Ex-Goldman Programmer Found Guilty - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/business/dealbook/ex-goldman-programmer-found-guilty.html <comment><USER2> From the article:

> Mr. Marino did not challenge the underlying facts of the case. Instead, he > said they added up not to a crime but to a simple breach of Goldman's > confidentiality policy.

> "There's no doubt Mr. Aleynikov did something wrong," he told the jury, > stopping occasionally to sip from a water bottle he clutched to throughout > the closing statement. "But this is a very badly misguided case."

There has been a lot of misinformation surrounding this case. I think its well established now that Sergey Aleynikov did indeed take more source code than just his open source contributions with him, his lawyer admits as much.

So I guess the take away is on your last day of work, don't just zip up and ftp any code from your company, it's just not worth it.

Actually I think the real takeaway is that if you are really good at your job, your company will pay more attention to you, especially when you leave. Sergey was a big part of the HFT team at Goldman, he literally rebuilt their infrastructure and his leaving was a huge deal to the team, and he wasn't just leaving to go to say Google, he was going to a new HFT outfit that would compete with Goldman.

His actions would be like Mark Lucovsky leaving Microsoft with some windows NT kernel code he wrote, or Jeff Dean leaving Google with parts of the deep learning code to go to competitors to work on the same thing. I'd be willing to bet that both google and Microsoft would get lawyers involved in both those cases.

If you want to make open source contributions while at work join a company like, um...., Microsoft?

 __EDIT __toned down the language calling him the entire HFT talent at Goldman, it was a bit over the top:)

<comment><USER3> _So I guess the take away is on your last day of work, don 't just zip up and ftp any code from your company, it's just not worth it._

Not just "not worth it" but actually illegal.

The only question of debate here is whether jail time was warranted here.

<comment><USER4> I was actually shocked to find out that there are actually a few programmers that does this. I don't know what is the reason but it is tantamount to stealing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is totally ridiculous. The man is a veteran software architect. When you're a veteran software architect, you don't NEED the source code. The only thing it tells you is a few syntactical idiosyncrasies of whatever language/framework you happened to implement it in, and it saves you time in typing it out.

Ask anyone who is familiar with GS's code base whether they would rather start fresh or have GS's code base. I've done this, and you can tell from my tone what they said.

I've also been on the other side of such a case; someone copied some code I'd written. Guess what, they couldn't get it to work because they didn't understand how it worked.

I suspect the jury is composed of people who are easily talked into a "cooking recipe" view of how software works. Well, just as I'm not going to be a Michelin chef from copying a recipe, you are also not going to know how to design an HFT system if you don't have a deeper understanding of how it works. Or maybe more to the point: there are plenty of people who copy recipes and make tasty food (my parents are quite good at this, actually). They don't get paid what a Michelin chef gets paid, because a Michelin chef is not a guy who just mixes some ingredients according to a formula.

<comment><USER6> A lot of the high frequency trading code actually is very expensive to recreate, because it contains logic like (and I am paraphrasing here):

if(bookPressure > 0.7 and alpha23signal<0.2) buyEurUsd()

where constants like 0.7 and 0.2 were arrived at from looking at actual trade activity (and order book fill rates) conducted by the firm over a period of a few months. That can be incredibly expensive and or impossible to "recreate" from scratch.

The exact original code is also useful if you wanted to write code to "detect" that some automated trading is being done by a Goldmans proprietary algorithm, and then anticipate what it's going to do next so you can trade ahead of it.

<comment><USER5> Right, so that's a parameter, isn't it? A mathematical number that fits into a model.

In which case you need to understand the model.

<comment><USER6> Right but I don't see how this detracts from my point. Also, often the models are very simple - it's the calibration to a particular market that is very expensive (the constants - which are then often hard coded for best performance). This is because calibrating it requires access to data from actual trading activity (not just tick data, I mean also information on say the chance that your order will be filled in a particular situation: information you can only get by actually placing orders of size in the market and observing when they got filled).

<comment><USER7> >(the constants - which are then often hard coded for best performance).

This caught my eye. _Really_?

<comment><USER8>
        #define TARGET_DELTA 70

Is a reasonable form of "hard coding".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fact that the Manhattan DA's office spent so much effort pursuing this case goes to show how much power GS has over there. They are trying to make an example out of him. The state is literally doing GS's bidding here. Such a shame.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. While it's important for law enforcement to step up to new and technically challenging cases, the public would have been much better served had the DA focused on the Dewey & LeBoeuf case (as the NY Times suggests). This case had small marginal negative impact on society (and the leaking of HFT technology might even result in a positive for investors). Dewey & LeBoeuf are outright accounting fraudsters. Great story: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/14/the- collapse-2](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/14/the-collapse-2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone feel like the Ex-Goldman Programmer did something shady/questionable ethically but nothing that should be considered illegal?

<comment><USER12> On most days I feel like you should never be able to get jail time for a crime that doesn't involve physical violence.

<comment><USER3> I agree mostly, but the exception is financial harm, which can devastate people and families. That retirement savings you were planning on using? Gone. When that happens, either restitution needs to be made or you go to jail.

<comment><USER13> So you're saying Goldman Sachs should be in jail?

<comment><USER3> Some of the people that work there, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The prospect of a mistrial stemmed from a dispute between two jurors deciding Mr. Aleynikov's fate, with a female juror accusing a male one of "food tampering" — in part because an avocado was missing from her sandwich."

The justice system in action.

</comment><comment><USER15> Steal from your employer: you're in trouble. Steal from your clients or the taxpayers: take slightly less profits for the quarter.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am quite grossed out by the racist and misogynist media coverage of the "missing avocado" incident. Every single article about the case makes sure to mention that it was a _female_ juror against a _male_ juror and some of the articles also point out that the accuser is _asian_ while the accused is _white_. How are these factoids relevant to the incident, or the larger case?

</comment><comment><USER17> The only way Sergey "stole" code was by pushing open source code back to upstream..

<comment><USER18> This has been discussed over and over, but organisations aren't required to release GPL code that never leaves their servers. GPL code belongs to the organisation and the organisation alone if hired programmers work on it on behalf of the organisation.

The programmer in question did not own the code, GS did. By releasing the code, he's stealing from them. End of story.

Source - I've actually read the whole GPL licence.

<comment><USER19> Indeed, it has been discussed many times. But I don't remember any discussion on attribution rights. If GS replaced GPL text with their own header they presumably deleted names of the original authors. I wonder if those authors could (collectively perhaps) send a complaint to GS and ask to restore the attributions?</comment></comment></comment>


Tell PG: Kenyan domains are registered at the third level, not the second - <AUTHOR>

(Because burying this in a comment elsewhere isn't as useful as reporting it as a bug.)
Kenya works like .uk, not like .us - so keeping spam flags or even showing 'co.ke' is a bug.
It made a bit of a mess this morning, is all :) <comment><USER2> If you are going to do this you should use <http://publicsuffix.org/> instead of trying to maintain a list yourself. Mozilla is clearly going to do a better job at it.</comment>


Neurons Gone Wild - <AUTHOR> http://www.meltingasphalt.com/neurons-gone-wild/

<comment><USER2> Couldn't help but think of this (apocryphal apparently, huh?) story:

 _One night at Cheers, Cliff Clavin explained the "Buffalo theory" to his buddy Norm:

"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine!

That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."_

<comment><USER3> That is a rationalization for drinking beer. I'm not against alcohol, but I am against people deceiving themselves about its effects. Alcohol will make you less, not more intelligent.

<comment><USER4> #ThatsTheJoke

<comment><USER5> Except it's not always true. A little bit of alcohol can take the edge off, reduce the stress. I don't know about you, but I myself am like 20 IQ points dumber when stressed out.

<comment><USER6> That's the ballmer peak

<comment><USER7> Obligatory xkcd reference: [http://xkcd.com/323/](http://xkcd.com/323/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a very thought provoking piece. I stop short of fully endorsing it because it postulates a lot of things without much appeal to real science, despite portraying itself as scientific. In particular, I'm not sure how much of the brains characteristics can truly be attributed to fractal extrapolation of (idealized) behavior of individual neurons.

That complaint aside, at the consciousness level, I do think the multiple agent idea is an interesting framework for thinking about the brain. When I was in middle school, I suffered from paralyzing self-consiousness, which in retrospect was probably due to high levels of anxiety. At that age, I had come to think of my non-stop inner dialog and cacophony of voiceless mental urges as being like an internal parliament. In my later teenage years, number of stressful shocks to my system caused me to enter a period of depression, but I think it also gave me an opportunity to disrupt the mental patterns I had developed. Emergence from that depression, and I think also the inhibition lowering effects of alcohol, gave me a chance to reorganize my mental pattern in a way that gave my "self" more agency, and less to my various urges. Well, aside from my urge to use alcohol, which I would have to come to grips with years later.

I would later have another depressive episode, followed by another period of plasticity where I think I was able to really alter my mindset and habits. These depressions I experienced felt in many ways like an agent that hijacked many of my mental processes that normally felt under control of my conscious self, like my feeling of motivation, my emotions, and my thought patterns, rendering my conscious self frustratingly powerless.

