A new look for rust-lang.org - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/11/29/a-new-look-for-rust-lang-org.html <comment><USER2> A personal opinion:

The old site said to me "Here's a programming language made by programmers for programmers.".

The new site says to me "Here's a programming language which has a marketing team.".

The "Featuring" bullet list was an excellent way of calling out what makes Rust distinctive, and I felt I could trust what it said to be basically true.

But claims like "empowers everyone to become a systems programmer" or "Rust has great documentation", coming from the language's own designers, convey little information: they might be an over-optimistic view.

(Or, in the language of the blog post: I trust them to tell me what a fireflower is. I'd rather judge for myself whether I believe that it will turn me into Fire Mario.)

<comment><USER3> I strongly agree. The list of features on the old list is very meaningful to a C programmer who will recognize all of those things as things would love to use every day. Its underlying message is "we're technical nerds and we made a thing that you'll like".

The new version is corporate-speak that won't appeal to.. anyone? Its underlying message is "we're trying to get you to like us and we studied how to do this".

But, like, what's the point of a programming language's website anyway? Most people who visit the site will probably be at least vaguely aware of it. You use it if recommendations online, code samples, etc are compelling, and if the early adoption story (examples and motivations) are compelling. All I ever want is a list of examples up front and center. The more words I have to get through that aren't literal actual examples that show both what the language looks like and what differentiates it... the more exhausting the whole experience.

<comment><USER4> I totally agree. As a coder, whenever I visit a website of a project I'm interested in, I'm looking for key technical features to convince me it's the right tool for the job, or that it offers an unique property tht I never even thought about. That's usually conveyed in a list of bullet points, and a couple of examples.

I can rarely find it though. I wasn't quite able to grasp why, and I kind of accepted this as how it is. But after seeing the two revisions side by side, I finally get it! The important, unique information found in the old version. The majority of project web sites are closer to the new version, which hides the complexity behind colorful "screens" and headlines which are short, friendly, distracting, and very, very bland, delivering the same "simplicity, performance, productivity" message regardless of the project. Can you guess what Docker does (or does especially well) just based on the website? [0]

I've learned to cut the crap and go straight to the "about" page to understand the distinct advantages in a more condensed form, but that seems to be missing from the redesign.

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

<comment><USER5> >As a coder

Obviously the website is no longer targeted at coders: the Rust Team seems to target managers to push adoption. To me, it looks like a corporation that has to report user growth every quarter, so they start employing harmful UX to desperately try to push the numbers up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my (useless) opinion, the old website looks more modern and approachable. I can see immediately what are the benefits of Rust, as well as a code sample. The new site only offers a vague tagline ("The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems programmer."), which doesn't explain much.

<comment><USER7> In my (useful(?)) opinion, the code sample didn't really illustrate the nice things about rust. I do like the bulleted list from the old website, but I find the new website more modern and approachable (especially with all the big headings and smaller text that drills down into the details). Maybe they wanted to give users a more focused view on the biggest selling points, rather than show some generic-looking code and several bullet points that noobs might not understand?

But, in my (useless) opinion, the green is... "bold", and that part isn't very modern or approachable

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They have a clean, effective website. It has a pleasing look, and mostly it's just what a webpage should be, after all: a document. Text, images, an interactive code editor. Some CSS to make it look pleasing and readable. A navbar at the top. It works, it is pleasing to the eye, it communicates what it what it is meant to communicate and links to 4 important sections of the website.

Wait, let's throw all that away and develop a vomit-inducing monstrosity, complete with: in-your-face extra-bold title headers, jarring colours and colour changes, overall very large design suitable for tablets and not desktops (which is after all where most of your target audience should be accessing from)... What a complete cock-up. The web design equivalent of painting flames on your car: an immature attempt to look "cool" that turns the thing into an horrendous mess.

I can only sincerely ask why why why.

<comment><USER9> > What a complete cock-up.

Ferociously bad doesn't even begin to cover it.

This is a result of Rust attempting to be "social ecosystem" instead of a "useful programming language". Sigh.

If you really wanted to improve the current website, make the "Featuring" bullets actually change the code in the runbox. Now _THAT_ would be impressive so that people can actually see what all the fuss actually looks like.

As for the new site, I'll leave the cosmetics to people far more qualified to judge.

However, as someone who works in embedded and has been tracking Rust, the _idea_ of putting "Embedded" on the front page and trying to advertise Rust as a useful embedded language isn't just laughable--it's dangerous. Rust is so far from useful in embedded that people who try to use it will _NEVER_ come back and they will report to their managers that it shouldn't even be looked at for another 5-10 years.

Until I can sit down with a sparkly new Windows 10 VM, plug my board in via USB, fire of a Windows installer, double-click on a selection dialog for my current evaluation board, watch it crunch and then pop up a Debug windows with an LED blinking, we're not even at the starting line. (Most environments for embedded now are pretty good about this--getting your blinking LED really is the "Hello, World!" equivalent).

<comment><USER10> I don't mind who downboted this but it would help me to learn why?

It seems to me that this comment is making a valid point, if only in a strong tone.

<comment><USER11> Probably because of snippets like this one:

"the idea of putting "Embedded" on the front page and trying to advertise Rust as a useful embedded language isn't just laughable--it's dangerous. Rust is so far from useful in embedded that people who try to use it will NEVER come back"

Embedded is still at its early development stages, just like WASM and just like asynchronous network programming. Still, all those are on the front page.

WASM a year ago and wasm todays is a tremendous difference. A year ago, in my opinion, WASM was something for experimentation. Now, a lot of the ecosystem "just works" and is developing really quickly. You can write a working JS library and upload it to NPM without even touching a line of JavaScript code.

Async (network) programming in Rust with async/await is promising but still in flux, so the ecosystem hasn't settled yet. Still, a lot of systems already use it in production.

Embedded in Rust a year ago was mostly a list of blogposts, an early draft of HAL traits and some random register binding crates. You had to use nightly, and your code would frequently break. But in just a few weeks, you'll be able to use Embedded on stable, there is an active ecosystem developing around svd2rust, groups like stm-rs and lpc-rs are forming and a lot of device agnostic drivers have already been written. Combine that with a _very_ promising preview of a new version of the RTFM framework. It's not production ready yet, but I'd estimate it will be within 2 years. See [https://github.com/rust-embedded/awesome-embedded- rust](https://github.com/rust-embedded/awesome-embedded-rust) for a summary of the ecosystem.

The problem with the post above is not that it's written in a strong tone. It's that it's uninformed, generalizing and unfair.

<comment><USER9> > Embedded is still at its early development stages, just like WASM and just > like asynchronous network programming. Still, all those are on the front > page.

