X: The First Fully Modular Software Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disaster.html <comment><USER3> Ah, this is entertaining to contrast with [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031814) "Why did software go off the rails". The "UNIX haters handbook" is extremely old, as if you couldn't tell from the references to Reagan and the 50-MIPS workstation (roughly equivalent to a $1 Cortex-M0 in today's money).

And in many ways they're not wrong:

\- "X has defeated us by switching the meaning of client and server"

\- "most computers running X run just four programs: xterm, xload, xclock, and a window manager" : the intervening 20 years have added a web browser. Almost all software run by the user is in either the xterm or the browser.

\- ICCCM is hilariously complicated, although cut-and-paste largely works now. It's just that there are two different cut-and-paste mechanisms in play.

\- client/server division of labour is _still_ being fought over on the web

\- X authentication is painful to do with the original mechanism, but was eventually fixed by ssh X forwarding

\- Xdefaults is a great mystery, largely obsoleted by the GNOME people with their own mysterious pseudo-registries and, god help you, polkit

\- X still has trouble with the wide variety of graphics hardware out there, although you can usually get 2 monitors working eventually.

\- "NeWS an d NEXTSTEP were political failures because they suffer from the same two problems: oBNoXiOuS capitalization, and Amiga Persecution Attitude(TM)." : basically true, until they dropped the attitude and capitals and became Cocoa.

<comment><USER4> It also ignited debate over what it was even called. Is it the "X-Window System", or abbreviated, "X-Window" or, like the British and their "maths", is it "X-Windows"? Not to be confused with "Windows®" of course.

<comment><USER5> I think the US is the odd one out hete with your one unit of 'math'.

Mathematic _s_ -> math _s_

You don't say, "I am learning mathematic", unless you are a cretin.

<comment><USER6> It has an 's' at the end, but it is still treated as a singular noun in most contexts. You don't say "My favorite subjects are mathematics", you say "My favorite subject is mathematics".

<comment><USER7> To be fair, you would also not say "My favorite subjects are games"; there's only one subject, called "games", even though the word "games" is a plural form of "game".

I can't really come up with a situation where you would want to refer to multiple "mathematicses"; it kind of just is something ethereal, not a _thing_ where it makes sense to refer to one or many.

<comment><USER8> Hypothetical_Bob: "I like applied and pure maths. Mathss are my favourite subjects. I don't know which one to pick for my A levels".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > X has had its share of $5,000 toilet seats -- like Sun's Open Look clock > tool, which gobbles up 1.4 megabytes of real memory! If you sacrificed all > the RAM from 22 Commodore 64s to clock tool, it still wouldn't have enough > to tell you the time. Even the vanilla X11R4 "xclock" utility consumed 656K > to run. And X's memory usage is increasing.

I just opened up "clocktab.com" on Chrome, the first simple clock I could find by googling "clock," and Chrome's task manager shows it using a full 42 megabytes of memory.

<comment><USER10> We should have a competition for smallest analog clock in terms of running memory.

<comment> c-smile Here is the one: Sciter renders: [https://sciter.com/temp/sciter-analog- clock.png](https://sciter.com/temp/sciter-analog-clock.png) \- it takes 50 Mb of memory for the whole process.

This clock sample ( [https://github.com/c-smile/sciter- sdk/blob/master/samples/gr...](https://github.com/c-smile/sciter- sdk/blob/master/samples/graphics/analog-clock.htm) ) is a port of Mozilla's clock : [https://codepen.io/anon/pen/vJpqOY](https://codepen.io/anon/pen/vJpqOY)

Chrome needs 6 separate processes to run this sample with total memory consumption of 575 Mb.

<comment><USER9> I fired up Windows 2.03 in DOSBox, with its clock app, available on archive.org[1], and it took up 60.1 MB. This is fun! I think the OS would run fine (at least, enough for the clock) with as little as 512K of ram[2].

Screenshot: [https://i.imgur.com/09xjyPs.png](https://i.imgur.com/09xjyPs.png)

[1]: [https://archive.org/details/msdos_win2_03](https://archive.org/details/msdos_win2_03)

[2]: [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/32905/windows- versi...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/32905/windows-version- history) ("512K of memory or greater" for 2.03).

<comment> c-smile If you have screen of size 640*480 and rendering without AA then you can render by CPU. Otherwise, with modern hardware and 200 ppi monitors you will need GPU rendering with the whole infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Unix Haters Handbook is pretty interesting reading, but I remember that the chapter on X was one of the weakest. It doesn't help that it starts with the hoary old myth that X named the 'server' and 'client' backwards. More relevant however is that from the vantage point of 2017, it becomes clear that X is one of the most unreasonably successful software architectures of all time.

Think about it: how many pieces of software design have remained in heavy use worldwide for 30 years. The fact that no one bothered to replace it in all that time is proof enough that whatever warts it has can't be _that_ painful. (Now, finally, it seems like it's going to happen with Wayland, but it's not there yet.)

Not only that, but computer display technology has changed massively over X's lifetime. I'm writing this in a composited window manager hardware accelerated via natively-3D hardware outputting to multiple monitors of different resolutions over as many different digital display links. How much of this was even imagined in the 1980s? Yet the X protocol via it's extension mechanisms has proven adaptable enough to take in massive changes in the technology, and still keeps on ticking.

<comment><USER12> "how many pieces of software design have remained in heavy use worldwide for 30 years. The fact that no one bothered to replace it in all that time is proof enough that whatever warts it has can't be that painful. "

I'm not convinced modern software ecosystem optimizes for quality. Many CAD packages used today have roots as old or older. The dominant CAD format (at least in construction) is DWG which - I can tell you from experience - <USER2> about as nice to work with on programmatic level as trying to skin rotten cod. The data contained in this steaming heap of obfuscation is mostly trivial in complexity. Just because we have tools in use does not mean they could not be better - it's rather that once something is in use, social proof, sunk cost fallacy and some practical reasons kick in and development stagnates to dealing with the kinks in the established system.

<comment><USER13> I was just ranting to some people yesterday about how with HDMI there are still remnants of the original NTSC broadcast standard from nearly 80 years ago. Even though we've (finally!) reached the point where my digital computer is sending a digital image to my digital monitor with no unnecessary analog conversions in between.

<comment><USER14> One of my "favorite" parts of HDMI is that you can specify the resolution in two different ways depending on if you are connected to a computer monitor or a TV. Choosing the right one is sometimes important, a resolution might not work on your display if you specify it using the other format.

<comment><USER15> That sounds absolutely crazy, so I believe it. Can you elaborate though?

<comment><USER14> Look up CEA vs. DMT video modes. Typically this can become a problem when you need to specify the video mode before connecting the display, or if you're running through a KVM.

<comment><USER16> Dimethyltryptamine video modes?… Sounds about right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd say that X is the foremost example of actual software evolution.

In the sense that (in the words of my pathologist father when I asked him how hard drug discovery and design was),

 _" Nature is lazy before it's intelligent. At every turn, it would rather reuse a system designed for a completely different purpose than design something new from the ground up. Which is how we end up with single pathways affecting six completely unrelated systems in the body."_

<comment><USER18> > Nature is lazy before it's intelligent. At every turn, it would rather reuse > a system designed for a completely different purpose than design something > new from the ground up.

So we can blame all the crazy things we do with computers and software on nature? ;-)

But seriously, that is a great insight. Both where evolution is concerned, and software development. (And other branches of engineering, too, I bet.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm probably one of the only people who liked the .Xresources file.

Sure it's a text and you do regexes to specify objects, but I found it easy to customize and because much of it was automatic there would be a ton of the UI variables in it. You want a different color on the background of a particular text box? No problem. You want to change the font used in the app? No problem. You need to customize the contents of a menu? That might be possible! Every application used the same file so you only had to figure it out once.

Granted, you would leave 99% of the variables alone, but it was nice to have the option if you needed it.

Interestingly enough, I still have the file on my box, although I doubt it gets used much anymore. Looking at the file I forgot how you could do a sort of primitive themeing by specifying broad wildcards like "* MenuButton.Background" and "* Toggle.Font"[1]. That's probably a bit dangerous but I can't remember it ever exploding on me spectacularly. Probably because Athena widgets were so damn minimal to begin with.

Oh, man it even still has:

       Netscape4*blinkingEnabled: False
       Netscape4*myshopping.isEnabled: False

[1] The spaces aren't there in the file, they're just necessary to work around the way HN's markdown does italics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Excerpted from Eric S. Raymond's The Unix Hater's Handbook, Reconsidered (2008)[[http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=538](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=538)]: This chapter begins unfortunately, with complaints about X's performance and memory usage that seem rather quaint when comparing it to the applications of 14 years later. It continues with a fling at the sparseness of X applications circa 1990 which is unintentionally funny when read from within evince on a Linux desktop also hosting the Emacs instance I'm writing in, a toolbar with about a dozen applets on it, and a Web browser.

I judge that the authors' rejection of mechanism/policy separation as a guiding principle of X was foundationally mistaken. I argued in The Art of Unix Programming that this principle gives X an ability to adapt to new technologies and new thinking about UI that no competitor has ever matched. I still think that's true.

But not all the feces flung in this chapter is misdirected; Motif really did suck pretty badly, it's a good thing it's dead. ICCCM is about as horrible as the authors describe, but that's hard to notice these days because modern toolkits and window managers do a pretty good job of hiding the ugliness from applications.

Though it's not explicitly credited, I'm fairly sure most of this chapter was written by Don Hopkins. Don is a wizard hacker and a good man who got caught on the wrong side of history, investing a lot of effort in Sun's NeWS just before it got steamrollered by X, and this chapter is best read as the same bitter lament for NeWS I heard from him face to face in the late 1980s.

