Unilever threatens to pull its ads from Facebook and Google over 'toxic content' - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-unilever-ads-google-facebook-20180212-story.html <comment><USER2> Top advertiser Procter & Gamble, competitor to Unilever and likewise an owner of many distinct brands, has been very vocal about the sorry state of digital advertising [1], threatening to drastically cut spending [2] on ad networks that made it difficult to gauge ROI.

When in 2017 they cut spending on Facebook [2], they noticed no corresponding drop in sales, leading them to conclude that the spending they cut was probably ineffective to begin with [3][4].

[1] [http://adage.com/article/media/p-g-s-pritchard-calls- digital...](http://adage.com/article/media/p-g-s-pritchard-calls-digital-grow- up-new-rules/307742/) [2] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/p-g-to-scale-back- targeted-face...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/p-g-to-scale-back-targeted- facebook-ads-1470760949) [3] [https://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2017/07/28/pg- cuts-100m-in-d...](https://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2017/07/28/pg-cuts-100m-in- digital-adspend-sees-no-business-impact/) [4] [https://wolfstreet.com/2017/07/28/procter-gamble-slashed- dig...](https://wolfstreet.com/2017/07/28/procter-gamble-slashed-digital-ad- spending-what-happened-next/)

<comment><USER3> I always hear about how online advertising has a lot of data to show how effective it is. I've always been skeptical of that, but I have no evidence either way. This seems to show that it wasn't working for this company.

I really wonder how many companies are actually getting anything for their money.

Does anyone know of any data either way?

<comment><USER4> When people say ads are ROI trackable, they are referring to ads that have specific monetizable actions, such as buying a product. There's definitely some advantage there.

However, most big ad spenders engage in "brand" advertising, where the goal is building brand recognition to influence decisions at the future point of purchase decision rather than driving a purchase decision at the point of viewing the ad. I don't see what measurement advantage an online ad brings for this type of advertising, and I see many reasons why it would be inferior to, for example, TV, which can more fully capture a viewer's engagement than a side banner ad.

<comment><USER5> And the internet is probably the worst outlet for brand-building.

Why would Calvin Klein place their beautiful ad with Kate Moss next to photos of your right-wing friend's AK-47 collection and videos of his deer field dressing skills?

<comment><USER6> > Why would Calvin Klein place their beautiful ad with Kate Moss next to > photos of your right-wing friend's AK-47 collection and videos of his deer > field dressing skills?

Because they want to reinforce the notion that wearing Calvin Klein will make you strong and manly and help you attract beautiful women? I'm sure your general point makes sense but I'm really not seeing your example.

<comment><USER7> Because that's where you spend your time. The advertisers are ultimately going to go where consumers' attention is...they don't have much of a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Last year, Unilever spent nearly $9.5 billion marketing its brands, > including Dove, Lipton, Axe and Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

Holy cow, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Dove soap, Lipton tea, and Axe fragrance are all brands owned by the same company?!

<comment><USER9> There is far less competition than it appears, which is why brands are so important for maintaining the fictional appearance of it. This is why some of the left say "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" = while it's a crappy slogan, the reality is that many well-meaning consumers who try to vote with their wallets are just picking 'nicer' brands but still giving their money to the same places, and their buying decisions have far more influence on the way goods and services are _marketed_ than the way they are _produced_.

Now, in some places you can absolutely vote with your dollars, buying locally produced food and keeping the money circulating within your community and so forth. But that's also a bit of a luxury choice - you're willing to pay a bit more, and have the know-how to figure out the difference between a genuine small business that's doing right by its employees/the environment/whatever you care about, and a hip brand that is associated with those values but actually yet another front for a large corporate concern. Many people don't have those choices available (their only buying options maybe through superstores like Walmart or Dollar Tree), or lack the insight to see through the multiple layers of marketing and the economic pros and cons of our complex business infrastructure.

Unilever and other big conglomerates do actually put their logo on the products so if you pay careful attention you can see that information just by inspecting the packaging at the supermarket, but to most people that's just another certification stamp.

<comment><USER10> > the reality is that many well-meaning consumers who try to vote with their > wallets are just picking 'nicer' brands but still giving their money to the > same places

Exactly. I can't think of a better example of this than Dove branding (love- your-body-in-any-shape-or-size feminism) compared to Axe (our deodorant will make hot chicks love you).

<comment><USER11> Dove is for women. Axe is for men.

<comment><USER12> Ironically there are "Axe for Women" and "Dove Men" products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have we finally hit the Minski Moment of online advertising predicted[0] several years back? I really doubt that corporations would care much about what is going on with these platforms as long as their ads yield steady returns. However if this wasn't the case then things will get ugly fast.

[0]:[http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#fatads](http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#fatads)

P.S. My own view of the whole YouTube adpocalypse thing is that it had little to do with controversial content but more to do with how ineffective those ad placements had been overall. Is today's media landscape so messed up that nobody is able to monetise properly?

<comment><USER14> I am willing to bet that companies have a reasonably good handle on the returns from their advertising spending.

I suspect they have no better than guesses as to why those returns change over time, or what might improve the returns. That brief "ad-blockers are immoral" campaign was probably the result of a few advertising committees deciding that some downward trend was caused by ad-blocking. This is more of the same.

The companies are never going to come out and say "we're not making good enough ads," they're going to blame the platforms they're advertising on. That will put pressure on the platforms to lower prices, and in this case, serve as a kind of corporate virtue signalling by pretending to be concerned about social issues.

<comment><USER13> Indeed, though I am worried that advertisers and platforms will take a long time to find equilibrium again (and minor players may be priced out of the market).

When the first ad exodus from YouTube happened, a lot of us thought that it would take them about 6 months to renegotiate and things would be back to normal. Well, it did not happen and we have only seen more exits since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The company behind the Axe ads is complaining about sexism? The whole Axe ad campaign is about objectifying women to sell stuff to young men.

<comment><USER16> The company behind the Axe ads is also the company behind Dove advertising. Different brands, different markets.

Complaining about facebook is a way to get free advertising for all of it.

<comment><USER17> They spent about 10 billion dollars on advertising last year; I don't think their angle here is "free advertising". Stop being so cynical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Story title is not accurate. Actual headline is:

 _Giant advertiser Unilever threatens to pull its ads from Facebook and Google over 'toxic content'_

They haven't committed to it yet, they're in talks with Facebook, Google, etc.

Also, their entire digital ad budget is $2.4B, but not all that went to Facebook and Google, which the title implies. Probably majority did, as they make up like 65% of the digital ad market, but not all.

<comment><USER14> Big companies ask themselves "how can we lower our advertising prices?" and come up with the idea of claiming that their ad-buying decisions hinge on aspects of the advertising platform that will be very expensive to fix. In addition, they'll look social conscious for having the same complaints that their target audience does.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, they have nowhere else to take this ad spend. They can't risk being left behind by getting rid of digital advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find it hard to believe that Unilever really 'cares' about any of these issues so I'm chalking this up to virtue signaling. Really just seems like posturing more than anything

<comment><USER21> They are complaining about "toxic content directed at children". We are talking about the worlds biggest _ice cream_ manufacturer, they own brands like Lipton who make billions from sugar water with ads like these Muppet animations targeted at children gulping it straight from the bottle:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8n-BF5lrnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8n-BF5lrnQ)

Once those kids are fat teenagers, they own Axe of course, infamous peddlers of archaic gender role pushing crap like this:

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

So yeah, the first step on making responsible ads for the internet is banning these particular vermins at Unilever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Right now, there are three highly negative Facebook articles on the front page of HN, simultaneously:

* this article, about Unilever pulling ads from Facebook and Google

* an article about Facebook losing 2.8 million US users under 25 last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360408)

* an article about German courts ruling that Facebook's use of personal data is illegal: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16361614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16361614)

The way people on HN feel about any technology today is how the rest of the world will feel about it tomorrow.[a]

This does _not_ bode well for Facebook.

[a] Typical example: [http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html)

<comment><USER23> I'd say that's undoubtedly not true. Hn loves open source, locally hosting software, customizable software, etc. The general public doesn't even know what open source is, prefer web apps that just work, and prefer OS X/windows to Linux.

Hn doesn't predict market desires at all, its just a smaller subset of the same market.

<comment><USER24> Is 2018 the Year of the Linux Desktop?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And who will be deciding what is "toxic"? Corporate pressure to make companies who already lean towards a political monoculture even more inclined to silence dissenting views is really not encouraging if you believe that discovering the truth requires exposing yourself to a broad range of ideas.

<comment><USER26> "pull its ads from social sites such as Facebook and YouTube if the tech companies don't do more to minimize divisive content on their platforms."

Can the divisive part also apply to any cable news networks guilty of divisiveness?