That is more an indictment of WASM and asynchronous network programming than a vote of confidence for embedded...

And I avoided commenting about things other than embedded explicitly because I don't have any background to judge those.

> It's that it's uninformed, generalizing and unfair.

You claim this statement is the problem:

"the idea of putting "Embedded" on the front page and trying to advertise Rust as a useful embedded language isn't just laughable--it's dangerous. Rust is so far from useful in embedded that people who try to use it will NEVER come back"

and then follow it with: "But in just a few weeks, you'll be able to use Embedded on stable" "It's not production ready yet, but I'd estimate it will be within 2 years."

Ummmmmm ... I think you just made my case for me.

I pull a bunch of the embedded Rust stuff about every 4-6 months and build a "blinky". I have an intern try this about every 9 months--I have yet to have an intern make _any_ meaningful progress without me holding their hand every step of the way. Those same interns pull down Keil and fire off a blinky in about 4-6 hours without my help. Boards with their own environments like Silicon Labs or NXP are generally faster--about 2-3 hours to blinky--but are more annoying when you have to do something outside the "flow".

I'd argue that experience makes me quite specific and informed and my comments quite fair. Thanks.

If you point an embedded engineer at the Rust embedded ecosystem to evaluate, he will hand you your head on a platter. Embedded is _NOT_ ready and putting it on the front page is going to get you a reputation for half-assed-ness.

The problem is that Rust is moving "slow and steady" in an era where everyone wants "growth hacking". Or, if I'm feeling particularly nasty and snarky, Rust "thought leaders" outside Mozilla are annoyed that Rust isn't providing the revenue opportunities for speaking and consulting that languages like Go and Swift do (like Rails used to).

Rust honestly doesn't have a marketing problem. Most of the people I know who might benefit from Rust are tracking it--even up to VP of Engineering levels (oddly, Rust appears to be better regarded than you would expect)--however these people are doing hard-headed cost analyses and don't find Rust to be coming out on the winning side most of the time. The issue is simply that most of the current languages are entrenched for various reasons and moving them aside requires that you be _demonstrably_ better--and that implies i's dotted and t's crossed.

See Theo de Raadt about Rust in OpenBSD: [https://marc.info/?l=openbsd- misc&m=151233345723889&w=2](https://marc.info/?l=openbsd- misc&m=151233345723889&w=2)

What Rust _really_ has is a completeness problem. The lack of completeness in Rust reminds me of Lisp quite a lot--lots of libraries at 70%, very little at 99%+. Every time I try to use Rust for a project, _some_ library isn't up to scratch or requires some odd combination that demands nightly, has some weird showstopper bug that will be fixed "Real Soon Now(tm)" that has been extant for 24 months, etc. Fortunately, Mozilla needs Rust to be up to scratch for Firefox, so at least certain core things get driven to completeness.

I can contrast Rust at 8 years old (and I'm being generous) to Python at 8 years old (sigh, I'm now a greybeard ... "Back in my day, sonny..." <shakes cane>) Rust isn't convincing me to throw any of my languages away in spite of the fact that I really hate C. Python at 8 years old was good enough for me to throw Perl 5 away at roughly the zenith of Perl 5's popularity--now _that 's_ completeness.

I like Rust, but people need to get comfortable with the fact that Rust has a long, slow, unsexy road ahead of it.

<comment><USER10> I have to agree with you. While rust definitely is making progress, wasting peoples time by telling them things are ready is not done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I actually like the new website. I think the primary barrier to Rust adoption now is something along the lines of "my organization doesn't use it"—this website is clearly geared toward persuading CTOs or administrators.

It's a sign of the strength of the Rust community that they feel they no longer need to persuade developers. It implies that many developers have already heard about and are interested in Rust, but need higher-ups to approve using it.

<comment><USER13> Well said. As a programmer I prefer the old site, however you bring up a good point. The new site is a lot better for people in management to see that Rust is used by other large companies and to not immediately discredit it.

<comment><USER14> Then why not make two sites?

management.rust-lang.org and rust-lang.org

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm CEO of WSO2 and we are working on a programming language for writing microservices called 'Ballerina', and we host it's community at [http://ballerina.io](http://ballerina.io). Prior to the first public launch, I pulled 9 of our core community members into an offsite where we developed and implemented the web site.

It was a challenging exercise and so can relate to Rust's community efforts to the redesign. I wanted to offer some perspectives of what Rust's challenges must be.

1\. It is really hard to capture the value proposition for a programming language. While working through Ballerina, there is a hard balance between a) describing the language design, b) explaining why language elements are valuable, c) describe the key types of programming workloads that most benefit from your language philosophy, d) direct those interested to learn more to the right information, efficiently.

2\. As such, whomever is leading the Rust site evolution over the years shows a real touch and depth for messaging. It takes a lot of insight and careful observation to your community over an extended period of time to tease out which elements are fundamentally what is driving your audience. Having said this, I have a tendency to feel that the messaging in the latest version might be creating a messaging abstraction trying to appeal to a wider developer base vs. the messaging in the current site which is more strongly appealing to existing system developers. Is this a conscious choice of the Rust team?

3\. The rust team has figured out, through years of promotion, that the first (and last) question language teams get is always about "who's using the language? how big is the community?". The hardest part about birthing a language is the chicken and egg problem - someone needs to be the first big production app. Dogfooding is really the only way. Rust takes this head on.

I am not a big design person, so don't have an opinion about whether the minimalistic design is better than the new flowing design. A lot of the design influences for ballerina.io came from Go and Rust lang's web site - we are fans! So, I guess you could say that we prefer the minimalism concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just... thank you. Truly.

<comment><USER16> Hey Steve,

I wanted to chime in and say I'm sorry so much of the crticism on HN failed to stay on the right side of constructive. You and your team deserve more respect than that.

What's triggering people, likey fans rust fans sadly enough, is seeing their identity and fandom slipping away from focus. If this page had been presented as a why-rust.org splash page instead of a replacement for a treasured resource I'm sure those same vitrolic people would have been ambivalent at worst.

I like the new page. I'd hate to lose the old one, even if it moves to a rust- doc.org domain or something. And maybe a link to it from the splash page!

That's for all your hard work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

There's no way we can keep up the maintenance of two entire copies of the site; we can barely do the work for one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The colors, the fonts and the thick bars behind the headlines are really distracting and most important: example code on the front is missing as well as the clearly stated list of features ("zero-cost abstractions, move semantics, guaranteed memory safety [...]").

The buttons in the "get involved" section should better be labeled "read the book", "watch videos" and "read contribution guide".

The z-index of the "Click here to try out the new beta site!" banner on rust- lang.org is wrong when scrolling down.

