Ask HN: How to eat and drink properly? - <AUTHOR> I know the basic gist - avoid sugar, count calories, watch salt and carb intake, maintain a high level of activity, ... . There seems to be so much to consider, so many micro nutrients and other things to keep in mind. How does a hacker keep track of all this? <comment><USER3> You don't. You don't even count calories, as those vary widely compared to the count on the package/menu.

It seems it comes down to this: Eat a variety off foods. Get some protein sometimes, eat fruits and veg. Try to get whole grains in there. Watch the added and refined sugar, regardless of source, but there is no need to avoid it entirely. Make sure to eat some fat and dairy. Heck, even high activity isn't necessary if you make the right life adjustments (like walking most places) or have the right sort of job. Cook your own food, and develop a few flexible meals that are easy and nutritious. Stir fries and the like come to mind.

The real trick is the personalisation. For myself, I'm hungrier in the evening so I eat lightly during the day. I skip breakfast (I'm not hungry). I eat fish but not other meats, but this is mostly due to the lack of a gallbladder. I also had to learn to be more comfortable with hunger. I did this with a combination of delaying snacks (it is easy to tell yourself to wait a short time) and working on portion sizes. The last one was simple: I'd eat a portion, and be done. I always knew if I was hungry in an hour or two, I could get a healthy snack. The snack rarely equals the food I'd have eaten if I got more on the plate, so it works.

And just to be fair: At one time, I weight over 200 pounds. I'm a 5'6" woman. I now am fully in a healthy weight and trend towards thin. I'm don't know my weight, but i'm about a size 6(US) and have kept the weight off for years with only minor fluctuations.

Edit: I should mention that I didn't keep good records, just observed my general diet and made improvements and adjustments.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is probably the worst site to ask. The replies will range from Soylent to Doritos to vegan without much moderate voices in between. A lot of insurance plans will completely cover a visit to a nutritionist or talk to your GP. Don't listen to the fads and hysteria on the internet that offer diets that are simple to describe but hard to live by.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to emphasis the bit about fad diets. My own personal rule of thumb is to not try any diet that I couldn't keep up for 10 years. Especially if the diet cuts out some of your favorite foods. This cuts out a lot of them. My main exception to this is anything health related (diabetes, allergies, etc), but at that point you've already talked to the GP. Otherwise, you don't have a diagnosis or confirmed medical condition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Define your goals, find out your TDEE, adjust your daily calorie consumption, then replace staple foods with healthier options.

Trying to do everything at once is guaranteed to make you hate dieting and fall off the bandwagon quickly.

For example: if you want to lose weight, find out your TDEE - 350--500 calories. Spend two or three weeks trying stick to that total amount, without worry too much about changing everything you eat. Just get used to a different amount. Once you have that down, start swapping out big meals with healthier foods, then snacks.

Also, meal prep. It will help curb impulse meals and poor snack choices if you don't have to think about it.

<comment><USER6> > find out your TDEE - 350--500 calories

This has worked very well for me, I stated on May 15th and I am down 35lbs/16kg [1]. Curbing cravings and not eating at night have been the hardest obstacles to overcome.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/WZBgzXH.png](http://i.imgur.com/WZBgzXH.png)

<comment><USER5> congrats! 35 lbs is no joke.

I practice IF, just works with my natural eating habits. Was never a breakfast person but giving up eating late night snacks has also been tough for me.

The hardest part is trusting the process of cutting and sticking to it even when not seeing immediate results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only diet that works is the one you stick to. So figure out the combination of what drives you and what you can live with, and do that.

For me, I fall apart when I'm hungry. So my diet is based around "efficient" foods (most fullness for least calories) and easy-to-follow guidelines that I can fall back on when I'm too hungry to think straight.

\- Protein makes me full. Lean protein makes me stupid full.

\- Vegetables make me feel like I've had a real meal. It's hard to add so much oil or butter to a vegetable to make the calories matter.

\- I can eat infinite carbs. Carbs + fat is an easy way to put down 2,000 calories in a single meal.

\- Most places have a salad. When in doubt, order the salad. Add protein.

\- Cooking at home means meat + veggie. I make whatever I want, as long as it's meat + veggie.

\- Breakfast doesn't make me full for long. Coffee is equally effective.

Figure out what works for you! Maybe keto is easy to follow. Maybe lifting makes you crave fewer pizzas. Maybe you can outrun your food habits by training for marathons. Maybe you should eat 7 meals a day, 3 of which are soylent.

It's all about the habit. If you can figure out what the happy output is, optimize for the fewest inputs that get you there.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have a dead simple method. If I'm hungry I drink water. If I'm still hungry after I drank water then I eat a modest amount of what I fancy. Most of the time this will end up being something I need rather than something I want which is always the problem with eating properly.

The human body is pretty good at telling you what it needs.

I've eaten a banana, pear, cereal, chicken and rice today and drank about 2L of water. Feel fantastic :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Drink water.

Eat animal products when hungry. Ignore the fat content (don't purposely eat too much nor too little.)

Eat fruit and plants, but not too many.

If you're happy with your body composition (can you see your abs?), add complex carbs to your meals (rice, bread, potatoes, etc) and liquid calories such as milk or kefir.

It's okay to eat junk from time to time.

<comment><USER10> Consider reading Whole by Campbell, How Not To Die by Greger, Starch Solution by McDougall, End of all Diets by Fuhrman.

Promoting animal products seems to be somewhat en vogue.

But please open your eyes and look at the data, the history of the human race (starch based!), and for the love of "god" (ie the universe with all that it contains, not the religious kind), look at the cruelty against animals. Bad karma. Really bad karma.

And considering that the human population nowadays with meat, dairy and eggs in their diet is getting sicker and sicker (studies, numbers, all there for you - just have to look), maybe animal products aren't exactly on the safe side..

:-/

<comment><USER9> Will do, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried to figure this out a few weeks ago and was similarly confused. A lot of people on the internet seem to promote extreme diets, (paleo, veganism, etc.) but these guys also seem to open themselves up to really weird health problems (ex. Gout, rapid tooth wear & decay for vegans).

Anyway, since I didn't want to spend all my time researching this or become a doctor, I just looked up the USDA guidelines and tried to eat more in line with that.

3 meals a day, minimal snacking, home-cooked food, ~2400 calories per day (for my body & weight loss goals), 3+ servings vegetables, 2-3 servings fruits, 2-4 servings dairy, some meats and eggs, etc.

The USDA site even gives you recommendations to eat certain amounts of specific types of vegetables weekly (greens, starchy vegetables, orange vegetables, etc.) which I assume is an attempt to abstract things out a bit so we can worry less about levels of specific micronutrients

There's also an app called MyFitnessPal that lets you log food intake by scanning barcodes with your phone's camera and tracks some nutrients (vitamin a, c, potassium, iron, a few more)

</comment><comment><USER12> Learn how to cook your own food from scratch. Focus on whole foods, especially vegetables and fruit. You can meal prep in advance by steaming a lot of vegetables, storing them in separate containers, and then chopping and mixing them with sauce to create various other dishes quickly.

Soup is also quick and easy. A pressure cooker or slow cooker can speed up the prep.

Brown rice, buckwheat, amaranth seeds, and quinoa provide additional nutrients. I don't think that "carbs" are bad -- only refined carbs. A rice cooker or pressure cooker is useful.

I think that if one only eats high-nutrient foods, there is less need to worry about the details.

I went from 215 pounds down to a healthy 145 (currently 150). There are some examples of my food experiments in my blog: [https://blog.artofmemory.com/tag/food-and- nutrition](https://blog.artofmemory.com/tag/food-and-nutrition)

</comment><comment><USER13> I recently got serious about my diet. What I thought was going to be a very difficult lifestyle change that I was going to try for a few weeks ended up being much easier to achieve than I thought. Now, I don't ever see myself going back.

In simple terms: Eat plant-based foods, period. Veggies, fruits for snacks, beans, nuts, etc. Avoid processed foods other than plant foods that are minimally processed for freshness (liked canned foods).

I thought I would struggle to stop eating meat, especially chicken. After the first few days, vegetables and beans started to taste amazing! I had no idea what I've been missing all these years since meat mutes the taste of everything else.

I also avoid dairy and snack foods. I "cheat" about once every two weeks during social events, but even then I crave the healthier options. I now look at bad foods differently and I feel better than ever.

Tip: Take a one-a-day multivitamin that includes B12. When you're getting started, get rid of all the bad food. If it's there, you'll eat it.

</comment><comment> 52-6F-62 I don't often dig into the details too often. I rely on my physician and blood work to keep me updated on any deficiencies (B12, and as a consequence, Iron).

I had the benefit of growing up in a green belt, so there was a lot of food agriculture and farmers markets, produce stands, and the local grocer received shipments from chain warehouses as well as local farmers.

Growing up we didn't have a lot of money so we prioritized fresh and cooked vegetables (nothing special, just plenty of dark greens and kept some variety). Meat was often lean ground or pork then, and I kept my meat rations pretty lean (though later opting for more chicken and beef) until my doctor instructed me to eat _more_ red meat.

That's pretty much it. Limit carbs but don't cut them out. Don't count calories too closely because it makes living dreary, just keep a ballpark. With enough exercise it shouldn't matter anyway.