<comment><USER27> > Can the divisive part also apply to any cable news networks guilty of > divisiveness?

no, because these are already in the pocket..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not that the literal toxic dump of mercury they left behind in my hometown that lead to generations of deformity for people who lived nearby had much impact on their image. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodaikanal_mercury_poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodaikanal_mercury_poisoning)

</comment><comment><USER29> This can't be great for Google. I suspect a large part of their margin is advertisers that assume their investment is paying off somehow. Should encourage some actual investigation of ROI in the space.

</comment><comment><USER30> Makes solid business sense. If you are doing generic brand advertising you want positive associations with your brand. Unilever pays millions of dollars to celebrities just to be associated with them. After all that you don't want to show your million dollar ad next to an article about how Hillary Clinton ate a baby in 2004.

</comment><comment><USER31> Good, the world could do with less advertising. At least we now know what the "toxic content" is good for --- much like rat poison. ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> Considering Unilever's own mis-steps in well known territory, they seem pretty intolerant of others' struggles with the less known.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is excellent. Hopefully other mainstream brands will follow suit. Once this issue hurts Google and Facebook enough that analysts start asking about it at earnings calls, we'll start to see some change.

The only other avenue I see for meaningful change is proper enforcement of anti-trust laws, but the odds of that happening inthe current administration are probably zero.

<comment><USER34> How is it excellent? For one, the standard by which content is determined to be toxic is based off of basically nothing. Take for example The Rubin Report on YouTube, which is constantly demonetized for simply facilitating discussions between intellectuals from across the political spectrum. Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew who is an outspoken opponent of racism and the alt- right, was accused of white supremacy by these same groups claiming toxicity. Advertisers determining what is and is not morally toxic by whatever standards are currently being employed is not exactly a step in the right direction.

Unilever exists at upper echelons of a free market that even most libertarians would begin asking for a semblance of regulations. To think that this is an attempt at anything other than capitalizing off of social trends in order to lower advertising costs or simply to cultivate easy social good will would be foolish.

<comment><USER35> Although I agree with your message, how is Ben Shapiro an 'opponent of [...] the alt-right'?

<comment><USER36> Because in online circles, the 'alt-right' has basically become synonymous with white nationalism, advocacy for an ethnostate and/or belief in a Jewish conspiracy.

Ben Shapiro is in opposition to those views.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have not read the article yet but it looks like advertisers are starting to do what online "news" sources used to do back when news was trustworthy. Vetting of content by educated, professional editors.

When I worked in radio and TV, years ago, small stations that couldn't afford a news department would just rip news copy off the teletype machine from UPI and AP and read that. Thus the term "rip and readers" as a derogatory term for a bad news man or department. Something you see on virtually every TV station now except with video.

</comment><comment><USER38> Ben Thompson, writing at Stratechery[1][2], has some good analysis of the CPG business model. One insight he highlights is that the entire CPG business model is tightly coupled to the retail business model: that is, consumer buying decisions used to happen at a retail location, meaning that brand awareness, loyalty, and product placement within the retail location were paramount.

The entire structure of CPG companies is an organic outgrowth of a) retail's constrained distribution and b) old-media advertising (radio, tv, etc).

It makes sense, then that digital advertising does not deliver ROI on CPGs. E-commerce and digital advertising break all of the constraints above: consumers no longer have a single point-of-decision for what they buy, and because of that, digital advertisements can directly track their effectiveness (and ROI for advertisers) through immediate conversions. CPGs can somewhat take advantage of that new opportunity, but they are built for the post-war era of consumer behavior and advertising.

[1] - [https://stratechery.com/2016/dollar-shave-club-and-the- disru...](https://stratechery.com/2016/dollar-shave-club-and-the-disruption- of-everything/) [2] - [https://stratechery.com/2014/technology-changing-world- pg-ed...](https://stratechery.com/2014/technology-changing-world-pg-edition/)

</comment><comment><USER39> When Google AdWords was starting out, there was a famous line about "can't sell coke on Facebook." It's still true. AdWords worked for DIY ebooks, lawyers, dentists, electricians, eBay, accounting software, night clubs... It never really worked for coke.

Not sure that Unilever (dish soap and other supermarket consumables should advertise on FB.

I really hope fb (also Google properties like YouTube) don't try to PG their content further. The problem is spam and garbage, not breasts and politics.

</comment><comment><USER17> Good. The only thing Facebook listens to is money.

I'll laugh when the alt-right tries to boycott Unilever, though. Enough big companies do this, and they'll all starve to death. :)

</comment><comment><USER40> You mean they thought that they could use programmatic add buying to reduce the cost (and make people redundant) - without understanding what they where buying and have a good way of monitoring.

Also they should have taken greater interest in the agency they used to do the buying rather than just handing the PPC budget to the Marketing directors mate who he plays golf with.

Its not all FB and Googles fault there is a lot of ass covering going on here.

</comment><comment><USER41> most of the anti fake news brigde is only aimed at anti russian fake news end of the day xD.... the problem is that people still these days beleive any random shite they read on the news or internet without thinking and researching for themselves. learn people critical reading and thinking instead of trying to police the interwebz :s

"Fake news, racism, sexism, terrorists spreading messages of hate, toxic content directed at children — parts of the internet we have ended up with is a million miles from where we thought it would take us," <\-- really ,where did u think anonymous free speach would lead? Happy clappy love land? someone misunderstands the human condition. the world is in a shit state and so this reflects to the internet, if yu don't shield people from the real world by living in some kind of bubble they won't be so 'influenced' by the things they read on the internet because they will better understand it.

<comment><USER42> You sound cynical without any need for it.

The hatred and fake news comes from small but very radical and vocal minorities. The vast majority of people is quite sensible and does not like this a bit, that's one of the reasons for a certain online fatigue and why people are so annoyed with many unmoderated forums nowadays. For example, I personally came to HN from Slashdot, which has become unbearably toxic within certain topics, even though they have tried to adjust their moderation attribution algorithms to compensate against the haters.

The same reality distortion was already at place back on Usenet, though. It's a simple fact of life that certain crackpots and people with an agenda have way more time at hand than people with a real life.

So we used killfiles. But apart from such drastic private solutions, moderation is the right way to go. In my view Unilever's pressure on Google and FB is quite welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> They sort of talk around dealing with the content, along some other super vague ideas about platforms that "make a positive contribution to society" but really this seems to be more about keeping their ads away from that content.

I'm not sure it really addresses the content itself, everyone else's adds will just fill that gap.

<comment><USER44> Advertisers want more targeting control on which exact content their ads are displayed on. Why doesn't facebook grant them the ability to run callbacks based on that data so they can effectively moderate the demonetization themselves?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > that it will partner only with digital networks that pledge to use an > industry standard for ad metrics and improve consumer ad experiences.

Whatever standard this ends up being, it needs to guarantee you cannot get drive-by malware, or the ad blocker is staying on and the arms race will continue indefinitely.

</comment><comment><USER46> I guess I get it - but how do you measure when the toxicity level falls low enough?

What is the LD50 of a social network?

<comment><USER47> Since its entirely user provided, I don't think its going to ever be.

<comment><USER48> Does this imply that user-provided content is fundamentally incompatible with an ad-funded model?

There seems to be massive inertia on both sides: advertisers don't want to be placed next to user-provided content, and users want to pay for content via ad views. I wonder which is easier to change?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> So two things here. First, you have the fact that these types of products are not easy to track ROI with. It's not like a click through ad where it is easy to see a direct conversion from a click to a purchase. The other issue has to do with privacy and pending regulation. More regulation and a drive towards privacy will mean less data, less data means less targeted direct measurement. Any way you look at this, it sounds like things are going to get interesting.

</comment><comment><USER50> Didn't FB just dial down it's toxicity quite a bit?

<comment><USER17> I've seen no evidence of this having been done.

<comment><USER50> I noticed a big drop in shared memes in late January, though they have inched back up when I looked today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Honestly, no more ads for Unilever brands sounds like a solid improvement. What do I have to post to get rid of the rest of them?

</comment><comment><USER52> Here's a recent interview by Recode with Facebook's head of news partnerships & News Feed where they addressed this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU- MIj5vEjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU-MIj5vEjU)

</comment><comment><USER53> Defining what is toxic besides the most obvious content seems to be an almost impossible task.

</comment><comment><USER54> It seems these companies are failing to compete with niche product companies in online space. Failure to shove ads down consumers' throat by leverage their overall net ad spend on the ad network regardless of customers' engagement.

</comment><comment><USER55> Unilever worried about sexism? have they viewed ads for ax body spray?

<comment><USER11> Axe isn't sexist; it is selling a certain fantasy to people who want that fantasy. It isn't hurting or insulting any sex/gender.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Seems like this will be a controversial comment here, but why should the advertisers get to dictate the content?

Do we want Unilever to decide what we see on TV, too (such as political opinions, etc) ?

<comment><USER57> Seriously? They most certainly already do.

Which is why stuff like nudity and swearing is almost never shown on basic cable (advertising sponsored) but is shown on premium channels such as HBO which don't rely as much on advertising. Then every couple years we have people who get fired from TV or have their shows cancelled after advertisers pull out due to some controversy surrounding them.