Don may have been right, architecturally speaking. But X did not win by accident; it clobbered NeWS essentially because it was open source while NeWS was not. In the 20 years after 1987 that meant enough people put in enough work that X got un-broken, notably when Keith Packard came back after 2001 and completely rewrote the rendering core. The nasty resources system is pretty much bypassed by modern toolkits. X-extension hell and the device portability problems the authors were so aggrieved by turned out to be a temporary phenomenon while people were still working on understanding the 2D-graphics problem space.

That having been said, Olin Shivers's rant about xauth is still pretty funny and I'm glad I haven't had to use it in years.

</comment><comment><USER20> Uh, as a frontend developer, I am kind of _shocked_ I've never read this before. There's a lot of fascinating parallels to modern web development. zitterbewegung noted the similarity to complaints about Electron apps' memory consumption, for example, but:

> The right graphical client/server model is to have an extensible server. > Application programs on remote machines can download their own special > extension on demand and share libraries in the server. Downloaded code can > draw windows, track input eents, provide fast interactive feedback, and > minimize network traffic by communicating with the application using a > dynamic, high-level protocol.

Certainly sounds a heck of a lot like how web applications work (even though we're currently terrible at sharing libraries, heh).

> X gave programmers a way to display windows and pixels, but it didn't speak > to buttons, menus, scroll bars, or any of the other necessary elements of a > graphical user interface. Programmers invented their own. Soon the Unix > community had six or so different interface standards.

Now _that's_ certainly familiar. Sure, the DOM is a heck of a lot closer to a platform for displaying complex UIs than X was, but it still falls so far short of what developers need that a plethora of frameworks, UI libraries, etc. have appeared and fragmented the community. You could also stretch a bit and say things like Google's work on web components are an attempt at a Motif- like standardization around one questionable standard, but I don't know if I'm quite cynical enough to make that jump.

> Even if you can get an X program to compile, there's no guarantee it'll work > with your server. If an application requires an X extension that your server > doesn't provide, then it fails. X applications can't extend the server > themselves -- the extension has to be compiled and linked into the server.

While a lot of new browser features are polyfillable, a lot of the more advanced ones (e.g. service workers) are not, and users and developers are at the mercy of their browsers, much users would be with their X servers.

> Myth: X is "Device Independent"

The quirks discussed in this section apply to responsive web apps too. There's actually quite a bit of nuance in making fancy canvas, WebGL, or CSS transforms that look good on retina screens, etc.

I'm sure none of these comparisons truly map 1:1 to X development (having never done it myself), but damn if it doesn't remind me how cyclical software development has been over the past few decades. Not that that's a bad thing, just that some things are very, very hard :)

<comment><USER21> >Certainly sounds a heck of a lot like how web applications work (even though we're currently terrible at sharing libraries, heh).

NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently:

\+ used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming.

\+ used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML and CSS for rendering.

\+ used PostScript data instead of XML and JSON for data representation.

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

<comment><USER22> In an alternate universe in which NeWS won out, someone developed a standard viewer for networked documents which provided standard routines for layout and document linking. Eventually, as more people got viewers, many applications began to be distributed directly as client-side interactive PostScript documents, eschewing the NeWS network protocol altogether in favor of PSON, a text-based protocol which had the advantage of working correctly through corporate firewalls. Someone developed a server-side runtime engine called Node.ps, and many people jumped on the bandwagon, claiming that it made sharing code between the client and server much easier. As PostScript development became more complex, preprocessor tools began proliferating, including a strongly-typed version of PostScript, known as TypeScript. Due to PostScript's lack of a good standard library, a company named "NPM" started a package repository, which was soon filled with tiny libraries for each PostScript procedure, eventually leading to the "string-length debacle" when an upset developer unpublished a five-line package...

<comment><USER21> Arthur van Hoff wrote an object oriented C to PostScript compiler called PdB, which is kind of like TypeScript!

[https://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/93-01-152](https://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/93-01-152)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So this means we really need Wayland. Hope that somebody puts a EOL like Flash on X. Only then will all those projects move to Wayland. Even Python 2 to 3 took well over a decade and we still haven't reached EOL.

<comment><USER24> I dunno... modern X (XCB) doesn't seem so different to Wayland.

Both are asynchronous RPC protocols with bindings generated from a bunch of XML specs. Both use shared memory aggressively. Both share a lot of concepts. X just has more back-compat to deal with.

<comment><USER25> People over-emphasize a lot of the problems X has. A lot of the real original problems like high latency were evolved away. And while backwards compatibility can be annoying, that's just what you get for trying to do serious software engineering. So I agree with you that the differences between X and Wayland are greatly exaggerated.

However, there is one _significant_ architectural difference between X and Wayland that is quite difficult to evolve away. In modern X, there are actually three processes involved: the client (app), the X server, and the compositor. In Wayland, there are only two: the client (app) and the compositor.

The X design is more fragile (state managed in 3 places instead of 2) hence ICCCM, and has more latency and overhead. However, it made a lot of sense back when the X server talked to the hardware directly and therefore needed both an integrated driver and special privileges. It'd be silly to implement drivers as part of compositors, so the separation of mechanism and policy was the right way to go back then.

Since then, however, the mechanism has basically entirely moved into the kernel (DRM/KMS) and Mesa (OpenGL). This happened in bits and pieces first with the evolution of the DRI protocol and then the jump to kernel mode setting.

 _That_ is the evolutionary development which lead to the move to Wayland makeing sense.

I suppose this 3-to-2-process transition _could_ have been evolved by refactoring the core of the X server source (the whole protocol handling etc.) into a library that compositors then simply link against. But that would have been a truly herculean task with not very many natural intermediate steps. Implementing something like Wayland from scratch on the modern Linux graphics stack is actually _much_ less work -- except perhaps for transitioning all the toolkits, but then again, the X server source lends itself fairly well to writing various "X-on-something-else" servers, since people have been doing that for a while, so there's a natural if slightly awkward solution for backwards compatibility.

So hacking up an initial prototype for Wayland could be done very quickly, but note that actual adoption still took a long time. But the point is that the Wayland path had more presentable intermediate steps (unlike the X server refactor), so that's the path that software evolution took.

(Man, this got a lot longer than originally intended...)

<comment><USER24> > In modern X, there are actually three processes involved: the client (app), > the X server, and the compositor.

Is the compositor not optional?

<comment><USER25> Even if you don't have a compositor you still have at least a window manager, which has much the same issues (high latency, ICCCM).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I liked xwindows very much. Still do. What other system allows you to use your local window manager to control windows from multiple different machines?

<comment><USER27> RDP does.

<comment><USER28> Its'n the same. With RDP, you are sharing a whole desktop. With X protocol, you can share WINDOWS! You not need to run the whole windows manager/desktop on the remote machine. You can simply launch the X11 application and allow the local client to manage the windows. It's far more efficient and far more responsive (if is compressed and cached like does NX).

I remember connecting to my desktop from a computer on the university using NX protocol and running remote apps like was on local. And I don't had a superb internet connexion.

<comment><USER29> Quick note, RDP has extensions to forward just the app. It has been able to do that for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of the amazing things about X was how easy it was to snoop on others. There was one prof at my university who appeared to be working long hours until a grad student came up with the idea of dumping out the prof's frame buffer - and it turned out he was playing Tetris! Default settings were very permissive...

<comment><USER31> Dumping the frame buffer has nothing to do with X; you can't blame X for bad permissions on the underlying device node in Unix. X didn't create the device node, and is therefore not responsible for the permissions on it.

<comment><USER32> Maybe the GP means the DISPLAY? People couldn't be bothered using xauth and even just had _xhost +_ (allow anyone).

When we got internet connectivity at Sydney University we used to just dump X-Windows from all over the world. One in particular was some displays in Sweden. Forget what was actually on them though.

<comment><USER33> It worked the other way round too. You could overwrite the screen buffer of anyone on the network. Usually with something offensive. Sun even provided a command to do it. This was hilarious in 1989.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ages ago when I read this article I thought they missed the one major feature that X totally flubbed. IMHO X should have exported some way to do sound along with the graphics. Sound support on Unix was a nightmare for most of the 80s and 90s and even into the 2000s. Everything was different and broken in their own special ways and some were proprietary and very few (only Sun's halfassed network audio as the exception) worked over the network.

Most of the rest of the complaints come off as someone with an axe to grind, especially all of the hand-wringing over flipping the client and server model around. It's not like X was the first system to do that, active mode FTP does exactly the same thing. Back in the days before firewalls and NAT this was a legitimate design decision, they just ended up on the wrong side of history.

Besides, from a network architecture standpoint it makes sense. Your local X display doesn't know that you've started an app on a remote box until something tells it. Having it make the connection out would require some local broker to inform it that it needs to make the connection.

I will agree with one point, ICCCM sucks and has been overdue for a complete rework for at least 20 years now. That said, I'm not a fan of Gnome's Ctrl- Shift-C Ctrl-Shift-V workaround either.

</comment><comment><USER34> "Self abuse kit" is such an appropriate way to describe Motif.

<comment><USER35> A few years ago I found a book on Motif user interface programming in a used bookstore, and started leafing through it. The entire book had exactly ONE picture. ONE. And it was some architectural diagram describing X, depicting a network of terminals and servers and happy little cloud things. The rest of the book (asymptotically, _all_ of the book) described APIs and widgets and protocols and whatnot, all without the benefit of showing what the user would be interacting with.