<comment><USER17> And in my opinion the old white/blue/black color scheme provided a very familiar and simple corporate identity throughout the ecosystem.

I don't think those new playful colors will fit the whole ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The old site was pleasantly minimal, easy to find the important things at a glance, and fit everything into a single screen.

The new one overloads you with bright, ever changing colors and useless marketing, while hiding important stuff like language documentation into a tiny link at the very bottom, next to the site terms and conditions.

It is dazzle camouflage [0] for information.

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

</comment><comment><USER19> Feature request: A documentation search bar right at the top on the homepage. As an existing user, that's usually the first thing I want to see. After that, a link to browse the documentation. Then a link to install it.

When looking at the home page, I don't know what "Get started" is going to take me to, but experience with other sites has given me a bad taste with "Get started" buttons. (The content it leads to here is good, though much of it would have been better put on the front page.)

Personally, I think trying to sell the language on the homepage is the wrong goal. I like language examples on the homepage to make a snap judgement about a language. If I can't see an example, I'm going to assume that there is a reason you don't want me to see it.

If I'm unfamiliar with the language, the things I want are:

* A code example

* A listing of properties of the language (e.g. statically typed, compiled, no gc, memory managed at compile time, etc)

* A command to install it

* A link to a tutorial where I can quickly try out the basics

* A link to the documentation so I can get a sense of its quality

* A link to the github page

<comment><AUTHOR> Part of the issue with that is that our documentation search isn't unified. It's gonna take a lot of work for that to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I liked the old site better. It looked like a site about Rust programming language. It had the benefits of the language on it, this new site doesn't look like a site for programmers at all.

It now just looks like every other generic looking product page out there.

I think if I had come to this new site, and not the old site, I might not have bothered to even try Rust out. The new look is just so 'meh'.

<comment><USER21> Form (brand) over function, I guess?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm disappointed that the Rust community is moving from open IRC to proprietary Discord. Sure, people think IRC is archaic, but for them, the Discourse-based forum is plenty modern, isn't it? The fact that Discord is proprietary means that people aren't free to use any alternative client they want. This is especially problematic for people who aren't well served by the official client, e.g. blind people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Discourse is for async communication, you need both.

We love open source, but it's one of many options to weigh. They're also a production user of Rust, which is a pro. It's not that there are no cons, of course... there's just really no perfect option in this space.

<comment><USER10> I just want to say that if and if not you're the PR guy for rust, you're doing a great job.

Rust is a well thought language and while I don't agree with the redesign, I like that you bring the thoughtfulness to the non-language component as well.

I enjoy your blog posts.

Ps: Your parent comment was opposed to discord not discourse.

<comment><USER22> I don't think Steve got Discord and Discourse mixed up. I did suggest that people who won't get on IRC could use Discourse instead, but Steve rightly pointed out that they're different.

Maybe Gitter instead of Discord? After GitLab acquired Gitter, they open- sourced it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We had a bad experience with Gitter, and so decided against it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This website seems like they are targeting CEO and CTO's. The website looks very much like a business website trying to get corporations to sign up. The old website felt it was targeting programmers with it's code sample that you could modify and run directly on the web page.

<comment><USER24> Yes exactly! The content targetting "system programmers" is odd as Rust is great for so much more like the examples towards the bottom about webassembly and such.

Additionally the website seems to take longer to load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Rule #1 of useful programming language websites is to have some sample code above the fold. With this design, I'm not sure where I'm even supposed to go to find some. I'm surprised at how decent it looks visually on my phone, despite my disliking the color scheme. But please, you're not selling some amorphous, all-singing, all-dancing enterprise product, you're trying to tell us about a programming language. So tell us about the language.

</comment><comment><USER26> The one thing that I noticed immediately is that it sends all visitors' data to Google by means of embedding a Google Calendar. I'd like it more if the "Upcoming Events" panel listed the N upcoming events with a link to the Google Calendar, so that users can decide whether to send data to Google servers.

</comment><comment><USER27> Old website looked like made by well meaning technical people who do not have all the time in world to make website with all the latest fads in web design.

New one looks like some shady marketing crap put together with off-the-shelf components like bootstrap libs. But it does 'empowers everyone'. May be they can add 'No programer left behind' and we all be happy.

</comment><comment><USER28> I honestly can't look at the page for more than a few seconds without feeling very nauseous. The stark color changes everywhere make it hard to scan the page for relevant information. It feels way too distracting. I really like Guile's front page. It's very easy on the eyes and yet provides a lot of useful information: [https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/)

</comment><comment><USER29> In general I like the approach of the beta website, though I prefer the very simple visual style of the current one.

The one main objection is the new slogan.

> Rust: The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems > programmer.

They claim it better conveys "what you can do with Rust", but in my opinion being a systems programmer is not more descriptive than the previous statement and it can be read as Rust not being a good choice for anything else than traditional systems programming, which is obviously not true.

Additionally, and this is subjective, I perceive an elitist tone, as in somehow all other programmers should aim to become system programmers, a more elevated type of programmer. I get this is not the intention and I repeat it's subjective, but still.

<comment><USER30> Also, systems programming is about so much more than being good a programming in a particular language. Programming in rust doesn't make you understand memory barriers.

<comment><USER31> > Programming in rust doesn't make you understand memory barriers.

I'm not a fan of the new website, but it's possible that the intent was to be "with Rust, you don't have to".

<comment><USER30> I guess it depends on what you mean by systems programming. You absolutely need to understand memory barriers if you are doing operating systems work; no language can spare you from that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I mean, it's ok. But language sites should have examples of the language on their home page and this _removes_ that in favour of a load of marketing fluff. That is just wrong.

I get that you want to say what works well with Rust, but frankly few of these things are unique to Rust. With minimal changes I could turn this page into one advertising C++ or D.

It's ok to add the new content but the code example and list of unique features shouldn't have been removed.

</comment><comment><USER33> I prefered the old slogan. It actually told me a bit about the language and made me curious to pick it up.

The new slogan does not do that for me. But I might not be their main target - I like programming languages for the code itself and not the applications/domains where I can use it.

The website didn't need a redesign either imo, but it is better than the changed slogan.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm not a huge fan, but it's not bad. Some Rust sponsors have their big logos on there, and the Rust Book (the real documentation) is at the very bottom of the page.

</comment><comment><USER35> Tabbing through the page is kinda annoying because they've set outline: 0 on all the buttons.

<comment><USER36> Genuinely curious about any opinions on how to handle this. I've personally set outline: 0 because I can't stand the blue glow that Chrome puts on.

Is there a way to have good keyboard support & have it look good?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Fear of empty space is showing a lot on new website. Also poor contrast, poor font size, poor vertical spacing, buttons as links - all make things very difficult to even just read. Meanings of links and labels are confusing too.