Soap operas got their name by originally being sponsored by soap companies.

Then there's the advertisers that suspended YouTube ads after Elsagate, which prompted YouTube to clean up and ban certain content and channels, including one of it's top 100 channels Toy Freaks.

And, yes, some political opinions are simply bad business, which is why we don't see them on TV.

This isn't new, this has been the way the world works since the beginning of humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I guess the "disturbing content that exploits children" is those "5 supermans racing bikes" type videos. But how is "disturbing" a problem? That means the adults watching are confused or afraid of some unknown. But does it do any harm to children? It sounds way too similar to the old fights against violence in videogames and swear words in music, or even color TV. I think when people become parents they go hunting for things they worry might disturb their child and want to censor the whole world just in case.

</comment><comment><USER59> I call BS, they will go where consumers are

</comment><comment><USER60> Looks like Facebook is the new Theranos.

</comment><comment><USER61> > "Fake news, racism, sexism, terrorists spreading messages of hate, toxic > content directed at children — parts of the internet we have ended up with > is a million miles from where we thought it would take us,"

Sad but true. Also add reddit in its vocal, annoying, pro-Trump minority.

</comment><comment><USER62> Nice cheaper ads for me then :)

</comment><comment><USER63> go ahead, please

</comment><comment><USER64> Good riddance. We don't need the advertising companies to regulate free speech on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER65> The chasm deepens between progressive supremacist propagandists and reality. I don't think these ivory tower elitists fully grasp how offensive their ideology is.

One can only hope they return to ad policies that eschew social constructivism for plain advertisements displaying the utility of their products, but I won't hold my breath.

<comment><USER66> Every company aspires to have a lifestyle brand.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are we consuming thing we don't need? - <AUTHOR> Hey, In the last weeks, I often ask my self, why we buy things we don't need.
Sure, status symbols. But why dose we need a new iPhone, when we just use it for Twitter? Why do we need more then one car per Person? Why do we need this fancy gaming PC with 128GB of RAM, when we only utilize 15% of it?
Has anybody asking such things them self? And do anyone has tips to stop buying useless things?
Max <comment><USER2> Silly thought experiment. You're a Stone Age hunter. You use a slingshot. Someone says they can make you one that shoots a little bit faster and weighs a bit less and has a sweet mammoth bone inlay that will impress everyone. You'll have to pay a couple days of hunt. Would you do it? It's a thing you carry all the time and it's a big part of your "equipmental nexus" and thus your life and your real daily experience. Is it ridiculous to think of your phone as similarly crucial? Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a part of our socioeconomic system. Our economy is run on carrots and sticks. The carrots have to look bigger and the sticks have to look bigger.

If we stopped caring so much about grades, the education system wouldn't work as planned. If we didn't care about salary, the workforce system wouldn't work.

Past a certain point, food and housing is not that big an influence on workforce. Hence status symbols.

Another aspect: animals crave both status and territory. As time goes on, we start to own less and less 'territory' (smaller houses, less transportation, less long term jobs, even our movies and music aren't our own). So we make up for it by trying to own more things, or trying to project our status with status symbols.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a much deeper question, and answer than appears at the surface.

Consumer tech is designed to be addictive, and it's marketing aimed at unconscious insecurities.

Realizing that, and exerting self control can be tricky, especially for people with plenty of disposable income.

Tips:

1\. Acknowledge the addiction - first step to recovery

2\. Research best practices to overcome the addiction. Just like any other, quitting cold turkey is probably impractical. Set achievable, meaningful goals and knock them off one by one

3\. Get busy - find something that is meaningfully uplifting and immerse yourself in it - the busier you are, the less likely you're drawn to (old) addictions. Translation: replace bad addictions with good ones

<comment><USER5> > Consumer tech is designed to be addictive

When scanning google news, I skip the entertainment and sports sections, because I have no interest (and they're really just advertising). I also skip the "tech" "news" section, because it's just another entertainment section.

</comment></comment><comment> dfeojm-zlib My 2 cent manifesto:

Manufactured insecurities mutually-reinforced by peer pressure ("Keeping up with the Jones") is often why. Don't do what you don't want to do; don't be pressured into lemmingification. Everyone else can buy absurdly-overpriced conveniences like tiny bottles of water in disposable plastics. Pack your own lunch, take up freeganing and stay away from "luxuries" like _recent_ MacBook Pro's that are overpriced and designed for unrepairability. Opt-out of the new widget competitive upgrading bandwagon and only acquire just what you need, just when you need it and not before. Also, share services that rent things that bleed you but convey no ownership.

</comment><comment><USER6> Some things to read:

Dave Ramsey has a podcast and many books, and while he mostly talks about getting out of debt, he's really talking about controlling your money.

Look up asceticism. I don't think it's the answer but it has a lot of helpful things to say, particularly imo Christian asceticism. Stoicism might be similarly helpful: not the answer but says some helpful things.

I wholeheartedly agree with the others who say to limit your exposure to advertising. Over 10 years ago I drastically reduced my TV watching and that alone has helped tremendously.

Spend time with people who have very little, such as people who are homeless. It helped me to gain a different perspective.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you have spare money to buy new stuff, you have no pressing reason not to do so. What helped me was to find another "higher" purpose for spare money (e.g. pension savings, house down payment, a big vacation, ...), so I can always ask myself: Is this iPhone really worth it or do I get more out of it by dedicating it to the other purpose?

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a choice, often an emotional one. One message our society sends is that power, expression and escape can be achieved through buying things.

I came to a point in my life pretty early where I realized that I don't _need_ much. Also, I don't really give a shit about proxies for status, and that the people who _do_ care about those proxies rarely are people that I want in my life in any significant fashion.

In a way, I've self-selected a social circle that doesn't pressure me into adopting principles and behaviors surrounding consumption that I don't agree with.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it's simple. There are millions of people who go to work at companies whose job it is to figure out how to sell more of their stuff to you.

Not just marketing and sales. Coders working on analytics platforms used by marketing for example are part of the team. Reflect on what tasks got priority at your work today. And if you are not helping to increase consumption maybe you are helping your customers customers to do this instead.

Companies that can grow get all the rewards. Their shareholders get rich. People want to be rich because that's the dream they are sold. It's a cycle.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you have excess income, consider committing to give X% of your salary/income away to charity.

You might find researching effective charities that you are passionate about to be an interesting endeavor which might satisfy the "shopping" itch if that's part of what motivates you to buy things you don't need.

And if status symbols is your game, going to charity gala events and showing off your donations on social media can take the place of instagramming your new car or gadget.

</comment><comment><USER11> Because we are constantly conditioned to consume. Advertisements are everywhere. Popular culture always glorifies hyper consumption lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why: endorphins.

How to stop buying useless things: stop buying useless things.

If that's hard, reduce or eliminate your exposure to advertisements. Eliminate broadcast and cable TV, install an adblocker in your browser.

</comment><comment><USER12> Try reading 'Predictably Irrational' by Dan Ariely. He explains a lot.

</comment><comment><USER13> Who is this "we"? I consume things I don't need because I like them; your own decision making process may differ from mine though, so I wouldn't like to speak for anyone else.

We _need_ very little ; food is cheap, air and water are generally free, shelter is not strictly necessary. I choose to spend money on things I don't need, such as a warm and comfortable indoor place to sleep, because they bring me more pleasure than the extra dollars in my bank balance might.

"Need" is a pretty high bar to clear, I don't think that should be your standard for what you buy. I think what you're asking is something more like "why do people buy things which fail to give them enough benefit to justify their purchase", which is a good question, but perhaps can only be answered by the individual concerned, through introspection.

Sometimes I worry I'm the opposite — that instead of spending too much money on things that don't give me benefit I'm being too cheap, and failing to buy things that actually _would_ be worthwhile. On the other hand I'm sure I make errors on both sides.

<comment><USER14> Thank you, I really don't think that questions like "Why do we do X?" lead anywhere, because they have the built-in assumption that everyone does X and that everyone does it for the same reason.</comment></comment>


Is linode down? - <AUTHOR> http://www.linode.com/

<comment><USER2> According to @kovaya, "linode's problems in Dallas are NETWORK not host related. Linodes are all OK, network is getting attention."

Right now, <http://twitter.com/#search?q=linode> seems to be the best way to get information.

My linode is unreachable and pinging my linode's IP gets 100% packet loss, so it's not just DNS or anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> This service is handy right about now...

<http://reports.panopta.com/cloudharmony/>

Seems to just be Dallas. Anyone know what data center that is and who else is there (to see how widespread it is).

<comment><USER4> Webfaction is in that datacenter and they seem unaffected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have nodes in all 5 Linode data centers. Currently only the Dallas node is down. We document all outages here: <http://cloudharmony.com/status> (click on the Linode links to view previous outages and outage documentation). Atlanta has been the most reliable data center for us (no outages in 6 months we've been up there).