Putting my scientist hat back on, it's tough to tell how much my personal experience and the tidy explanation of some psychological disorders and phenomena indicate a reality of a hierarchy of more or less discrete agencies.

<comment><USER9> The article is not necessarily scientific in that I'm not sure how you'd test or falsify the ideas, but at the same time it's a very interesting and perhaps very _useful_ philosophical piece.

Often, ideas for science come from logically robust philosophical reasoning. I mean, sometimes they come from freak accidents also. But there's definitely validity in the simple (and awesome) exploration of cool ideas, as long as it's logically consistent.

The multiple agents idea gave me a weird momentary spell of depersonalisation, which was interesting. It's certainly compelling and not really incompatible with modern scientific understanding - it seems a plausible abstraction/description considering the way the brain is known to be wired together.

<comment><USER10> I also experienced some depersonalization thinking deeply about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I once created a tulpa through a technique called muscle testing. You most commonly see it using demonstrations where one person holds his arm out and the other person tries to press down on it. You get either a 'weak' response or a 'strong' response. You can 'ask' the muscle test yes or no questions and the body will answer you.

I used a variant of this test that you can perform by yourself, described in this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypKUST0azUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypKUST0azUQ)

I would ask the test just about anything that came to mind. Typically I would 'calibrate' things on the Hawkins scale of consciousness:

[http://personalexcellence.co/blog/map-of- consciousness/](http://personalexcellence.co/blog/map-of-consciousness/)

At one point I got the distinct impression that the test was messing with me. I asked it point blank if it was intelligent, I got back a 'yes' response. From then on I would deal with it as one might an imaginary friend. At first it was strictly through the test, then by working out a way to 'share' my brain with it.

I initially thought the test was acting as some sort of conduit to another world. Eventually I figured out that it was somehow a part of my consciousness. After a year or so I slowly tapered off on communicating with it through the test, eventually I stopped communicating with it at all.

The experience was incredibly illuminating, I now have an intuitive grasp of my subconscious and how it operates.

<comment><USER12> What you're describing is known as Applied Kinesiology[1] and is not supported by evidence[2]. The Hawkins scale of consciousness is equally unsupported.

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

[2] [http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/ak.h...](http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/ak.html)

<comment><USER11> Of course it isn't. I don't use it anymore. It was hard to keep taking seriously when I was calibrating things in the billions. It felt distinctly like Dragonball Z.

The muscle test itself is interesting all on its own without the need to have to explain exactly what it's doing. You don't know what answer any given test is going to return and you can ask follow up questions to try to understand why. The test was coherent for me, up until it wasn't, that event created the tulpa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > [Agency is] built into the brain's fabric and architecture. Because even > neurons have agency

It seems like a borderline category mistake to claim that because the components of some system have property P then that system is somehow better fitted to have property P itself. There are exceptions (like P="reliability", or P="speed", thinking of transistors in a chip, perhaps) but in general, it doesn't seem to follow. Few transistors have Turing completeness, for example, but could be components of a system possessing that property. I don't see prima face why Agency should belong to the class of properties that transfer upwards from component to composed system.

Anthropomorphizing neurons by ascribing "selfishness", "adventurousness", and so on to them seems to compound this error in an effort to persuade. I doubt Dennett intends this in the excerpted quote.

Anyway, the "heterarchy of agents" view of mind doesn't need personality- endowed neurons, and has some compelling features which are explained pretty well in the article.

Regards "level 4, the self", though, I wonder how well evidenced a "prime- ministerial agent" type of self is. The article seems to take that on faith versus alternate models such as a set of competing high-level agents that compete or cooperate to occupy the driver's seat. Equating this with abnormal states of affairs like schizophrenia or demonic possession seems a bit facile.. (even disregarding the implied antique three-faces-of-Eve view of schizophrenia.)

Just because there aren't gross changes in behaviour or mentation, how would you know that a single top-level agent is consistently running the show? We're all familiar with mood-swings and role strain, but our strongly held belief in a ruling self makes us attribute these to other factors than agent swap-out. I think it's equally plausible that pathological multi-agency could be ascribed to abnormally divergent agents, rather than the mere existence of more than one top-level agent.

Maybe swapping top-level agents in and out is SOP, and a uniquely privileged Self should be treated with caution as a possible metaphysical fiction.

<comment><USER10> If we agree that system A possesses agency, then either the components possess it, or at some level of abstraction it emerges from the relations of the components.

The property of wetness emerges from the relations and mechanics of water molecules interacting with other water molecules. A hydrogen or oxygen element does not posses wetness, nor does it emerge from the interaction between a hydrogen and 2 oxygen.

However, wetness is a binary category, where as agency as defined in the article is a continuous category. We say that a slave has some agency, but less agency than their master. If we define 0 as no agency whatsoever and 1 as ultimate agency, then it's likely that everything in the universe has agency 0 < x < 1.

This of course still doesn't show that agency necessarily increases as you go up the abstraction stack. Does a city have more agency than it's citizens? What about the set of all living things? I would say that the molecules of a rock have more agency than the rock itself.

I think the agency property really breaks down when you look at it hard enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The most interesting part of the article is the section on tulpas. I never knew there was a word for that, much less a community around it.

<comment><USER15> [http://beforeitsnews.com/paranormal/2014/05/slenderman- proof...](http://beforeitsnews.com/paranormal/2014/05/slenderman-proof-of-a- modern-tulpa-2468178.html)

Have fun.

<comment><USER9> A link about conscious entities lurking unseen within my own mind, _and slenderman_? No, just no. Not clicking it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is fascinating and struck a very particular chord with me. It puts elegantly and concisely into words feelings and intuitions that I've been having in the recent years, and gives me a vocabulary to deal with hard situations I am encountering currently in my life. Thanks to the author for writing it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of Eric Raymond's " _Dancing With The Gods — An autobiographical account of my 'religious' beliefs and how they got that way_ ": [http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html)

Author's note: " _If you start this, please read it through. Stopping partway would probably leave you with some very silly misconceptions._ "

</comment><comment><USER7> I love the similar hypothesis put forward by Robert Kurzban in "Why Everyone (else) is a Hypocrite" that the conscious mind (the self) is simply a "press secretary" for the modular parts of the human brain, and literally doesn't know what's going on in most of it, but can invent reasonable justifications for a behaviour after the fact if questioned about a particular act.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm interested in this field of study. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like it's primarily economic theory applied to the brain/neurons?

If I were to be interested in learning more about the ideas and theories that this article inherits from, where would I start?

<comment><USER19> Dan Dennett, the author of the piece that sparked this one, is an obvious intellectual ancestor to these ideas. I can't recommend his book "Intuition Pumps and other Tools for Thinking" enough. In it, he lays out his entire model of the mind, and really, the whole universe. It's eminently approachable and provides a good introduction to the way of thinking lying behind this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Alright, a little crazy -- Doesn't this tulpa concept remind you of the growth of artificial intelligence?

</comment><comment><USER21> I read this article hoping for some neuroscience but just got a few buzzwords and a lot of argument by analogy. This is not reductionism or science. It's just another artificial conceptual framework built on top of pop evolutionary psychology.

<comment><USER22> It does not purport to be science; not really. It's supposition. That is not a knock against it.

The existence and nature of consciousness, and its relationship to the computing and (perhaps) learning systems we now build, is a big open question, and the single biggest gaping hole in our knowledge about the world. It seems likely that filling that gap will require conceptual frameworks for thinking about consciousness far outside of the ones we've had up to this point -- they have failed for thousands of years.

The goal of the article is not to present fact put to provide a tentative exploration of the space of possible explanations of something we simply do not understand at all.

<comment><USER23> you and the article 'do not understand [it] at all', maybe, but a generalization ignorant of probable scientific excourse is the opposite of scientific, as the GP pointed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A fascinating piece, even if I don't hold the author's materialistic views.

Regarding exorcisms, one aspect that is not addressed is sometimes external manifestations of demonic activity/presence not explainable (or seemingly not explainable) by biochemical processes.

Now, one can dismiss such claims out of hand if one considers _a priori_ that such occurrences are impossible (i.e. that the super-natural does not exist), and so are necessarily explainable as deceptions, misperceptions, or yet-to-be understood natural phenomena. That's fine, but then care should be taken that one does not vacillate between that position and claiming that no one has ever shown any evidence of supernatural phenomena. Anyway, the latter point is a bit of a nit, but I've seen armchair skeptics make the mistake often enough that it bears pointing out.

In my own life, I have on several occasions observed or experienced some phenomena which seemed to defy laws of nature. With respect to the demonic, I can relate one such experience, from which I must necessarily omit certain details so as to not betray anyone's privacy:

Several years ago, I met someone whom I will refer to as "Jim". Jim suffered from serious mental illness and had been unable to develop an awareness that he had a problem for which medical treatment was necessary (and readily available). I tried to be a good friend, but Jim's life was upside down and he regularly got into (sometimes serious) trouble with local law enforcement. I visited him and picked him up from the county jail on several occasions over the years. As I got to know Jim better, I also discovered he had something of an obsession with "the devil" and demons, as well angels and manual copying of long portions of the Christian Bible.

