Charity is no substitute for humanity - <AUTHOR> https://hmmdaily.com/2019/05/01/charity-is-no-substitute-for-humanity/ <comment><USER2> I think another thing to think about with charity is control and agency. Charity is, I'd argue inherently extremely undemocratic. Most people will never be able to afford philanthropy in any meaningful way, so Charity means subjugating yourself to the control and decisions of richer and more powerful people. There are more and less extreme cases of this, of course. I vaguely remember a eugenics charity in the US that paid "lesser" people to sterilize themselves or perform abortions. However, even in less extreme cases, the top down control of charity is inherently oppressive. It allows rich people to "vote with their wallets" on the lives of the general population. Sure, everyone can technically vote, but some people have a million times more votes than others.

Does this mean we should outlaw charities? I don't think so. This only becomes a problem in a country where there is extreme wealth inequality and the rights of the general populace are not guaranteed. Charity seems like a good way to stuff small holes in a general welfare system, but it shouldn't be _the_ welfare system.

<comment><USER3> Can you answer why this is a problem in terms of costs and benefits presupposing that there is no inherent value to human life? If you argue with certain moral beliefs at your core your probably only reaching deaf ears from key figures that could help change things. Appealing to someone's self- interest is more efficient.

<comment><USER2> > presupposing that there is no inherent value to human life

I mean, you can argue anything if you make your assumptions ridiculous enough.

If your approach is to let other people die because that's more efficient then sorry, I'm not very open to your arguments about self-interest.

(I don't want to engage in too much character assassination but: There's this joke that within the first few pages of the comments of any Libertarian account, you will find them defending pedophilia in some way. I'm pleased to say that this rule still applies)

<comment><USER3> Your problem seems to be, that you need arguments to convince someone to do something that you want him to do. I don't care if you're not convinced. I don't need you doing something for my benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People should not have to live or die depending repeated random acts of kindness from strangers.

So many American feel-good news stories are utterly dystopian, where some person completely _fucked dry_ by the government or corporate interests have disaster temporarily staved off by friends or colleagues desperately sacrificing their time or money. Either that, or it's about some billionaire dropping pocket lint on a good cause.

Sites like [https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good- news](https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news) just make me depressed:

[https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3283/Man-Shares-Chick- Fi...](https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3283/Man-Shares-Chick-Fil-A- Employee-039-s-Quiet-Act-Of-Kindness) \- man starving on the streets gets one meal our of sheer luck

[https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3279/7-Eleven-Owner- Catc...](https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3279/7-Eleven-Owner-Catches- Shoplifter-Instead-Of-Calling-911-He-Asks-Him-Why) \- starving children win the getting-fucked-for-life vs eating-a-meal lottery one single time. Thoughts and prayers go to their next 1000 times they need to play.

[https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3270/Unused-Cafeteria- Fo...](https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3270/Unused-Cafeteria-Food-Is- Being-Turned-Into-Take-Home-Meals-For-Kids) \- starving children (Why is this even a thing anywhere?) are allowed to eat leftovers.

<comment><USER5> > People should not have to live or die depending repeated random acts of > kindness from strangers.

That is true, but the flip side is that people should not have to live or die depending on compelled acts of strangers either.

No ideological purity survives the myriad of real world circumstances; but the normal case should be that people don't need charity because when life hits them hard there are avenues where they can live a dignified life through their own hard work.

<comment><USER6> If all it took was hard work to live a dignified life there would already be plenty of dignity. The fact of the matter is the world doesn't work on dreams, hopes, and hard work. Silicon Valley had plenty of failed companies to prove this. It works on the fact that bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people and the vast majority of your ability to deal with that comes from how much money your parents had, something over which you have no control. The fact that you have to pay dues in the form of taxes to be part of something like the United States shouldn't be a hard choice to make. We're all willing to pay for corporate welfare, military excess, public land give aways to private entities, but heaven forbid we give up a little bit of cash in the form of taxes to help our fellow citizen. If you look at the outrage on taxes it's always when it comes to helping other people. Access to healthcare shouldn't be a political issue. There is no liberty in a life where one must make the choice between certain death and loss of freedom. As a citizen you're also not compelled to stay in the United States. You can gain all the benefits of citizenship and live in another country. You can even choose to become a citizen of another country. This idea that you're forced to help your fellow citizens is plainly a falsehood. As soon as you become an adult you're free to leave the country. Compulsion is an illusion.