</comment><comment><USER6> Totally subjective, but with slicehost I recall that their Dallas center had problems noticeably more often.

Is there something about Dallas, for Linode or Slicehost or both?

<comment><USER7> Dallas seemed to be a problem for mosso -> Rackspace Cloud Sites, too. Just setup a linode in Dallas for a client last week, too. I hesitated to use Dallas, but I thought surely I was being irrational. It's still probably true that I was, but dang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like the Dallas datacenter is back online now.

</comment><comment><USER9> yes. second time in 2 weeks. [http://search.twitter.com/search?q=linode&result_type=re...](http://search.twitter.com/search?q=linode&result_type=recent)

Sounds like the whole Dallas center is down.

</comment><comment><USER10> Mine in Fremont CA are fine.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://linode.typepad.com> seems to be what status.linode.com resolves to.

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/linode.com>

</comment><comment><USER13> Yup. My server in Dallas is down. However, my server is New Jersey is still up and running. Are there any other server locations down other than Dallas?

<comment><USER14> Dallas, Newark, Fremont, Atlanta, and London.

EDIT: Haha, sorry, read that wrong. I thought he was wondering if there were any server locations other than Dallas.

<comment><USER15> My London Linode doesn't seem to be down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> yup for me too.. even their status.linode.com is down :P

</comment><comment><USER17> My ATL nodes are up and running. I don't think I've had any downtime with them at all in the last couple of years, at least not memorable ones.

</comment><comment> demo- Looks down from here <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/linode.com>

</comment><comment><USER18> As stated, NJ noc linodes seem to be up. My sites there are responding to http requests. But linode.com dashboard / admin ui is unreachable

</comment><comment><USER4> I've got two linodes in Dallas that are down. Another server in the same datacenter (with Webfaction) is still up and running.

</comment><comment><USER19> Our linode in Newark is fine, but all of Newark was unavailable for almost two hours a couple of weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER20> Also, <http://twitter.com/linode>.

</comment><comment><USER21> down since 11:12 EST (according to my wasitup.com notifications)

</comment><comment><USER22> No problems for me with my linode in the Fremont datacenter.

</comment><comment><USER14> Mine are up in Newark.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm logged in to my NJ linode right now and it seems fine.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not working for me. I'm from Singapore.

</comment><comment><USER25> My St. Louis linode is up and running.

<comment><USER14> There is no Linode datacenter in St. Louis (Last time I checked, at least)

<comment><USER25> haha, I forgot I switched from slicehost. My VPS _used_ to be in st.louis at slicehost but is now in Atlanta.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My linode in Dallas is still online.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's back up.

<comment><USER20> My node is back, but linode.com still down for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Mine in Atlanta seems fine.</comment>


Show HN: I created a simple website that generates random color palettes - <AUTHOR> http://www.randomcolorpalettes.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey. Your site doesn't work for me: "Sorry, no Host found"

Also, check out a another random-color palette builder a friend of mine made: [http://www.coloryapp.com/](http://www.coloryapp.com/)

<comment><USER3> Came here to say that ^ plus another random color palette app I've used in the past: [http://coolors.co/app](http://coolors.co/app)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for noticing it. It was fine when I submitted it here. My DNS provider just crapped all over this by simply resetting to their default settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just don't _hold_ the spacebar. {blink blink}</comment>


Is Firebase secure even with your code on client-side? - <AUTHOR>

I'm new to web development and am looking into using Firebase to get an application up and running. I was looking at the tutorials, and wondering if Firebase is safe? In the client-side code, you set up a reference to your Firebase data store.<p>Is this safe? The information is public (on the JS files), so what's stopping someone from copying your code and writing to your Firebase server? <comment><USER2> You can set permissions on collection in Firebase, see e.g. [http://thinkingonthinking.com/build-your-email-list-with- fir...](http://thinkingonthinking.com/build-your-email-list-with-firebase/) \- additionally, you can provide OAuth authentication, and have user modify their own data.</comment>


Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.5, Visual Studio for Mac Released - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/12/04/visual-studio-2017-version-15-5-visual-studio-for-mac-released/ <comment><USER2> > Performance: In this update we continued to improve performance. Solution > load times for large C# and Visual Basic projects is nearly cut by half. The > time to switch between debug and release is significantly reduced. It is > faster to add, remove, and rename files and folders in .NET Core projects. > Project templates should now unfold much faster than before. In the most > exceptional cases, you can see up to a 40x improvement in unfold time.</comment>


How to tell your boss to F*off and not get fired - <AUTHOR> http://blog.teachstreet.com/learn-new-things/thursday-humor-deal-office-communications/

<comment><USER2> If you're spending energy to really have to refrain yourself from telling your boss to fuck off, you should really try focusing that energy on looking for a better place to work at.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a unfortunate that the Hacker News solution to experiencing even a little bit of annoyance at one's job seems to just be "find a better place to work".

Not really trying to fight, you just touched a nerve. I've noticed lately that any story about coping with unpleasantness like this leads to the inevitable comments, "get a new job" "find a new place to live" "don't waste your time on problems that are boring".

Edit: And please don't take my comment seriously in the context of this silly joke article (which I flagged for being not really HN material). It's just an offtopic rant that's been percolating for a while now.

<comment><USER4> I think people that say that might have a ton of potential offers, and work at startups that, thanks to the "talent shortage", are forced to be awesome places to work.

I can vouch that Justin.TV and Castfire, both places which are SF based, are amazing working environments.

Given that slant, it might color why people who have virtually unlimited awesome choices choose to put up with less crap.

<comment><USER3> But sometimes crap is just part of the job (yes, even your dream job). If the choice is between spending effort to avoid it, and spending effort to improve it, I choose improvement.

One of the top mainstream news stories today is about a teacher who may be getting fired for blogging mean things about her job and students. It's easy to stand on the sidelines and say "get a better job if you don't like it". But was that job different from what she expected going into it? Or has something about the world changed, that we expect 5 star experiences all the time, and feel the need to sound off on anything that makes us unhappy?

I think about it every time I see a post like "Ask HN: Where should I go to college, What should I major in, Where should I work?". Maybe technology has made us much more willing to ask for directions, and much less willing to get lost along the journey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> this would have been very useful earlier today

</comment><comment><USER6> If I felt like telling my boss to fuck off then I'd probably rather get fired.</comment>


The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep - <AUTHOR> https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/silicon-valley-military.php <comment><USER3> Steve Blank has probably done the best job yet of conveying the historical and intergenerational connections between Silicon Valley and the military:

[https://steveblank.com/secret-history/](https://steveblank.com/secret- history/)

The video and slide set do a great job of covering it comprehensively.

I had a chance to learn directly from Steve and his Hacking 4 Defense team.

BIG changes since WWII when military R&D was nearly all R&D.

Today, most R&D is commercial with a lot of duel use potential for Defense(hence the desired ties).

It's quite interesting that military/commercial R&D proportional parity was achieved the year the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War paused.

Here's an article I wrote that borrows a bit from Steve Blank's presentation and blog posts.

[https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin- effect...](https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin-effect/)

The military is utterly dependent on commercial off the shelf technology modified to suit its needs.

How the tables have turned in R&D.

<comment><USER4> > Today, most R&D is commercial with a lot of duel use potential...

I am sure "duel" was a typo but too wonderful not to point out

<comment><USER3> Good catch!

My bad.....I wasn't intentionally trying to be cheeky. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's weird to put their Darpa funding together with this decision and then lump the whole thing as Google being confused or hypocritical.

Darpa funds fundamental research. They try to look ahead to what the military could use in 15 years, but it funds open and fundamental projects. They funded Google when it was 2 graduate students trying to search web pages. It was part of the "Digital Libraries" project to make libraries more usable. They funded research that led to the internet and self driving cars (Darpa Grand Challenge). Right now they are funding exoskeletons and implantable health sensors.

This project was to _deploy_ tech to the military that could search drone footage for targets to bomb. It is a purely offensive technology that leads directly to killing people.

They chose to draw a line at not using artificial intelligence for weapons that target human beings or for surveillance that violates human rights.

Amazon is drawing a different line, something like it's ok to use our AI to target human beings as long as it's legal.

It all seems pretty straightforward, they hadn't drawn that line before or needed to and now they did.

</comment><comment><USER6> I haven't been able to dig up a copy, but I remember there was a file named something like AI: HUMOR; LOGO TURTLES that was a grant proposal written by some people in the LOGO group at the MIT-AI Lab, in response to a military request for proposals, about how they could hatch thousands of LOGO turtles to swarm around the battlefield in geometric patterns to confuse and bewilder the enemy.

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/code/llogo.lisp.txt](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/code/llogo.lisp.txt)

        ;;HATCH CREATES A NEW TURTLE WITH THE SPECIFIED NAME.  ALL PROPERTIES OF THAT
        ;;PARTICULAR TURTLE ARE AS INITIALLY WHEN A STARTDISPLAY IS DONE.