One evening, Jim seemed to be struggling with an intense episode of paranoia and I went to visit him at his request. Upon entering his apartment, I felt that something was... wrong, very wrong. I couldn't quite figure out what it was, but then Jim spontaneously began to verbally relate knowledge of events in my life which were in no way recorded in digital or physical media (Facebook, paper trash, etc.) – private things, secret things, spanning years before I met Jim (and in precise form) of which I had never spoken. It began with one sudden statement, which startled me, which reaction elicited a pained laugh from Jim. He then proceeded to relate more "secret knowledge". His intense gaze (at me) and manner of speech throughout seemed "detached" from the world around him... for just a moment I was genuinely frightened. I said a silent prayer, abruptly changed the subject, and then hurried him out the door so we could go get a late dinner and coffee. Later conversations with Jim suggested that he didn't recall the incident; I've never asked him how he knew those things. Sadly, Jim disappared some time later, after a failed intervention to get him medical help. If he's still alive, I hope a couple of things for Jim. One, that he will realize he needs medical help to deal with his mental illness, and will avail himself of it. Two, that if he is under demonic influence, then he will meet with a kind soul who is able to help deliver him. I have spoken with a real-life exorcist – I didn't seek him out, I met him in passing – and was told that my experience with Jim was a possible sign of demonic activity though not necessarily possession.

Please note that my relating the above is not my way of "pounding the table" to insist that demons are real. It's a very personal and unexaggerated anecdote offered, for what it's worth, in relation to the idea that exorcisms and experience of the demonic would somehow always relate to "internal" phenomena.

<comment><USER25> One interpretation that you seem to overlook in favor of an external demonic possession: he has sociopathic tendencies (perhaps spying on you) and was attempting to manipulate you into thinking he is/was possessed. Maybe you even got wasted with Jim once and let out some secrets. Anyway, I If true, he succeeded in defending his criminal behavior by outsourcing his internal evil on bogus societal constructs such as religion or demonic possession. I see why you got downvoted though; the OP makes a yet another more plausible case of splitting of the self, or growth of a more evil, maniacal self.

<comment><USER24> Actually, I didn't overlook the "spying" interpretation. It's certainly a possibility given Jim's tendency to compulsive and obsessive behavior. But as I noted, the things he related were not accessible in any recorded medium, nor did I speak of them to Jim nor anyone else during the time I knew him. Prior to that, I lived in a different part of the country and was even out of the country for awhile. Some of the things I'm fairly certainly I never related to anyone at any time.

I was never intoxicated during the time I knew Jim – I gave that up several years prior.

Jim never claimed to be possessed, nor anything like that. He would have found the idea repulsive. On the contrary, he generally considered himself to have a privileged relationship with God – a not uncommon delusion among persons suffering from severe mental illness. At the same time, I never heard him justify his personal behavior on that basis. Generally, Jim seemed to believe that other people, especially the police, had serious moral and intellectual defects which caused them to misunderstand and persecute him. He also displayed paranoia (sometimes extreme, to the point of self-harm) about most everything and everyone.

Finally, I never gave (and don't give) Jim a "pass" because I believe he was possessed. In fact, I'm not sure he was. The only thing I am certain of is that he displayed all the signs of serious, prolonged and untreated mental illness. I also thought he was deeply spiritually troubled – so I prayed for him a lot (still do) and I tried to encourage him to seek the counsel and ministry of a couple of wise pastors in the area. However, for all his hyper- religiosity, Jim displayed a strong aversion to church and to authority figures in general. The incident I described previously did make me consider that some aspects of his malaise might be related to demonic influence, and the events seems to defy a natural explanation, but I cannot presume to know for certain.

<comment><USER25> Fascinating story. Thanks for sharing, though I hope you understand my general doubt. But you'd expect that since I'm so far away from these strange occurrences.

Getting back to the point of this thread: when you pray, are you praying to something external, or are you praying to an internal divided, yet more divine, disconnected self?

<comment><USER24> I understand completely, and take no offense of any kind.

When it comes to personal prayer, my understanding has been shaped most strongly by the following two texts:

[https://archive.org/stream/PPCV- Manresa#page/n273/mode/2up](https://archive.org/stream/PPCV- Manresa#page/n273/mode/2up)

[http://christianperfection.info/tta6.php](http://christianperfection.info/tta6.php)

When it comes to corporate prayer, my experiences and understanding have been most strongly influenced by public worship in the "style" of what is sometimes called the Traditional Latin Mass:

[http://www.livemass.org/LiveMass/dayHD.html](http://www.livemass.org/LiveMass/dayHD.html)

There are numerous texts which attempt to explain what the latter "is all about". A favorite of mine is a guide, of sorts, for uniting one's personal prayer with the corporate prayer of the Mass:

[http://www.catholictradition.org/Eucharist/hidden- treasure2....](http://www.catholictradition.org/Eucharist/hidden- treasure2.htm)

Finally, a mode of silent corporate prayer which is also intensely personal is called "Eucharistic Adoration", during which one's attention is directed toward Jesus, who Catholics believe is bodily present under the appearance of bread. Many believers also make "holy hours" before the Eucharist on their own at little chapels throughout the world. There is even an online chapel, of sorts:

[http://savior.org/](http://savior.org/)

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-

A common thread to all of the personal dimensions of these kinds of prayer is that there is frequently an interior dialogue, perhaps deliberately shaped according to a method of discursive meditation. However, there is also understood to be an exterior object of prayer, God Himself or the Saints and Angels. The dynamic by which the interior dialogue is (or can be, in any case) supplanted by something which transcends the one who prays has been the object of much writing over the past 2,000 years of Christian history. Generally speaking, the subject matter is treated by the ascetical and mystical branches of Catholic theology. The second link from the top is to a book which tries to summarize the most accepted schools of thought in those areas, i.e. within the Western Catholic Church.

</comment><comment><USER26> 2013

</comment><comment><USER27> This isn't even porn.</comment>


I got sued for $3 Million by a religious cult - <AUTHOR> http://www.skeptical-science.com/religion/sued-3-million-religious-cult/ This is relevant to any webmaster who keeps a Web2.0 website. Interesting searching the footer I can't spot any legal terms of use?! <comment><USER2> I have serious trouble with any claim crossing (or getting in the general ballpark of) the 'million $currency' line.

So while the hints and lessons might be worth a read, I'd like to finish with my general 'This legal system is insane and I cry every time I see one of these sue-because-it-works-and-grants-you-a-shitload-of-money-for-no-reason articles'.

3 million. Because of a comment. Even the RIAA just blushed.

<comment><USER3> That's the headline number from the statement of claim, not how much they're entitled to. You can write whatever number you want in a statement of claim, and they did!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> U.S. bloggers: Note that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives protection from defamation claims associated with anonymous comments. Quoting from the Electronic Frontier Foundation website (1):

 _...Your readers' comments, entries written by guest bloggers, tips sent by email, and information provided to you through an RSS feed would all likely be considered information provided by another content provider. This would mean that you would not be held liable for defamatory statements contained in it..._

The EFF page adds, "[Section 230] does not apply to federal criminal law, intellectual property law, and electronic communications privacy law."

The Citizen's Media Law project contains additional information about Section 230 and blogging (2):

 _Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants interactive online services of all types, including blogs, forums, and listservs, broad immunity from tort liability so long as the information at issue is provided by a third party. Relatively few court decisions, however, have analyzed the scope of this immunity in the context of "mixed content" that is created jointly by the operator of the interactive service and a third party through significant editing of content or the shaping of content by submission forms and drop- downs.

So what are the practical things you can take away from this guide? Here are five:

1) If you passively host third-party content, you will be fully protected under Section 230.

2) If you exercise traditional editorial functions over user submitted content, such as deciding whether to publish, remove, or edit material, you will not lose your immunity unless your edits materially alter the meaning of the content.

3) If you pre-screen objectionable content or correct, edit, or remove content, you will not lose your immunity.

4) If you encourage or pay third-parties to create or submit content, you will not lose your immunity.

5) If you use drop-down forms or multiple-choice questionnaires, you should be cautious of allowing users to submit information through these forms that might be deemed illegal._

Note that there are some exceptions and scenarios where the law is not so clear. In addition, I have heard an expert in this type of law advise either taking down offending comments or starting a dialogue with the person complaining to head off legal disputes. His reasoning: Is it really worth dealing with the hassle and cost of having to hire a lawyer to bring up Section 230 in front of a judge in order to get the case dismissed?

Read the EFF and Citizens' Media Law website for more information about Section 230.

1) <https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230>

2) [http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/immunity-online- publi...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/immunity-online-publishers- under-communications-decency-act)

<comment><USER3> Although helpful for US lawsuits, the article is about Canadian law so none of this would apply.