I was in high-performance sports in my teens, and this was pretty typical. Just eat balanced for your needs, a lot of vegetables (esp. dark greens of your preference), plenty of water, and plenty of exercise and if you like beer you don't have to give it up. I didn't see much in the way of obsessive diets and protein powders and supplements outside of a few guys who went crazy on creatine and later cut it out due to less than desirable outcomes.

Nutritionists I've known have generally shared similar sentiment. Beyond working out any details they do, their advice to me has always been more general and simple. That's totally circumstantial, though.

I also take a multivitamin and a B12 to keep up on anything that falls out of balance.

On the other hand, my brother who was never the type recently went vegan for his wife and swears he feels better than he ever has. And he has to keep up with physically-demanding continental shifts on a provincial police service. So there's that...

</comment><comment><USER14> Going vegetarian is what I did, for moral reasons primarily, but it has lots of health benefits.

Assuming that you want to do it properly, that is you want to replace meat with various vegetables, nuts, and beans etc that provide protein you automatically increase your intake of healthy foods.

You can of course just eat chips, cheese and margerita pizza which won't help. But being vegetarian does open your eyes to a wider variety of food than just meat + x (e,g. buger + fries). Meat is so tasty on it's own that you can ignore other things.

By going vegetarian I don't have to count calories, I've actually struggled to keep weight on since going full vegetarian, when I had been gaining weight prior to that.

Plus you don't even have to go fully vegetarian, purely just reduce meat intake and up vegetable/bean/nut intake.

<comment><USER15> I've seen lots of people try and it does seem to work for weight loss short turn but the effect does not seem to last. At some point you start liking the food and weight comes right back. (ditto for pretty much any special diet)

As for the health benefits, I'm not so sure there either. I eat a mostly meat diet and my wife has been vegan for last 10 years and vegetarian for the 15 years before that and my numbers are better pretty much across the board.

Sure it seems like a vegetarian diet should be better for you but with nutritional science in the state it is it is hard to know much of anything for sure.

<comment><USER10> Consider reading Whole by Campbell and Starch Solution by McDougall. Add How Not To Die by Greger and if you want some more add End of all Diets by Fuhrman.

The gist: Limit the fats. If your exercising and/or are at least moderately active, you can have some more nuts and seeds etc. But if you're sitting at the computer all day, limit fats to the absolute minimum. Eat lots of carbs. The body will not turn them into fat. Lot's of studies (100 years+) on this. Just open your eyes and read online and the books I mentioned.

Funny example: Oven chips vs french fries. Prefer oven chips with <= 2% fat and your "OK". Steamed potatoes with zero fat are, of course, better in this context.

Not saying keto diets (meat based or not, but protein+fat instead of starchy/sugary carbs based) don't work. Just really bad karma with the cruelty against animals in meat farms etc. Not cool. Not cool. Anyway, long term data isn't there yet on keto diets. And generally speaking: The world is getting sicker. And Campbell & Co seem to hint at food - mainly animal products - <USER2> the cause. McDougall etc show that the human race survived and thrived on starch. (Low fat! Actually.)

Consider this..

Vegetarian or vegan means little. WFPB (whole food plant based) is a better term. And find your sugars and starches under this WFPB umbrella and your good. These foods have only little amount of natural fat. Look at WFPB / 80/10/10 athletes for examples..

Just my two cents..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When trying to cut, bulk up, or maintain weight, I have created a simple spreadsheet to calculate your TDEE and target calorie/protein/carb/fat consumption (you need to know your weight, body fat %, and how much you exercise per week): [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YeAgLanxOgJRAxf20cet...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YeAgLanxOgJRAxf20cetzr8qyow3k6b3sU3z-lIX2lg/edit?usp=sharing)

It works well for me as I create my meal plan in the white space (see example) looking up the values from calorieking.com

 __EDIT: Note that this math comes from a book "Bigger, Leaner, Stronger" \- calculated for Men. There is a similar book for Women that may differ.

</comment><comment><USER17> I happened to be watching a PBS show that mentioned Caldwell Esselstyn and the diet he recommends (he is a heart surgeon.) I was blown away by how much I misunderstood about a good diet. Lots of the standard "good diet" advice now looks like "fad" to me (eg. Mediterranean as a role model - since it really only shines in comparison to our horrible Western diet.) Of course, now it is even harder to eat a good diet...

Perhaps his key observation is the relationship between oils and so many of our modern diseases. I do suspect that some oils have benefits which outweigh the costs (a subtlety which isn't reflected by his coarse data) For example I suspect that oils from Salmon and Walnuts may have benefits yet to be fully quantified.

</comment><comment><USER18> Don't get diet advice from engineers.

I appreciate the interest in knowing what your virtual colleagues do, but honestly some topics covered on Ask HN simply cannot be answered with the same expertise as tech related questions.

</comment><comment><USER19> Checkout Bulletproof diet [https://blog.bulletproof.com/start-the-bulletproof- diet/](https://blog.bulletproof.com/start-the-bulletproof-diet/) it's amazing, a stricter version of Paleo.

In a nutshell: Veggies, limited fruits (1 serving per day), some protein (red meat, lamb, fish, chicken (go for organic and grass fed for meat if you can)), good healthy fats (coconut oil, MCT oil, some butter)

avoid anything and everything that comes in packaging. Packaging and long shelf life = preservatives, additives and all that crap.

</comment><comment><USER10> Please consider reading the Starch Solution by McDougall. Or watch some of his youtube videos. It's the easiest way to look at nutrition.

If interested, add How Not To Die by Greger. Nice youtube video of him at Google online. But a lot of information. Don't get confused by this. Go back to McDougall after watching this! :-)

Add Campbell's Whole or one of his recent youtube videos. If you want to be blown away by what the meat and dairy industries are doing to humans (and animals of course). It's like with the tobacco industry 50-something years ago! It's a shame that money is allowed to kill people in the millions with the governments knowing about it. And oh my the cruelty against animals.. Bad karma.. :-(

Anyway, avoid processed foods, yes. Processed sugar. Don't say "avoid sugar". Don't fear natural sugar! Fruits are good for you. But don't combine with fat! In a gist: The fat will be in your blood stream, blocking absorption of the sugars when you really want the sugar to be available for your muscles. Studies and data online. Known for many decades.

Somewhat more extreme: Read Graham's 80/10/10.

I'm on his high fruit 80/10/10 raw diet as much as possible - living in Germany where there isn't that much good fruits. I compensate with McDougall based starchy foods when i run out of fruits. I sometimes eat two to four pounds of oven baked potatoes.. :-) Eating between 3000 and 6000 calories a day. Exercising moderately for 30 to 60 minutes 3 to 5 days a week. Spending rest of time mostly sitting and standing(!) at my computer. Keeping my weight and body fat around 10% easily. The body isn't stupid. It will not turn carbs into body fat easily.

Note that I'm not saying keto diets etc don't work. High carb diets just seem to have a much better karma. Environmental factors, animal cruelty, and looking back at history, the human race survived and thrived and starches. Studies and data all there online. The gist: We could easily feed 10 billion people on this planet with carbs. But doing this on the back of helpless creates like cows, pigs and chickens, will f __* up our environment and cost far too much of our resources.

Consider karma in all you do.. ^^

</comment><comment><USER20> Open Food Facts ranks all products from A to E, using the French Nutriscore. It helps you compare products within a category, and get a general sense of how bad the product is, nutrition wise.

You're in luck, we've just imported 175K Open Data products from the USDA, so it now works in the US :-)

Also it's collaborative, so please take pictures as you scan products :)

[https://android.openfoodfacts.org](https://android.openfoodfacts.org) [https://ios.openfoodfacts.org](https://ios.openfoodfacts.org)

</comment><comment><USER21> To simplify my life, instead of micro counting calories an nutrients i've setup some simple rules for myself.

1\. Eat out as little as possible cook everything at home, so I know exactly what is going into my body. 2\. Make sure I eat a salad or a meal that includes vegetables once a day. 3\. SHAKES!!! I make shakes daily a great way to get nutrients and fill yourself up. My shakes generally contain (berries, banana, power greens mix, plant protien, soy/almond milk). 4\. Excercise daily. 5\. Take a multi-vitamin (optional)

<comment><USER22> If you don't find shakes appetising you could eat the berries separately, and make a salad with the greens and plant protein, and eat some almonds, and skip the bananas. Eating it in this form will also be more filling with fewer calories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I found Matt Fitzgerald's Endurance Diet to be an easy-to-remember ruleset (bias fruit, nuts, and carbs) largely because it presents the rulesets as a spectrum filled with tradeoffs of +/\- points.

[https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Diet-Discover-Greatest- Athl...](https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Diet-Discover-Greatest- Athletes/dp/0738218979/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502300268&sr=8-1&keywords=endurance+diet)

</comment><comment><USER24> Honestly? I can't do it when living on my own. I've taken the ready-to-eat meal route (whether that be a ready-to-drink food smoothie or plain/raw stuff (nuts, fruit, etc).

I love cooking. But never for myself, and 90% of my meals are by myself.

With ready-to-eat or drink stuff, you just calorie count. Miss bits or increase bits depending on other things you've eaten (ie when out, someone has cooked, etc). Feeling fat today? Miss a meal. Feeling a little light? Snack a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER25> Drink lots of water, eat a wide variety of mostly non-processed food, find physical activities that are fun and engaging enough that you will do them for entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you're a woman wanting to become pregnant you'll need to pay extra attention to some vitamins. Take a folic acid supplement until 12 weeks. Consider taking a vitamin D supplement. Avoid too much Vitamin A.