        (DEFINE HATCH (TURTLE-NAME)
            (PUTPROP TURTLE-NAME
                         (FILLARRAY (*ARRAY NIL T TURTLE-PROPERTIES) 'HATCH-PROPERTY)
                         'TURTLE)
            (OR (MEMQ TURTLE-NAME :TURTLES) (PUSH TURTLE-NAME :TURTLES))
            (USETURTLE TURTLE-NAME)
            (SHOWTURTLE)
            TURTLE-NAME)

<comment><USER7> What Lisp is this? I can understand what it's doing but it's clearly pre-CL.

<comment><USER8> That's MACLISP.

[http://www.maclisp.info](http://www.maclisp.info)

Common Lisp was later a joint successor to MACLISP

<comment><USER6> Not to be confused with Mac Common Lisp!

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's nice that in addition to the compulsory Google-bashing this article explicitly points out the other companies involved. Specifically, it mentions Amazon and Microsoft who did much less yet ethics-wise than Google did and yet are rarely called out in the press.

Anyone working for Amazon or Microsoft here? Is this just a skewed press coverage? Or is there any dissent going on there?

<comment><USER10> Microsoft and Amazon are both less liberal cultures than Google. Microsoft particularly historically has skewed much closer to centrist politically, in its culture, business operations and ideology.

Microsoft is more like old IBM in that regard, which makes sense given how old its cultural foundation is (dating to the 1970s) and its history of working with more conservative old-line enterprise businesses. As are Oracle, Cisco, Intel, etc. All will very happily serve the military industrial complex. You won't find any serious dissent in Redmond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Everyone acts like military research is obviously evil.

Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their lives keep us safe?

<comment><USER12> > Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their > lives keep us safe?

If this was the only thing the weapons were used for, then maybe people wouldn't be upset about this kind of stuff.

The same arms will however also be used to extrajudicially assassinate people based on nothing else than their phone signal, in countries we are not at war with; they might be sold to regimes like Saudi Arabia that kills countless civilians in places like Yemen; they might be used to fight wars based on reasons the administration knows to be false; they might be used to gun down civilians by private contractors; the list goes on.

I'd not be opposed to participating in military research if the weapons were actually used "responsibly" (I know that's a somewhat subjective terms, but most of my examples are quite clearly considered immoral by most people).

<comment><USER13> Are you sure you want to be unarmed in front of enemy just because someone else may use your weapons unresponsively?

Look at Ukraine then. Ukraine exchanged their nuclear arsenal for promises of safety by Russia, Britain, and USA. Is Ukraine safe place now?

<comment><USER12> Helping a military that is behaving immorally and being unarmed are also not the only options. If more and more people refuse to work for the military on these grounds, this may in the long run put some pressure on them to change their behavior. I do admit that this is hopelessly idealistic though and I don't expect this to happen anytime soon.

<comment><USER13> Can I ask question first about "immorally" to be sure I understand you correctly?

There are few different kind of morality in circulation, so I need to know about what morality we are talking.

Liberal morale is used at the West: every person life costs infinity, so we cannot exchange life of a person to save another person or even infinity of persons.

However, at war or in military, Liberal morale can't be used, because Liberal morale forbids to send soldiers to protect civilians: life of a soldier has same cost as lives of all civilians in the country. So every military in the world uses Utilitarian morale, where each life has a cost. In most countries, order of life cost is: our politics > our commandment > our civilians > other civilians > our soldiers > enemies, and goal is to minimize loses. In some countries order can be different, e.g. religious leaders can send civilians to kill other civilians or civilians can be used to protect soldiers (e.g. famous speech of V.V. Putin: «We will put our soldier behind their (Ukrainian) mothers and children. Not in front but behind. Will they shoot at them? At their own mothers and children?» [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoQXvPsBBn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoQXvPsBBn8) ), and so on.

So my question is: to which kind of morality you are referring when you are talking about "immorality"?

<comment><USER12> I didn't have a concrete moral framework in mind, but I was thinking of a few baseline rules that should hold in most sensible systems, such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago), not killing civilians without due process in countries where there is formally no state of war (drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries), not starting wars of aggression based on falsified intelligence (Iraq, Vietnam), investing reasonable amounts effort to avoid harm to non-combatants (that "Collateral Murder" video, US support for the Saudis' actions in Yemen, drone strikes based on just cellphone signals); all of these points are arguably features of many different moral systems and should be much less controversial than the dilemmas you bring up. I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I know to they are all standard components of rules of engagement (like the Geneva Convention).

Also, all of these have been repeatedly violated by the US military or its contractors, making me more hesitant to want to help them, even under the assumption that they are necessary to protect our liberal societies from other regimes.

<comment><USER13> In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot.

> such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in > Syria a while ago)

It looks like error (one bomb hit territory near to hospital), not a precise strike. In contrasts, Russians (I will Russian-Ukraine war as example, because I know it better) are shooting civilians pretty often. I had Uber-drive with driver which served in Augustinian during USSR invasion. He told me that in Augustinian they completely destroyed nearest civilian village with all habitats when one of them was killed during mission. AFAIK, Russian army is not changed much since then.

> not killing civilians without due process in countries where there is > formally no state of war (drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries)

Completely agreed. We(Ukraine) are victims of hybrid war too.

> not starting wars of aggression based on falsified intelligence (Iraq, > Vietnam)

Intelligence was not falsified in case of Iraq: chemical weapons are just moved to Syria few months prior to invasion.

Not sure about Vietnam, but I know a bit about war in Vietnam from USSR side, and it not good. Not interested much in the topic.

<comment><USER6> >Intelligence was not falsified in case of Iraq: chemical weapons are just moved to Syria few months prior to invasion.

Now YOU are falsifying intelligence.

You can't win an argument by falsifying intelligence and not being interested in topics that contradict your falsifications.

Iraq war 'waged on false intelligence': [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/09/usa.iraq2](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/09/usa.iraq2)

And in case you only find Russian news interesting: How Distorted Intelligence Dragged US Into Vietnam War 53 Years Ago: [https://sputniknews.com/politics/201708021056125095-us- vietn...](https://sputniknews.com/politics/201708021056125095-us-vietnam-war/)

<comment><USER13> «SADA: They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.»

[http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/01/26/exclusive-former- top...](http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/01/26/exclusive-former-top-military- aide-to-saddam-reveals-dictator-secret-plans.html)

I newer read Russian news, because they are prepared and targeted. :-) I read memories (many of them were released uncensored shortly after fall of USSR), and I also listened to stories told us by our teachers, ex-officers of USSR army.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The deep history of Silicon Valley is the history of WWII and unrestrained debt-based government spending on R&D. Only after that foundation was laid did the private businesses grow on that fertile ground.

"Secret History of Silicon Valley" (Computer History Museum, Mountain View)

[https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo)

> _Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology > innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by > fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn 't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned > inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and > wartime urgency._

> _In this lecture, renowned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank presents how the > roots of Silicon Valley sprang not from the later development of the silicon > semiconductor but instead from the earlier technology duel over the skies of > Germany and secret efforts around (and over) the Soviet Union. World War II, > the Cold War and one Stanford professor set the stage for the creation and > explosive growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. The world was > forever changed when the Defense Department, CIA and the National Security > Agency acted like today 's venture capitalists funding this first wave of > entrepreneurship. Steve Blank shows how these groundbreaking early advances > lead up to the high-octane, venture capital fueled Silicon Valley we know > today._

Since the American public (and not just the American one) considers such kinds of unrestricted government spending as a waste of resources the way left to fund basic research apart from the little bit that doesn't lead to cries of "government waste" \- because let's face it, a lot of it is, that's just what happens when you do very basic research with no immediate goal in mind - <USER2> military spending. If the role of military research is considered bad I think there has to be a culture shift coming from all voters. As long as they allow such government actions as long as it's "for defense" but not for anything else (at least not even close to the scale) then stuff _will_ get done through the military. Apparently the demand (pull factor) is there, so if the only path is spending through military channels this is what happens.

 _EDIT:_ Also see @chriselles's comment

</comment><comment><USER15> I guess you can be a "Silicon Valley" company and be located anywhere now? This article lists exactly 3 companies, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Two of those are headquartered in Washington.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's seems like more than a coincidence that the first and most primary AWS installation was built at Dulles Airport in 2002-2003.

Right down the road from the newly formed and growing DHS alphabet soup of agencies.

<comment><USER17> I always figured it was because of Internet connectivity, as Dulles is near the original MAE-East network access point (NAP).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAE- East](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAE-East)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the title, I thought this was going to be a story about the HP garage, Fairchild Semiconductor, and DOD dollars flooding the Valley with talented engineers in the 60s and 70s.