<comment><USER5> As far as I understand international cases, in most countries they are only enforcable if the things that you did were also illegal in your home country. So if it's OK to do this in the us, it doesn't seem to be enforcable here (but IANAL).

<comment><USER6> No kidding, you aren't a lawyer and this is completely wrong. If you read the original piece, the case would have gone to Canadian courts. Courts use the law of the land they are in, they do not make "exceptions" for people who live in countries with different laws.

<comment><USER5> There's a difference between a court delivering a judgement and this judgement being enforcable. I never said that the case wouldn't go to Canadian courts. Just because some foreign court says you're doing something wrong doesn't mean that your home country automatically agrees with that decision. Many countries (maybe except the UK) won't care that much unless what you did is also illegal according to their law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dw: They accusers eventually backed down.

This is relevant to any webmaster who maintains a web2.0 website (so basically every webmaster today). Interestingly enough I still can't find any legal terms or even copyright on skeptical-science.com which is kind of disappointing because I wanted to see how well those disclaimers of the type "All comments, links and content is user generated and owned by the poster. No legal responsibility..." hold up in court.

<comment><USER7> Somewhat related for US companies: it's probably a good idea to file a DMCA safe harbor form if your site has user-generated content[1].

1\. <http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would a disclaimer that a commenters views are not you own suffice?

</comment><comment><USER9> tl;dr: if you're threatened with a libel suit in the Commonwealth bend over and take it like a man

<comment><USER10> My grandfather told me men don't bend over and take it.</comment></comment>


Lose It or Lose It - Why, How, and How Much - <AUTHOR> http://forge38.com/blog/2009/12/lose-it-or-lose-it-why-how-and-how-much <comment><USER2> This is brilliant. I love how he shared his milestones, and costings. What do you guys think of the app? Do you think he will get venture or angel?

<comment><USER3> I have no idea if he will be successful in a business sense. However, I do think it is unlikely that he will help many people. The economists at Marginal Revolution point to research indicating that betting on weight loss is generally ineffective: people don't lose the weight: [http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/should- you-bet-on-your-own-ability-to-lose-weight.html)

Ultimately, if you're taking money from people with the expectation that the vast majority of them will fail, well, that doesn't seem like the kind of business that will generate lots of referrals from happy customers. People generally don't like to share their personal failures. Beyond that, focusing on weight per se seems problematic from a public health perspective. It is extremely difficult to lose weight but also not strictly necessary for health benefits. If you can run 10 miles in an hour, it really doesn't matter what your weight is, and the ability to do is a much better predictor of future health.

<comment><USER4> I used this site starting around February of this year. I thought it was really helpful and I ended up losing close to 30lbs in 10 weeks because of it (I've also kept it off since then, too). It wasn't really the money that mattered - I guess I saw it as sort of a game and it was fun to try and beat the goals from week to week. Also, having my friends cheer me on helped a lot (you have to have a couple of friends sign up with you to keep you honest). Perhaps I could have done it on my own without this site but the idea really worked for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a <http://withings.com> integration? If not, why? That seems mind- numbingly obvious. I would consider doing this if there was an integration.

Note that the user experience would be much better too. Rather than need to upload photos, I would just use my scale normally.

Also, you could incentivize the photos by reducing the amount you lose. You could lose less of your bid when you miss a weigh-in by, for example, getting people to join the service. They could then follow your progress to make sure you don't miss your next one.

Finally, I'd make this about a charity and only take a cut of the losses. There isn't much reason you deserve hundreds of dollars for lazy people. This might decrease the success rate but increase your signup rate.

<comment><USER6> Hey, this is John, I'm Randy's minority partner in the site (and so far, I've lost 43 pounds, though as someone with an interest in the site, my own success isn't really relevant.)

Anyhow, I like the actual foot _photo_, not just an integration. It might just be personal preference. I use a withings scale, and weigh in daily, but then I "capture" that with accountability by taking an actual photo of my actual feet. It's a trivial task for a once-a-week thing, and it brings that integer number into the real world.

As far as the "why not charity", people often ask that. Our feeling is that if you want to donate to charity, great! Donate to charity! Don't entangle that with your goals. Besides, then your interest and the charity's interest are at odds. Consider donating your _winnings_ to charity, so your interests are aligned! You can check out the FAQ on the site for more of our thoughts on that.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't consider uploading a photo trivial yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 14K for a design and 5K for the initial legal work seems pretty steep to me for a completely new, unproven web. Surely it could have been done an order of magnitude cheaper for similar quality, no?

Anyway I'm glad he shared the data.

<comment><USER8> It could have been done for cheaper, especially legal. However, I don't think the design would have been as good for cheaper. Keep in mind those were "retail", I had some "friend discounts" I didn't want to make public.

Legal is tough, the weight loss industry can be kind of scary because people can get hurt. It is especially scary if you are doing something "weird". Most new websites or businesses will not need a custom TOS, PP, etc. They can tweak one that already exists.

<comment><USER2> I definitely think the design could of been cheaper. You have to hire people for their strengths and it seems these guys' strength is design. I would then outsource the PSD2HTML to a company like P2H.com, or a freelance (who would probably charge less!).

I imagine the design could of been done for half the price, if you spent a bit of time looking on Dribbble or similar, and outsourced the code.

I've come from a background of having to find the cheapest person, but also equally as high in quality, and you find some great places and tricks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this startup would be a great partner for the Biggest Loser TV show. The show could provide the contestant with money and each week the contestant would make money if he/she lost weight. You could incorporate the original idea by forcing them to give some of the money back if they regain weight.

</comment><comment><USER10> Considering the way you'll make money, I would get a good laugh if you added some advertising to your site for fast food / ice cream places.

Kidding aside, this is an interesting post. I feel like I might have committed less on the design side and then revisited it at some point, but I understand where you're coming from too. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems really cool and I'm always glad to see entrepreneurs making progress. The only thing that seems kind of odd is that it's a service meant to help you lose weight, yet it directly benefits if you don't lose weight. Though, I'm sure that's what the tips are meant to offset.

<comment><USER6> Yup. We call the tips "happy" money, and the penalties "sad" money. We like happy money! Plus: what's more valuable -- a site that skims a couple of bucks off of failure, or a demonstrated and proven way for folks to achieve their weight-loss goals? Hell, we'll write a book and get our faces on Oprah! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Two things I thought of....

1) Can I lie and say that I lost the weight in order to get my money back?

2) Is there anything out there that works with positive reinforcement for weight loss? In other words, instead of punishing people (which may work for some), reward people with prizes (money, gifts, etc..)

<comment><USER8> 1) You weigh in by taking a picture of your feet on the scale. Sure, you can photoshop it or lean on a table (it's actually kind of hard to do that), but in the end, if you cheat, all you do is get your money back, you don't make money.

2) Pretty much everything out there is positive reinforcement. We try our best to help you succeed, we would rather get a tip than keep your money because you failed to make your goals. For years I would try to lose weight for a couple of weeks and then my life would go back to normal. I wanted something where my life would be WORSE if I failed so I made LIOLI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't read the post, but from the comment I think that in order to lose weight there is an easy solution:

Eat less and move more.

<comment><USER8> Yup! That's right! That's why we don't tell our users HOW to lose weight, but help them set reasonable weekly goals and "punish" them if they don't stick to them.

I know how to lose weight, it's the sticking to it over a long period of time and not procrastinating that is hard. I built this for myself, and it is working great!

<comment><USER13> Punishing your clients is not a good way for they to lose weight. I propose another solution, when they stick to their goals they should receive a reward that's a better solution, try it and tell us about it. Don't downmod yourself.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's TechNet is hilariously down - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/ <comment> daniel-levin There is nothing funny about a web service being down? Fuck. Everyone has downtime sometimes. 100% uptime is a fairy tale. Billion dollar businesses (like Microsoft) know this and try to hit lots of nines. This error is probably stressing the fuck out of a bunch of people right now. Someone might even lose their job. MS may have been hit by what in legal parlance is termed "an act of God". Who knows?

<comment><USER2> What is not acceptable in my opinion is that with this post being an hour old I am still seeing the site down. If anybody at Microsoft knows about this they should at least have a valid splash page in place by now. Redirect the whole domain to a static file somewhere if you have to.

It's only a blog so it's not really a big deal, but this is Microsoft. They should be completely embarrassed to look like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's "hilarious" about a site being down?

<comment><USER4> They didn't use good, standard practices for handling the exception. It's an example of them not taking their own advice. Advice I'm sure you could find on the website, if it wasn't down.

<comment><USER5> Some exceptions cannot be handled - that's what makes them exceptional. Other than the page not being pretty it's not breaking any standard practices.

<comment><USER6> I often here this but it seems disingenuous - something is printing an error message, why could whatever that is not recover?

<comment><USER7> The error message could represent defective hardware. If we did our job right, that's about all it would ever indicate. There's few sane actions one could take in an exception handler to remediate the problem. I will agree that a better overall system design could detect this problem and rotate the defective nodes, though.

But in this case for all we know it could be a software defect from which there is no recovery. IMO it's bad to overdesign recovery mechanisms that just end up masking design errors. Clever staged rollouts of changes are good ways to mitigate the impact of a new regression.