Don't make it so hard for people to find the compiler and documentation. You are not going to attract users this way.

</comment><comment><USER38> The existing site's "rust by example" is extremely valuable. It's up front and centre. In the new site it's very buried, which is a shame. Much easier to get started, perhaps, but much less easy to see whether I'd want to in the first place.

The getting started stuff is good, though.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Please file an issue with any feedback you have! We're also looking for > people with abilities of all kinds to help maintain the site, and especially > people with design, CSS, and marketing skills. If you'd like to get > involved, please email us!

Just a reminder that if you've got some time to type out a comment in this thread voicing your dissatisfaction you could type that comment out into a Github issue[0] and become a certified open source contributor(tm)!

One of the best things about rust is it's community and it's willingness to change and find better ways to do things.

[0]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/beta.rust- lang.org/issues/new/c...](https://github.com/rust-lang/beta.rust- lang.org/issues/new/choose)

</comment><comment><USER40> I like the design of Haxe front page: [https://haxe.org](https://haxe.org)

It explains both what it is and how it can be used, with a simple (but not oversimplified) presentation. It has a code sample too.

It's better to keep the the code sample on the Rust site as well.

</comment><comment><USER41> Generally LGTM.

I loved the playground editor embedded in the old front page. Any chance it can be added to this one as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> We loved the code snippets in the abstract, but nobody could come up with good, succinct, representative ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't like the new beta website. It doesn't feel rusty. It would have been better if they just kept slowly improving the old website.

</comment><comment><USER43> The content changes make a lot of sense (even though I'm not a fan of a screenful of "testimonials"), but the design feels dated, and not in the good way, like a bad kind of pseudo-retro :/

</comment><comment><USER44> Warning; I'm going to have a brutally honest opinion here.

It's better to start over. With a proper UX design, a proper visual design and a good quality frontend developer. Or at least, as close as you can get.

My first few thoughts on the design:

The design language doesn't seem to convey anything. Whoever chose that color palette? What are the core principles it's supposed to show you?

Elements are severely misaligned all over the place. There is no coherency, composition or vertical rhythm to be found. It has a hodgepodge of font sizes and weights without clear typographic hierarchy.

Links are actually missing a hover state. Buttons have a hover state, just don't expect it to be noticeable. Just like the font size on the buttons - those are 12px. We don't have 1280x1024 screens, unless I've somehow traveled back in time to 1999. 16px minimum, please.

There is too little breathing room on mobile. It's not actually responsive, it just collapses on a single breakpoint. That breakpoint is also in the wrong place (960px), making it too big on tablet portrait (750px buttons, really?) and too small on desktop (960px max on HD+ screens, even 2.5K screens - really?).

It looks like it's made with an off the shelf layout framework without any sort of customization. There's a horrible google calendar embed - why not a simple, integrated solution? There are upscaled(!) PNG logos on there (Chucklefish, Yelp) - why not use a vector file, like decent folk?

Those design patterns are barebones, but work reasonable well on the homepage. However, the moment you click through they seem to be (ab)used for anything and everything. Where are the other, less generalized patterns? And why are the patterns not actually designed for mobile as well? Just dumping all the buttons below each other and making them 100% wide does not make for a good user experience. For that matter, why are there not more effective patterns used? Code example could really use an, oh I don't know, inline code example perhaps? Fortunately, almost all links go to external (sub)sites -without warning- so you won't have to look at this for too long. Just a shame everything looks different from each other, even subsites.

Where are the loving touches? It doesn't have to be a christmas tree, but a little transitions and effects go a long way.

As for the code:

A display font is fine, but preloading six (6!) font weights of the body font, just on the homepage? And not even .woff2 or .woff, but huge .ttf files at that! That's about 3MB of fonts. Nice when you're on 3G; you can see the webpage building up.

It seems to use utility classes. The responsibility for style composition should be in your stylesheets, never in the HTML. The classes look like some clever backend developer cooked them up: "v-top pl4 pl0-l pt0 pt3-l measure- wide-l mw4 mw5-ns w-100 mw-none ph3 mw8-m mw9-l center f3". There, everybody intelligent will immediately know what it does! If you rely on good will for maintenance, this will limit the amount of developers willing to dig in.

Also, there are 4 different CSS files, separated for no apparent reason. Three of which aren't even minified.

SVG illustrations should be placed inline.

As someone with an enmity for big javascript libraries used in the wrong places, the fact that there's no JS should be wonderful. Except that I'm guessing that's part of the reason those design patterns are so barebones.

There's lots more, but let's pick the low hanging fruits first.

PS: I prefer this version: [https://www.rust-lang.org/en- US/](https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/) ;-) It might be stamp-sized visually, but it does some things much better.

<comment><AUTHOR> We hired a designer. We're not frontend devs, but do have people who have some experience with this.

Please file bugs! [https://github.com/rust-lang/beta.rust- lang.org/issues/new/c...](https://github.com/rust-lang/beta.rust- lang.org/issues/new/choose)

Some of this is stuff we know, and are tweaking. As the blog post about this says, this is a beta, and we have a lot more work to do. For example, the calendar thing: it's temporary. It's not trivial to style. There's been zero optimization work, which is a lot of what your comment is about. We didn't want to invest in that until we got the big picture stuff down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The beta site is several times slower to load than the old site.

[https://www.webpagetest.org/result/181130_4K_96804be61480d15...](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/181130_4K_96804be61480d159a727823bbf4d1aff/)

[https://www.webpagetest.org/result/181130_FK_8e4d67b49b8d2ea...](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/181130_FK_8e4d67b49b8d2ea9772797f0da039081/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we've done zero performance work yet. That comes next. There's no reason this site can't be super fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I like it, but I would ditch the super heavy fonts. They are needlessly difficult to read. You only have to look at the Governance page to see that you've gone a few weights to far with the font choice.

[https://beta.rust-lang.org/governance](https://beta.rust-lang.org/governance)

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't hate it, but I do miss the similarity the old site had to the rest of the ecosystems documentation. I'm glad to see more information added though.

</comment><comment><USER48> This new site looks really awesome and really got me into why not trying rust the next time I'll write a hundred LOC bash script.

Much better than the previous version. I had a Wow effect yesterday on mobile and now seeing it again on desktop, it's till wow! Strange that there are so many negative arguments here.

Also really interesting to learn about the fireflower problem - there's some truth in it! Applicable to so many things in live...

</comment><comment><USER49> That slogan, with the emphasised "everyone", reads to me like "The systems programming language for idiots".

</comment><comment><USER50> sorry, too much happening on the page for me. not wild about the colour scheme.

it looks fresh, but it's a lot of colours all at once sorry.

