's preference and I look forward to seeing how it goes.

<comment><USER45> Oh, but there's several shades of grey. Take running friendica or diaspora on your own webspace, for example. You're a customer to your webhost, but the software is free. Well, it does have the cost of being kinda slow or hard to set up respectively, but still.. there are public pods you can use and donate to, and where the product is mostly the warm fuzzy feeling people get from doing the right thing. I think you are underestimating human generosity and inventiveness.. shop around!

<comment><USER44> My definition of a customer is someone who pays me.

Someone using a free service is a user, they may not necessarily pay.

Didn't mean to come across as underestimating human generosity, I very much believe in keeping kindness, goodness and giving fashionable, but in money, the context of a business, is largely it's bloodflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> One more model is pending - a donation based twitter - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER47> The point no one asks is - why has a federated model such as rss been replaced with a single point of failure monopoly - twitter.</comment>


The rise of the automotive App Store - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/08/17/guest-post-the-rise-of-the-automotive-app-store

<comment><AUTHOR> any thoughts on security threats to apps in cars?</comment>


Solution to track scroll depth for variable height pages - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cognetik.com/2018/03/20/new-solution-google-tag-managers-scroll-depth-trigger-solve-variable-height-problems/ <comment><USER2> I've been struggling with this for some time, thank you!!</comment>


At Legal Fringe, Empty Houses Go to the Needy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/us/09foreclosure.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

<comment><USER2> O'Reilly called this a "mortgage hack", which I love: <http://twitter.com/#!/timoreilly/status/2414447138177024></comment>


When A Big Company Is Threatened By A Startup, It Looks Like  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/when-a-big-company-is-threatened-by-a-startup-it-looks-like-this-2013-1

<comment><USER2> and yet they still look hideous compared to the start up.

Design by committee can't even copy a simple website accurately.</comment>


Archive Team is a loose collective dedicated to saving our digital heritage - <AUTHOR> http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page <comment><USER2> Infrastructure overview: [http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Dev/Infrastructur...](http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Dev/Infrastructure)</comment>


Finite Difference Methods - Derivative Approximation - <AUTHOR> http://www.quantstart.com/tutorials/Finite_Difference_Methods_-_Derivative_Approximation/

<comment><USER2> I hope no one was trying to learn from that. FD can be tough to handle for people not mathematically trained.

Heat equation? Why? Any second order differential equation would suffice since there is no real example with materials, temperature, properties, boundary conditions, etc. Mine as well just been reading <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_difference_method>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll probably modify the article to include a list of suggested prerequisites and change the heat equation to "diffusion equation", as that is less physically biased.

My real goal is for somebody with a background in mathematics (but no programming) to learn how to program FD, rather than just learn the theory. This is not really made clear by the current article and I will be adding an overview.

Thanks for the feedback though - I'd welcome any more, obviously I want the article(s) to be accessible to as many people as possible!

<comment><USER2> I would suggest adding more visual aids, especially when talking about grid spacing/nodes. I'll try to keep up with it and suggest more things.</comment></comment></comment>