<comment><USER6> Hardware failure is one thing but in my experience it's just devs not taking the time to properly handle errors and exceptions. If something fails, restart the process and report the error silently in a log, not facing the customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For when it's fixed, the error page occurring is the generic 500 error for ISS: "Server Error in / Application."

screenshot: [http://imgur.com/L58Cip3](http://imgur.com/L58Cip3)

</comment><comment><USER9> It was inevitable :)

On a side note, as anyone who ran .NET/IIS in production knows, when the 500 page has an error (couldn't reach the session store, ran out of disk space, etc.) this would be shown with no way to remove it.

It made for so many unpleasant Saturday evenings...

</comment><comment><USER10> technically it's not technet but blogs.technet.microsoft.com - technet.microsoft.com is still up.

</comment><comment><USER11> msoft is huge with tons of products. not surprising that something slipped by. why this is frontpage material is another question (but not surprising since people here seem to like it when msoft falls down).

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm quite surprised it's still down - either they have no alerting on it at all or something went horribly wrong and there's a team out there somewhere frantically trying to bring it back...

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of times MS will outsource these sites to vendors – I used to work for one. For people who don't know what it's like, it's basically a MS project manager making ridiculous demands on a very short time frame, which usually leads to shoddy products being delivered.

I'm not surprised in the least.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like just the blogs part of their site is down. [https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/) is up

</comment><comment><USER14> it's still down at the moment

</comment><comment><USER15> Just Microsoft being Microsoft.

It hasn't even been 1 week since the last major incident.

</comment><comment><USER16> It almost looks like someone is trying to work out how to bring up a static page..

      <!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

      <configuration>
          <system.web>
              <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
          </system.web>
      </configuration>

To be fair to them... What would Stackoverflow admins do if their site went down? TechNet is the ISS equivalent.

<comment><USER17> They're not, that's a default message.</comment></comment>


Fintech fiddles as home burns: 97% of apps lack basic securit - <AUTHOR> https://techbeacon.com/security/fintech-fiddles-home-burns-97-apps-found-insecure <comment><USER2> The article or the original post don't really give many details but I have been telling people for years to think trice before using the new shiny app that their bank offer (most of the times developed by consultancies that don't really care).</comment>


Ask HN: What do you know about thorium as an energy source? - <AUTHOR>

Thorium is a naturally-occurring element that is so safe you can hold it in your bare hand, that's four times more abundant than uranium, and that's so dense and highly efficient, a ball bearing-sized amount could provide all the power an average person will consume in their lifetime. <comment><USER2> I assume it would cost a lot in R&D although other nations are currently experimenting LFTR. Beside that, I don't think the cost-benefit is at a point where it would make sense. It's one thing to produce energy but it's another entirely to distribute it. We need to develop both source and distribution.

There is a great video on thorium reactor that was posted here or on reddit a while ago.

<http://youtu.be/P9M__yYbsZ4?t=1s>

That's the extend of my knowledge on thorium.

</comment><comment><USER3> One rather important thing about thorium vs. uranium that is never spelled out in most texts but is very essential- thorium is what they call a "fertile" material, whereas uranium is a "fissile" material. Fertile materials can produce nuclear energy, but they require fissile material to get the reaction started.

In theory Thorium's economics are far better than those of Uranium, but the above factoid makes a full switchover complicated.</comment>


Using Docker with Github and Jenkins for repeatable deployments - <AUTHOR> http://blog.buddycloud.com/post/80771409167/using-docker-with-github-and-jenkins-for-repeatable?utm_source=Docker+News&utm_campaign=a4320fc137-Docker_0_5_0_7_18_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c0995b6e8f-a4320fc137-235720153

<comment><USER2> Is Docker going to disrupt Chef and Puppet? Is it ready for using in production environments especially RHEL

<comment><USER3> I was recently on a podcast panel that discussed if Docker was a replacement or complement to Puppet/Chef.

[http://theshipshow.com/2014/03/deciphering-the-docker- lifest...](http://theshipshow.com/2014/03/deciphering-the-docker-lifestyle/)

<comment><USER4> I've seen Puppet Fabric Chef Vagrant and Docker pop up in popularity over the last couple of years, but I've never really been clear on what the use cases are for each. It'd be a nice to see an easily digestible comparison somewhere.

<comment><USER5> Puppet and Chef do basically the same things: they let you define how a server should be configured, and the respective applications make changes to the server so that they converge upon that definition.

Fabric is a "library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks." In other words, it's shell scripting in Python that makes it easy for the author to switch contexts between local and remote commands, or run a series of tasks. It makes no attempt to converge to a known state like Puppet or Chef; it simply runs what you tell it to.

Vagrant is a bit different; it connects to VirtualBox or VMware to give you disposable VM for use as a development environment. So, if your application is deployed on Debian configured a certain way, someone on your team can make a Vagrantfile that tells your local computer to fire up a Debian VM and configure it a certain way that is similar to how it is in production. (That configuration might actually be done by Puppet or Chef - Vagrant just builds the VM and fires it off.) It prevents various cross-platform issues from being an issue during development, aka "it works on my machine!" syndrome.

Finally, Docker is a way to run a super lightweight container, like a VM, but taking advantage of various Linux kernel capabilities, preventing you from needing the overhead of yet another OS. Your Docker images might have a full VMs worth of content for libraries and such, but they'll not need to actually run as an OS. (Only the libraries needed for your app will be loaded.)

With the exception of Puppet and Chef (which are directly competing products), all are very different tools that can be used simultaneously at various parts of the product lifecycle. Does this help clear things up a bit?

<comment><USER2> So are you saying we can use docker to create VMs which means it is competing with Vagrant and Openstack. If we use docker to deploy containers(war, mysql) then it is competing with Chef and Puppet. I am still confused what is the best use of docker. Do people really use docker to create VMs I doubt this

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: using Jenkins+Docker in a similar fashion myself I extracted most of what I do into a Jenkins plugin for publishing images (I was an early user of the private docker repos): [https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/Docker+build+pub...](https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/Docker+build+publish+Plugin)

</comment><comment><USER7> Though I like automated deployment flows and docker, the author should have stated that docker itself claims to be not production ready in the current 0.9 version. I am a true fan of bleeding-edge technology, but when it comes to production I would like to see a more conservative approach.

<comment><USER8> Whether something is or is not "production-ready" is subjective. Different projects can handle different levels of (un)reliability; "production-ready" really just means "not a significant contributor to your service's downtime, relative to the quality of your own code."

A more useful-and-objective piece of information, I think, would be the average/maximum number-of-nines of reliablity reported by current users of the project. Then you could just look at your own project's current reliability, and allow yourself to depend on anything more reliable than you are.

<comment><USER7> Oh I am not disagreeing with you on that one. Definitely a subjective matter. Just the statement about "production-readyness" of docker comes from the docker developers themselves.

<comment><USER8> Humility is often a problem with software developers, though. Some software is still versioned 0.X after ten years of development, releases, adoption and usage. I would take any developer's claim that their software _isn 't_ production-ready with a grain of salt, and test it for your use-case for yourself.

They are probably correct-enough in that you shouldn't be using Docker in production at Google/Amazon/Facebook/wherever. It's not yet nine-nines reliable. But Docker _is_ probably more reliable than your startup's MVP, and you shouldn't let "not production-ready" scare you away from developing and shipping your new project using Docker.

<comment><USER7> Yes. I did use systems in the past that had questionable versioning, milestone releases a.s.o. and they proved to be just fine. Docker on the other hand is not just a third-party library in your project.

Docker is a container, and I therefore apply the same set of standards that my linux distribution/kernel should fullfill.

<comment><USER8> > Docker on the other hand is not just a third-party library in your project. > Docker is a container

What's the difference, exactly? In either case, a failure in the code composing the third-party component can, at worst, cause an instance of your application to crash and corrupt state, preventing instances on that machine from coming back up.

But as long as you've got immutable deployments[1] set up, when all else fails, you can just destroy the server (hosting the containers) hosting your app instances, and deploy it afresh, which should be automated to the point that it only takes a few minutes.

[1] [http://chadfowler.com/blog/2013/06/23/immutable- deployments/](http://chadfowler.com/blog/2013/06/23/immutable-deployments/)

<comment><USER9> When talking about whether something like Docker is production-ready, the "at worst" can be a lot worse than that, particularly where security is concerned. Months back they found that Docker's API wasn't sufficiently locked down, for example, and could be accessed by an untrusted process. So they changed that and locked it down.

I don't see anything unreasonable about waiting to use a package until the devs themselves say it's "production ready".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the go-to for windows application 'isolation' or 'sandboxing' ? I only know about sandboxie..Anythine else ?