</comment><comment><USER19> Surprised that Palantir wasn't mentioned

</comment><comment><USER20> Have the armed forces of the United States subjected the civilian population to inhuman treatment prohibited by international law? Yes (unanimously). Is the United States Government guilty of genocide against the people of Vietnam? Yes (unanimously).

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal#Conclusions_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal#Conclusions_and_Verdicts_of_the_Tribunal))

</comment><comment><USER21> Is it true without the atomic bomb you do not have the chrome browser?

</comment><comment><USER22> Todays war are different than WW2. Today is more like the US military needs a country to play with (also NSA, ...). Today is more like let's bomb a random country in the middle east.

<comment><USER20> ww2 was more like that than you think. Check out Nicholson Baker's "HUMAN SMOKE"</comment></comment>


Stardust: GPU-Based Visualization Library - <AUTHOR> https://stardustjs.github.io/ <comment><USER2> This runs like magic on an iPhone, but for some reason Chrome, Safari and FF on desktop (mac, recent mbp) it's sluggish as hell. Burning through CPU, 15fps for the force-graph.

I feel like something's wrong, but I don't even know where to start debugging this. Do I need to enable Chrome feature flags? Or do mbps just have less powerful gpus than iPhones?

<comment><USER3> On my desktop (Nvidia 750 Ti , Windows 10) I get 60fps with Chrome, Firefox, and Edge on everything I've tried of the examples.

<comment><USER3> Gave that a shot on the (Intel Graphics) Macbook Pro and wow, didn't even manage 10fps. Safari was worst of the lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The link to the online playground is broken. It goes to [https://stardust- vis.github.io/playground/](https://stardust-vis.github.io/playground/), but since the project seems to be named stardustjs right now, I tried [https://stardustjs.github.io/playground/](https://stardustjs.github.io/playground/) and that worked.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the link on the topbar works, not the one in the readme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm reading through the paper, and this library almost seems custom-built for my use-case: a data browser for datasets with arrays of hundreds of thousands of datapoints.

One of the reasons I didn't go with D3 or any of the existing charting frameworks is that they simply do not seem built with that quantity of data in mind. Not only the rendering, the whole model: data is all packed in trees of JS-objects (at least the examples I see).

I have simple data that can be represented as dense typed arrays[0], with all the performance benefits of such, and no library seems to make good use of that. If I read the documentation for Stardust correctly, it's an exception to that rule (which makes sense, because typed arrays were mainly introduced for the sake of WebGL).

Similarly they also seem to do smart things with avoiding having to re-upload data to the GPU. I really hope this lives up to my expectations, it would save me a whole lot of work!

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Type...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Typed_arrays)

<comment><USER7> Have you considered using dygraphs ([http://dygraphs.com/](http://dygraphs.com/))? It is designed to endure large ammounts of data.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the suggestion, but it doesn't seem to support anything other than line charts, which is too limited for our needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That force-graph demo is awesome... those things usually take down my browser if they're non-trivial.

<comment> v-yadli Totally agree. And it turns out not caused by the layout algorithm but exactly the rendering.

We've been drawing on canvas without proper acceleration for too long.

<comment><USER9> For more scalable on both, generally happy to share Graphistry API keys -- ping email@example.com . At the 100K+ scale, you need to optimize both :)

I'm excited to see both Stardust and the related DeckGL project. We've internally built several related framework layers (ex: streaming for cloud GPU offloading), and picking accessible abstractions for different developer personas is hard. Stardust & DeckGL are both (potentially) enabling dedicated visualization engineers to work more closely with high performance computing engineers. That's impressive: we deferred that problem to focus energy on enabling embedding for regular web developers (which goes above stardust) and scaling to the next 1000X (which goes below/adjacent)... but at the expense of making it harder for non-webgl visualization engineers to work on parts of our stack.

Long-term, I think their mindset is right, so, I've definitely been enjoying these projects!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What makes this library fast?

I thought there were already many GPU accelerated paths for graphics in the browser, even including basic CSS functionality which leverages hardware acceleration in a significant number of scenarios.

It's great to see this library, just thought that since a lot of visualizations don't require advanced graphics techniques that a lot of GPU benefit was already being realized.

<comment><USER11> > I thought there were already many GPU accelerated paths for graphics in the > browser, even including basic CSS functionality which leverages hardware > acceleration in a significant number of scenarios.

That is true, and therein lies the catch. Those paths must support a _significant number of scenarios_ , which means they must be very generic. This incurs (comparatively) huge performance penalties.

Using webgl trades genericity for performance. To put a bunch of 2d coordinate points on a canvas like this library does, only requires the equivalent of 1-2% of CSS functionality that browsers have to go through for every DOM element. It also means that whatever you're drawing has no impact on the rest of the page layout so there's another ton of overheads the browser can skip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I plan to use this to modify my approach in unsupervised visualizations [https://hackernoon.com/unsupervised-machine-learning-for- fun...](https://hackernoon.com/unsupervised-machine-learning-for-fun-profit- with-basket-clusters-17a1161e7aa1)

</comment><comment><USER13> Impressive, works like a charm on Firefox/Linux.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is awesome

</comment><comment><USER15> D3 can use GPU shaders and is far more flexible. This is ok for canned vis, not for custom data vis. Like Vega vs D3. D3 wins every time.

<comment><USER14> What makes D3 more flexible?

<comment><USER16> Vega is built on D3. It's just operating at a higher level. It's like C++ vs Python. You can do anything in C++ you can do in Python, but it may take a lot more work.

<comment><USER17> This may be a bit confusing but Vega only uses some D3 helpers, it does not generate D3 code at any point. See [https://vega.github.io/vega/about/vega- and-d3/](https://vega.github.io/vega/about/vega-and-d3/) for details.

But you high-level point is accurate, D3 is more expressive since you can use all of JavaScript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> All I can say is finally. Death to d3.

<comment><USER19> What's wrong with d3?

<comment><USER20> It's not the easiest tool to learn

<comment><USER21> Doesn't that make it more fun/rewarding?

<comment><USER22> nope - d3 code is extremely imperative...

so after a couple of lines, they're somewhat unmaintainable to me...

but couldn't find anything that covers most of d3's features...

<comment><USER23> d3 is extremely functional. You can write it imperative, but it becomes unmaintainable pretty quickly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can you solve this TextEditing challenge in less than 5 keystrokes? - <AUTHOR> http://vimgolf.com/challenges/4d1db1b8de2f897c2a00014a

<comment><USER2> What is a keystroke? For instance, is a control character two keystrokes? How about a shifted character? Their FAQ and rules page didn't say (or I somehow missed it).

The way that first comes to mind to do that particular text transform is (using up arrow notation for control characters):

        :s/./^M&/g

If shifted and control characters count as one keystroke, not two, then that is 11 characters (^M takes two, because it is entered as ^V ENTER). However, the leader board currently shows 12 as the best solution, and I'm having a hard time believing, since I'm not anywhere near being a vim guru, that my first "off the top of my head" solution could take the lead.

So I would assume that means modifier keys do count. In that case, mine is 14. Interestingly, no one else has a 14 on the leader board. There are a bunch of 12's, then a 13, then a 16.

Assuming the cursor starts on the first character of the first line, my second idea is

        qea<ENTER><ESC>q24@e

That would be 12. That's about the limit of my vim-fu. Under 5? Way beyond me...unless the submitter accidentally linked to the wrong problem!

EDIT: OK, my first attempt above doesn't work. It puts an extra blank line at the top of the file. (Swapping the order of ^M and & puts an extra blank at the bottom). The second solution above works, and I was curious enough to see if I'd guessed the counting rules that I signed up and submitted it, and sure enough it is 12, and it is the same (up to the name of the macro) as all the other 12 keystroke solutions. (Although it turns out I didn't guess the rules. Shifted characters count as one, but it counts whatever you use to save and exit).

It's interesting to see the names others use for their macro. A lot of people used 'a' or 'q', and one person used '0'. I'm the only 'e'. I use 'e' for temporary macros because invocation is easier with 'e': @e is easier, it seems to me, to type than @a or @q or @0.

EDIT 2: the problem the submission links to is named "Reverse simple deletion". There is another problem named "Simple deletion" which currently has a best score of 6. (<http://vimgolf.com/challenges/4d1d9f55de2f897c2a000103>). I wonder if the submitter meant to submit that one?

</comment><comment><USER3> :s/1*/\r/g <return>

11 keystrokes but it adds an additional new line, not sure if that would pass the test.

<comment><USER3> bah, the earlier poster got both my methods, oh well, teach me to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On emacs, the immediately obvious approach takes 11 keystrokes:

C-x ( C-f <return> C-x ) C-u 2 5 C-x e</comment>


Ask HN: What did you get up to when HN servers were down and out? - <AUTHOR>

When HN was down I decided to learn javascript. What did you guys do? <comment><USER2> I hit F5 a couple of times, then resolved not to make the situation any worse in case it was a DDoS, so I went away for a while.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you ever faced ageism? - <AUTHOR> On your workplace? When job hunting? <comment><USER2> I am in my late 40s and regularly interview people who are as old or older than me and occasionally they'll bring up alleged ageism from an old job or how hard it is to find a new job.