That someone could write a book on UI programming and someone else would publish a book on UI programming without any actual depictions of UI is pretty much all I need to know about X and its community (although I know a lot more, and my actual exposure to X goes back to early versions that came on 9-track tapes directly from MIT and supported mostly just frame buffers on DEC Vaxen).

(For years -- and this may still be true -- the software to manage the equipment in Comcast's head end datacenters was controlled by some X-based UI. Now, I ain't gonna say "Them folks surely deserve it, because they done me wrong" but that miserable train-wreck of a system goes a long way towards explaining why it's often hard for Comcast to fix their stuff. I have un-fond memories of taking down whole QAMs because I was fool enough to click some check boxes in a dialog in the wrong order...)

You can write hideous UI in just about anything, but X seems to have a special place in the ecosystem.

<comment><USER21> It's because Motif is so ugly, they were embarrassed to include a screen snapshot.

Then TCL/Tk came along and emulated Motif's look and feel, only better because its default color was bisque.

"Bisque is Beautiful"

[http://www.ucolick.org/~de/Tcl/pictures/](http://www.ucolick.org/~de/Tcl/pictures/)

"The procedure tk_bisque is provided for backward compatibility: it restores the application's colors to the light brown ("bisque") color scheme used in Tk 3.6 and earlier versions."

[https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl/TkCmd/palette.htm](https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl/TkCmd/palette.htm)

[http://mars.cs.utu.fi/BioInfer/files/doc/public/Tkinter.Misc...](http://mars.cs.utu.fi/BioInfer/files/doc/public/Tkinter.Misc- class.html#tk_bisque)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I love Unix, but I have to admit there is some truth to this article.

</comment><comment><USER37> You can still use X to run a local GUI hooked up to a remote machine, and 15 years ago that was pure voodoo magic.

<comment><USER14> Even today that's not exactly a common feature. Usually you need to start a full desktop (RDP, VNC, etc...) to do anything similar.

I still use X display forwarding regularly. Often for something like sending a Firefox window back so I can look at a page on a test network without needing a direct route to it.

<comment><USER38> RDP has supported running single apps remotely for a decade. Windows Server 2008 had this feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> PEX and GLX were really quite cool, and only recently matched by WebGL. Native 3D apps really could be opened remotely, then download display lists to the local store, and use local 3D rendering hardware.

There just wasn't very much PEX interoperability between different manufacturers, because of all the different extensions. Only a rare vanilla app could be remoted in a heterogeneous environment.

Some vendors, like E&S, had PEX as the native graphics API. You could _not_ write a purely local app that couldn't be opened remotely, including stereo displays (CrystalEyes) and use of dialbox or spaceball input devices.

<comment><USER27> RDP supports networked DirectX, with the GPGPU on the server or client side.

And DirectX offers so much more than downgraded OpenGL ES 3.0 (aka WebGL 2.0).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I am not sure if the whole idea is considered bad or the way it has been implemented. In general I think X is very useful.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why is configuring displays so damn difficult? It was never clear to me why there needed to be so many tools (xrandr, xorg, X, startx, xinit, xanorama) to just get a basic display working at the max resolution when other operating systems manage to have some sane plug-and-play behavior.

All of this seems to render linux pretty useless for hot-pluggable displays. I'm sure ubuntu has some sort of solution (I never use the desktop version); why can't this be integrated at the level of the X server (or hell, the graphics driver) itself? Is X too firmly baked to adjust to the needs of its users? Will wayland address this?

</comment><comment><USER42> Reading this reminds me of people complaining about Electron for desktop apps.

</comment><comment><USER43> Dammit... Now I want to install CDE again...

</comment><comment><USER44> To me this is always what made linux fun.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's called X Window, man. Singular, not plural.

<comment><USER46> From the bottom of the page:

To annoy X fanatics, Don specifically asked that we include the hyphen after the letter "X,", as well as the plural of the word "Windows," in his chapter title.</comment></comment>


Live Stream – Werner Vogels Announcing New AWS Services Re:Invent - <AUTHOR> https://live.awsevents.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Kinesis time series analytics coming next year.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Python on Lambda is now available.</comment>


Elrond Network: Change in Consensus and Randomness Source - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/elrondnetwork/elrond-improvement-change-in-consensus-and-randomness-source-d764a3fad35 <comment><USER2> 0-predictable, un-biasable, cryptographically secure blockchain of random seed for consensus group selection & 2-round pBFT consensus scheme.</comment>


TransLattice intros world's first geographically distributed database - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/24/translattice-geographically-distributed-database/

<comment><USER2> Hardly a world first - don't Amazon & Google have this already?

<comment><USER3> Both Amazon and Google aren't relational, but rather NoSQL breed.</comment></comment>


P-99: Ninety-Nine Prolog Problems - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/prologsite/prolog-problems <comment><USER2> I like the idea of walking around Prolog sometimes. But often it is used against its seemingly main purpose. What do lists do there? Prolog should be cool at tasks like: Pierre is french and never met a guy from 2nd floor at the stairs, Joe has french friend who smokes, Bob likes Alice and living under the roof, and Alice can't stand cigarettes (and Bob); can Alice live in the same house if it has only 3 floors?

Lists though seem so unnatural to logic problems, the same way they emulate integers with lists in 'too abstract' lisps.

<comment><USER3> One application that seems to me like it should be a natural fit for Prolog is building a (human) schedule: class goes from 8-4, a student cannot take two classes simultaneously, Joe is not available on Wednesdays, etc.

I forget the specifics but every implementation of such a schedule tends up using lists and explicit recursion, (which I think is unpleasant in Prolog) In fact, most moderately complex solutions of any problem I've seen fall back on lists and explicit recursion. (I thought I was using Prolog to avoid all that!) That's probably a shortcoming of the language.

<comment><USER4> If you have such constraints, why not use a proper constraint system? Prolog is in a (sometimes not so) sweet spots in terms of exploring search spaces.

For a problem like you've described, just write a SAT instance and be done with it. And if you don't know how large your solution/search space is (even a bound), then there's no alternative to creating lists and giving recursion hints.

<comment><USER5> Most prolog implementations have finite domain constraints and constraint handling rules, so you can work with constraints if that's more natural.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Scala's adaptation of this (S-99): [http://aperiodic.net/phil/scala/s-99/](http://aperiodic.net/phil/scala/s-99/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Just make sure, solutions work in both directions.

</comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is interested in implementing a mini prolog interpreter...I made a toy one in python which you can find here: [https://github.com/photonlines/Python-Prolog- Interpreter](https://github.com/photonlines/Python-Prolog-Interpreter)

</comment><comment><USER9> An example of a small Prolog program used in a perfect use-case: the advent of code of this year.

[https://github.com/nitnelave/advent_of_code_2019/tree/master...](https://github.com/nitnelave/advent_of_code_2019/tree/master/04)

I'm doing the advent of code in a different language every day, and since the day 4 was about some constraint resolution, Prolog was the perfect tool there.

<comment><USER10> Nice. As a hint, you can unify free variables, i.e., variables not bound to anything. Future bindings of those variables will respect the equality.

This means that you could write your password/1 predicate as something more like:

        password(X) :-
          length(X, 6),
          has_2_equal_consecutive_digits(X),
          has_6_digits(X),
          is_value_in_range(X),
          digits_are_increasing(X).

That is, even _before_ filling the list with digits, you would already have captured the constraint that two digits will have to be consecutive. Then, while instantiating the list inside has_6_digits/1, something like 134567 would never even be generated, and you wouldn't need to test it for being in range and having increasing digits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Prolog / Datalog are beautiful languages. They should be in the repertoire of more programmers.

</comment><comment><USER12> I tried using Prolog for Advent of Code last year. It went okayish, but I seem to recall that some things were unreasonably hard, such as reading from non- Prolog-syntax files. I should give it another try this year. Maybe I missed something obvious.

</comment><comment><USER13> Obligatory fun clones :

* 99_Ninety-Nine_Lisp_Problems [http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~meidanis/courses/mc336/2006s2/func...](http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~meidanis/courses/mc336/2006s2/funcional/L-99_Ninety-Nine_Lisp_Problems.html)

* Ninety-Nine_Haskell_Problems [https://wiki.haskell.org/H-99:_Ninety-Nine_Haskell_Problems](https://wiki.haskell.org/H-99:_Ninety-Nine_Haskell_Problems)

* Ninety-Nine_Erlang_Problems [https://github.com/joelchelliah/ninety-nine_erlang_problems/...](https://github.com/joelchelliah/ninety-nine_erlang_problems/blob/master/README.md)

* ... Rust [https://github.com/MaskRay/99-problems-rust?files=1](https://github.com/MaskRay/99-problems-rust?files=1)

</comment><comment><USER14> No.</comment>


Anandtech: Macbook Pro with Retina Display Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review <comment><USER2> He's unsatisfied with his 'old' MBP 15" (previous gen) because "it always made me feel like the old fogey at tradeshows where everyone else had something 13-inches or smaller".

Stuff like that defies parody.

<comment><USER3> That's signature style of a lot of great, obsessive reviewers. Connecting to what a particular product ultimately "means" to you is something that differentiates reviews from spec-sheets.

This reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson on Porsche Boxster - "The only reason you would buy one of these is because you can't afford a 911... so what you're doing as you're driving around is advertising the fact that your life hasn't worked out quite as well as you had been hoping"

<comment><USER4> And that is why Jeremy Clarkson's reviews should not be the final arbiter of what constitutes a "good" car. The Boxster/Cayman has been consistently judged to be a better driver's car than the 911 because the engine is mounted in the right place to begin with. It's very much similar to Intel and the x86 architecture where its greatest success is keeping it from future greatness.