Many people should consider whether to take a Vitamin D supplement.

I tend to agree with other people - eat a variety of fruit and vegetables, small amounts of meat or fish or alternatives for protein.

</comment><comment><USER27> Eat a variety of foods in your diet and most of the micronutrient stuff works itself out. You have a problem when you stick to a regimented meal plan, always eating the same sets of foods. If you're worried about it, grab a multivitamin.

Other than that, it depends on how heavily you want to keep track and for what purpose.

<comment><USER10> You want to look at Mc Dougall's Starch Solution. It can be argued (studies included) that a few foods are enough if you consume enough of it. Potatoes are an example.

I'm not saying you should only eat a few foods. But Adding multi vitamins has been shown to be somewhat more on the detrimental side. See for example How Not To Die by Dr Greger.

Just my two cents..

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't strictly follow this diet, but I have incorporated elements of it into my eating:

[https://www.drfuhrman.com/learn/the-nutritarian-diet/how- it-...](https://www.drfuhrman.com/learn/the-nutritarian-diet/how-it-works- fundamental-principles)

</comment><comment><USER29> Can only speak for myself. I have only one rule with respect to diet: everything is ok but fried(sauteed, blanched in oil, deep fried, browned, stir-fried, whatever)stuff. Non-fried(steamed, bolied, raw?) fats are ok. Sugar in moderation is not gonna kill me. Works for me.

</comment><comment><USER30> This article covers more than just fat loss, but goes over the whole spectrum of how to plan your diet.

[http://physiqonomics.com/fat-loss/](http://physiqonomics.com/fat-loss/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Exercise is more important than diet for overall health and longevity. Obviously all habits contribute but people put a (temporary) focus on their diet and forget everything else in my own experience.

<comment><USER32> An important point that often gets lost even in "correct" (for lack of a better word) discussions of what is healthy. Generally it's better to be quite overweight and active than look good and be sedentary afaik.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I often recommend people to "reset" their diet.

For 30 consecutive days:

\- Think of food as a source of nutrients, not pleasure.

\- Only eat once a day.

\- Only eat beef.

\- Only drink water.

After 30 days, introduce 1 new ingredient a week.

<comment><USER34> This is great advice because every additional ingredient you add reduces your risk of colon cancer.

<comment><USER33> Since when does water or beef cause colon cancer?

<comment><USER35> Red meat has been considered a risk factor for a while now.

[https://www.cancer.org/cancer/colon-rectal-cancer/causes- ris...](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/colon-rectal-cancer/causes-risks- prevention/risk-factors.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm seeing a lot of "make sure you eat meat/dairy products" here. Are animal products necessary for a balanced diet?

</comment><comment><USER37> the same way i approach learning anything new

i try to break it down into first principles, then try to break those principles into components and start to familiarise myself with as much information as possible

it can help to apply arbitrary constraints to aide in reducing the initial barrier of entry

from there you can start to construct your own diet around your interests, your body, and your goals

one day i became obsessed with cinnamon and would put it on everything

once i ran out of the cinnamon i had i went out to get more and learned there are different kinds of cinnamon

from different places with different preparation practices that result in different flavors, of cinnamon

so i'd try one, then another, then another, and eventually i developed a preference, now i know what kind of cinnamon i like.. and why

there is a lot to consider in regards to food and diet, but that is mostly what attracts me to it

for the most part it is an unsolved problem, but there are many great theories and theorems in regard its practice

curiosity ensures development

</comment><comment><USER38> As far as keeping track of micronutrients, Cronometer.com is a fantastic site.

</comment><comment><USER39> The basic gist is all that is necessary.

To repeat -

1\. Avoid sugar like the plague. 2\. Exercise. 3\. Sleep.

kthxbye.

</comment><comment><USER40> Stop eating once you're no longer hungry.

</comment><comment><USER41> nutritionfacts.org for science-based nutritional advice.

</comment><comment><USER42> One good advice to remember is to avoid eating egg-based food when you don't have much movement (like when sitting at the table or before sleep). This is also important when you're on an airplane for hours.

</comment><comment><USER31> You shouldn't avoid sugar, you need it to live; glucose is the fuel your body runs on.

I assume you mean refined sugar.

<comment><USER43> Your body can turn fat into glucose by gluconeogenesis.

Sugar is okay if and only if there is a high fiber count as well. Ketogenic and Paleolithic diets show that high sugar intake, especially with breads, grains, and refined sugar is not healthy and not necessary.

<comment><USER31> It's (eating a lot of bread and grains) necessary for the majority of the planet that cannot afford such a diet.

<comment><USER44> That's not necessarily true. Peanuts and oils from other vegetable sources (canola, mustard, soybean, corn, coconut) are full of fat, cheap to grow and reasonably healthy. Beans, legumes, eggs and dairy are protein-rich and also quite cheap. Keto doesn't have to mean steak and bacon-wrapped shrimp every meal.

<comment><USER33> Vegetable polyunsaturated oil is not healthy.

<comment><USER44> Citation? This is what I found searching "vegetable polyunsaturated":

"Polyunsaturated fats can have a beneficial effect on your heart when eaten in moderation and when used to replace saturated fat and trans fat in your diet."[1]

1\. [https://healthyforgood.heart.org/Eat- smart/Articles/Polyunsa...](https://healthyforgood.heart.org/Eat- smart/Articles/Polyunsaturated-Fats)

<comment><USER33> [http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated- oils.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Opportunist Chef, kickstarts his mission to feed the world - <AUTHOR>

Portland, OR (USA)November 8th, 2014 — Chef Steven Ferneding is an explorer turned esteemed chef who is hungry for change, his mission: to feed the world. <p>Chef Steven Ferneding has launched a Kickstarter project with the hopes of raising $10,000.00 to start his own television show called Trading Dishes. Trading Dishes will feature Chef Steven Ferneding as he travels the globe to the worlds most interesting climates, as he measures the impact of environmental destruction, at the level of the dining room table. Chef Ferneding will take you on an adventure of a lifetime, as he explores different culture's local ingredients and teaches the world unique and nutritious ways to bring communities together. "We are currently trying to raise $10,000 to film the pilot for this series, with your support we can feed the world, one dish at a time" states Chef Ferneding. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2007145999/trading-dishes <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2007145999/trading- dish...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2007145999/trading-dishes)</comment>


Ask HN: How would you donate a few $20 bills? - <AUTHOR> Any suggestion is appreciated, but let's add that I care about wildlife and environment preservation, and that I don't want to just send the money to an association that I have no idea what it'll do with it. <comment><USER2> If you want to see a direct impact of your donation, I would highly recommend doing it through [https://watsi.org](https://watsi.org) (YC nonprofit).

It's one of the best feelings when they follow up on a complete procedure and you see the actual impact you've made.

</comment><comment><USER3> Contact an organization that you care about. Ask them if they use a service/product that is based on subscription. Offer to pay the subscription fee in advance for that service.

For example if organization already have domain name, offer to pay the registration fees for X number of years in advance that fits into Y number of $20 bills.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not to be dense, but did you mean bills themselves or possibly electronically transferred money?

If it were cold hard cash then you'd have to go local. If it were possibly electronic check out : [http://www.givewell.org/](http://www.givewell.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> There are websites online that recommend and rate charities by their efficacy or efficiency, and they'll have them grouped by topic. It doesn't matter, though. A thousand years from now, and in the millions of years thereafter, the wildlife and environment will be unaffected by your donation. But if you donated to a charity that helps out humans today, somebody's life will be improved.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think you should volunteer at a charity that engages in work that you care about and then decide if you still want to donate.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.givedirectly.org/](https://www.givedirectly.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> bitcoin address or "donate with paypal" (last one only if first option is not there...)</comment>


Is science fiction dying? - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.salon.com/books/feature/2010/12/16/21st_century_science_fiction/index.html

<comment><USER3> SciFi might not be dying, but reading that prose nearly killed me. Anyway...

 _Does the genre continue to have new and useful things to say?_ I still remember when I first came across the idea of recreational engineered viruses as a substitute for drugs (I think it was in a Richard Morgan book?). I think SciFi is becoming more original, not less.

</comment><comment><USER4> Giant wall of text, so I skimmed, but I think, no. Art never dies, it just finds a niche when the general public finds a new fad.

Commercially, sci-fi seems to be doing well. Moon, District 9, Avatar, Star Trek. As a forecast of tech-to-come, who can say if it's as accurate as it once was, we'll have to wait for the future to arrive to really know, right?

Aside from an enjoyable read, sci-fi is still inspiring people to get involved in the sciences. So sci-fi, I think, is doing fine on many fronts.

<comment><USER5> For due diligence:

"Where is my flying car?" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMPH0tlC5K4>

Sci-fi generally fails at future predictions.

<comment><USER6> You don't really read sci-fi for predictions though?

<comment><USER5> No, which is the point. (as a reply to derefr)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a hardcore sci-fi fan. Although I basically grew up in a library, the most fascinating part of it were the two or three racks nobody frequented than me: the racks were full of hardcore sci-fi like heinlein, asimov, pkdick, silverberg, leguin, pohl, you name them. In that sense, Sci-Fi is actually dying, because in the last 10 years, I hardly found something that even remotely compares with the great work of these guys except for the works of one author, Iain. M. Banks.