<comment><USER11> Not sure if Cameyo meets all your needs, but it's worth a look:

[http://www.cameyo.com/](http://www.cameyo.com/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks, will have a look !</comment></comment></comment>


Installing Graphite & Statsd on Mountain Lion - <AUTHOR> http://steveakers.com/2013/03/12/installing-graphite-statsd-on-mountain-lion-2/

<comment><USER2> If you're installing it on a laptop just to play with it, perhaps [https://www.hostedgraphite.com](https://www.hostedgraphite.com) might be useful. The 14 day trial means you can fool around and dump it for self-hosted at the end of it. :)

(My company)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was installing on a laptop to demo during a conference talk. I also had aspirations of contributing to graphite (something I've so far failed to do.) Having said that, I do know that hosting and maintaining graphite internally is a barrier for some companies. Your product looks like it will fill that need very nicely. Kudos!

<comment><USER2> Thanks. Yes, for a demo or contributing doing it locally is a good idea. :) Nice set of instructions, it's a bit of a complex beast to install.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I wrote a simple Ruby script that will "replay" data as if the event were happening live. It's great for a demo because you can leave it up while your talking and known data is streaming in. And for me it's even better since I was demo-ing a monitoring tool and could have known alert occurring live. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to cope with Heart break - <AUTHOR> Every time, I think about her, I went into a panic attack state, most of the time.
Blood pressure drops and something shitty happens with the body. Really bad feeling. Hope you guys have something to share. Sorry for asking this strange question, but I think you guys can help. <comment><USER2> Let me ask a question first - Is she dead or did she leave?

If she is dead then take time and grieve and don't let anyone say to you that you should be over it. Everyone is different and everyone grieves differently and in their own time. Grieve according to your needs and you'll come out stronger. Don't grieve and you'll be dead in more ways than you can imagine.

If she left, then take your time and look at what the circumstances that happened. Use that to make the required changes in yourself. This will take time and effort on your part. learn to understand yourself and how you deal with each of the little things that come up in life. Finally, don't let emotions rule you (as in letting your heart be given to someone), wait until everything else is sorted out before unlocking your heart.

You need to build strong foundational and broad based friendships first, otherwise, the emotions will grab you, twist you and ruin your life.

I have watched myself, friends, my children and grandchildren let emotions be the drivers of some of their relationships and little good came of it. Those who built on strong friendships tend to make very lasting relationships. I have been blessed that the woman I am married to was and is my best friend in all ways. I know her and she knows me. Everything else has followed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure where to begin but let me just tell you that things will be better in time. Usually the first few days, weeks will be so hard. You can vent out everything, speak your heart's content, etc. it's okay. It'll be better in time.</comment>


1kb functional JavaScript library for building UI applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp <comment><USER2> This is pretty interesting. What was the motivation behind this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm glad you ask. The motivation was a web client for a research project at work. My first choice was React+Redux, since that's what we already use for our service Qiita, but I wanted something more lightweight.

I made the first prototype using Elm, but it was too painful to integrate with third party components, like CodeMirror[1].

I made the next prototype using yo-yo, but yo-yo is agnostic about state management, lacks inline CSS styles (by choice) and it's based in morphodom (which updates DOM nodes directly) whereas I preferred a virtual DOM approach like Snabbdom or Vidom.

I also considered choo.js, a framework based on yo-yo, but it has the same limitations as yo-yo. It was also very difficult to integrate third party components with it, e.g, CodeMirror, involving the creation of a portal[2], reminiscent of Elm ports.

I also couldn't agree with some of its API choices like namespaces, router design and models as containers for state objects.

HyperApp is ~1kb, and takes inspiration from several sources: the Elm architecture[3], yo-yo/choo's API, the SAM pattern[4], Snabbdom and Vidom.

[1]: [https://codemirror.net](https://codemirror.net)

[2]: [https://github.com/trainyard/choo-codemirror#choo- codemirror](https://github.com/trainyard/choo-codemirror#choo-codemirror))

[3]: [https://github.com/evancz/elm-architecture-tutorial/#the- elm...](https://github.com/evancz/elm-architecture-tutorial/#the-elm- architecture)

[4]: [http://sam.js.org](http://sam.js.org)</comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds Back in Charge of Linux - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-is-back-in-charge-of-linux/ <comment><USER2> I don't know what I thought would happen exactly but when he said he was taking time away I certainly imagined it would be a lot longer than a month.

<comment><USER3> To me on the other hand, it was obvious that he would be back as soon as 4.19 was released and the 4.20 merge window opened (the kernel release cycle has two phases, the merge window where new features and the bulk of the changes come in, and a phase where only bug fixes are supposed to come in). He took advantage of the time when the merge window was closed, since it's a less hectic period, and handed over maintenance to someone who already does something similar (Greg KH maintains the "stable" trees, which also accept only bug fixes).

<comment><USER4> That's impressive foresight.

Why did Linus make such fanfare about his departure if it was always intended to be so short?

<comment><USER5> > Why did Linus make such fanfare about his departure

I'm not sure he did. AFAICT he wrote an email on the Linux mailing explaining that he was taking some time off and why. He also did an interview or two, presumably because he was asked.

He probably realised that a portion of the internet would go bananas but that's not entirely his doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am now waiting for a post from Linus entitled: "Behaviour therapists are just bullshitters" ;)

<comment><USER7> Welcome Linus 1.0.1-000 (first minor revision).

Linus debugged his own communication routines after users complained.

<comment><USER8> People can change their habits only to a certain extent...

<comment><USER9> sudo change behaviour -f linus20.json

<comment><USER10> JSON is likely the least efficient container for a behavior type. ;-)

<comment><USER11> sudo change behaviour didn't work.

Maybe you used the wrong option?

<comment><USER9> Not in sudoers file or group more likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Funny that their code of conduct contains all the standard equal rights no matter what XYZ, while this was never Linus problem. He never lashed out on people because of gender, race or sexual preference. It should simply have said "Don't be an elitistic assh*le aginst people just doing their best."

<comment><USER13> Obviously the COC isn't written just to control Linus' behavior.

<comment><USER12> The timing is impeccable, would you not agree?

<comment><USER13> The timing is easily explained from the perspective of the New Yorker's article publication and a want to do _something_ visible to the contrary as evidence of a willingness to improve as a community.

Hence why the CoC is a whole lot broader in scope than anything Linus has ever done. It's more of a "while we're here on this subject and have everyone's attention, let's clean house a bit."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really wonder what's going to happen to Linux once Linus is gone. I think we've seen now that just a week after he took a break the community started falling apart rapidly.

<comment><USER15> Kernel fragments into a dizzying array of forks, TrueLinux, RealKernel, Linux Core, LinuxPlus and DogeKernel fight for supremacy on obscure making lists and github issue trackers.

The public remains largely unaware.

Huge PR battles over which logo to use erupt, somebody sneaks backdoors into the majority of the kernels. Somebody else backdoors the backdoors. Pretty soon over half the code base consists of backdoors and embedded nVidia graphics drivers.

Buzzfeed publish a list of 15 linux kernels you won't believe exist. A week has now passed since Linus left the project, and we have hit Peak Kernel.

Linux fades from the cusp of becoming a mainstream desktop OS and eventually settles into a niche server role until the 2038 bug wipes out humanity due to some buggy memory management running on an ICBM launch computer.

Chrome OS sees a slight uptick in users.

<comment><USER16> I really enjoyed reading this comment. I'm still smiling. Thanks. Now I can start working happy.

carlmr, you issued a nice writing prompt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Jon Corbet, kernel developer and editor of LWN, thinks the Linux community will become less of what was once a "Wild West world with dueling developers and more of a professional developer community."

Well, that's what all this has always been about right? Power-washing the personality out of open source by subverting the popular movement of the day. A group wants something but there are very few actionable steps to achieve it, and the ones that do exist are long term investments. They're turned into unwitting campaigners for a different goal when someone provides them an easy answer that's really a thin veneer over a different purpose.

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18278072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18278072)

<comment><USER19> Also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18274192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18274192)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273213)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thus restoring the natural order.

</comment><comment><USER21> That was easy.</comment>


Amazon's War on Fake Eclipse Glasses Trips Up Newbie Merchant - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-15/amazon-s-war-on-fake-eclipse-glasses-trips-up-newbie-merchant <comment> j-c-hewitt I work with Amazon sellers (including on getting suspended sellers reinstated). I am not sure that his story is the actual story.

If the glasses were counterfeit, obviously his suspension was justified and he might have committed a felony. If they were authentic but just unsafe, he was foolish to have listed them when buying in such quantity and it's not surprising that Amazon would suspend him for trying to sell them.

However, Amazon is very inconsistent and capricious in how it enforces snake oil rules on supplements and similar kinds of products. In many cases legitimate sellers with authentic FDA-approved GMP-compliant stuff get into trouble while snake oil vendors manage to skirt the rules and get away with selling ineffective stuff.

Amazon does have all kinds of escalation features and different levels of seller support to deal with a suspension. The real issue he had was just buying a lot of highly speculative products that could pose a danger to customers with no sales history at all.

There are so many other cases in which Amazon acts unjustly or inconsistently enforces its (often arbitrarily applied) rules. This is not really one of them.