<comment><USER7> No, you are not free to leave because the supposed other country might not take you in and even if they do it is a big process, nor are the costs of travel negligible.

<comment><USER8> I think every country offers an immigration program of some kind. To get super pedantic you can show up in Svalbard and live there forever with no immigration process - you just get off the plane and tell the Norwegian governor you live there now. So there is always _somewhere_ you can go. I think the travel costs are the smallest part of immigrating somewhere new (especially since most immigration programs are employment sponsored). That's not to understate the scope of what you're doing, it's a big decision, though it definitely is an option. I guess I'm saying "yes and no."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article decries people the necessity of people banding together in tough times and want's more "humanity" meaning that expenses are automatically taken care of in bad times. The author knows nothing about humanity and what it entails. Humanity is not a robotic system where ants are ordered.

Societies are built by people interacting and building trust and taking care of each other in bad times for their own self interest. Not by forcing people to act against their own judgment.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that without the greed of a few most of these charity acts wouldn't need to exist. Healthcare is extremely expansive and inefficient in the US because of the greed of a few. This false dichotomy between a freedom crunching social regime against the freedom saving forces of market is a lie. Social democratic countries exist, the populus are not subjugadeted to an opressing regime nor are they left for the mercy of strangers for basic survival. On top of that, most systems there, even governmental ones are much more efficient than in the US. And still, there's a free economy, with plenty of chances for a decent life.

On the other hand the US is controlled by the greed of a few huge corporation, the people are much less free. As I see it, human society tends to create hubs of power. The civilian powers are not less prone to oppression than the power of the state. In a democracy you at least have the moral grounds to fight corruption. But in a society obsessed with free markets and small government this power still ends up concentrated in places. But now you as opressed don't have a moral ground to fight abuses of power. This false dichotomy of freedom vs welfare means that standing up against the opressors is considerred bad morally, because it means you are against freedome. Anyway, because it seems that power have a tendency to concentrate. I'de rather have a moral system where abuses of power of any kind can be considered morally wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have always been told that I should save my money and build a nest egg. That I should not stop until I have 6 months to a year of runway, and that once I get there, treat that money as if I don't even have it. I have lived by this advice and I am grateful for receiving it early.

<comment><USER12> I am also wondering why I have to subsidize everyone else's kids while not being able to afford my own, since I have relatively high standards for what a stable financial situation should be before I have them. Charity is voluntary while taxation is not.

<comment><USER13> Consider, you have a job, an apartment, dignity.

Without taxation you would have none of these. You would be a surf or servant, or simply dead. Statistically it would be astonishingly unlikely you would be in the ruling class, and given that you are posting on HN you probably aren't a candidate.

You have standards, I respect that, but your community disagrees with you. Children are our future, they are ours - all of them - and we need to look after them. They should have food, shelter, healthcare and education. We should all give them that. If we do we can look each other in the eye and demand respect, dignity and community. If you are robbed or shamed they you have a right to be offended and outraged.

If we don't then you and I are wolves in the forest, with everyone else.

<comment><USER12> > Consider, you have a job, an apartment, dignity.

> Without taxation you would have none of these. You would be a surf or > servant, or simply dead.

I do not agree with this premise, especially since you have provided no proof that it is based in reality. If you were to guess, what was the income tax in the US in 1900 and were everyone there a surf [sic], servant or dead?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For me having a huge amount of charitable organizations mean that governments have failed. As a world.

<comment><USER15> Not to mention a lot of charitable organizations are created as a mean to evade taxes.

> The IRS estimates that the charitable sector controls approximately USD 3 > trillion (€2.36 trillion) in assets.