<comment><USER8> If you like Banks you might consider checking out the other two members of the "Scottish Clique", Ken Macleod and Charles Stross. Both write some really good stuff.

Other new good hard SF writers might be Cory Doctorow, Michael Chabon, Rachel Swirsky, Sara Genge, Geoffrey Landis, Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Paolo Bacigalupi, Aliette de Bodard, Mary Robinette Kowal, Charlie Jane Anders, Felicity Shoulders, and Ian Tregillis. I haven't read them all, but they're all at least on my reading list for good hard SF due to recommendations from friends I trust.

And I'll second the Alistair Reynolds recommendation too.

<comment><USER9> Greg Egan should be on this list.

<comment><USER8> He's certainly good, I really loved Distress, but I guess I don't think of him as new. Which is sort of silly I guess, given that he's still putting out stuff. If we're including him might as well do Bruce Sterling as well. I'm rereading "Distraction" at the moment and it hold up pretty darn well - <USER2> for failures of understanding about the economics of software development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For some reason, this is linking to Salon's mobile version. The standard version is available at [http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/12/16/21st_century_s...](http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/12/16/21st_century_science_fiction/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> SciFi in 1920:

|==now==|</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====future</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===|

SciFi today:

|</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===now</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=|====future====|

See? The problem is that we are out of land! We have so much science now that would have been fiction before, that you can write a totally scifi novel that is just seen as contemporary fiction. Take a gander at the newer William Gibson books (Pattern Recognition for example). They are set a bit closer to present, but if they had been written in the 70s, they would have been totally scifi (laptop computers, cellular phones, realtime video editing, etc).

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't know - the most recent "Year's best science fiction" was a bit of a letdown (And if the editor, Gardner Dozois is reading this, please don't take it personally). I'f that's the best out there (I trust the editor) then, well, maybe we could do a bit better, yeah?

</comment><comment><USER13> Science fiction is fine it's just going through a bit of a lull at the moment. The current big market is contemporary fantasy aimed at a female readership, and that's where publishers are putting their money, which means there is less to spend on other similar (and I use the word loosely) genres. They are simply going after what sells to the widest audience.

I think sci-fi is also suffering from the decline in interest of the sciences in general. It's a shame but that's the way it is.

Quality rises to the top eventually, it will return.

</comment><comment><USER5> When Syfy is adding shows about the paranormal, there is reason to worry.

<comment><USER14> No, it's picking a name like "Syfy" that's hurting sci-fi ;)

<comment><USER5> That may be for Google optimizations. _Sci-fi_ is generic, _Syfy_ is specific.

<comment><USER15> Likely more for trademark and brand protection than Google (although it doesn't hurt there either).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Theres loads of seemingly good sci fi books being self published for the Amazon Kindle, which might open up a new avenue for the niche and instill some new ideas into the genre

</comment><comment><USER17> Skim the article and jump to comments to find that everyone else has done the same. How delightful. Shame the article didn't match the title. Doesn't appear that there is any reason to suggest sci-fi is dying.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find any discussion of sci-fi has to start with terms.

To me, sci-fi is fiction based in science that asks "what if"

What if we had time travel? What if we could read minds?

When you string together many such what-ifs, you end up in fantasy, which is what a lot of people today confuse with sci-fi.

Early Star Trek to me was sci-fi because there were believable contemporary characters engaged in asking and exploring around clear "what if" questions. Yes, there was a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but it mostly stayed out of the way. Soon, though, the Trek universe became so full of mumbo-jumbo, futuristic societies that could never exist (really? no money? Just how would that work?) and reversing the warp drive through the deflector grid nonsense that it quickly ended up in full space fantasy land.

I just got through with Hull Zero Three, and while I liked it, it struck me as a dark nightmare from a soulless author (I know nothing of the author, that's just my impression). I _think_ there was a clear "what if", which was only put to the reader at the end. Therefore, I'd qualify it as sci-fi. Pretty good book, but dark.

But a lot of the crap, er, stuff I'm seeing that folks think is sci-fi is just long-format futuristic fantasy -- social commentary at an epic scale written with blasters and hyperdrives. Nothing wrong with that, but (to me) once you lose track of exploring that simple what-if question, it's more like commentary than analysis. You spend more time learning how the author views the universe than you do questioning you beliefs in how things are put together and what depends on what. Good stuff, certainly, but not sci-fi.

<comment><USER19> _(really? no money? Just how would that work?)_

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the Star Trek universe, but there are other works of science fiction that explore this idea in a more plausible fashion. Iain M. Banks has written a number of novels about a post-scarcity civilisation called the Culture, which also lacks any sort of a financial system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a good question, but keep in mind that people have been asking it for the last 20 years.

<comment><USER21> From the article:

> _Such statements regarding the death of SF are eternal. In 1960, for > instance, a famous seminar was conducted under the heading "Who Killed > Science Fiction?"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Skim it for the descriptions of new books. I came away with half a dozen to look into.

</comment><comment><USER22> Stargate Universe ... that's allllll I'm saying...

</comment><comment><USER23> Science fiction is not prognostifiction, it's not an attempt to predict the future, and never has been.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not as long as Cory Doctorow is around.</comment>


Wusk Launches at SXSW - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wusk.co/post/78862786538/wusk-launches-at-sxsw

<comment><USER2> I suggest rephrasing the homepage language.

"Support Great Content" \--> Meaningless. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

"Paste your content URL..." \--> What? Why?

"Wusk is an exclusive, personalized way for content creators and fans to support and connect with each other." \--> What? Support in what way? Connect in what way? What's the point of this? Why would I use this?

"Do you create videos, music, written content or art? Wusk will help you receive monetary support from your fans and connect with them personally." \--> OK, finally something that makes sense, though I doubt most people would stick around long enough to get to this part. I guess it lets people give tips to YouTube channels?

"Through Wusk, you can support and show your thanks to your favorite content creators for the content you enjoy, and get exclusive fan experiences." \--> Saying the same thing as before. The previous one alluded to paid support, whereas here it's ambiguous how you're going to "support" and "give thanks."

<comment><USER3> Greg, thanks for all of these suggestions. I appreciate you taking the time to look over our service. I will work on some of these recommendations in the next couple of days.

Joseph Holguin Founder Wusk.co</comment></comment>


Pearson launches Catalyst, a 3-month education tech startup incubator program  - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/20/pearson-catalyst-incubator/

<comment><USER2> Pearson is trying to change into a media technology company. I honestly don't know what useful information they will have to give a edu tech startup, or any tech startup. They outsource the majority of their tech work.

They are currently firing employees across the globe and re-organizing the company yet again so they can pivot away from traditional book publishing.

The terms from their press release say they want established (though young) companies that have a product ready to go to market. What value are they going to provide?</comment>


What the Font? – Made a small game for typography nerds - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/eehayman/full/RoEMNo/ <comment><USER2> Would be nice to have an option to see the answers, for people who don't have high typography skills. Or did I miss it?</comment>


SAP Open Sources UI5 Web Components - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/OpenUI5/status/1094986740610134016 <comment><USER2> unfortunately it still seems to make heavy use of jQuery

<comment><USER3> Actually the web components don't rely on jQuery. Perhaps you were seening it on the playground app which was built with openui5.</comment></comment>


Tactile sensor lets robots gauge objects' hardness and manipulate small tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/tactile-sensor-lets-robots-gauge-objects-hardness-and-manipulate-small-tools <comment><USER2> Nice. Camera ICs are so cheap now you can do touch that way. There have been lots of attempts to do touch-sensitive robot skin with things such as custom silicon arrays of strain gauges. Too expensive in small volume.

(The price of robot force-sensing devices is insanely high due to low volume. That's why robots have inadequate touch sensors. I built a force-sensing wrist out of a 3DConnection six-DOF knob input device.)</comment>


Show HN: Javalin 1.0 – A Kotlin/Java web framework - tipsy- https://javalin.io/news/javalin-1.0.0-stable.html <comment><AUTHOR> Good job reaching a stable release.

I have a Kotlin microframework that never made it past hobby-level stability[1].

One thing I found out is that you really have to write a library in Java if you want it to be used in both Java and Kotlin. Java -> Kotlin is effectively one-way interop.

I also found async programming to be really hard in Java which is why I wrapped Jetty. Meanwhile async APIs like Netty and Undertow were completely exotic to me.

For example, I couldn't figure out how to go from `Request -> Response` to `Request -> Promise<Response>` by wrapping Netty.

One thing I did find out was that Kotlin is probably my favorite language. Very similar to Swift, though I wish you could re-open 3rd party classes to make them conform to additional interfaces which you can do with Swift protocols.

I also never figured out how to hot reload code without restarting the server. Even JRebel didn't work for me. Looking at Jetbrains' own framework, their code that implements reloading is pretty intimidating[2].

OP is also the author of [https://github.com/tipsy/j2html](https://github.com/tipsy/j2html) which I've been using in my own small servers. I couldn't figure out a better way to get typesafe html templating in the ecosystem.

[1]: [https://github.com/danneu/kog](https://github.com/danneu/kog) [2]: [http://ktor.io](http://ktor.io)

<comment><USER2> > Java -> Kotlin is effectively one-way interop

Could you provide some more details? I'm a bit surprised by your statement because Kotlin team has put a lot of effort into providing mostly seamless two way interop. Kotlin project itself is ~50% Java (specifically to test interop).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really rusty, but if I can recall the simplest example correctly, you can't just naively go from this Kotlin code:

        Server { req -> Response().html("
Hello world
") }

to this Java code:

        new Server(req -> new Response().html("
Hello world
")

Because Server is implemented in Kotlin and the Java lambda certainly isn't a kotlin.Function.