<comment><USER5> I think you've rather missed his point - it has nothing to do with how good the car is to drive or not, it's a judgment on what buying the car would say about your aspirations. As usual from Clarkson, it's extremely opinionated and nobody sensible would take it as the final arbiter on anything, although it is a unique and fairly perceptive take on the car.

<comment><USER4> In which case the poseurs driving 911s should go out and shoot themselves in the head since they can't afford a Carrera GT... which is also mid-engine.

<comment><USER6> They made 1,200 of the things. Failing to be wealthy enough to own such a limited-production car is only called "failure" by a very few.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "glare handling" pictures makes me wonder why anybody would buy a portable device (=to sometimes be used outdoors) and be happy with those outrageous reflections. I mean, you can barely see the content!

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook- pro-w...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with- retina-display-review/4)

With the new decice, Aplle again tries to makes those unusable mirrors the only display you can order. I'll pass.

<comment><USER8> Glossy displays are exclusively better in controlled lighting, because their black levels are actually good. Controlled lighting is not difficult to achieve and is already a necessity for graphics work.

Actually, it can even be better outside. A screen with reflections on it is not as bad as a screen that you can't see due to low contrast.

(I'm currently using a matte desktop LCD, but wasted tons of time looking for a model with an 8-bit screen and good contrast.)

<comment><USER9> Whatever happened to the matte-ish finish used on some late-90s-and-on CRTs? I had some with way less glare than my MBP, and, being a CRT, about as perfect black levels as you're going to get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm hoping that we see a 13" Air edition with the Retina Display sometime soon. _That_ I will pull the trigger on.

<comment><USER11> Considering the 13" Pro doesn't have room for a discrete GPU, I doubt we're going to see a retina Air until a few more revs of Intel's integrated GPUs.

<comment><USER12> Have you heard of the iPad?

<comment><USER11> The iPad needed nearly double the battery to keep up with the larger display+GPU's power requirements. The MBP still had to add 20% to keep up. There's no room in the current Air for extra battery, so even if the current GPU could keep up to Apple standards, running time wouldn't. Which means either becoming less Air-y or waiting for a more efficient part (likely Haswell)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The most interesting section for me was the performance issues of the retina display ( [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook- pro-w...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with- retina-display-review/8) ). I wonder if waiting for a next generation mbp to really be able to push those pixels would be a smart choice. I had noticed a few stutters when playing around with one in the store, though if Mountain Lion will optimize it as claimed then that could fix it.

<comment><USER14> What I'm surprised about is that people are just realizing that retina uses a lot more processing power. I bet most people still don't realize that a "retina-optimized" game should should have half the performance on iPad 3 compared to the "low-res" version on iPad 2, if everything else is equal, even though the GPU in iPad 3 is twice as strong.

<comment><USER15> Yes however retina games don't require 4x AA to look great. So you're trading one performance hit for another.

<comment><USER16> 4x AA is only a 15-20% hit when you're talking about MSAA: <http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/535?i=455.488.456.492>

<comment><USER15> Not all games support MSAA, however yes it's much more GPU friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm allergic to the "best product x Apple has ever built" line, it is such an obvious manipulative marketing spin. Of course every new device should be the best they ever built. All the components have been improved - it is just the way computer technology has progressed for a long time now.

Also, it is just a slightly slimmer notebook with a higher resolution. It is not "changing computing as we have known it".

<comment><USER18> _Also, it is just a slightly slimmer notebook with a higher resolution. It is not "changing computing as we have known it"._

Wow. This is like saying "the iPad is just a tablet you can touch." You're completely trivializing the rMBP's benefits.

It's not just "slightly slimmer," it's a 15" laptop that weighs _4.6 pounds._ I see one laptop in that range (Sony Vaio S series), and it has an i5 and a spinning platter. A "higher resolution" is also too hand-wavey, since the screen has 220 ppi. I couldn't find a 15" screen that comes within 80 ppi of that mark. [0]

Apple's ridiculous marketing ("the most magical, splendiferous touchscreen device since the last touchscreen device we produced!") can be too much, but, I mean...have you _used_ one of these? They're amazing in person--it weighs less than my 13" MBP, the screen is infinitely nicer, and apps launch so fast...[1]

[0] [http://sortable.com/find-laptops/high-PPI- laptops-15-to-16-s...](http://sortable.com/find-laptops/high-PPI- laptops-15-to-16-screens)

[1] Granted, I don't have a SSD in my laptop, but still.

<comment><USER17> I've had laptops that weigh less than 4 pounds for years. It's nice that we can now have one with a bigger screen, but show me the revolutionary new things you can do with it that you couldn't do before?

For what it's worth, I think broad availability of capable netbooks for 300$ was probably more of an evolutionary jump. Or things like the Rhaspberry PI - those things open up new use cases. Like, it makes a difference if everybody can afford to buy a notebook instead of a desktop PC, because it makes mobile computing take off (in turn leading to localized services).

<comment><USER18> _I've had laptops that weigh less than 4 pounds for years. It's nice that we can now have one with a bigger screen, but show me the revolutionary new things you can do with it that you couldn't do before?_

You're doing it again. Do any of those machines have a quad-core CPU with SSD, 8GB RAM, a 220 ppi screen, and ~7 hours of battery life?

I'm not arguing that the rMBP is revolutionary or magical or whatever, but give it it's due: this is a uniquely practical and powerful machine. I'm sure you've used sub-4lb laptops before, but I bet none of them posted Geekbench scores over 7000, much less 13000. [0]

[0] [http://www.maclife.com/article/features/benchmarking_macbook...](http://www.maclife.com/article/features/benchmarking_macbook_pro_retina_display)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I prefer reading it this way: [http://www.anandtech.com/print/6023/the- nextgen-macbook-pro-...](http://www.anandtech.com/print/6023/the-nextgen- macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review)

</comment><comment><USER20> I didn't realized until now that the Ethernet port is gone. I need that! That might actually be the main and only reason for me to not buy this. How sad, I really like the device otherwise.

<comment><USER21> They will be happy to sell you yet another adapter. <http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/product/MC704ZM/A>

<comment><USER22> Note: the ethernet chip _is_ present. In this article (anandtech) they look at Gigabit Ethernet performance and benchmark it at 925-928 Mbps - using the _Thunderbolt_ adapter.

Over at the iFixit teardown (step #13), you can see that the ethernet chip is present on the I/O board:

"Broadcom BCM57100 series Gigabit Ethernet + Memory Card reader controller"

[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina- Displ...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-Display- Teardown/9462/2#s36202)

<comment><USER23> I'd like to see a teardown of the adapter. My understanding of thunderbolt is it's not going to carry ethernet signals. There's _another_ ethernet chip in the adapter (I think). The one on the motherboard is there primarily for the smart card reader and because it allows Apple to use the same chip on the laptops that do have ethernet jacks.

<comment><USER24> Correct. Tunderbolt is PCI-Express + Displayport. PCIEx part is what makes all these dongles possible at great speeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I didn't realize Apple was pushing graphics so hard the past few years just to get to a point where retina-level resolution was possible at these sizes.

Funny, it reminds me a bit of the big push Vista caused in hardware manufacturers to stop stagnating on the amount of RAM considered 'normal' in computers.

</comment><comment><USER26> So how will my code editor look on Retina? All blurry?

<comment><USER27> That is the issue I am having. Eclipse-based IDEs are not ready for Retina. The text is legible, the IDE is usable, but its noticeably blurry. I've logged a ticket with Aptana Studio and Eclipse, but they have no solution to this issue, just workarounds which don't really work.

If you are using Vim or a simple text editor, however, there is no issue with the appearance of the text.

Xcode works just fine, too.

<comment><USER28> There's another option. You can get a third party utility like SwitchResX ($, but the free ones didn't work very well when I tried them) and run your display at native resolution. Yes, you get a full 2880x1800 desktop, and yes, some things get terribly small. But, you can then set your font sizes larger in things you use all the time, and I find the really small stuff to still be readable, maybe just not pleasant for long term use.

I am running that way right now, using Firefox zoomed in slightly, and it works beautifully. SwitchResX lets you set up hot keys to switch resolutions too, so I've been switching back and forth between 1920x1200 and native resolution trying to decide what I like best. So far, I think 2880x1800 is winning, with Firefox zoomed in, and a 14 point font (Inconsolata) in Emacs and iTerm2. Though both of the latter work correctly at Apple's scaled resolutions already (I've so far settled on Inconsolata 11 at 1920x1200)

For me, the biggest thing that's changed is that I've used Monaco 9, or variants thereof on non-Apple platforms, as my code font for the last 15 years. This was already too small for some people to read, and I've had hotkeys set up to switch to larger fonts when showing other people code on my screen for years. Monaco 9 doesn't even really exist at scaled resolutions though - it is NOT the same font you get if you render any other point size of Monaco, which is what happens at Apple's scaled resolutions. "Monaco 9" looks like the rest of Monaco now. (Techincally the old pixel version does still exist when running at native resolution, but it's crazy small and although I can read it with some effort, it's not really practical). But the screen is so great that I'm finally over my obsession with pixel fonts. Inconsolata is a fantastic tiny font when the pixels are too small to see. I'll probably try a few more now that I've been liberated, that was just the best I happened to have installed already.

<comment><USER29> If you're using the "best for retina" resolution, you can get Monaco 9 on the native pixels by selecting Monaco 4.5. It will be extremely small, but if you have good eyes it should still be readable, more readable than anti-aliased fonts at that size anyway.