<comment><USER50> less is more for me

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Missed opportunity for some circa-2005 rusty photoshop tutorials in action here. [https://photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/rust/rust.htm](https://photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/rust/rust.htm)

</comment><comment><USER52> Doesn't the "small Rust application" at the bottom of the page lack an "extern crate ferris_says;"? I know very little about Rust, but I cannot get the example to work without that...

<comment><AUTHOR> Rust 2018 does not require extern crate anymore (except in certain very limited circumstances); when this page goes live, that will work. Or you can try it out on beta.

<comment><USER53> For those curious (like me), this is described in the upcoming Edition Guide at [https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/edition- guide/rust-2018/...](https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/edition- guide/rust-2018/module-system/path-clarity.html) .

<comment><AUTHOR> And the exceptions, yet to be described in the guide: [https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/edition- guide/issues/12...](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/edition- guide/issues/121)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The new design looks like it was made in Microsoft Word.

</comment><comment><USER55> I don't see any support for switching human language on the beta site. Having the ability to switch on the page itself helps a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> As we said in the post, that's because the translations aren't ready yet. When they are, we'll make it obvious.

<comment><USER55> Sorry, I must of missed that in the post before looking.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's all good!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The colors are great, really comfortable contrast level, and the typeface is easy to read. Fairly tight information density, but low-density layouts are a common complaint with the target audience so I think it strikes a good balance. My compliments to the designer.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think it's beautiful! :)

</comment><comment><USER58> Haha, someone read Badass

</comment><comment><USER59> I love it!

</comment><comment><USER60> I guess that's the result when a Rust developer does the job of a Web dev.

<comment><USER61> Is it a compliment ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The new text is a great improvement over previous programming language theory jargon.

<comment><USER63> Yeah who wants to hear programming language jargon when looking up a programming language

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Love the new design, it adds a feel to the project that many others lack.

Compare it to [https://www.python.org/](https://www.python.org/) for example which is perfectly functional but squint and you could be on any page on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER65> If it empowered everyone, it would be available on other OSes than Linux, Windows, and macos (ok, it is available on Android and iOS apparently and some *BSD variants too).

I'd love to use Rust - but my business requires support for, (in addition to Linux and Windows), Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and OS400 for me to serve my customer base.

Rust can't empower me there, it simply isn't available.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are people working on it! Debian is now shipping 14 architectures. The big show-stopper is if LLVM has support for a particular bit of hardware. OSes are easier. We need people who know these systems to help out. It's not easy, but we'll get there.</comment></comment>


Reading bits in far too many ways - <AUTHOR> https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2018/09/27/reading-bits-in-far-too-many-ways-part-3/ <comment><USER2> Very important for things like video codecs, since this is an inherently serial process and (as mentioned in the article) attempting to parallelise it is not really possible nor gives much gain.

Also interesting to note that the ultra-naive "pull one bit at a time and accumulate them until you have enough" method which often taught in CS courses when they cover Huffman compression and the like is basically a useless dead- end. In practice, no one decodes variable-length-codes that way because it is far too slow.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is part 3 of a series; part 1 was discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16417490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16417490)

<comment><USER4> I seldom understand his posts. He goes way too deep into the nitty gritty details, which is actually good.

However, its quite tough for me to apply his teaching to real life apps. I had gone through his Twitter and LinkedIn and looks like he works in video game industry.

<comment><USER5> He works for RAD Game Tools, a developer of middleware for games. He also used to be part of the demoscene group Farbrausch, responsible for 64k intros such as FR-08 and the 96k first person shooter Kkrieger.

<comment><USER6> _Kkrieger_ was totally mind blowing, and for me the first painfully clear demonstration between the difference between tech demo and product known and used by the masses.

It was science fiction level technology. Wikipedia says development was started in 2002, but I have (possibly completely wrong) recollections of seeing some kind of (non playable, 320x200 resolution) demo way earlier than that.

<comment><USER5> Your recollection doesn't seem accurate, sorry :)

Btw, it might be interesting to know that AAA games also use plenty of procedurally generated assets through tools like Speedtree and Substance, but they are typically generated offline instead of application startup.

<comment><USER6> You don't happen to know any user rooster from scenemusic.net? There are a couple of souls I only communicated with messages on that server and it would be nice to be in touch again.

<comment><USER5> I don't, sorry.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Just thinking you have poor endurance genes changes your body - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/just-thinking-you-have-poor-endurance-genes-changes-your-body <comment><USER2> Congratulations.

Another test and proof that the placebo effect is real.

This has been done so many times in so many ways, there are better ways to spend research money at this point than to beat this proverbial dead horse.</comment>


Show HN: Cardtanium – Your complete information card. In a URL - <AUTHOR> https://cardtanium.com/#eyJjMSI6IkpvbiBDaXRpemVuIiwiYzIiOiJwcm9ncmFtbWVyLCBwcm9kdWN0IG1hbmFnZXIiLCJjMyI6IkJhc2VkIGluIEJlcmxpbiIsImQxIjoiTTogKzQ5IDE1MiA4ODQgOTAyIDc0MSIsImQyIjoiRTogam9uYmVybGluQGdtYWlsLmRlIiwiZDMiOiJGb3JtZXJseTogR29vZ2xlLCBSb2NrZXQsIEFtYXpvbiAmIFN0cmlwZSJ9 <comment><AUTHOR> This is sort of a stupid idea. But I always liked the idea of 'stuff in URL' especially something personal.

This way, there's no need for a server. It's just Github pages.

To make your own card just go to

[https://cardtanium.com](https://cardtanium.com)

Also I was thinking of a way to put an image on the right, but couldn't come up with any ideas I liked. Linking to FB profile? Hard to get an easy way to help people input that URL. And I didn't want to host. Maybe no image is OK. If anyone wants images and has a good idea on how to add them (without needing to host), submit a pull request.</comment>


Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/technology/tulsi-gabbard-sues-google.html <comment><USER3> It might be more appropriate to link to a indepdent article about this rather than Gabbard's site. Here is one from The Verge [1].

It sounds like Google's fraud/spam algorithms automatically triggered the suspension (maybe due to a large increase in spend meant to build on Gabbard's post debate momentum). The account was unlocked after human intervention. Gabbard insinuates the initial suspension was politically motivated, which seems hard to believe. But either way, it highlights a long standing problem with Google giving algorithms so much power. It is also potentially more damaging for the all of us who aren't presidential candidates and can't get our accounts quickly restored if we mistakenly anger some unknown Google algorithm.