If that's a bad example (foggy memory), another one would be the use of @DslMarker or reflection to build my type-safe router: [https://github.com/danneu/kog#type-safe- routing](https://github.com/danneu/kog#type-safe-routing). Or how about inline functions with reified generics.

Kotlin does have Kotlin->Jvm interop annotations, but my take-away was that you would have to put some thought into your API and possibly make concessions so that you could sufficiently annotate it to the point that it's pleasant to use from Java. Not everything maps.

For example, you can see that OP went the route of using Java at the interface edges yet Kotlin internally to solve interop for their project.

I admit that "effectively one-way interop" is too heavy-handed of a statement, but there's definitely asymmetry that I ran into on my own project. For example, I would not recommend building something in Kotlin in the hopes that, once you're done, you can just sprinkle on some @Jvm annotations and end up with an API that's compelling to use from Java.

<comment><USER3> That's because the concept of a typed lambda function doesn't really exist in Java; in Java 8 lambdas are syntactic sugar for SAM-type object creation. (There are other interface warts too: @DslMarker and parameterized receivers, as you mention; treatment of void vs. Unit; different default collection types; destructuring data types, and the need to clutter your code with 'new' if you use them a lot; etc.)

It's similar to any interop problem: if you want your library to be accessible from lots of languages, its interface better be the lowest common denominator of the features they support.

There's nothing stopping you, though, from defining your interfaces in Java and then implementing those interfaces in Kotlin. The Kotlin interop code even will do a good job letting you use Kotlin's syntactic sugar for this, eg. you can pass Kotlin lambdas to functions that expect a SAM-type, or use 'with()' to treat a conventional builder pattern as a DSL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone illuminate me on the necessity/benefits of embedding Jetty? I can never seem to understand what it offers that java.nio does not on a fundamental plumbing level (for sure, Jetty provides a lot of convenience classes on top of that plumbing), yet I see a lot of projects that could potentially get away with the plumbing embed Jetty and its thousand(s?) of minimally documented classes.

<comment> le-mark _I can never seem to understand what it offers that java.nio does not on a fundamental plumbing level (for sure, Jetty provides a lot of convenience classes on top of that plumbing)_

Creating a minimalist server is an interesting excercise, everyone should do it to see how it's done imo. BUT it's the stuff like parsing http headers, query parameters, and request bodies (formencoded, chunked files?) that make a solution like Jetty worth while. Again, writing an http parser is a valuable learning experience, but your boss _really_ doesn't want you spending time on it, OR paying to support it going forward.

As an aside, it used to be a thing in the late 90's early 2000's for every application out there to have it's own "XYZ Transport Protocol" ie XYZTP, and it really, really _sucked_.

<comment><USER5> And it isn't like this stuff is exactly trivial: with content transfer encodings, trailers, and exotic stuff like Expect: 100-continue, no one ever does this stuff correctly when they think they can just throw it together :/.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great framework. I hope it takes off.

Oh a separate note, I'm relieved that for once the java version of demo code isn't twice as long as $otherJvmLanguage. Java's come a long way.

<comment> tipsy- Thanks! Java8+ is what you make of it really. The syntax and standard APIs are still a bit clunky compared to $otherJvmLanguage, but you can make great APIs in Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a bit off-topic, but, as we are already discussing Kotlin, for a person new to the whole Java world, does anyone have a suggestion for a good ORM which plays nicely with Kotlin? (Elephant in the room being Hibernate but I'm intimidated by the complexity. Looking for something way more lightweight).

<comment><USER8> Have you tried jOOQ?

[https://blog.jooq.org/2017/05/18/10-nice-examples-of- writing...](https://blog.jooq.org/2017/05/18/10-nice-examples-of-writing-sql- in-kotlin-with-jooq/)

It might be a bit too lightweight for your tastes, but I'm very satisfied with it. Never used it with Kotlin tho, but according to the above link it seems to be supported just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of NancyFx for .Net and Flask for Python. I enjoy micro- frameworks like these, They make web development a bit less intimidating.

I hope this projects takes off.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure if I would call a framework that uses jetty under the hood, that micro...

<comment><USER11> Personally I don't use macro/micro to describe the bytecode footprint, but rather the API/conceptual footprint. If Jetty is secure and performant, and Javalin keeps it encapsulated, I think micro is a fair descriptor still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks nice and clean. What use cases make this a better choice than Ktor? This is an important question to answer because Ktor seems a bit more complete, has more contributors, and is backed by IntelliJ.

One big point in Javalin's favor: it does have more documentation than Ktor, which is currently missing some rather important parts (e.g. having no documentation for authentication and authorization is kinda unforgivable).

<comment> tipsy- I'm slightly biased of course, but Javalin is just a lot simpler to use. That might be because it's inherently simpler, or because Ktor's docs (as you pointed out) are very incomplete. I've tried to setup simple apps in Ktor to compare how it feels to write apps in it compared to Javalin, but I have given up on a lot of them because of the lack of documentation.

Other than that, Javalin is aimed at java-devs who have switched (or are interested in switching) to Kotlin, and works equally well in Java and Kotlin. Ktor is probably a better fit if you're a Kotlin purist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just came here to say I am using your project and I like it. Good job and thanks!

<comment> tipsy- Thanks, I appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm glad more frameworks follow the simple and concise way of Spark.

However, why support both Java and Kotlin, it seems that would create more work with no real need ? Admittedly, I've been burned in the past with Play! which said they would support both Java and Scala but using the Java version I always felt a lot behind in feature support.

<comment> tipsy- It's not that much more work. You have to be careful with a few concepts (like SAM/Functional interfaces), but most of the time you can just write in Kotlin. I want to support both because a lot of companies are probably like the one I work for, where there are a lot of java-devs, and a few of them are pushing for kotlin. This seems like a good compromise to me.

Play was two different projects tho? There is only one Javalin source.

<comment><USER15> There is only one for play as well

<comment> tipsy- Okay, poorly worded. I think (please correct me if I'm wrong) that in play you have distinct parts of the code-base that are for Java developers, while other parts are for Scala developers.

In Javalin, although some parts are written in Kotlin and some parts are written in Java, there is 0 duplication. If one part is written in Kotlin, both Java and Kotlin developers use that part. If a part is written in Java, both Java and Kotlin developers use that part.

<comment><USER15> That is correct. There are 2 separate APIs (that come from a single project). This is because Scala can support a bunch of functionality that Java (and Kotlin) can't support (type classes, higher kinded types, etc.). So your options are to hamstring the API for Scala or have 2 separate APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a Java developer by any means, but I wanted to say this looks like a very clean and well thought out design.

</comment><comment><USER17> It says it's 'inspired by Sparkjava', what does it do differently and/or better?

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks like Java version is not that different in terms of readability and lines of code...

<comment> tipsy- That's the point. It's not a framework for kotlin purists, but for java- shops/java-devs who want to try out kotlin. It should work more or less the same in both languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome! Why are routes added after the server has started? That makes me a bit worried, I would like to initialize the app completely before accepting requests, that's more or less necessary when under high load...

<comment> tipsy- You can add them before starting the server if you want. I usually put them after just because I like separating them out. Should only take a few milliseconds to add them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How would I find it coming from Flask and SQLAlchemy? Seems only a matter of time before such a transition comes quite easily, have been watching Kotlin and Swift with interest

</comment><comment><USER21> How does Javalin comapres to ktor ?

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been thinking about porting from sparkjava (another jvm jetty based microframework) to this. Cool. My problem with Sparkjava is the slow development time.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder what the benefits of this API surface is? Yes, it is beautiful but what are the benefits? Declaring some routes and map them to lambdas or functions is not exactly something new and also not that mission critical. Why not working on something established?

I am a C# dev and neck deep in .NET Core with all its flexibility. Maybe that is the reason I miss the point.

<comment><USER24> Hey man, im currently learning web dev and want to learn asp.net core for web development, im attracted to it after seeing that Stackoverflow uses it and also bcoz i can do a little bit of C#. Your thoughts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does Javalin have support for REST endpoint versioning?

I.e. does it support any of versioning types mentioned here: [https://www.troyhunt.com/your-api-versioning-is-wrong- which-...](https://www.troyhunt.com/your-api-versioning-is-wrong-which-is/)

</comment><comment><USER26> This looks clean and concise. A very good start. I like it, easy to pick up. Kudos for releasing 1.0.

</comment><comment><USER27> That github pop-up was quite infuriating. Made me lose concentration and close the page when I realized it was just to get stars on github.

<comment> tipsy- Sorry about that. Getting people to participate on GitHub is pretty hard. I feel dirty for doing it, but it helps.

<comment> michel-slm I find it kind of cute myself (and went ahead and starred it) but I could see how others might find it distracting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Still not used to see lambdas in java. Nice I guess

</comment><comment><USER29> How would this compare with something like vert.x? [http://vertx.io](http://vertx.io)

<comment> tipsy- Javalin is better suited for smaller/simpler projects (the library is a lot easier to understand and easier to setup). Vertx is a lot more powerful. If I ever found myself in a position where I'd need to create a massive and performant service (10m+ daily users), I'd probably choose vertx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> How about metrics/healthchecks?