<comment><USER28> Hey thanks for that. I wasn't aware I could type smaller sizes into the font selector. It doesn't seem to work very well though. iTerm2 still renders a scaled font when I do that. Terminal does render the bitmap font, but bold text is all screwed up - apparently it's bolding by rendering twice, slightly offset - only that offset is now multiple pixels, so it doesn't look bold, it looks like two overlapping renders. Emacs has issues with the font selector dialog in general, and doesn't appear to accept typed values at all. Further, when setting the font the normal emacs way (using an X11-like font description), it errors out when trying to give it a font with a fractional size. Monaco 5 does work, but it's not quite right.

Anyway, I wasn't really trying to get Monaco 9 back, I'm actually happy I can use "real" fonts now and still get as much code as I'm used to on screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It would have been great if apple introduced a regular macbook pro with an IPS screen. I have a hi-res 15.4" macbook pro and a 1080p Dell XPS 16. Both are non-IPS. I recently picked up a Lenovo 12.5 HD IPS screen which is lower DPI than either the mac or the dell. However after using the lenovo for a couple of days I'm blown away how shitty both the mac and the dell screens looked (dull, like someone had put a film on top). Given many applications are not ready for retina display, apple could have used their supply chain prowess to get an IPS display on their regular macbook pro line.

<comment><USER31> I agree that it would have been awesome to upgrade the non-retina MacBooks to IPS. But go try the 14" Thinkpad. It uses the shittiest LCD panel in the industry, way worse than any MacBook and worse or on par with the worst Dell laptops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ugh, having to upgrade to the outrageously priced high-end CPU just to get the 512GB SSD is killing me.

I need to upgrade, but I'm seriously considering a fully loaded Air instead because it'd be nice if this came in under $3k.

</comment><comment><USER33> I find the desktop performance bit ridiculous. I mean, a (very) high-end hardware manages only 20FPS while browsing Facebook? It would have been interesting to see similar benchmark on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER34> i'm so tempted by the weight and the screen resolution, but thrown off by the glossy display and the sluggish frame rates at > 1440 resolutions. i tried a glossy in 2010 and returned it for a highres antiglare because the reflections created a serious eyestrain problem for me. i doubt the new one will be much better, but look forward to seeing one. and i wish he'd try the framerate tests on mountain lion.

i really need the performance increase over my 2010 but may go w the old style until they work out the bugs in a year.

</comment><comment><USER35> is it still TFT IPS display, its so thin on photos.

</comment><comment><USER36> The article adds nothing of value and the use of different names for the same machine is nothing but an attempt to do some SEO.

How is this on the front page?

<comment><USER37> It's a pretty comprehensive review. Page 16 on the battery life at various workloads was important to me.

<comment><USER36> Oh man, I'm an ass. I read the first page on my phone and did not see the following pages. My previous comment has zero merit.

<comment><USER38> All of the major review sites split their articles into 20+ pages.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Solved: Why Poor States Are Red and Rich States Are Blue - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/04/solved-why-poor-states-are-red-and-rich-states-are-blue <comment><USER3> Does the guy just completely miss the very obvious part part where blue states tend to have higher population density among their voters and tend to be more urbanised hence referenced things core to his argument like "housing cost" and "zoning" are obviously impacted. Also how the effect this urbanisation has on voting behaviour[1]

It's this population spread that probably also contributed (among other things obviously) to red states more often running a deficit. One could argue conservatives are hypocrits and need democrat subsidies or one can also look at the cost of providing infrastructure, services and the like for a more spread out population that earns less.

It's so obviously a huge factor that it must either be intentional (which would not be too far fetched given the institution he's part of) or he must be seriously blind to any internalized biases.

[1] [https://medium.com/@davetroy/is-population-density-the- key-t...](https://medium.com/@davetroy/is-population-density-the-key-to- understanding-voting-behavior-191acc302a2b)

</comment><comment><USER4> We are now in the modern age of near-instant electronic communications, social media, Facebook, YouTube, etc. These tools enable the mass education of citizens across the nation, if they choose to partake in the political process.

The idea that we even need an electoral college system anymore is now firmly outdated. And especially since it failed to do its job the last time!

The fate of the nation is now decided by insignificant random counties, by people who appear to refuse to adjust and help themselves. Get retrained, move, do something. But no, they won't do that. And I get it, life gets in the way.

So the nation needs to move forward and switch to a popular vote. And perhaps even a UBI model, that would alleviate the pressure of making rent, and putting food on the table. This may actually help eliminate the divide, and bring the country together.

<comment><USER5> "And especially since it failed to do its job the last time"

It doesn't even make sense to say it failed to do its job. Its original job was to choose the President without direct input from the voters. Now that we have statewide elections, failing to elect the person with the most votes nationally is just _how it works_ , unintended by anyone. It was changed long ago so it has no purpose or job any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have a TLDR for people who aren't turning off tracker blockers?

<comment><USER7> [https://outline.com/7ythkX](https://outline.com/7ythkX)

<comment><USER8> [https://smmry.com/https://outline.com/7ythkX#&SM_LENGTH=7](https://smmry.com/https://outline.com/7ythkX#&SM_LENGTH=7)

<comment><USER9> Solved: Why Poor States Are Red And Rich States Are Blue Blue states, like California, New York and Illinois, whose economies turn on finance, trade and knowledge, are generally richer than red states.

Red state economies based on energy extraction, agriculture and suburban sprawl may have lower wages, higher poverty rates and lower levels of education on average than those of blue states - but their residents also benefit from much lower costs of living.

The red states aren't in fact poorer than the blue states.

For blue state urbanites who toil in low-paying retail, food preparation and service jobs, for the journeyman tradespeople who once formed the heart of the middle class, for teachers, civil servants, students and young families, the American dream of homeownership - or even an affordable rental apartment - <USER2> increasingly out of reach.

Many are opting to move to cheaper red states instead, further driving their growth.

Restrictive zoning is very much more common in those blue states than it is in the red.

Meaning that by artificially pushing up the cost of housing those blue states are indeed making life worse for the poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> (2015)

</comment><comment><USER11> Did anyone else hear that guitar riff and see the large 70s lettering when they got to the name 'Joe Stiglitz', ala 'Everyone in the German army has heard of Hugo Stiglitz.'</comment>


SOA and Versioning - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigeng.io/stencil-challenges/ <comment><USER2> Funny, I thought that 'BigCommerce' was a fake name like "Acme Corp" or "Foo Co".

Versioning APIs is hard. Anyone have any good reading / experience to share? How do you prevent too much code duplication across folders? How do you expediently insure that code that is shared doesn't break a distant dependency? Should you create lots of new versions or only for large changes? Does something like Semver help? I don't feel like I've seen a happy solution for this yet in my work and would like to learn more...</comment>


The Dark side of .io TLD - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedarksideof.io/ <comment><USER2> The archipelago was first settled in the 19th century, only about 1500 people were displaced, yes the British government mistreated these people by not properly compensating them because the US and NATO needed a military base in the region.

However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation than this incident.

And while i understand that some people might feel they've been stripped of their homeland, but considering that the Islands were populated for the 1st time in modern history less than 200 years ago and remained populated for a period of only about a 100 years it's not exactly the strongest backing for a claim to a nation.

<comment><USER3> > However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western > countries that displace more people without proper compensation

Such as? Most western legal systems require compensation in such cases… at least in theory.

<comment><USER4> I think the key is in who gets to define what is "proper" compensation.

<comment><USER5> There's no number high enough- at the end of the day people will just cry out "amagad but our homes!" and claim that that's priceless and forever want money and sympathy from everyone. A line must be drawn somewhere.

<comment><USER4> As long as the line is more on the side of the majority feeling it fair as opposed to a certain minority feeling it advantageous, then I'm fine with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >They lost all rights to their homeland, now including the valuable .io TLD.

You don't want to know what happened in the United States... Or everywhere, to that matter.

</comment><comment><USER7> "...and for being cheap."

Admittedly, I am ignorant to many of the TLDs available today... But having primarily dealt with .com and .net TDLs previously (and their <$20USD price tag), is there something else at play when considering the cost/value ratio of an .io domain? Something that would make sense to refer to it as 'being cheap', despite it's costing 100%+ more than a 'traditional' TLD?

I get that 'io' is two letters rather than three and so it's "cool"... And that an io domain has potential for "domain hacks" (I assume they are talking about a neat looking URL, where the 'io' has significance in the brand and URL)... But is 'cheap' accurate?

Just curious - honest question... When I read 'cheap' as one of the primary bullet points (of the few cited bullet points) for the io TLD, I thought "There must be a lot that I don't know about io TLDs - let's ask".

Thanks!

<comment><USER8> while a .io domain is more expensive than a .com domain, you have to take into consideration that all the good .com domains are already taken (and you have to buy them from third parties for more money), while you still can get some good .io domains

<comment><USER9> Sure, but there's still some good .io domains available exactly because they aren't cheap (right?).

<comment><USER10> I pay <40 USD / year for taco.io, I have no idea of how much million dollars (which obviously I can't afford) would taco.com be worth.

<comment><USER9> Mind sharing your registrar?

<comment><USER10> Sure, [https://www.gandi.net/](https://www.gandi.net/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some background via gigaom:

The dark side of .io: How the U.K. is making web domain profits from a shady Cold War land deal [https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how- the-u-...](https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-k-is- making-web-domain-profits-from-a-shady-cold-war-land-deal/)

UK government denies receiving .io domain profits [https://gigaom.com/2014/07/11/uk-government-denies- receiving...](https://gigaom.com/2014/07/11/uk-government-denies-receiving-io- domain-profits/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Not to ignore the bigger issue, but the site implies .io would belong to the Chagossian people today if this hadn't happened. But the IO country code is derived from "British Indian Ocean Territory". Is it likely that the Chagos Archipelago would have this ISO 3166 code if the deportation hadn't occurred?