And I feel for them, but inside my head, based on the interview, I'm thinking "well, it's probably not strictly due to age, but rather that your experience has left you with strong opinions about things and as a natural response makes you less flexible to new ideas."

Based on this insight, I regularly catch myself making my own assumptions and yeah, I'm often correct, but I still want to maintain a healthy dose of self- skepticism.

Sometimes, I'm wrong. And sometimes the paradigm has shifted to a new model I am unfamiliar with.

<comment><USER3> "alleged ageism"

How long have you been in your job? How many times have you changed since you hit 40? Do you look your age, or younger?

Personally, as someone well over 40, I've found it not worth my while to even apply to a company whose leadership is in their 20s. I've very rarely gotten a job offer from such a team. On the other hand, I've had pretty good success getting offers from companies with older leadership.

Not sure what you'd call it, but whatever it is, most of the devs I know who are my age have had a similar experience.

(and it's not new technology or a rusty mindset: I'm familiar with far more new technology than the average 25-year-old software developer. I'm constantly adopting new approaches and paradigms.).

That said, as advice to anyone in my position, it's probably a bad idea to bring up specific instances of alleged ageism in a job interview. Try to avoid any negativity in job interviews.

<comment><USER2> > How long have you been in your job?

A long time: decades at my same org.

> How many times have you changed since you hit 40?

Zero.

> Do you look your age, or younger?

I look my age, but I am fit and normal weight.

Totally good points you made.

I guess I still preach that people our age fight their own internal "ageism":

\- Try your best to maintain a curious, learning mind.

\- Try to keep an open mind that the way you've been doing things for decades may not still be the right way. There may be a new right way and it might take a little time for you to grasp why. That's all ok.

\- Provide great mentorship: Let the younger people make their own mistakes and stumble into their own findings. But be there for them when they want to bounce things off of you or talk about their experiences.

<comment><USER3> With due respect, if you're in your late 40s and have been in the same job for "decades", then you don't have any personal experience with the hiring ageism common in our industry.

And I totally agree with and live by the 3 points you made (except the 3rd, in some circumstances). But that's the problem with ageism. If you look like you're over 40, then it doesn't matter if you follow that advice or not, younger companies will often _still_ hold your age against you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Undoubtedly, yes. I have never been hired by anyone younger than me. Young managers, of which there are a lot now, simply don't feel comfortable hiring someone with more experience than them. I've also felt discrimination from being a lifelong bachelor. A lot of married guys are unhappy with their situation (there is scientific evidence to back that claim, search happiness and children) and they do not want to be around someone who is not in the same situation.

</comment><comment><USER5> No.

I have found that as I get older it takes longer to find a job, but I don't think it's ageism. It's just that I have over 30 years of experience, and I want to be paid accordingly. But you see job postings for "senior software engineer", and they want 5 to 7 years of experience. If that's what you need, then I'm not your guy.

There are employers who understand why I'm worth more than the younger people, and who will pay for the experience. But there aren't as many.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not sure it is ageism, but I hate how scrum-master (young people who has a few days of training and made arrogant by their 'master' title) take agile methods as a pretext to disregard any experience we built the hard way on the way to manage IT projects.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ageism in the legal sense (40+)? No.

I have been overlooked or talked over in some scenarios because I am younger. I have even been told I can take a hit for the sake of office politics because my career has plenty of runway.</comment>


Wayfair Product Listings Provoke Conspiracy Theory About Child Trafficking - <AUTHOR> https://www.complex.com/life/2020/07/wayfair-cabinets-conspiracy-theory-child-trafficking <comment><USER2> This is 2020's version of backward masking, book burning, etc with a new bogeyman.

The guy said he put in the product sku and got only pictures of little girls in bikinis... I thought that was seriously unlikely, so I searched the skus of the 4 that were shown in the article, and mainly I got articles about this article, and a bunch of links to pages about race cars and some electronic stuff.

If I got race cars and he got little girls in bikinis, I'm thinking our search patterns are not the same, and he needs to learn to use incognito mode.</comment>


I wanted to contribute to humanity. I ended up with an air conditioner instead. - <AUTHOR> http://www.riturajsatpute.com/2012/06/i-wanted-to-contribute-to-humanity-i.html

<comment><USER2> Of all of the inventions that I would say are merely useless pursuits of materialism, air conditioners aren't one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oscar Wilde said, "Everything in moderation, including moderation." This is a very elequent way of expressing that you shouldn't focus too much on living a "moderate" lifestyle.

Rejecting air conditioning is a fundamentalist viewpoint. It's no better or worse than a Wall Street trader who has billions of dollars but no meaningful relationships. If the pursuit of your chosen ideology blots out the meaningful relationships in your life, then what's the point of the ideology?</comment>


Ask HN: Which DRM-free ebook reader to buy? - <AUTHOR>

Given that Amazon can remotely wipe your Kindle and revoke your access to your "bought" books (see e.g. http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/), which ebook reader should one buy?
Must haves:

  - some kind of e-paper
  - no remote wipe capability
  - can read DRM free books

 Nice to have:

  - possible to install free/libre firmware
  - seller doesn't sell DRM'ed books
 <comment><USER2> A great device fitting your stated "must haves" is this little-known device called the Amazon "Kindle" (without Amazon books).

Between the available devices, they have e-paper displays that are comprable to other devices on the market, so you should be able to find what you want there. They can't lock you from the device or delete books you've loaded onto it yourself. It can read DRM-free books in MOBI format, and there are open- source programs available that can convert from any other format you'd like.

On the other hand: there is alternative firmware available, but I've never used it and can't attest to it's quality. And, unfortunately, the majority of the books Amazon sells are DRMed (AFAIK the decision is left up to the publisher but they almost always opt in), so that's not fantastic.

<comment><AUTHOR> > They can't lock you from the device or delete books you've loaded onto it > yourself.

Is this really true? Given that they can remotely wipe "bought" files how can I know that they can't remotely delete self-loaded files?

<comment><USER3> It's less than ideal, but if you disable wireless connectivity and only load new books on via USB connection (it shows up as a generic USB volume) I'd imagine you're safe, as that should theoretically completely stop the device from calling home.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly what I do. The device doesn't have the password to my wifi so it can't phone home. I have no need to connect it to the internet — I just transfer files from my computer over USB. Couldn't be happier with the setup.

<comment><USER5> I have owned a Kindle since GEN 1. I have always added my own DRM free books. I would say %80 of my library is DRM free. I rarely turn the WIFI on. There are several pieces of software than can convert files into Kindle readable formats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm very happy with my Pocketbook Touch (<http://www.pocketbook- int.com/us/products/pocketbook-touch>). It seems quite hackable, the vendor is responsive (some employees hang out on www.mobileread.com pretty regularly). The touchscreen works well and the buttons for paging are great.

I've bought one or two books off Amazon and used de De-DRM tools available to put them on there, though it even supports the Adobe DRM (not Amazon's, though). It does have some annoyances but I haven't hit any major snags in several months of use.

<comment><USER7> It looks good, but I cannot figure out how to buy one. Can someone point to where I can order one?

<comment><USER8> <http://shop.pocketbookreader.com/main.sc>

<comment><USER9> Doesn't appear to offer the Pocketbook Touch. I can't find anywhere but eBay to buy them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I rather enjoy my Kobo. I'm not sure why it says "Coming Soon" because it's out now.

<http://www.kobo.com/koboglo>

It's definitely e-paper, I don't believe it has remote wipe, and can read many ebook formats, including DRM-free ones.

Some titles on the Kobo store are DRM-free (and are indicated as such), and the store is massive. If your books are DRM'd, it supports Adobe's DRM scheme.

<comment><USER11> It is out, in Canada. From what their reps have said they're having supply chains issues surrounding the XGA E-Ink panels (could be the same reason Kindle Paperwhite orders are out 4-6 weeks).

Stateside, none of their listed retailers have anything available. Best Buy comes closest, by actually having them listed on their online store as "coming soon". Currently, a quick jaunt across the border is an option but who knows how Kobo will handle potential warranty issues?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been using a Kobo for around a year now.

Plusses:

* They're cheaper than Kindle to buy

* The Kobo store is well stocked and competitively priced

* You can upload your own books easily by dragging and dropping the files as if it's a thumb drive or by using Calibre (see calibre-ebook.com).

* The screen looks just as good as my partner's Kindle.

<comment><USER13> > _The screen looks just as good as my partner's Kindle._

Which kindle though? The screen on the new kindle paperwhite is reportedly a marked improvement over previous models...

<comment><USER14> The limited reviews are saying the new Kobo glo is very comparable to the new kindle paperwhite. But availability is limited so I am still waiting for more reviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like my Nook Touch, mainly because the built-in software is pretty good (much better than Kindle 3, though I haven't tried a Kindle Touch) and because it can read epubs. I never buy from any online store that sells DRM out of principle.