[1] - [https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8930373/google-tulsi- gabb...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8930373/google-tulsi-gabbard- democratic-candidate-lawsuit-ad-search-ban-political-bias-debates)

<comment><USER4> > _insinuates the initial suspension was politically motivated, which seems > hard to believe_

How is that hard to believe? We know for a fact Google does political censorship.

[https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows- whis...](https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec- reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/)

[https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/25/breaking-new- googl...](https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/25/breaking-new-google- document-leaked-describing-shapiro-prager-as-nazis-using-the-dogwhistles/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ricI5t66cj8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ricI5t66cj8)

(note these are fresh links just from the last 2 days)

<comment><USER5> I work at Google on ranking algorithms for Search. I'm aware of everything that controls how web pages are ranked. If I ever encountered a system that was designed to alter the results for political reasons, I would resign.

<comment> word-reader Just as an example: a controversial political figure's popular website is buried on page 5 of Google results (underneath a mountain of criticism) when you search for his name, despite being in the top 3 results of page 1 for all of Qwant, DDG, Bing, Mojeek, and Yandex. Obviously, the website is being downranked for being full of "conspiracy theories and fake news" (I wouldn't completely disagree that it is). But who decided all this? Is this not "political"?

<comment><USER5> I'd be happy to pass it along to debug if you have a specific query in mind. In the cases of this I've seen in the past, there's been a specific actionable bug that we were able to fix.

(Lots of other search engines use each other as backends, so don't be too surprised when they return consistent results.)

<comment> word-reader I think DDG and Qwant basically use Bing as a backend, potentially augmenting with their own crawlers. Yandex and Mojeek use all their own stuff, as far as I can tell. The query is "alex jones". At least put the garbage website at the bottom of page 1 where most people who aren't already looking for it still won't click it, page 5 is just lacking in subtlety.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I'll pass it along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This brings up the inherent absurdity of wanting tech infrastructure providers to sensor their platforms.

When the mob decides that they don't like a thing then it's "why were they allowed a platform".

Whereas when the mob wants access to a thing and then it's restricted it's "why were they allowed to capriciously control my access"

It's an inherently unwinnable game. Tech companies who are essentially an information utility at this point controlling huge flows of content should not be made judge jury and executioner on what is acceptable speech.

It's bizarre to me that people who on one hand seem to hate these companies also want to give them immense power and responsibility to restrict access to information. It's because they associate the idea of censorship with getting the specific thing they want censored and not with a broader world in which these companies hold this power.

Not a huge fan of Joe Rogan but Naval Ravikant expresses this very lucidly on the podcast:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNWN5ioF-9A&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNWN5ioF-9A&feature=youtu.be&t=592)

<comment><USER7> I feel like we've forgetton how to propose and discuss common standards that should apply in encouraging and enforcing public speech. It looks like a unwinnable game if there aren't standards - but our media and our politicians rarely ever couch discussion in those terms, only in individual conflict terms which makes it more difficult to pull a common direction out of the mass.

<comment><USER6> Yes this is a huge problem. These days everyone gets a say and the loudest voice wins but many people are simply not systematic thinkers. Their idea of a how a system should behave is whatever behavior gives them what they want now, regardless of what the final equilibrium of moving to that state would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> NYT article that has more information: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/technology/tulsi- gabbard-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/technology/tulsi-gabbard-sues- google.html)

The account was inactive from 9:30pm on June 27th - 3:30am on June 28th. This doesn't seem like an act of malice from Google, but rather a verification check.

Some excerpts:

> Tulsi Now Inc., the campaign committee for Ms. Gabbard, said Google > suspended the campaign's advertising account for six hours on June 27 and > June 28, obstructing its ability to raise money and spread her message to > potential voters.

> After the first Democratic debate, Ms. Gabbard was briefly the most > searched-for candidate on Google. Her campaign wanted to capitalize on the > attention she was receiving by buying ads that would have placed its website > at the top of search results for her name.

> The lawsuit also said the Gabbard campaign believed its emails were being > placed in spam folders on Gmail at "a disproportionately high rate" when > compared with emails from other Democratic candidates.

<comment><USER9> Changed to that now. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20528797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20528797).

<comment><USER10> In general, I think people would appreciate the link not being to a paywall.

<comment><USER9> Users usually post workarounds in the thread. There's one elsewhere in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I saw that Googles response was that "large spending changes" caused an automatic suspension.

With all of Google's tech, they should just have that weird Google Assistant call the phone listed on the account to have the account owner verbally confirm the changes instead of flat out freezing it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Both sides, Democrat and Republican, are now anti big tech.

Love it or Hate it, when you piss off the most powerful governing body on the planet you're in for a bad time.

My question is more timeframe: Google obviously won't be broken up tomorrow, but probably earlier than a decade from now.

I guess the timeframe depends on who wins the next presidential election?

<comment><USER13> The worst part is I think both sides have at least some merit for their suspicion. Obviously the Republicans seem to be more openly punished and the balance tipped against them, but the Democrats also suffer occasionally, especially if they are not the right Democrat.

Google might be treading dangerously close to becoming persona non-grata for 50% of the population, regardless of who wins. There is also a cautionary tale there that perhaps the whole idea of "don't talk politics at work" was not some tool from The Man to keep workers subdued, but rather a hard-earned lesson to keep companies from imploding when employers think they've been hired to be activists.

Surprise, turns out not everything has to be political and your personal identity doesn't have to bleed over to your professional life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Since OP has no actual information, some excerpts from the NYT story:

>Tulsi Now Inc., the campaign committee for Ms. Gabbard, said Google suspended the campaign's advertising account for six hours on June 27 and June 28, obstructing its ability to raise money and spread her message to potential voters.

>The lawsuit also said the Gabbard campaign believed its emails were being placed in spam folders on Gmail at "a disproportionately high rate" when compared with emails from other Democratic candidates.

>Google has automated systems that flag unusual activity on advertiser accounts — including large spending changes — to prevent fraud, said Jose Castaneda, a spokesman for the company.

>"In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter," he said. "We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters, and we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology."

>Gabbard campaign workers sent an email to a Google representative on June 27 at 9:30 p.m. once they realized the account had been suspended. In emails reviewed by The New York Times, the campaign sent Google a screenshot of a notice of suspension for "problems with billing information or violations of our advertising policies."

>The account was reactivated at 3:30 a.m. on June 28. In the email announcing that it had reinstated the account, Google wrote that the company temporarily suspended the campaign's account to verify billing information and policy compliance, but offered no other explanation for what had happened.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/technology/tulsi- gabbard-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/technology/tulsi-gabbard-sues- google.html)

<comment><USER15> >The lawsuit also said the Gabbard campaign believed its emails were being placed in spam folders on Gmail at "a disproportionately high rate" when compared with emails from other Democratic candidates.