<comment><USER13> Well, it would still be in the Indian Ocean, for a start.

However, if you look at the list of .cX TLDs, all possible obvious results are already taken by (alguably) bigger states: Switzerland, Canada, Congo, Colombia and .. well .cs is complicated.

That still leaves room for solutions like .ic (Islands of Chagos), in a similar vein to .im for the Isle of Man, and you could have cool domain hacks like fanf.ic or grabthem.ic.

Or, since Diego Garcia is the largest island, .dg, and cash out from D&G.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Paypal donate link to a gmail address makes me a little nervous. Is [http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/](http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/) a legitimate and well-run charity? Where specifically does the money go?

<comment><USER15> It isn't a charity as far as I can tell (or at least does not have UK charitable status): the only registered charity with Chagos in the name is the Chagos Conservation Trust[1].

This means that UK Chagos Support Association does not have to follow charity law (i.e. be open about their work among other things), have a purpose considered as "charitable" [2], be run my trustees that don't personally benefit and/or be run independently. However, they could still be doing these things but be unable to register as a charity due wanting to do things that are prohibited as a charity e.g. "benefiting interests of a narrow closed group" or "campaigning for a change of government" among others [3]

(Of course it is open to debate whether many actual charities properly fulfil the stated requirements)

[1] [http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfC...](http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithoutPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1031561&SubsidiaryNumber=0)

[2] [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-makes-a- char...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-makes-a-charity- cc4/what-makes-a-charity-cc4#part-2-about-charitable-purposes)

[3] [https://www.gov.uk/how-to-set-up-a-charity- cc21a#step-1-deci...](https://www.gov.uk/how-to-set-up-a-charity- cc21a#step-1-decide-if-a-charity-is-the-right-option)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the detailed answer. Even if the law doesn't require it, I'm pretty wary of donating to a cause that doesn't voluntarily open its books.

And I say that as a .IO owner who was ready to get out my credit card.

<comment><USER16> Hi all, my name's Stefan Donnelly and I am the Committee Chair of UK Chagos Support Association. Firstly, thanks for the donations for those who have chipped in!

To answer some of the questions raised about our group, we are not a registered charity. We did attempt to register but were told our aims were too overtly political to qualify as a charity. So yes we are a non-profit, entirely voluntary I should add, we have no paid staff and committee members get nothing for their work.

On where the money goes, its pretty evenly split between supporting Chagossian community projects (including training classes and Chagos Islands football team), supporting impoverished Chagossians in times of hardship and campaigning for Chagossian right to return.

Over the past year we have done a lot on the latter as the previous Government committed to 'resolving the issue,' though then did not do so. This is everything from paying for transport to protests and printing materials to promoted posts of Facebook.

For reasons of scale we haven't in the past arranged to be audited or published full accounts as it just wouldn't have been worth it for the small amount of money and limited donor base we had. As we look to fundraise more online, however, I appreciate it is reassuring to have that bit of extra detail and I think our next AGM will publish much more substantial reports on our income and spending, which we'll be happy to make public.

The point has been made before to me that the Gmail address looks at bit dodgy and transferring it over to the @chagossuport address (which we do actually hold) is certainly on the to-do list.

Hope that's answered some of the, very legitimate, concerns raised. If anyone has any further questions, on this or anything else about the campaign, feel free to ask

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Deported at the _request_ of the United States. A crucial bit of information left out on that fancy page there.

</comment><comment><USER17> The site pointing out the dark side of .io is ironically on .io TLD.

<comment><USER18> No, it's not ironic at all. It's not asking people to stop using .io. It's asking people using .io to support a fund that supposedly helps the cause of natives of the island.

Did you read the link?

<comment><USER17> Yup I've read.

By using .io TLD, they are submitting to the UK government on what should be theirs. It may be like rebels claiming a territorial independence but then still pay taxes to the government for that particular territory.

<comment><USER19> Most non-violent independentists in western countries pay taxes. Actually, even most violent independentists pay taxes as well so they can conduct their activities without attracting attention from the government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Alexa ranked .io domains list from last month [http://hack.ly/articles/the- most-popular-dot-io-domains-2015...](http://hack.ly/articles/the-most-popular- dot-io-domains-2015/).

</comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for sharing. This is a history I was completely unaware of.

</comment><comment><USER22> "...its possiblities for domain hacks..."

Ok I'll admit it, I'm a little lost. What do they mean by this?

<comment><USER23> Companies will get .io domains to appeal to developers as it looks like I/O (in/out).

<comment><USER9> Or for using it with words ended with "io" (like scenar.io, portfol.io and such)

<comment><USER24> Does this work well? A friend did that for his company and it was a real pain to explain that the last two letters of a full word have a dot first. Ended up getting the .com.

I've got ci.al (so.ci.al, fa.ci.al, etc), I think, but trying to tell someone that over voice seems... problematic.

<comment><USER25> Usually startups using this kind of domain end up moving to .com once they get funded. I do data mining for a VC, and see this all the time.

<comment><USER26> Off topic, but I'm curious what kind of data mining the VC has you doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Haha, oh wow. This is actually real?

The irony of it...holy shit it's painful. And listed supporters _all having .io_.

If people can't see the near-masterful irony here, you're already lost.

Has someone bought up thedarksideof.ly yet????</comment>


How a programmer reads your resume (comic) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanovsolutions.com/resume_comic.png <comment><USER2> For an easy +12, I recommend the "simplecv" LaTeX document class -- it's included somewhere in the full TexLive distribution. That Computer Modern font on a resume or CV, combined with judicious use of small caps, looks _deadly_ serious.

[http://tug.ctan.org/tex- archive/macros/latex/contrib/simplec...](http://tug.ctan.org/tex- archive/macros/latex/contrib/simplecv/)

<comment><USER3> You can get Computer Modern in OTF here: <http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/download.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> -1 for a PhD? That's nonsense. Even ignoring the fact that Google _et al._ love to hire CS PhDs, I can guarantee that anyone who has had the persistence to make it through a PhD in an analytical discipline has skills a lot more valuable than the ability to make a resume in LaTeX. Yet another example of short-sighted anti-intellectualism by software nerds.

<comment><USER5> Hi, I'm a short-sighted anti-intellectual software nerd.. who has done a lot of hiring and programming, management, and/or analysis work with the people hired for years thereafter.

IME, a PhD in the closest related subject to the job is a negative, but not a damning one. Some of these folks just seem to put their head down, ignore the things around them, and tend to take overly complex approaches to problems rather than tending to eliminating problems. I've guessed this comes from the mentality you have to be in to complete a PhD. That said.. I've known some pretty cool PhDs in the relevant subject too.

My favorite candidates are actually PhD /dropouts/. I've really enjoyed people who were smart enough to get a PhD, but found going into one deep topic for years in academia wasn't for them. Also, PhDs from a different area seem cool too. They're smart, and the mere fact they're applying to something outside of what they mastered proves they're not the sort I'm afraid of.

<comment><USER4> _"Some of these folks just seem to put their head down, ignore the things around them, and tend to take overly complex approaches to problems rather than tending to eliminating problems."_

...which is a true statement for all coders, not just those people with a PhD. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a description that is more generally applicable to the autistic world of the software nerd.

You can candy-coat it any way you like, but what you're doing here is making a generalization about a group of people based on their choice to pursue an advanced degree.

<comment><USER6> "You can candy-coat it any way you like, but what you're doing here is making a generalization about a group of people based on their choice to pursue an advanced degree"

which is then one step away from generalizing about people on other attributes, like race or sex.

<comment><USER7> Which is a good thing: we make generalizations because we don't have the cognitive ability to instantly assign a million variables to every stimulus. Generalization keeps us sane.

When it becomes a bad thing is when we allow these mental shortcuts to take the place of sound reasoning, as in when we are looking at job applicants.

Never think that stereotyping or generalizing is bad -- it's the way your brain works, and for good reason.

<comment><USER6> "Which is a good thing"

If this was a response to "generalizing about people on other attributes, like race or sex.", I have to disagree with you, since the context of discussion here is about selecting someone for a job. I have yet to see a valid generalization about sex or race providing an indicator about programming ability.

"Never think that stereotyping or generalizing is bad -- it's the way your brain works,"

and unless overridden with logic, it is also the way prejudice (in this case racism and sexism ) operate.

Just so we don't go round and round, my opinion on generalization from examples: generalization is neither good nor bad by itself - it depends on the quality of the data and the inference mechanism - it could lead to good or bad depending on what it results in.

It is a facility of the brain certainly but being human means you are not blindly subject to your generalizations. All imho. Feel free to disgaree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I kept waiting for it to be funny, but it was merely true.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've recently had to look over hundreds of resumes for recent job postings and I must say this is spot on.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't know whom this is actually making fun of -- if I were hiring, I'd consider the presence of a cover letter with my name on it to be of far more informational value than a resume typeset in LaTeX. The cover letter would actually show me that the person made some modicum of effort to apply to my company; the LaTeX wouldn't give me anything I wouldn't be able to tell from the rest of the applicant's resume. And there's no way it's worth more than "started own company".

<comment><USER11> The LaTeX says "this person is sincerely nerdy enough to actually become comfortable with LaTeX."

<comment><USER12> Is it worth learning Latex just so that (some) people who see my resume will recognize that I took the time to learn Latex?

<comment><USER13> No. But it's worth to learn LaTeX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Man, If it were a programmer who read my resume, then according to this it would kick ass! Unfortunately, it must be some one in HR who thinks LaTex is something they make gloves out of, because my job offers are not so hot.