[https://www.oecd.org/tax/exchange-of-tax- information/4223203...](https://www.oecd.org/tax/exchange-of-tax- information/42232037.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I highly recommend Citations Needed's episode on Perseverance Porn. If you have ever been uneasy with stories about people walking 10+ miles to work or relying on charity just to survive a common misfortune, this will open your eyes to just how prevalent it is. [https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-23-the-medias- gri...](https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-23-the-medias-grim- addiction-to-perseverance-porn)

Beware, you'll see it everywhere after this.</comment>


Webglstudio.js – Open-source 3D graphics editor in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jagenjo/webglstudio.js <comment><USER2> Creator here.

This is an Open Source project I started 7 years ago to help in our research lab. Right now the engine is very mature and stable and it has many features (irradiance probes, realtime reflections, skeletal animation and blend shapes, etc) but most importantly, because it is an open source project, the idea is to be very modular so people can extend it easily. It even has an Addons system that let you include external code from the editor.

I do not publicy it too much because there are still some parts that I want to improve before release it as 1.0.

Right now Im finishing the shader graph editor and working on a better backend.

Feel free to ask anything :)

<comment><USER3> litegraph.js really caught my attention and I'll be looking into using it for a project unrelated to 3d editing. I had been looking for a "general purpose node editor" for a while now but somehow never found litegraph. Let me know if you are interested in hearing feedback on that process.

I'm also looking for something similar to control and edit timelines. Do you have any plans on doing a litetimeline.js?

In general: kudos for having one of the few projects I've come across that is not drowning in dependencies. Very refreshing!

Suggestion: Having a few scenes to try out in the editor would be nice! (Or did I just miss them?)

<comment><USER4> Any chance you looked for a grid system?

In the early stages of needing to do fairly basic CAD with grid and snaps on a web page.

Having a hard time finding a decent lib to build on top of.

<comment><USER2> snapping is not complex, but then there is snapping to cell,edge,vertex,... and it gets complicated quite fast.

but I will consider it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Three.js has an online editor app that works really well (even on mobile..) - [https://threejs.org/editor/](https://threejs.org/editor/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool. I'm not familiar with 3D scene development, so I'm not sure exactly what goals someone would have while using it if you can't edit the meshes, but it looks very impressive.

<comment><USER7> Modeling is just the start of the 3D pipeline. You also have surface design (textures & shaders), lighting, animation.

The well-known big 3D packages do all, but there's a long history of separate tools too.

AFAIK Pixar still has separate toolchains and editors for each discipline. It makes some sense that, if you hire the world's best expressive character animators, you don't want to distract their daily work with mesh editing tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a great start. I particularly like the View JSON capability (in the Scene tab for those interested)

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't actually tell from the readme, does it support actual modeling and/or sculpting?

<comment><USER8> As far as I could tell playing around with it, the answer is no. You can load models, transform, animate, etc. but no vertex editing

<comment><USER10> If you're looking for a modeling package there's [https://clara.io](https://clara.io)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Preatty awesome product. Long way to go but a great start</comment>


Pointillism – Art Generator from Image - <AUTHOR> https://pointillism.digitalbunker.dev/app <comment><AUTHOR> I've always been interested in computer generated art, so I built a web app to generate pointillism art from a source image. It's my first website I've ever made from scratch and not particularly useful, but it's entertaining. The Pointillism script is written in Processing.</comment>


Baidu Research Announces Breakthrough in Simultaneous Translation - <AUTHOR> https://simultrans-demo.github.io/ We are excited to announce STACL, the first simultaneous translation system w/ integrated anticipation & controllable latency. This is a major breakthrough in #NLP due to word order differences between languages and simultaneity requirement. Demo & paper: https://bit.ly/2yTCvjE <comment><USER2> Really cool demo! Just a note, the last example is corrupted at least for me in Firefox on mobile (but not Firefox on a computer).

Curious how this would work translating between a language like German where verbs sometimes are placed at the very end. Or even if clauses make things complicated. You wouldn't know the meaning for a long time -- or would you guess and amend?

To make this concrete (DE <-> ZH) with EN provided for clarity, apologies for errors:

[EN] I didn't go out last evening, because my mother had warned me about feral cats on the street.