Or you know, more people spam foldered your junk mail and triggered the algorithim to learn and mark you more globally as spam. Shit, I spam folder anything that is unsolicited, any politicial party.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't even have to be from people, she could just have a terrible email full of red flags and/or didn't send from a decent ESP with a good server reputation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Algorithm defense is a new Twinkie defense.

On the first debate where so many candidates are buying google ads, for Google to have not planned for a spike in advertising and blaming it on the algorithm is just inexcusable.

Either Google is very incompetent and the person in charge needs to be fired, or there is something else going on. Either incompetence or intentional their action did impact Tulsi Gabbard's post-debate moment and her fundraising ability and google is liable in election interference.

</comment><comment><USER18> Tulsi is the most prominent Democrat presidential candidate that the media often says has conservative views. She is also broadly considered anti- establishment. Are there any establishment Democrat candidates (e.g. Harvard and Yale Law faculty member and senior senator Warren) to date that have had their Google ad accounts suspended by an 'unbiased' algorithm?

<comment><USER19> This is the kind of evidence I'd want to see before going along with the "we _know_ there's nothing to see here" crowd - if this outage is completely legitimate, I'd think Google should be able to produce a list of similar outages involving non-run-of-the-mill accounts - or, do they genuinely have no attribute that would provide their algorithm with a hint as to the "class" an account falls in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Of all the trending searches after the debate, Google's systems singling out Tulsi's account for flagging seems suspicious, and Google's robo-responses to press inquiries specious. I'm sure other candidates upped their spending, so let's have the ACTUAL numbers Google!

Also, it's a little surprising to see parroted defenses of Google here - <USER2> operate behind an opaque cloak, designed from the ground up for plausible deniability on every single one of their actions. Their P.R. statements cannot be believed. Tulsi's criticisms do not seem unsubstantiated, and the fact she's suing a corp. with unlimited funding indicates her campaign believes they have some evidence of malice. Between the two, I'd give Tulsi the benefit of doubt, and wait for the discovery stage in this case

</comment><comment><USER21> stoked to see this on multiple fronts:

\- someone with a vested interest + some modicum of power can hold .google's feet to the fire on this issue and will likely hammer the point home even post-settlement or whatever (remember when they out of the blue suspended my ad account?...)

\- Tulsi maybe gets more exposure as a candidate, leading people to her anti- war ideals, which may influence other candidates

admittedly haven't heard google's side but there's precedent here for them committing unwarranted screw ups. of course, if the campaign did do something naughty that'd be a pretty big self inflicted wound.

<comment><USER22> Better that they hash the issue out in the primaries than in the general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How is this a violation of her "Freedom of speech"? Google is not the government. The Bill of Rights protects us from the government, not private enterprise. I feel I'm surely missing some key detail.

</comment><comment><USER24> The microphone cutting has been going on since long before the debate, kiddo.

Welcome to the private-government deplatforming dystopia.

</comment><comment><USER25> In all likelihood, Gabbard and her campaign managers are perfectly aware that: 1\. Google's automatic account suspension systems were doing exactly what they would do for any other account.

2\. There was no intentional discrimination/meddling.

A sudden spike of search traffic corresponding with a sudden influx of advertising spending is likely to trigger red flags for the system. 6 hours of downtime for these google ads did damage her campaign, but Gabbard, or anybody, is not entitled to 100% uptime for a service provided by a corporation, except to the degree that it violates a contract/ TOS.

"Google's discriminatory actions against my campaign are reflective of how dangerous their complete dominance over internet search is, and how the increasing dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens our core American values," Gabbard said in a statement. "This is a threat to free speech, fair elections and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans."

Her statement quoted above make me like her less, and I don't feel like I'm a particularly pro-google guy.

</comment><comment><USER25> In all likelihood, Gabbard and her campaign managers are perfectly aware that:

1\. Google's automatic account suspension systems were doing exactly what they would do for any other account.

2\. There was no intentional discrimination/meddling.

A sudden spike of search traffic corresponding with a sudden influx of advertising spending is likely to trigger red flags for the system. 6 hours of downtime for these google ads did damage her campaign, but Gabbard, or anybody, is not entitled to 100% uptime for a service provided by a corporation, except to the degree that it violates a contract/ TOS.

"Google's discriminatory actions against my campaign are reflective of how dangerous their complete dominance over internet search is, and how the increasing dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens our core American values," Gabbard said in a statement. "This is a threat to free speech, fair elections and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans."

Her statement quoted above make me like her less, and I don't feel like I'm a particularly pro-google guy.

<comment><USER26> To plays devils advocate, google may be a private company, but it has a sheer dominance in a how information is disseminated, giving it a influential role in how people formulate there beliefs and opinions. And even though currently, as a private company, Google can argue that they don't have to allow anyone on there system, because of how much influence they have on the flow of information, not having proper or fair access to there platform is equivalent to a community not being giving access to vital utilities or education. There is no equivalent or remotely second best option to google.

The event regardless is an issue in both Googles system and for Gabbards campaign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Google should just disallow political ads entirely. This is a no-win proposition. Being too lax leads to election meddling, trying to flag suspicious activity is censorship. You're just an easy punching bag.

They've already stopped serving political ads in Canada, so there's precedent.

</comment><comment><USER28> > The lawsuit accuses Google of violating the First Amendment, among other > offenses, and Gabbard is seeking $50 million plus assurances that Google > will refrain from "censoring or restricting" the account.

Isn't it common rhetoric that Google _can't_ violate the First Amendment, being a private company? They have the ability to arbitrarily close or censor any account they choose. Politicians don't get special treatment, especially while saying it's fair for Google to close accounts belonging to people whom they personally find objectionable.

</comment><comment><USER29> On one hand this might seem like Google is trying to hurt her. On the other hand, if there was anyone at Google who was actually rooting for her, and had any input or ability to suspend accounts, this could end up actually helping her, as it pits her against the "big tech" and would in the long term help her chances of winning the election.

But, as they say, sometimes, the algorithms is just an algorithm, and it could be just a routine suspension and Gabbard's campaign saw an opportunity to profit (PR-wise) from it.

</comment><comment><USER30> "We didn't really do anything to you, it was this automatic machine that we programmed. We have no way of controlling what it does, and thus are not responsible for the outcomes of its activities at all."

Google defense brief. Also, probably, a classic Dilbert comic.

</comment><comment><USER31> On a first principles level, this highlights the core issue of bans/blocks/suspensions being handed out immediately rather than after a series of strike-based warning messages or something to that effect.

YouTube creators come to mind as some of the most blatantly affected by this, i.e. when YouTube automatically demonetizes videos, losing the creator revenue from 75%+ of the video's viewers, and then remonetizes it after an appeal.