It is false that anyone can sell anything on Amazon. Most frequently counterfeited (like Jewelry) or otherwise problematic/hazardous categories are 'category gated' and require you to submit a bunch of documentation to sell in it. While there are a lot of problems with the way Amazon does these reviews, it does make it challenging for bottom tier scammer types to pass review and to maintain their right to sell in that category.

<comment><USER2> > Most frequently counterfeited (like Jewelry) or otherwise > problematic/hazardous categories are 'category gated' and require you to > submit a bunch of documentation to sell in it.

I find it surprising that Amazon doesn't gate protective products that can injure people when there's so much focus on counterfeits which primarily injure brands. This time they got burned by simple category 1 PPE and made a big stink about sunglasses, but still allow non-conforming category 3* PPE to be sold.

example: [https://www.amazon.com/YXGOOD-Treestand-Harness-Climbing- Fir...](https://www.amazon.com/YXGOOD-Treestand-Harness-Climbing- Firefighting/dp/B011K7FUUG/)

There's no way that this product would withstand any sort of scrutiny if Amazon actually requested the conformity documentation before selling it. Returned it and reported it - still for sale.

Seems insane that luggage is gated when safety products aren't.

* I'm using the European terminology here because it gives a pretty sane way of thinking about and handling the certification for PPE. Compliance in the US is way more fragmented across different product classes.

<comment> j-c-hewitt Yeah Amazon doesn't review any stuff like that. They may respond to reports after the fact and have a pretty low threshold for suspending a product, but they aren't going to inspect it or test it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When product liability lawsuits start flying, every point the product touches along its route to the consumer gets named. The ones with deep pockets especially.

As big as amazon is, this could have been noticeable exposure, especially if they are partially self-insured and/or have other risk-sharing provisions in place.

Think: class-action lawsuit on an order of magnitude approaching asbestos.

I'm exaggerating a bit, but Amazon is wise to avoid total reliance on their position as facilitating a marketplace as opposed to being the seller. I don't think too many courts would toss a lawsuit over a newly vision-impaired 12 year old just because Amazon only got a cut of the sale as opposed to was the seller -- TOS provisions be damned.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a lawyer, but intuitively it seems like the more control they exercise over their products the weaker the claim that they're just a middleman becomes. Wouldn't a record of being directly involved in quality control significantly damage their case in the event that a lawsuit does occur?

<comment><USER5> In the US, products liability law places responsibility for defective products on all commercial participants in the chain, from manufacturer to the final retail seller. It doesn't matter whether they're involved in any QC at all; it is sufficient that they're selling a product for profit.

<comment><USER6> Right, but in this case several parties will get out because they are not part of the chain because amazon did not carefully preserve the full chain. Amazon will be liable to the entirely of the chain not just a part because they didn't track the full train on each product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't really say I'm surprised about this. If your income depends on the corporate policy of a 3rd party you don't have any contractual business relationship with then you have to be able to take the hit if/when they pull the rug out from under you.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps I am just risk averse, but this sounds enormously financially irresponsible. This man literally shoved all in on with a vendor he neither understood nor had a previous relationship with. I don't think you should be risking making rent for this type of thing.

<comment><USER6> That is what you have to do to start a business: take large risks. Many businesses fail like this and the entrepreneur loses a lot. It is common for someone running a small business to have to work a night job at a gas station or some such job because after paying the bills there isn't enough left to pay himself.

<comment><USER9> True, but when making investments like this you shouldn't invest money you can't afford to lose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > He got an email Monday afternoon from Amazon informing him that he could > continue selling glasses on the site through his account Moon Vision > Products.

...

> Meanwhile, Wright worried aloud whether there was still time to sell the > glasses or if he would be shut down again.

I think that there are enough people now who are worried over the counterfeits that he would have no trouble selling his, IF people can actually find them.

Going to Amazon and typing "Moon Vision" into the search field, it suggests the completion "Moon Vision Products" in "Health, Household, and Baby Care". Accepting that brings up three pages of products, none of which have anything to do with eclipse glasses and appear to have no connection whatsoever to Moon Vision Products.

So either he's been suspended again, or Amazon's search sucks. Either is bad news for him.

</comment><comment><USER11> So I bought a pack of glasses off of Amazon a few weeks ago. I made sure they were listed as adhering to the ISO standard before buying, confirmed the ISO logo and # on the glasses themselves once they arrived, and then proceeded to try them out and observe the sun a bit. That evening I then saw an article along these lines about fake glasses flooding Amazon. Curious, I checked my purchase history and the listing had been removed entirely.

so now I'm super worried that I A) Stared into the sun for like 10-15 minutes with sketchy glasses and B) will not be able to use these on Monday. Probably gonna run to Lowes and buy a pair or two there, since I can be reasonably sure they're safe.

<comment><USER12> There is no way I'm ever staring directly at the (full, non-eclipsed) sun for 15 minutes, no matter how good the glasses claim to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I ordered a dozen eclipse glasses which are clearly fake or defective as I can see my kitchen light with them. Amazon did NOT send me a recall email. People are going to get injured. I hope Amazon gets sued for major punitive damages. They've had this problem for many years, have absolutely no quality control, and most of their products are fake or garbage. In response to returns of this garbage, they proceed to ban buyer accounts. Why does it have to take people going blind before Amazon changes its ways? What a shitty fucking company. Fuck them. I hope the people who suffer get awarded billions in damages but they won't. They'll be lucky to be able to afford their medical bills. And this despite the fact that Amazon knowingly failed to notify some users like myself. Fuck Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER14> Related to this, there was a series of 'solar telescopes' being sold as Childrens Toys a couple years back (unfortunately I can't find the original article now) which was very dangerous because the usage was such that you use your eye on the telescope to view the image (rather than reflecting off a wall, which is a much safer practice) and the solar filter inside was very easily dislodged - not attached all that well. In the event it happens, you can say goodbye to your eyes :(

</comment><comment><USER15> > "After the eclipse these glasses are worthless," says Wright, who invested > about $4,000 in cardboard eyewear that resembles 3-D movie glasses. "I'll > just throw them in the trash."

Yeah, and you knew that when you bought them.

This guy got screwed, but this was a risk he should have realized (not being able to clear inventory)

If he flew out here did he bring any with him? I'll give 10 dollars a pair today.

</comment><comment><USER16> How to tell if your eclipse glasses are fake?

<comment><USER17> I have the same question. I ordered some from Amazon for my kids. I hope this article means that they were carefully verified by Amazon, but it has still made me uneasy about using them. Just knowing fakes are common is really concerning.

<comment><USER18> Assuming you got paper glasses, on the inside of the arms of the glasses should be information about the ISO certifications and who manufactured it. Compare this against NASA's approved manufacturer list. If there's no info or they're not on the list, don't risk using them.

It's weird but I've got a co-worker who bought some cheap Chinese ones and actually block more light from a phone's flash LED than my legit, approved pair. I'd still never use them since my test is very simple and I don't understand enough about the properties that make for good solar filters.

<comment><USER19> Wouldn't a faker just steal the name of a manufacturer on the list?

<comment><USER18> As far as I understood, the "fake" part of these fake eclipse glasses is calling them eclipse glasses with the implication that they are safe when they are not or not made to the proper standards, not that they were forging real manufacturer information.

<comment><USER20> Your understanding seems wrong: [https://www.eclipseglasses.com/pages/safety](https://www.eclipseglasses.com/pages/safety)

If your understanding were correct, the difference between fake and real glasses wouldn't be minor ones such as round-ness of certain parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know of the pros and cons of using these glasses vs using a pinhole camera?

<comment><USER22> Experienced eclipse watcher here.

For the partial eclipse, I recommend a pinhole projector instead of eclipse glasses, especially for children but for adults too. It is 100% safe, because you never look directly at the sun.

For the total eclipse _during totality_ , the only way to view it is with no eye protection at all. You won't see a thing with eclipse glasses or a pinhole projector. And binoculars are highly recommended for a magnificent view of the solar corona.

You do have to make sure to stop watching as soon as the "diamond ring" or "Baily's beads" appear. Totality is over then.

I posted more details here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15006190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15006190)

<comment><USER11> I was under the impression that the diamond ring is what makes it so dangerous to look at an eclipse with naked eyes. Because your eyes adjust to the darkness and in an instant it's flooded with a fuckton of sunlight.

<comment><USER22> There is definitely some truth to that. You wouldn't want to keep staring at the diamond ring! Or any of the partial eclipse.

This is anecdata, but I viewed the 1979 total eclipse with binoculars, and when the diamond ring and Baily's beads appeared at the end of totality, I kept looking at them _with the binoculars_ for a few seconds longer than I should have. It didn't damage my vision in the slightest.

I'm not saying I recommend that! But if you look away the moment they appear, you will be fine. Otherwise organizations like NASA and the American Astronomical Society wouldn't recommend viewing the total eclipse with binoculars.