</comment><comment><USER15> Surely for female coders 'topless in facebook picture' is a +12, not a minus? ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> In my last application (I got hired) it was the programming guy who asked me what Latex was.. (and not to test me!)

</comment><comment><USER17> I generally agree, but I'd like to point out that there are actually technology certification courses out there that are impressive if you've passed them. For example, having CCIE on your resume will certainly grab my attention.</comment>


Getting hired - <AUTHOR> http://abstractstuff.livejournal.com/39138.html

<comment><USER2> Man, if I knew you wanted to work at JTV so bad I could have pawned you off on the desk by the bathroom.. :D

</comment><comment><USER3> > I spent the next four years waiting for a Green Card

Damn. We have to eliminate that wait.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that sentence made me choke on my tea. I've been vaguely planning to apply to YC for winter '09 as by then I've hopefully sorted the cofounder issue, but if it's going to take that long to sort out the immigration crap I'd rather spend my energy elsewhere.</comment></comment>


Monsanto Seed Patent Case Gets U.S. Supreme Court Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-05/monsanto-seed-patent-case-gets-u-dot-s-dot-supreme-court-review

<comment><USER2> _"If it's overturned, it will have cataclysmic repercussions for the business model in the seed biotech industry," Benbrook said by telephone. "It would basically end the agricultural biotech industry as we know it, certainly for soybeans."_

Two things:

1\. Someone will still make money from it. Innovation will still occur.

2\. Indeed, the industry will change, to a better and fairer one. Oh woe be to humanity!

<comment><USER3> I was talking about this exact quote with my wife yesterday. "...will end [x] as we know it" is the most fatalistic way of wording anything, without actually stating whether it's a good or bad thing.

Monsanto, you already ended farming as we knew it, and that seemed to work out pretty well for you.

<comment><USER4> "Gutenberg's printing press will end lack of knowledge as we know it!"

"Tesla's radio will end communication as we know it!"

You're right, we could do this all day.

I agree on Monsanto, I think what we have today was intended from the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Monsanto wants to argue that seeds are patentable because they are unique and involve human intelligence endeavour which should be protected. They also argue that GMO foods do not need to be labeled as such for the consumer because they are not significantly different from 'regular' foods. Any contradictions?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. An analogous example would be if you invented a way to produce an artificial (human) organ (e.g., liver) that was indistinguishable from a natural one.

<comment><USER4> You are talking about having a patent on the method to create the organ, not the organ itself.

It seems to me that if Monsanto can have a patent on a "unique" seed that at the same time is indistinguishable from a natural one then it can be argued their patent covers the natural one as well. Especially if nature takes its usual course where the natural seed slowly takes on the characteristics of the patented seed due to cross pollination. Which cannot be easily controlled in an open field unless Monsanto wants to crack down on all the insects involved in pollination.

Oh yes, make the wind illegal as well.

Based on articles I've read about Monsanto's behavior in this industry it seems they think they do indeed own the rights to soybean seeds in the US.

If the patent covered the process of creating said seed then I can understand. But I don't agree that one can claim to be unique and generic at the same time. Plus if the resulting seed is indistinguishable from a natural one and the patent was on the seed itself then it would seem that the natural seed is the prior art to counter the patent in the first place.

In your example, a proper comparison would be if the new organ is resistive to aging or whatever other common human failing that would cause one to replace the organ. Therefore, it is not indistinguishable from the natural one. It would indeed have a distinguishable characteristic that makes it different than a natural one. Then you can have the patent on the organ. But don't tell me you own the liver of the child of the parent who received your organ because somehow the characteristics of your special organ was passed down to said child.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of those cases where the rights and interests of patent holders need to be balanced with the rights and interests of the public at large. Biotech crops are probably key to our survival and prosperity as a species on this planet and if anyone can simply grow some seeds and sell them, that will reduce/destroy the monetary incentive for creating new varieties of plants. (In some cases this does not matter, like corn and apples, because these plants do not breed true. But this is apparently not true of soybeans.) That incentive is what the patent system is ideally supposed to protect.

That said, Monsanto's ability/propensity to sue any farmer who breathes in a bit of their genetically modified plant material needs to be curtailed.

<comment><USER7> Can you substantiate your claim that "Biotech crops are probably key to our survival and prosperity as a species"? There is little evidence supporting that that I can find.

Globally, we currently produce more food than we need. The problems we currently have around starvation and malnutrition appear from my limited research to be centred on distribution, comoditization and other socio- economic factors.

How do biotech crops (current or future) tackle these issues?

<comment><USER8> _Globally, we currently produce more food than we need. The problems we currently have around starvation and malnutrition appear from my limited research to be centred on distribution, comoditization and other socio- economic factors._

Remember some "produced food" is fed to other food to make meat. What would you say if vegetarianism was legally required?

<comment><USER9> That in general, we might be better off for it?

That said, it really has no bearing on this discussion. Currently companies do things like destroy perfectly good grains in an effort to prevent the price from dropping due to over-supply. Why? Because it costs money to store, so better to just destroy it. If we come up short later, then it's even _more_ beneficial to the company because the price actually goes _up_!

That's not even touching the issue of Africa, where most 'aide' that is sent never makes it to the starving people due to political turmoil / warlords / etc.

<comment><USER8> I'm skeptical of claims that "food problems are just distribution, we produced enough food to feed everyone" claims, especially if it starts with "well, first everyone must switch to vegetarianism... easy!", and would need some convincing that it's possible to "end world hunger" without massive drastic changes.

<comment><USER10> Replying to this really late, but:

> _The world's second-biggest cause of child mortality, diarrhoea, kills about > 1.5 million children every year. Three-quarters of these deaths could be > prevented with a simple course of oral rehydration salts (ORS) combined with > zinc tablets, at a cost of just US$0.50 per patient._

For years we've[1] struggled to get this live saving cheap stuff to little dying children, and haven't succeeded.

Without any massive change - just a little bit of clever thinking, we use Coca Cola's desire to sell fizzy pop to everyone, and their delivery networks, to help ship ORS.

([http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94996/GLOBAL-Follow-the- fizz-...](http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94996/GLOBAL-Follow-the-fizz-save-a- life))

I agree with you about the "We just need to [...]" school of thought being hopeless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If Monsanto want their patent to cover future generations of seeds derived from a Monsanto seed. Would they also claim liability if one of those generations had a mutation that caused the plant to be toxic and kill people?

<comment><USER4> Of course not, that's easy, they would fight all accusations of liability in that case. The banning of GM crops is already starting around the world and I'm sure companies are fighting this "unfair characterization" of their product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To be fair, this case isn't about cross-pollination. This case is about a grain farmer who agreed not to reuse Monsanto's seed, then bought seed from a grain elevator that had accepted harvests from farmers using Monsanto seed. So he reused someone else's Monsanto seed.

<comment><USER13> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the Monsanto genetics be functionally useless when mixed with unmodified seed? If half of the seed isn't roundup- ready, you can't reap any benefit from it because if you take advantage of its one party trick -- herbicide resistance -- and spray your crops with Glyphosate, half of your crop will die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The guy bought the seed from the grain elevator... what does that have to do with seed saving? I can see banning the former but people should be able to reuse their seed.

(BTW, I worked like 6 summers for Monsanto detasseling corn)

<comment><USER4> From my understanding, if you purchase Monsanto seeds you explicitly agree to not reuse seed from your crop. You have to purchase new seed from Monsanto for the next crop. Which I don't feel I necessarily disagree with that practice. You made the deal so you have to abide by it.

The problem is that Monsanto claims to own the rights to all resulting seeds from their original, forever into the future. This includes cross pollination. So they want farmers who never agreed to use their seed in their crops to pay up because nature does its thing and everyone's crop ends up with characteristics of Monsanto's seed.

The solution is for every farmer to pay Monsanto or ban nature.

<comment><USER15> Monsanto should be sued for polluting the natural bio-system and be forced to clean up their mess. Soon the fossil fuel companies will be suing hospitals from profiteering from their air contributions.

<comment><USER16> No. Instead, each state needs to file trespass charges for every farmer who didn't buy seed and had their field cross polinatee.

Then you count how many seeds. There's a trespass charge for each and every one of them. After all, their seeds are their property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> FTA: "The Supreme Court took up the case against the advice of the Obama administration, which said the Federal Circuit reached the right conclusion in the case."

Is there any doubt who's side the president is on in this matter?

<comment><USER18> Monsanto's business practices are the perfect example of what is wrong with the patent system/big corporate interests taking precedence. They've successfully sued people for cross pollination; engineered seeds who do not produce children; used their standing to get those seeds in just about every market; and they want, and will probably get, their way when it comes to labeling of foods grown with the genetically modified seeds. You brought up Obama's stance on this, but I honestly haven't heard any presidential candidate; third, fourth, or fifth party; talk about changing this nonsense.

<comment><USER17> good point: i will assume for the sake of my previous comment that good ole' mitt would also take the side of monsanto in this case. still, obama is currently in power, so his actions are more critical than any other politician's stance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you want to get some non-mainstream or non-paid for opinions on this topic, the consequences for farmers in the U.S. and even more in developing countries, also on how the PTO started to allow such patents in the first place watch Food Inc - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food,_Inc>.

</comment><comment><USER20> Off topic: The snapping of the header into a fixed position on this web site is incredibly annoying. I thought my trackpad was spazing out for a bit till i realized they actually intended for the header to snap down to cover half the first paragraph, losing my place in the text in the process.

</comment><comment><USER21> Patenting genes strikes me as the only use of patents worse than patenting software.

</comment><comment><USER22> This never made much sense. I don't see what would keep some other company from coming up with a patentable gene in corn, spreading it all over the US, waiting a generation for it to cross pollinate and then demanding license fees paid by everyone.