At no point should any algorithm have the ability to block any account or perform any other such drastic measure (demonetization, etc.). It's just absurd.

</comment><comment><USER32> [http://archive.is/AM6iY](http://archive.is/AM6iY)

</comment><comment><USER33> whoever coined the term "artificial stupidity" is/was a prophet

</comment><comment><USER34> Would he resign if Google took a position in a non political debate but a scientific debate?

[http://linkaudit.co/blog/google-takes-side-in- controversial-...](http://linkaudit.co/blog/google-takes-side-in- controversial-vaccine-safety-debate/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Tulsi is one of the few candidates on either side that believes in servant leadership

</comment><comment><USER36> Perhaps it's a simple case of "Gmail users label her messages as spam more than other Dem candidates." and Google is using that to train their filter.

Social norms have never been decided in an entirely open and objective way. We're free to speak. Not be heard. Tulsi isn't owed an audience of Gmail users.

Look at all these "but the free market!" type pols who got us to give everything up to corps getting bit. Suddenly investigations and regulations be coming!

Not a peep when, you know, they started bulk collecting the general public's phone calls and emails.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm not a proponent of censorship by any means, but I'm starting to get serious fatigue of these types of stories.

Especially in the case of politicians, I have no sympathy when Google or Facebook or Twitter decides to terminate or otherwise take action on an account. Rally behind them until it becomes inconvenient, then launch a suit! What hypocrisy.

We got here because of our weird fervor for capitalism, holding it up as some pinnacle of society. Yet when a company successfully exploits all that capitalism has to offer, it's screams and outrage!

I admit, I am not fully up to speed on this story. But here's the kicker - after reading this article, I _still_ have no idea what the story is. This is just boilerplate "rally against the big tech companies!" without any rhyme or reason - at least no reason mentioned in the article.

> _Please join Tulsi in her fight for our core American values of free speech > and fair elections._

Free speech flows two ways, which is often forgotten. Corporate entities are entitled to free speech as well, for the better or for worse. They are also entitled to remove anyone from their platform or limit the services they offer someone. This is baked into the concept of capitalism. The whole legal system is built on the premise that corporations are awarded autonomy / person-hood.

The whole rallying against the corporations which capitalism enabled, in the name of capitalism and free speech.. I just don't understand it.

We wanted capitalism. We got it.

Stop begging for governments to intervene in private companies, while praising capitalism like some god. Pick a path. And then, apparently, ask for some donations.

<comment><USER38> Let companies rule the world! Let them put whatever they want in our meats! Remember the term "mystery meat"? That was from poor quality controls in corporate with zero government oversight.

<comment><USER37> I'm not saying that this is the way it should be.

I'm just pointing out that we _fought_ for capitalism in it's truest form, and then got angry when companies exploited it. (And still praise it when it suits us)

<comment><USER39> You're describing the caricature of capitalism by people who oppose it and saying "we fought for it". That's silly, regardless of whether your description is accurate or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Tangentially related question: How much money will be spent by all these losing campaigns?

<comment><USER41> A few hundred million dollars: [https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential- race](https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hope so wins the lawsuit!

<comment><USER40> Yea it almost certainly tanked her campaign.

<comment><USER43> On the contrary, I believe the publicity will call lots of attention to her.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can anyone think of any likely and plausible explanations for what went wrong on Google's end?

<comment><USER44> Yes - it's even outlined in the articles. A sudden increase in spending triggered a fraud detection algorithm, and the account was re-established before the next morning when a human verified there was no fraud.</comment></comment>


Hacker Shows Us How to Unlock a Laptop Using an NSA Tool [video] - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacker-unlock-a-laptop-nsa-tool-slotscreamer <comment><USER2> They exploit Thunderbolt, whose insecure "All your memory are belong to us" model is known. I wonder what the attackers would use on a non-Thunderbolt laptop (say, a ThinkPad, or a regular Dell/HP/What-Have-You).

Of course, using an Apple laptop to demo this makes a lot of sense: they are popular, almost ubiquitous, and they provide an external vector to full, direct memory access. But I don't think the scare factor holds up on a non- Apple device.

<comment><USER3> Most laptops which don't have thunderbolt ports have a pci express card slot that's also vulnerable to DMA attacks.

<comment><USER2> Do you mean ExpressCard? I don't think I've seen a single laptop with an external PCIe slot.

Even so, neither ExpressCard or internal PCIe are used for generic, everyday connectivity (like projectors / external screens). Thunderbolt on Apple laptops is marketed to be used for those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have physical access it's game over.

FireWire had this issue, so did express card, heck even if you don't have TB, express card or any other PCIe external interface.

Open the laptop and either find an empty microPCIe slot or pull out the wireless card there is some risk of a BSOD but it works in many cases and voila you have DMA.

That said bot Intel and AMD do have ways of encrypting memory regions which can prevent DMA attacks.

Windows 10 has DMA port protection which enables the OS to restrict DMA access from external ports this is available from build 1507 but I'm not sure if it's enabled by default.

Edit: looks like this is enabled by default when Bitlocker is enabled on recent builds.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> some links related:

\- [https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-22/dc-22-presentations/...](https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-22/dc-22-presentations/Fitzpatrick- Crabill/DEFCON-22-Joe-FitzPatrick-Miles-Crabill-NSA-Playset-PCIe.pdf)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD2Wxe4RLeU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD2Wxe4RLeU)

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool. I want that for Christmas.</comment>


Branded Man: The Long Tradition of Outlaw Poets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/03/23/branded-man/ <comment><USER2> As I read the author's knowing quotes of the various poems, and one by one they fly over my head, I recall why I never was able to get into poetry. Perhaps it's a language and a context that I would have to steep myself in. Perhaps I should take it as a challenge and start to read more poetry. Any suggestions, hacker types?

<comment><USER3> First, most of the quotations are translations from French, and translations of poetry often don't convey the quality of the original. Second, of those first written in English, a fair number are from Merle Haggard's songs, and probably better heard than read. My suggestion if you wanted to read more poetry would be to pick up a decent anthology and read with no or neutral expectations until something catches your attention. John Hollander's _Committed to Memory_ is or was out of print, but is not hard to buy on line. I remember Louis Zukofsky's _A Test of Poetry_ as pretty good, though I haven't looked into it in years. NYRB has brought John Williams's anthology of English Renaissance poetry back into print.

Or you could listen to some Haggard.

<comment><USER2> Excellent, looking forward! I really do enjoy beat poets and rebel outlaw characters so there was a lot in this article to like, but hitting against the issues you mentioned was a bit despiriting. Thanks for putting them in perspective and for the suggestions</comment></comment></comment>