For some more reputable sources than my own anecdotes, I posted several links in a couple of Reddit comments a while back:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/6rkqr0/the_path_of_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/6rkqr0/the_path_of_the_solar_eclipse_is_already_altering/dl69aej/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/6rkqr0/the_path_of_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/6rkqr0/the_path_of_the_solar_eclipse_is_already_altering/dl62ve8/)

I was also involved in a discussion in this Reddit thread:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6lyei5/befor...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6lyei5/before_eclipse_glasses_and_safety_knowledge_did/)

You don't want to risk your vision at all, of course, but in other recent eclipses, many people were _too_ cautious and based their decisions on fear, as happened to this astronomer when he was a child:

[http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/35055369/i-was-robbed-of-my- ecli...](http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/35055369/i-was-robbed-of-my-eclipse- experience-dont-let-that-happen-to-you)

One other thing I forgot to mention: if you are viewing the total eclipse, don't bother taking pictures! Totality will end all too soon, and the time you spend fiddling with your camera is time you won't get to experience the eclipse.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Laser gun fired from US navy ship - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13033437 <comment><USER2> pew pew!

If I take that picture in the article as the real thing, how in 7 hells do they keep the optics clean enough on a ship to fire the thing? Or do they need to; does ocean spray on the external-most lens not matter, maybe?

<comment><USER3> Some sort of water-repellent glass? Or maybe simply a plain old lid. It would be possible to keep the lens closed for most of the time, except for the short period when it is actually active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would my simple aluminum foil hat be enough to ... uh ... foil a laser gun?

<comment><USER5> Most reflective surfaces are only around 90% reflective at most and cease to be reflective after absorbing a fraction the energy a laser is putting out. You can make much more efficient mirrors, but usually only for a specific frequency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So why do we need this vs just shooting things with bullets?

I'm down with the crazy railgun systems they've developed, but this seems like a boondoggle.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately bullets take time to arrive at their target and are effected by gravity. That makes lasers better for shooting small things far away traveling at high speeds.

<comment><USER7> Lasers aren't a suitable long-range weapon here in the atmosphere, though. The dissipation over distance is very bad. And if your laser is too powerful it'll heat the air it goes through so much that it turns into plasma, making the situation even worse.

It might be suitable for shooting fast moving objects such as missiles over a short distance.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some startups you actually use and respect? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious if there are really great startups we're overlooking out there. <comment><USER2> I used Survata to validate some hypothesis about a potential startup (I'm based in Uruguay and wanted U.S. data, customer discovery isn't that easy at a distance!).

[http://survata.com/](http://survata.com/)

They definitely overdelivered :) I'm a satisfied customer and probably will use them again if I need U.S. data again.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Papertrail ([http://papertrailapp.com](http://papertrailapp.com)) and it's been invaluable.</comment>


Ask HN: finding a cofounder or two - <AUTHOR>

Are there any sites for finding a cofounder or two?  I'm in the middle of NE, so it might have to be remote cofounders although if anyone is in MHK, that would work as well.  I'm actually not looking at starting anything until Jan although I have several ideas for project. <comment><USER2> Mashable has an article listing several social networks for entrepreneurs. You may want to check some Quantcast stats to see which sites have the highest traffic from your geographic area.

<http://mashable.com/2009/03/12/entrepreneur-networks/>

I'd also take a look at tech / entrepreneurship / startup -related groups on <http://meetup.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't used any of these following sites, but they may be of use to you:

<http://cofoundr.com/>

<http://www.partnerup.com/>

<http://collabfinder.com/> (more designer focused)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have heard of people having luck with this:

<http://cofoundr.com/user/login>

That being said, it seems valley-centric and I personally have not had any luck with it in the past.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://thefunded.com></comment>


Mobile Enterprise Hack, powered by AngelHack - <AUTHOR> http://h22154.www2.hp.com/hackathon.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Use this promo code, "HPhack" for 50% off!</comment>


Hosted CI server with one free build agent - <AUTHOR> http://solidbuild.net

<comment><USER2> FYI, StartCom Class 1 is for non-commercial use only.</comment>


Introducing the WebVR 1.0 API Proposal - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/03/introducing-the-webvr-1-0-api-proposal/ <comment><USER2> While WebVR won't push the envelope of what's possible in terms of high end rendering, frameworks like [A-Frame]([https://aframe.io/](https://aframe.io/)) will lower the friction of developing and distributing simple, more utilitarian VR experiences and of hopping in and out of them from your web browser or phone.

I can see many interesting business use cases that can be solved in a lightweight VR context, without needing a full gaming engine.

<comment><USER3> That's just it. Being able to render web content in VR makes it possible for your typical web developer to use their existing skills to build content for VR. Unity and Unreal are fantastic tools and very well suited for building games, but not everything is a game.

Besides this, instant access by url with no downloads and installs, no-app store "gatekeepers" and a free and open technology stack are solid reasons for why you would want to have or use WebVR.

And while performance definetly lags behind native, I'm not sure that it's going to be that far off. WebGL 2, Web assembly, WebGL in workers, will in combination with general improvements in graphics and rendering performance will get it close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm remembering VRML now.

<comment><USER3> It was ahead of it's time. Mozilla's A-Frame is kind of it's spiritual successor. VR experiences starting with just a few lines of markup. Check it out [https://aframe.io](https://aframe.io)

<comment><USER5> VRML doesn't need a spiritual successor - it has an actual successor: X3D.

A-Frame looks a bit lightweight to do anything useful. You should have just implemented X3D.

Edit: maybe that's a bit harsh. But I really wonder why you went and created yet another declarative 3D format. X3D is an open standard that already exists, works well in the browser without plugins (X3DOM), and has fairly good support. It's also more advanced than A-Frame, and the syntax is almost as simple.

<comment><USER3> It's approachable and easy to use. That was the intent. But that doesn't mean its not powerful. It's built on top of a entity-component model (similar in many ways to that of game engines like Unity) that makes it highly extensible and customizable.

The arguments are well articulated in this post: [http://ngokevin.com/blog/aframe-vs-3dml/](http://ngokevin.com/blog/aframe- vs-3dml/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Click a link in one virtual reality room and instantly be teleported to another vr scene at a different url. Sounds fun.

<comment><USER7> Reminds me a lot of Quicktime VR.

[http://www.instructables.com/id/Create-Quicktime-VR- Panorama...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Create-Quicktime-VR-Panoramas/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Disappointed with the current state of discourse - <AUTHOR>

Recently, a quite heated (and needed) discussion took place on HN, and, as expected, was voted dead, yet again, by mods.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6216685
The justification for this sort of heavy-handed, draconian, and dictatorial policy is in the interest of keeping the HN community "pure" and avoiding the eternal September that Reddit and Slashdot have faced.
However, there comes a point with all leadership, where laserlike focus on absolving a single problem that presents itself regardless of what circumstances exist, and the problem that can be solved without heavy-handed and draconian approaches, yet continues to grow worse. We saw this approach with USG, and I fear it is coming to Hacker News.
There needs to be discussion on how to present the best way forward for this community. We can't solve the problem of the eternal September unless we take a holistic approach and think of exactly what we want to accomplish in this community. Abuse of power and micromanagement are the farthest from a panacea I could possibly think of.
The community will have its fair share of lunacy, unqualified posters, "me-too"ers, but that's what gives an online community breadth and depth. It gives a community character. The reason I came to HN in the first place was to engage in intensely scholarly discourse, and I have received that.
To keep it that way, let's be creative and not unnecessarily rename editorialized titles irrelevantly or hellban users that want discussion about the future of the community. <comment><USER2> _There needs to be discussion on how to present the best way forward for this community._

Holy smokes I've never been involved in a community that talks about the need to talk as much as HN. I bet there are ten "Ask HN" posts a week whose main idea is that we should talk about our community and how we need to this or that.

 _The community will have its fair share of lunacy, unqualified posters, "me- too"ers, but that's what gives an online community breadth and depth. It gives a community character._

You haven't been here long - less than a year. This community had a character - a great character - for years. It's been in the last 2-3 years that it's lost most of that character. So to have newbies come here and say that we need x or y for "community character" is a bit laughable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just because I hadn't signed up for an account until this January doesn't mean I haven't been lurking around here since 2009.

The reason we need to have this talk is that we've never been given a chance to.

<comment><USER2> I don't know how most people feel but my personal thoughts are that, if you are lurker, then you are not 'part of the community'.

 _The reason we need to have this talk is that we 've never been given a chance to._

I don't even know how to talk intelligently to that statement. Who has stopped "us" from talking about it before? I was here before there were mods and after mods - are you saying that there are mods who hate change and will autokill/hellban anyone who tries to talk about what you are talking about? Or perhaps that pg himself is doing it? Sorry - you've lost me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You don't know that the mods killed it. Many people on HN hate meta discussion and will flag those threads.

Having said that, recreating a meta thread when you've seen another meta- thread recently killed seems foolish at best.

Is there a suitable META sub-reddit, where all meta stuff can go? (EG, all the Stack overflow meta stuff that gets closed on SE, or the Wikipedia meta that gets derailed by BaseballBugs, or etc etc?)

<comment><USER4> It could be that the lack of a meta sub HN is key to the frustration people are feeling.

Some brief explanation of the moderation goals would be nice.</comment></comment>