The downsides are that the physical buttons are terrible, and since I don't do any online shopping the "home" section of the device is pretty useless. There are also some persistent rough edges to the software in terms of pages read, home page, and some minor typography issues.

I thought about getting the Glowlight version but when I tried it in the store, the contrast was noticeably worse. I'm going to wait till I can see a Kindle Paperwhite or Kobo Glo in person before I decide to buy a new reader. (A built-in light is a big selling point for me, as I often read in bed.)

There's a Python script out there that will easily crack the B&N DRM should you choose to buy from their store after all.

Just keep the wifi off on any of those devices and copy ebooks over as if it were a USB drive and you've foiled their horrible DRM and remote-wipe schemes.

<comment><USER16> I had a Nook Glowlight for about 6 months and the main downside is that the light screen is incredibly fragile. I am careful with my gadgets and I've managed to break 3 of them just by accidentally knocking stuff onto them (like, slipping and fumbling the Nook onto my keys, etc). Granted, Barnes and Noble replaced all of them for free (even out of warranty) but it was enough that I went and bought a Kindle Paperwhite and (minus the software) it is a generally superior device. Additionally, the Kindlegen software combined with stripping the DRM off of my Nook purchases allows me to read perfect epub-to- mobi conversions of all of my books on the Kindle without too much trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The classic nook. I'm from Germany and one friend brought it for me from the states. The B&N nook store is blocked in Germany, so I'm forced to load DRM- free stuff. Most German eBooks stores do not sell DRM-free books, so I'm really really forced to only get DRM-free books. They really don't want my money... :(

</comment><comment><USER18> I am happy with my Sony Reader.

Also, for DRM free books: if you like science fiction, look at Baen. They are a publisher that sells DRM free ebooks in a half-dozen formats at sane prices.

</comment><comment><USER19> The Kobo Touch or the new Sony Reader are excellent. The Kobo has a hard time reading O'Reilly books, but you can process the O'Reilly books to make them usable (unzip, remove core.css, repackage) with Calibre.

The old Sony Reader has a glossy, beveled bezel, which catches any available light. The newer model has a curved, matte bezel, making it far easier to read on.

Both use the same eInk Pearl display as the Kindle WiFi, quite readable. The Sony has a beefier processor, and doesn't have problems rendering O'Reilly books out of the box.

The Kobo is the friendliest reader I have used. The UX is simple, as if written by a Mac person. The Sony seems to be written by a Windows person: the layout and abundance of widgets and physical buttons makes the UX a little frustrating at times.

The Kobo's library is trivially easy to maintain: connect with USB cable, drag books to KOBO EREADER volume.

Buy your books from DRM-free retailers, see this (old) list: [http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/10/list-of-drm-free- publi...](http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/10/list-of-drm-free-publishers/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I use a rooted PRS-T1, and I use dropsync to sync my ebooks. I did a couple of small hacks, such as removing some buttons that I didn't like and I added two fonts (Caecilia and Garamond). Works quite well with epubs, and it has some dictionaries included in the reading app (being a foreigner trying to learn Dutch, I use the Dutch-English dictionary a lot while reading).

</comment><comment><USER21> I use a first generation Nook from Barnes and Noble. I have only 3rd party books on it purchased from publishers that make ebooks available without DRM. (O'Reilly, Manning, Pragmatic Programmers, Sitepoint) These are all backed-up up on my Dropbox account, so even if they hit the bit bucket, it would be straight-forward to restore them. This works well for me.

And, of course, gutenberg.org rocks my world with classic books available in epub.

</comment><comment><USER22> I personally use an Android Tablet (one of these $99 HP Touchpads). It is certainly not as comfortable as one of the e-paper readers, but the added functionality is extremely useful. It is just great to not just read stuff, but work with documents, i.e. add notes and highlights to your books, copy&paste excerpts in a text document for future use, etc.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nook Touch. It's Android-based and can be rooted to add Kindle, Kobo, other eBook apps.

<comment><USER24> +1. Nook Touch with glowlight, works perfectly with epub2 off the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> You can backup your kindle ebooks easliy. just look at this article.

[http://www.epubsoft.com/how-to-copy-or-backup-kindle- books.h...](http://www.epubsoft.com/how-to-copy-or-backup-kindle-books.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a kindle with a doukan installed.

The installation is quite trivial, and there is no more remote wipe. Also it supports pdf ebooks quite well (and djvu, not that well)

</comment><comment> hack-d [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fTbkNld0sHE)

</comment><comment><USER27> > _\- seller doesn't sell DRM'ed books_

Who cares? DRM is not in itself unethical. If you don't want DRM-files, then don't buy DRM-files. If everyone did that, then publishers would be more hesitant to build a market of DRM files.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are e-ink readers able to display graphs, tables, and code yet?

<comment><USER29> I'd love a large responsive e-ink screen (with some basic colours) to use for coding. Imagine not having to stare at the glowing LCD for coding. I'd be so happy.

<comment><USER30> E-ink would suck for coding.

Imagine doing all your work over a really laggy SSH connection. That's what typing on an e-ink display feels like.

<comment><USER29> That's why I said 'responsive' e-ink.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Communicating Sequential Processes (Hoare/Davies 2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.usingcsp.com/

<comment><USER2> CSPs are also implemented in Clojure's core.async

This blog post helped me understand some use cases for CSP

[http://swannodette.github.io/2013/07/12/communicating- sequen...](http://swannodette.github.io/2013/07/12/communicating-sequential- processes/)

<comment><USER3> Any game developers who use Co-Routines in Unity should know feel at home when making games for ClojureScript. Go-blocks give you the same power for animations and other timed scripts.

Here's a sample tetris row collapse animation using a go-block: [https://github.com/imalooney/t3tr0s/blob/master/src/client/c...](https://github.com/imalooney/t3tr0s/blob/master/src/client/core.cljs#L188-L201)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember as a student that I was comfortable just looking at notation and reasoning about things. CSP has a very simple notation.

But after a decade as a professional programmer, I somehow lost patience for things that can't be run. Either experience taught me not to trust things that don't run, or ideas are not fun unless you can poke at them, or my mind got lazy. I just want to run things and see what happens.

I like the CSP model, but since nothing can be run in this book, unfortunately I would look elsewhere to study it.

I've been playing with Standard ML and it seems like a nice way to mathematically specify algorithms, but which can still also be run.

Also, Leslie Lamport's style of doing mathematics with runnable proofs seems very interesting: [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=145533208090118123...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=14553320809011812377&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&sciodt=0,5)

<comment><USER5> I think they're two different UXen on two different reasoning methodologies: equational versus interactive. Time spent in Haskell where both are predominant has taught me that when used in synchrony they both have their place, but I agree there's a weakness in using equational alone: it creates great concepts but they are so substantially weakened by "operationalization" that there's still a huge risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> ok, I read the preface and while I was blasted out by the pretentiousness of the final line, I am interested about the content. However, I can't seem to get an overall 'what the hell is this useful for?' summary. The first part of the preface is all just abstract 'you will become better'.

Can someone please enlighten me? I think Hoare is great and would like to know if this stuff would benefit me as a programmer.

<comment><USER5> Distributed systems are really hard. This line has been endlessly parroted and, also, endlessly reproven. They are really hard.

The major reason why they're hard is that your standard reasoning toolbox is insufficient. Understanding distributed systems means being aware of a much larger state space and how things like special relativity impact it (I'm being a bit flippant, but not actually inaccurate—message latency is not poorly modeled by special relativity). Most programmers use reasoning methods like operational modeling (single threaded), guess-and-check, and unit testing. These are simply completely insufficient.

If you want to model full distributed systems you might want to use something like algebraic topology. It's a useful tool for understanding the entire state space of a system and its valid transitions. It can be used to prove Paxos or Raft are correct. [https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/33762/...](https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/33762/top_dc.pdf?sequence=2)

Another method is to simplify a whole lot what a "distributed system" is and hope to find a more analyzable model where more standard reasoning tools work. CSP is one of these. It's a simpler model where some of the reasoning tools of regular formal languages can be used to understand its operation.

The upshot is that CSP won't be as powerful as you could imagine possible when building a distributed system, but it'll be massively more manageable so long as its sufficient for your goals. It's, as such, formed the basis for some popular distributed tools like Erlang.

<comment><USER7> > Understanding distributed systems means being aware of a much larger state > space and how things like special relativity impact it (I'm being a bit > flippant, but not actually inaccurate—message latency is not poorly modeled > by special relativity).

This sound really interesting. Any recommendations to learn more about it?

<comment><USER5> The classic paper on distributed clocks mentions it, Lamport's "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System" ([http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/t...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/time-clocks.pdf))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would have loved an epub version. Pdf on ebooks is suboptimal (i tried this one)</comment>