<comment><USER31> A more featured glue "framework" [http://www.dropwizard.io/1.2.0/docs/getting- started.html#met...](http://www.dropwizard.io/1.2.0/docs/getting- started.html#metrics-for-metrics)

<comment><USER30> I've used dropwizard for years, that is why I was asking ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Java + Kotlin = Javalin :D

<comment><USER33> Except Oracle lawyers wouldn't like Java being literally used as part of the name, though I hate to say this.

That's why javaslang was renamed to Vavr: [https://github.com/vavr- io/vavr](https://github.com/vavr-io/vavr)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not interested in new web frameworks until they appear here

[https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r14](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r14)

</comment><comment><USER35> .</comment>


New York Times: Using AI to Host Better Conversations - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/topics/machine-learning/new-york-times-using-ai-host-better-conversations/ <comment><USER2> The linked post is itself linked to the API in question: Perspective [0].

The site has a demo where you can slide the "toxicity" from left to right and view the resulting bucket of comments sourced from various topics of discussion (Brexit, Climate Change, US Elections). You can also provide your own snippet and get a rating.

Obviously this kind of tool will sustain a lot of discussion about what "toxicity" is and how a ML system could infringe on speech by applying bias, either from the engineers building and evaluating the system, or from the inherent bias in data that Google themselves have already identified as a major problem. [1] For what it's worth, Perspective's site offers a definition of "toxic": "a rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comment that is likely to make you leave a discussion." The training dataset was ostensibly built by having humans rate comments on a toxicity scale based on that definition.

It seems as though the idea is to penalize poorly thought-out or inflammatory comments while encouraging in-depth or at least more measured responses. I think we can all agree that that is an attractive system to build: the main question will be if it can be done in a fair way and what latent problems might exist in such a system.

[0] [https://www.perspectiveapi.com/](https://www.perspectiveapi.com/)

[1] [https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/text-embedding- mod...](https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/text-embedding-models- contain-bias.html)

<comment><USER3> This is an interesting project for sure, and I see some great potential. I tried out a few phrases, including the one below that include commonly used words in "toxic" comments, but are not actually insulting anyone. This still had a high score (0.74).

> Unfortunately, most Americans are ignorant of the science about climate > change. This is not because they are stupid but rather because they do not > have all the data, or the data they have is unreliable.

I'm in no way saying this is the best way to communicate that message, and this could prompt a writer to re-phrase, but I don't know if I'd claim that this is toxic. I think that this could be a good tool, but it's clearly highly dependent on "common" understandings of words rather than actual definitions. Maybe that's the correct trade off though.

Edit: Forgot the score.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great. If the internet was mission one thing, that would be Google's AI moderating every single comment section on all independent websites. In Google's cyberspace, nobody can hear you scream.</comment>


Huawei says that it will release a HarmonyOS phone next year - <AUTHOR> https://www.phonearena.com/news/huawei-to-launch-harmonyos-phone-in-2021_id126981 <comment><USER2> I love the name of the OS, it reflects the new China and the struggles it faces.</comment>


GitHub launches Actions, its workflow automation tool - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/16/github-launches-actions-its-workflow-automation-tool/ <comment><USER2> Workflow languages are programming languages. I'd be really interested to know if 1) there's a textual representation of the visual workflow design that you can easily export/import, and 2) the syntax and semantics of the language. I've seen a _lot_ of visual workflow editors which have a tendency towards limited expressiveness; there seems to be a major disconnect between the worlds of workflow authoring and programming.

I noticed that they provide the ability to specify a Dockerfile which contains the necessary facilities to run arbitrary code. But I can't help but think there has to be a middle ground between the two. I've written about this in the past, arguing that applying concepts from traditional programming language theory (in particular functional programming) to the design of workflow languages can be fruitful.

[https://www.pmkelly.net/publications/wage2008.pdf](https://www.pmkelly.net/publications/wage2008.pdf)

[https://www.pmkelly.net/publications/thesis.pdf](https://www.pmkelly.net/publications/thesis.pdf)

<comment><USER3> GitHubs language for the new Actions feature is based on HCL, which is a superset of JSON (adding functionality like comments and other stuff).

[https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl)

<comment><USER4> Oh god. hcl is one of the worst parts of terraform. I really wonder what other declarative languages were considered for this because it feels like a very weird base to start with :/

<comment><USER5> Is it possible some of your perception is shaped by Terraform's implementation? I'm not a huge fan of json/yaml/etc as a DSL but Terraform makes/made some choices that leave me empty inside. But only after I read the original issue with hundreds of comments that was then migrated by a bot to a new repo issue which is then closed after hundreds more comments because a more recent issue that's more specific is now around and then that one is closed after dozens of comments because there's a roll up issue.

<comment><USER4> Maybe. On the other hand a lot of terraform's implementation has been shaped by how they themselves designed hcl, right? Things like multi-nesting function calls inside quotes and what not. All the dollar signs. I can't even tell if that's terraform or HCL, to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like [https://github.com/features/actions](https://github.com/features/actions) is the GitHub page about this

<comment><USER7> And documentation: [https://developer.github.com/actions/](https://developer.github.com/actions/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> At first I thought it was just another CI tool exclusive to github.com, but the fact that you can hook up more than just the commit push events makes it interesting for orchestrating a bunch of workflows around issues and pull requests.

Also great to see that it supports both UI and code definition.

The only big missing feature in my opinion is a shared library support, because it will soon be tedious to copy/paste the same generic docker build commands across repositories.

<comment><USER9> What do you mean — isn't that exactly what a DockerBuildAction would provide? Or are you referring to sharing an entire workflow?

<comment><USER10> I think it's referring to copying just part of the flow, where the terminal ends might not be connected, so per project/target you just wire up a repository to side A, and a deploy target to side B. Flows being a shareable description of part of the processing pipeline, where the testing/slack notification/approval workflow/building is standardized perhaps.. . (maybe I've been reading too much Akka streams)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this could be really useful for my team. We've built a ton of customized workflows on top of github. We use a modified git-flow process, and have bespoke solutions for automatically tagging branches when branches w/ name "hotfix" get into master, when long-living releases get merged, tons of logic for getting commits on a "release-*" branch into dev and other branches.

We ended up building a custom github worker that listens to all of this, but it's opaque and our Bus factor is 1 for that tool. Putting it on Github where anyone can change the rules and see them cleanly is fantastic!

<comment><USER12> what's 'Bus factor 1' ?

<comment><USER13> The "bus factor" is a way of saying "how many devs could we lose on this project and still have a working knowledge of it?"

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

<comment><USER14> A popular alternative I've heard here a few times is the "lottery factor".

How many devs could win the lottery and retire to a desert island while we still retain working knowledge of it.

<comment><USER15> Yeah but why shy away from the fact that any of us could randomly die at any moment? It may not be pleasant to think about, but it's true. And important to be plan for in critical systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This UI is beautiful. I hope GitLab looks into implementing something similar. Their CI is already so powerful, it would be great to be able to have a UI to build pipelines.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for you kind words about GitLab CI. What are the things that a visual editor is really great at? Getting a good overview of the relations between tasks? Seeing what secrets are available?

<comment><USER17> Just another kind comment for GitLab CI: we deployed it on prem and built a whole data analysis and quality tracking system for a clinical trial on top. I know it's not the most powerful thing out there but for our small deadline- ridden team the comprehensive and all in one nature + on-prem is just awesome.

<comment><USER18> Wow that's awesome! Can you share any more about the system you built?

<comment><USER17> It's a statistic model for epilepsy. We have GitLab running alongside dedicated NFS server for the data, build Docker images with the code, run them with access to the data, and put quality control images and reports on GitLab CI as artifacts. Each patient gets a branch, triggers CI runner generating patient reports. It took a while to figure it out but it's really good for a dev team lacking in discipline ;)

<comment><USER16> That is awesome, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> With MSFT buying GitHub it'll be interesting how they spin this with their existing "Azure DevOps" pipeline(s) offering...

<comment><USER20> Microsoft is gigantic, they loose absolutely nothing by competing against themselves.

People get caught up in the on-size-fits-all mentality. If you are a 20 man start-up it's stupid to make 3 separate solutions that all compete. When you employ north of a hundred thousand people, it's less of an issue.

<comment><USER21> From a certain size onwards not competing against yourself seems to be almost irresponsible. Just imagine the fate Intel without any internal competition to the Itanium, or without the Haifa team that insisted on pitting a refined P6 against netburst for mobile.

<comment><USER22> Totally agree with this. I've heard Amazon does similar things, like multiple teams competing with each other to accomplish similar goals. Can be very healthy for the company if managed correctly.

<comment><USER23> Google seems to take this to an extreme with a number of messaging clients competing all the time.

<comment><USER24> _That_ particular example, I'm not even sure if it's an issue of teams competing for the king of the messaging hill. And it's of particular interest to me as a developer who works in the messaging space.

It's not hard to get right, it's not difficult to get wrong either-everyone has their spin on messaging and that kind of choice is perfectly fine. We don't need one to rule them all, at least IMO.

But goodness gracious Google just seems to have _NO_ clue what they're doing with messaging. Which is frustrating because in the sliver of time they got it right, they got it _right_ (that time when Hangouts was actually kind of great, it was well integrated, and looked like Google was actually trying to make it better? Member those days?) and then-as expected-they stripped the car for parts and we ended up with two communications (Duo and Allo) platforms that really should have been one feature-rich solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wait, how does this work? Who pays for all that compute time in the cloud? What's the catch?