Heck, you might even be able to plant it near where Monsanto grows their corn for seed and then sue Monsanto.

<comment><USER23> Doubtful, since the strain that goes to market isn't taken from seed from the external test plots.

I think that if it ever came to that, all one would have to do is demonstrate that the gene is now occurring naturally, and they'd have a bonified defense against Monsanto.

As it stand now, though, most of the farmers who went to court with Monsanto were found to be intentially trying to reproduce the technology.

<comment><USER4> In many cases that's where I disagree with the courts. Unless the farmer's intentionally obtained original seeds from Mansanto outside of normal means, then I don't fault them for taking advantage of their crops ending up with said seeds.

Personally I would go the opposite route and do my best to prevent GM seeds from entering my crop. But that's just me.

Plus, not reading the cases you are referring to, was that it was actually found the farmers were doing this or that Monsanto convinced the court/jury that this is so? Remember that requirements of proof are much different for civil court versus criminal court.

Most of the cases I'm familiar with never got to jury, the farmers were bankrupt before getting that far or the farmers just gave in because it was cheaper to settle. Which I'm sure is as planned.

<comment><USER23> That appears to be the case with the farmers though. In this article and with the Canadian farmer some years back, they were both shown to have intentionally taken the technology directly and tried to reproduce it for themselves.

I don't know if there is a court case where the farmer truly had replanted seed of their own with the technology accidently pollinating it.

Keep in mind too that these court cases are closed, and that Monsanto can be using technology to prove their cases - technology which is not public information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider how patent rules apply to self- replicating technologies.

Well, let's hope that if we ever get to have a Star Trek-like replicator, we won't have to "pirate" food and whatnot by using the replicator.

<comment><USER25> I'm more concerned about the _self-replicating_ part. I don't want human self- replication technology (aka childbirth) to become patented. Don't laugh, some genes already are.

<comment><USER4> Considering the current path we are taking, it is almost inevitable that there will one day be a claim by a corporation to "own" a child due to it benefiting from its products and/or research.

<comment><USER26> I hope that day comes sooner rather than later. I can already hear the marching cry of those of us wanting to reduce the IP stranglehold in the US:

 _Think of the children!_

<comment><USER4> I think we can make the argument now that the current copyright/patent absurdities are harming future generations. It's just that for most people, if it doesn't affect them today then they don't care because they are likely incapable of realizing it will affect them tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> dont you love that company... they offer a farmer genetically polluted product that even bugs die of eating (and somehow magically they wont affect human organism, now and in 40 years of constant eating), farmer says "no thank you", then they buy a land around his, put their seeds on, wind blows them on the farmer land, then they sue him for stealing their seeds. By the time the case is closed, the farmer is bankrupt and in $XXX,000 debt.

Its literally like someone broke into your house, raped and killed your daughter and in defense you knocked them off by smashing their head. Then you are being thrown into jail because you hurt that perpetrator and they go free because only you could technically prove they did the crime.

<comment><USER28> [Citation needed] with regards to "then they buy a land around his, put their seeds on, wind blows them on the farmer land, then they sue him for stealing their seeds"

If you are referring to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser) then you are eliding the part where "[Schmeiser] had used Roundup herbicide to clear weeds around power poles and in ditches adjacent to a public road running beside one of his fields, and noticed that some of the canola which had been sprayed had survived. Schmeiser then performed a test by applying Roundup to an additional 3 acres (12,000 m2) to 4 acres (16,000 m2) of the same field. He found that 60% of the canola plants survived. At harvest time, Schmeiser instructed a farmhand to harvest the test field. That seed was stored separately from the rest of the harvest, and used the next year to seed approximately 1,000 acres (4 km²) of canola."

If there was a situation where Monsanto sued and won against a farmer operating in good faith after accidental contamination, please cite it. Monsanto may be an evil megacorp (See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Company#1997_WTVT_news...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Company#1997_WTVT_news_story)) but evil is not directly related to their GM work.

<comment><USER4> I think the case you cited is the citation you are looking for.

The problem with that case is in the definition of operating in good faith. If the farmer did not attempt to cause his crop to be cross pollinated with Monsanto seed then it's not his fault that was the result. He may have known what he was doing and took advantage of the situation, but that's irrelevant. Unless it could be proven that he somehow obtained the seed from outside his crop without going through proper channels then he did nothing wrong. He claimed to have replanted seed from his own crop and I don't see where Monsanto proved otherwise. Again, the case you cite is the citation you are looking for.

Granted, I don't believe that Monsanto purchased the land around his farm with the intent to infect his crop with their seed, but the outcome is the same.

The court gave Monsanto license to claim all crops cross-pollinated with their seed as being property of Monsanto. In this case, the court was wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


Skimming-as-a-Service: Anatomy of a Magecart Attack Toolkit - <AUTHOR> https://www.perimeterx.com/resources/blog/2020/skimming-as-a-service-anatomy-of-a-magecart-attack-toolkit/ <comment><USER2> I've found plenty of magecart infections myself. I was surpised at how difficult it was to tell the site owners. Whois privacy,no contact email on their site, no security.txt.

Just a protip,leave some contact info in whois or somewhere on your business site so people can let you know if you get pwned.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great writeup, wish the screenshots were a bit higher resolution/more readable</comment>


Ask HN: What statistics websites/newsletters do you look at? - <AUTHOR> Are there any websites or newsletters that you are subscribed to or look at? <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.statista.com](https://www.statista.com) has a cool newsletter that you can subscribe to for some pretty interesting statistics.</comment>


Pictures from the 1939 New York World's Fair (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/1939-new-york-world-fair/ <comment><USER2> The 1939 World's Fair vision of the future, or at least the GM version, "Futurerama", was mostly achieved by the 1960s.[1] (Skip ahead to 7:45).

The 1964 World's Fair had a similar GM exhibit, but almost none of it happened. Undersea cities. Large space stations. Moon colonies. Moving sidewalks.[2] No.

Shanghai 2010 was the biggest world's fair. [3]

[1] [https://archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940](https://archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-5aK0H05jk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-5aK0H05jk) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX_Wsh3MUpk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX_Wsh3MUpk)

<comment><USER3> And China is far more modern than US in many respects:

\- a country wide network of high speed railroads in a country larger than the US

\- many more EVs manufactured and in use

\- worlds largest manufacturer and consumer of solar power

\- essentially cashless socity. Smartphone usuable for every transaction

<comment><USER4> How is China larger than the US?

<comment><USER5> Not a significant difference, but China does have more land area than US:

China: 9.32 million km^2 of land

US: 9.14 million km^2 of land

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area#Countries_and_dependencies_by_area)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The "model city of 1960"* is not humans friendly. Looks like a parking lot for sky scrapers.

* [https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tMmp66CqNKY/WYKgglZbyZI/AAAAAAAAN...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tMmp66CqNKY/WYKgglZbyZI/AAAAAAAANqs/BxjyDBrMv-El9a67iGbvFrKjFWpvvnS0wCLcBGAs/s1600/1939_New_York_World_Fair%2B%252821%2529.jpg)

<comment><USER7> That model is actually made by Ford so it's kind of car centric. However, it is also also more 3D than that picture makes it look like. It has plenty of raised walkways to get around and roads below them. This picture is just absolutely dominated by that freeway.

Here is a slightly different angle: [https://placesjournal.org/article/indexing-the-world-of- tomo...](https://placesjournal.org/article/indexing-the-world-of- tomorrow-1939-worlds-fair/?cn-reloaded=1)

<comment><USER6> I guess you mean this: [https://placesjournal.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/01/mattern...](https://placesjournal.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/01/mattern-05-worlds-fair.jpg)

still not clear to me how one gets from one building to another without a car.

<comment><USER7> Raised walkways, you can see lots of little dots in the model which are supposed to be people. Here is the same design at larger scale:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_\(New_York_World%27s_Fair\)#/media/File%3AStreet_intersection_Futurama.jpg)

Also my bad it was GM not Ford.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the specific picture:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_i...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_intersection_Futurama.jpg)

That actually looks quite safe. Pedestrians don't have to look out for cars, and vice-versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It never ceases to amaze me what was accomplished in the 1930s and 1940s.

<comment><USER9> World War II was certainty a kick to technological progress.

RADAR, the modern airplane, atomic energy, rocketry ... so much was accomplished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where is the best place to upload historical found photos like this? I occasionally buy and scan old slides from estate sales and would like to use a site that makes them accessible and searchable. Is there anything better than Flickr?

<comment><USER11> Loc.gov & archive.org

<comment><USER10> I've thought about my local University's archive, but I'd like something a bit more DIY and accessible rather than donating images to some bureaucracy and the images never seeing the light of day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently visited the Parthenon in Nashville and after seeing photos of the Centennial Expedition, I always wondered what it would have been like wandering around when it was going on. It really put into perspective how alien other cultures would have been seen by the locals at the time, and I feel the '39 World's Fair captures the same feeling

</comment><comment><USER13> > _Flanked by Boy Scouts, President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened New York's > $160,000,000 World's Fair with an address in which he said America has > "hitched her wagon to a star of good will", on April 30, 1939. He emphasized > the United States' desire for placid living among the countries of the world > and expressed hope that the future would see a breakdown of "many barriers > of intercourse" among European nations._

</comment><comment><USER14> > Comm. E.B. McGovern, representing the governor

What a perfect name

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks awesome. NY looks way ahead of its time. I can't believe its 1939.

</comment><comment><USER16> "The future isn't what it used to be."

</comment><comment><USER17> Today, there is a well known telecom tower manufacturer named Trylon.</comment>