<comment><USER26> Presumably, like every other GitHub feature, the people paying for GitHub pay for it, free users get it as part of the ecosystem building promotion that the free tier provides to bring in paying (not purely public/OSS, team features) customers, with the assumption that the surplus on the paid accounts will, over the log term if not immediately, cover the cost of the free use.

Or they'll make it a separately charged feature once they evaluate demand and usage in the beta, but AFAIK that would be new for GitHub.

<comment><USER27> It mentions actions need to be private repos. So if I not mistaken free uses will not be able to use it.

<comment><USER28> Where exactly does what say actions need to be in private repos? I'm not finding it.

Edit: Seems like workflows can only be created in private repos [1],

> You can only create workflows in private repositories.

but actions can be public [2].

> To share GitHub Actions with the GitHub community, your repository must be > public.

[1] [https://developer.github.com/actions/creating- workflows/crea...](https://developer.github.com/actions/creating- workflows/creating-a-new-workflow/)

[2] [https://developer.github.com/actions/creating-github- actions...](https://developer.github.com/actions/creating-github- actions/creating-a-new-action/)

<comment><USER29> Found it about workflows at least:

[https://developer.github.com/actions/creating- workflows/crea...](https://developer.github.com/actions/creating- workflows/creating-a-new-workflow/)

> You can only create workflows in private repositories

<comment><USER30> Does this mean that Actions in general cannot be used for public open source projects? It seems like a lot of them could benefit from this.

Maybe they need a new category of paid but still public.

<comment><USER31> Might be a security thing rather than money?

<comment><USER32> > Over time — and Lambert seemed to be in favor of this — GitHub could also > allow developers to sell their workflows and Actions through the GitHub > marketplace.

Nope, it's about money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I could spend years automating my workflows and never actually providing value in the form of deliverables haha

<comment><USER34> big mood

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I hope this leads very popular actions being added to GitHub's UI.

I'll probably first end up using this for better issue management and triaging:

\- adding a default set of labels to new issues.

\- choosing default reviewers

\- synchronizing labels and GitHub project columns

But I really think those things should be built-in. Maybe actions can in part be product research for them.

Also, I'd love to see a Node.js serverless function version of this.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is this made to replace things like Travis and Jenkins? (I have very little experience with them.) The GUI looks very sleek, I'll definitely be checking this out to see how to integrate it into my SE course.

<comment><USER37> More like replace Atlassian Bamboo. I've had traumatic experiences with sleek CIs. To me it's like the Scratch "programming language". Good for beginners, and then you find yourself wanting to copy/paste your workflow or make any sort of involved change and having to rewrite everything in a Jenkinsfile.

Now, I'd like to be wrong. But I doubt a UI can get close to plain text for this kind of thing, it's just very difficult for software to translate boxes into code.

Until then, there's a reason our tooling is text-based to this day.

<comment><USER38> It will apparently also be configurable using static files written in HCL (Terraform syntax).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> NOW GitHub and GitLab are direct competitors.

</comment><comment><USER40> I like that they are using HashiCorp configuration language (1) for the configuration.

I have found HCL to be more human-readable than JSON and YAML. But it is plenty strict for use cases like this.

1\. [https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl)

</comment><comment> crooked-v This looks like a complete replacement for Bitbucket Pipelines (and a straight up better one), which makes me happy.

</comment><comment><USER41> The new UI that Github implemented for it's actions is really slick!

As far as implementation I'm starting to wonder if anyone actually uses BPMN[0]...It might be nice if we had a standardizable way to do these orchestrations, and I thought BPMN was it.

[0]: [https://www.bpmnquickguide.com/view-bpmn-quick- guide](https://www.bpmnquickguide.com/view-bpmn-quick-guide)

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's the official GitHub Actions collection.

[https://github.com/actions](https://github.com/actions)

And for a concrete example, the Docker Action.

[https://github.com/actions/docker](https://github.com/actions/docker)

<comment><USER30> Some of them have Dockerfiles but some don't. For the ones without Dockerfiles, exactly what environment are the commands run in?

<comment><USER42> Are you sure they don't have Dockerfiles? It looks like the Dockerfiles don't have to be in the root directory. You can have a repository with multiple Dockerfiles stored in subdirectories, which results in the repository hosting multiple actions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This looks very promising, and I'm eager to try it out for some hobby projects.

One thing I haven't found skimming the docs is a manual approval gate, which would be very useful for projects that don't have full automated test coverage (so, nearly all of them) before a production deployment.

<comment><USER43> I would just create a github release or a particular style of git tag.

<comment><USER29> ... and then use a second, different automation to deploy that into production?

That seems a little backwards for a small web app.

<comment><USER43> I use different workflows for commit verification and release automation, yes. Some things are actually simpler that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm very hopeful this can replace at least some of our hooks. We've for a fairly a automated process using GitHub labels and it would be great to be able to move some of those off our hook server.

<comment><USER45> If you don't mind me asking, what hook server are you using currently you'd move off of?

<comment><USER44> It's a pretty minimal one I developed for personal projects we ended up using internally.

[https://github.com/donatj/hookah](https://github.com/donatj/hookah)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Great news. Also the right way to do CI/CD with each step being a separately configured container with a persistent workspace throughout. Makes it very fast and easy to chain together steps while using small, focused, and updated images.

There's only a few providers that seem to get this right so it's nice to see included in github. I was just talking to the Azure DevOps people about this kind of functionality so it seems like GH is and will continue to be run independently of MS/Azure.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is very cool. I maintain a GitHub App (pullreminders.com) and I can see Actions helping with setting up additional custom alerts that users sometimes ask for.

<comment><USER48> you'll have to install the actions directly on your customer's repo iiuc. how will you be able to do this via your app?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How will pricing work with something like this? Are actions run on GitHub's servers, or can they only call out to third-party services?

<comment><USER49> Looking at the documentation, I got the impression that you give them Dockerfiles that they will run on GitHub servers for up to an hour at a time.

Seems like this would be pretty easy to abuse, and I was able to sign up with my free account. We'll have to see how long this lasts...

<comment><USER30> It only works on private repos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If you're as eager as I am to check this out, try this:

      1. Go here as a logged in user: https://github.com/actions/docker/blob/master/.github/main.workflow
      2. Click Edit on the file (top right corner, pencil icon)
      3. Edit existing workflow, or click "Create a new workflow".

</comment><comment><USER51> Isn't this a bit like Ant or Gradle specialized for version-control perhaps? What's wrong with using Ant or Gradle?

<comment><USER52> > What's wrong with using Ant

XML

> or Gradle?

Apache Groovy

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> "Imagine an infinitely more flexible version of shortcut, hosted on GitHub and designed to allow anyone to create an action inside a container to augment and connect their workflow"

Err... so like code? If he phrases it like that, does that mean that the target audience isnt developers? I mean why else go with such an analogy?

</comment><comment><USER34> I mean yeah, this is pretty cool but shouldn't we be worried about GitHub taking over our whole workflow?

<comment><USER54> We should be worried about locking our workflow to a specific provider. The fact a provider makes it easier or provides tools _in itself_ isn't lock-in.

Even then we shouldn't be particularly worried. Vendor lock-in is an unusual problem; deciding to change vendor is rare and if there's a good reason to do it then it's worth spending resources. The only time it's a real problem is when you absolutely have to change _and_ you don't have the resources to do the necessary work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Interesting that GitHub is continuing to still actively develop independent features after the acquisition. I almost started to say that this seemed like a pushback against Microsoft's newly-rebranded Azure DevOps before I even remembered...

</comment><comment><USER56> Wouldn't it make more sense for Microsoft to merge GitHub with their TFS workflow that already has build / test etc. integration to some extent (along with hosting code)? I don't understand this development.

<comment><USER30> No, because if they do that then up to five million developers may leave.

<comment><USER57> But five ~~million~~ already left when they announced the acquisition

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> RIP Puppet. If this takes off, Puppet's death spiral will be further cemented.

</comment><comment><USER59> Now our workflow can be insonsistent or down too for several hours a month.

</comment><comment><USER60> This looks great, reminds me of a concourse.ci pipeline, but prettier.

</comment><comment><USER61> Finally, I can hope to cancel my CircleCI account soon.

</comment><comment><USER62> If there ever was an native article it is this one.

<comment><USER63> Do you mean naive?

<comment><USER62> No, native as in native advertising. As in they most likely got paid to write it.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> distributed dataflow ?

</comment><comment><USER65> Meanwhile, forked repositories still aren't searchable.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is the "extend" portion of the new Microsoft strategy commencing...

<comment><USER67> GitHub sale hasn't even closed. This is GitHub being GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Nice. Brave stomps the whole article out and leaves just the nav and a small graphic that says "AdChoices". Looks like a feature to me.</comment>


LibreOffice And OpenOffice Will Not Merge - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/04/20/libreoffice-openoffice-no-merge/

<comment><USER2> One day (if not already) they'll be a Harvard Business School case-study of how corporations can create value through strategic use of Open Source communities.

And it'll probably be centered on Oracle : OpenOffice just 'got away', Java is looking a little frayed around the corners. MySQL has got to be the one they're most concerned about - and they plainly haven't yet got a grasp of how important 'playing nice' is to people that can be inspired/swayed by idealism.

It always used to be 'nobody ever got fired for buying IBM' - and maybe Oracle sees itself in the same way for databases. But it must be realizing that it's subtly being moved from the obvious choice on a list of three options, to just one of the three options...

<comment><USER3> Oracle's Hudson CI was also forked to Jenkins CI and the original developers went with it.

Anecdotally, I've had conversations with people who are looking into PostgreSQL as a MySQL alternative specifically because Oracle now owns MySQL and its future seems uncertain. So I agree that right now, it looks like Oracle is flailing around and missing the potential of open source.

<comment><USER4> MySQL already has three maintained patchsets or complete forks, and there's no reason to believe any of them would die if Oracle stopped open sourcing MySQL tomorrow. Percona Server and MariaDB are drop-in compatible, while Drizzle went in a different direction. All three projects have some pre-Oracle MySQL developers working on them.

Far be it from me to discourage someone from adopting Postgresql instead of MySQL, but there are other options that retain compatibility with mysql-only apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty much the only "merge" that would happen anyway is if Oracle donate the Trademark, and all other rights to The Document Foundation. I mean, it's hard to see why the Libre Office folks would want to go back anyway. I think it's safe to say, that from Oracle's point of view, that ship has sailed.

The only "merge" that makes some sense is to release a build of Libre Office under the name "Open Office" for the sake of those folks who have gone through the process of getting Open Office the "approved" Office solution (and have no wish to do it all again for Libre Office).

Mind you, nothing stops Oracle from taking the Libre Office code, and merging it into Open Office if they want to. They could even copy the Libre Office code "as is", rebrand it as Open Office, and release that.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is only partially related, but does anyone know why Google didn't buy Sun instead of Oracle? It had (still has) deep pockets and should have been very interested by Java, OpenOffice and MySql...? What happened?

<comment><USER7> Why would Google buy Sun? Google doesn't make hardware and Sun gave Java away for free. Google still gets to poach the best of Sun's programmers so what's in it for them?

<comment><USER8> They could still have purchased Sun as a whole, and left Sun Hardware operate on it's own until End of Life, or sell it off to another hardware vendor like IBM or HP.

<comment><USER9> But if they had done that it would have been less valuable to them than the money that Oracle ended up paying.

<comment><USER10> The patents would have been worth it alone.

<comment><USER11> Kudos to Google for not buying then.

Note that the alleged value of Sun's patents is based on essentially suing _everyone_ supposedly using the technology and so the money put into such an investment essentially forces the buyer to either write-off the investment or go out and do the suing.

It may be that Google has decided it needs a business model based on the end of (or diminution of) software patents - ie, they could not buy enough patents to not have other entity siphoning off their revenue on a per-byte basis (see the WebM fight that's brewing).

Here's where the analysis of Oracle-shill Florian Mueller is especially _insidious_ ([http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-is- patently-t...](http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-is-patently-too- weak-to-protect.html)). Any "patently strong" corporation, any coroporation that builds-up a large "war chest" of their own "profitable" patents has a strong incentive to keep the whole patent racket going (otherwise, the lose the value of that "war chest").

Again, kudos to Google for not taking that route (and, they're doing this to make money, which is great too...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think this means what this article says.

The important thing is that even though Oracle has said they will make Open Office a community-run project, no one knows what that will look like. Specifically, will they fix the things that made Open Office developers mad at Sun in the first place? (Refusal to merge peoples' patches was the big one, I think, but also copyright assignment.)

It's entirely possible they'll just give the Open Office trademark to the Document Foundation, in which case they could just rename LibreOffice.

Given that Oracle doesn't get open source at all, it's more likely that they'll just host some git servers with the Open Office code and hope that people will contribute to them under stupid terms. Then after a bit they'll realize that's not working and hopefully donate the Open Office trademark to LibreOffice.

Either way, though, the Document Foundation can't do anything about this right now because they don't know what exactly Oracle's plans are. If Oracle agreed to address all of the earlier problems with Open Office development, maybe the Document Foundation would be interested. For now, they're continuing to develop their software, which after all is the goal of all this.

</comment><comment><USER13> I still maintain that LibreOffice is a terrible and confusing name, and that OpenOffice was great branding. I do think that LibreOffice made a great move in terms of one confident fork everyone could jump ship to. And... I get the joke, they're saying what kind of "free" it really is, but it really doesn't roll off the tongue does it?

OpenOffice was an open source success story partially because of its name. It was differentiated from other open source options: KOffice, GNOMEOffice, NeoOffice. Why?

I believe because of the branding difference. It doesn't sound like some weird thing that might work to a non-expert user. It's "Office" but it's "Open". I'm a smart guy and I still have to look up Libre when the fork began to get the joke.

I think the rename and fork must be a joy to Microsoft, that's all.</comment>


1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS a surviellience platform by DARPA [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a clip from PBS's "Rise of the Drones" [1]

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the- drones.htm...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the-drones.html)</comment>


NokiaPlanB was a hoax - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/16/nokia-plan-b-was-just-a-hoax-all-along/

<comment><USER2> Sometimes these things take on a life of their own.

While the author of the plan was not serious it seems there are a lot of people who do actually like his plan, and do take it seriously.

Maybe some of them will organize using this plan as a starting template.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a sad state of affairs for your company when an anonymous guy can put up a blog offering a fake plan to turn things around and get a _boatload_ of attention and excitement. On the other hand: we're living in interesting times. A guy with an interesting idea can, overnight, capture the imagination of tens of thousands of people for very little time and money.

I guess for anyone who was holding onto hope of a non-Olop, non-Microsoft Nokia, there's only one thing left to say:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ytCEuuW2_A>

<comment><USER4> False hopes and vague handwaving concepts have always been suitable vehicles for attracting attention and excitement, if that's all one is looking for.

This "Nokia Plan B" was no different. It didn't offer anything actionable. Remember that the plan's main proposal was:

 _Return the company to a strategy that seeks high growth and high profit margins through innovation and overwhelmingly superior products with unrivaled user experience._

Is that really an exciting turnaround plan for a company of some 120,000+ employees? The whole plan boiled down to: "Let's keep doing the same thing we've tried unsuccessfully for years, but let's just do it better." Of course, there's always bound to be people who can't let go. (I know someone who bought Nokia shares in early 2000 at more than 10x the current price and is still holding on to them.)

<comment><USER3> Eh, I dunno, there was some sensible action in there. Reducing to two locations the enormous, global oilslick that is Nokia's R&D seems like a good idea. Gutting all the outsourcing seems like a good idea. De-bureaucratizing and de-cluttering the organization seems, to me, a lot more sensible than outsourcing the very soul of your product's user experience and becoming little more than a commodity electronics manufacturer.

Like Tony Hsieh says, you can't be successful by outsourcing something that should be your core competency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A hoax, or is it only being called a hoax because it failed?

Seems like it's an extra attempt at extending the 15 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Congrats to those here who were skeptical of the initial announcement due to the lack of details.

Put me in the camp that says it didn't _entirely_ start out as a hoax, but that a hoax looked increasingly like a good way of backing out gracefully after someone pointed out the rules.

</comment><comment><USER7> What would be really cool is if "NokiaPlanB was a hoax" was a hoax -- anybody could register a NokiaPlanB Twitter account and claim this.

<comment><USER8> But that twitter account won't enjoy redirection from nokiaplanb.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Being a shareholder is kind of a weak claim to authority when anybody can be anyway, isn´t it? If he picked up a couple of NOK stock is he able to be taken exponentially more seriously?

<comment><USER10> They didn't even need to be a shareholder.

Shareholders with voting shares have the right to attend shareholders meetings and vote in the board of directors. In such large corporations, shareholders usually appoint a proxyholder who attends the meeting and votes on the shareholder's behalf.

My understanding was that Nokia Plan B was basically soliciting such proxies by asking shareholders to give their votes to them for the purpose of replacing the board.

Corporate law usually doesn't require a proxyholder to be a shareholder, so they actually didn't even need such a (weak) claim to authority.

As a side note, soliciting proxies usually requires following proper corporate law procedure by sending prescribed materials. Nokia Plan B just had a website, which was an early indication this was a fake.

<comment><USER11> The beauty of the hoax was that in this situation, fake plan and real, well- intentioned but ill-conceived plan are basically indistinguishable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm still holding out for <http://nokiaplanxp.com/>

<comment><USER11> I love the design of the 6300.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess that explains the lack of bios, then.

</comment><comment><USER14> Crazy that it got so far. I have to admit, I was pretty much convinced when I saw it almost 2 days ago now (even if I was a tad bit skeptical). Crazy that print media picked it up today, too. Though, it does say something about what people think of Nokia's decisions lately...

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it bad that I never realized that anyone thought the site was anything except a joke?

<comment><USER16> No. That's all it ever was. You get a "basic critical thinking" merit badge for realizing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My last epic fail was a hoax too, I promise.

</comment><comment><USER18> Only goes to show the state of tech reporting. So superficial and trigger happy.

<comment><USER19> You can easily remove the word "tech" from that comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My only hoax fail was the rumor that MS was buying Mahalo..

R Scoble still hates me being taken by such an obvious fake claim as he was calling/email MA of TC and TC even had to put a small note on the TC site about ti being fake.

NokiaPlanB was executed better. Just enough small stuff to believe and something real big that was fake.</comment>