[FROM ZH] 昨晚我不去出因为我妈妈警告我街上有野猫。

[TO DE] Gestern Abend bin ich nicht rausgegangen, weil meine Mutter mich vor Wildkatzen auf der Straße gewarnt hatte.

In that German sentence, the key verb in the second clause "to warn [warnen]" happens nearly at the end, but in the beginning in Chinese [警告].

So if I'm halfway through the second clause of my Chinese sentence, ...因为我妈妈警告我, the simultaneous translation in German is "weil meine Mutter [.....]" and then all at once "mich vor Wildkatzen auf der Straße gewarnt hatte" when the Chinese sentence finally ends.

I suppose you could split the clause again to give some "early" meaning in the sentence in real-time: "weil meine Mutter mich davor gewarnt hatte, dass [...]" and then the bit about the wild cats when it shows up in the Chinese sentence, but I'm sure you can construct more pathological examples so my question still stands.

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the joke about interpreters at the European Parliament. It goes something like this: there are always 3 waves of laughter when an MEP says something funny. First are the natives, then most of others who rely on translation, last are the Germans who wait for the verb.

<comment><USER4> You can turn it around, it's the English who have to wait for the object.

I think in such a translation system (to text) you could just insert a placeholder and replace it later. Or (in speech) you'd just delay the sentence until it is complete. If you reach a timeout, you just render it ungramatically in the wrong word order. Especially when speaking freely and making up the sentence on the spot, you could say something like "because my mother... about wild cats on the street... [uhhm, you know] ... she warned me".

Chinese also sometimes has "strange" word order for western ears, when you just state the "topic" upfront instead of building a relative clause like you would in English or German. "[Talking about] wild cats on the street, my mother warns me".

A live translation system will always have a tradeoff between accurracy+elegance and latency, just like real human translators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is the code for your paper available in a Github repo?

</comment><comment> dis-sys just wondering when there will be a paper submission to a top ranking conference in the area actually AI translated from the native language of its authors. or maybe it has already been done before? :)

</comment><comment><USER6> So this article is the only thing this poster has ever submitted, which is a bit suspicious in itself, but additionally the account being non-civil in attacking my criticism has basically only commented on this one article. Pretty strange I'd say.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's a quote from a book that I can't quite recall, but related to German professors droning on with ever-more deeply nested sentences, and finally finishing with all the verbs at the end, leaving the poor students utterly lost as to which verb went with which sub-clause.

Anyway, great story, I'm sure, but it seem apropos.

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome demo!

</comment><comment><USER6> In Demo IV it's clear that this is intended to be used without correcting previous output. So with a look-ahead of 3 words it outputs the exact opposite of the intended meaning. For this to be practical, the look ahead probably has to be the whole sentence, defeating the purpose.

The propaganda push in Western media to build up and legitimize Chinese academia and technology ventures is staggering. Check out that map at the bottom. This article is more popular in EU and US than China itself. 99.9% of the chinese economy is built around stolen or borrowed technology. So what would be a minor development by a western researcher is a "breakthrough" for Baidu.

<comment><USER9> Keep thinking in that way, it's great for your mental health

<comment><USER6> I know you mean well, but please take a look at the Hackernews guidelines linked at the bottom of the page, specifically the following two passages.

>Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

>Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

These are great guidelines, I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of whoever wrote them.

<comment><USER9> Sorry since it's hate speech in the first place, I couldn't help</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs undergoing surgery Monday - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10150165-37.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not meant to encourage prying into his life. But for those to who tend this way, it's a good time to privately offer good thoughts, prayers, or whatever your approach is. That can be done without prying or intruding.

Whether you're a big fan or a detractor, I think that most will admit that his vision and tenacity have broken new ground for technology in the hands of the masses. I personally feel highly indebted.

God bless, Steve.

</comment><comment><USER2> So this article cites an article in valleywag that cites a secondhand account passed along from a employee at Stanford.

Very trustworthy...

<comment><USER3> Even more if their "news" have been declined just two days ago:

      Update: A Valley source tells us this is wrong. "He was in Apple meetings today, as a matter of fact. Valleywag is 100 percent wrong."

[http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/was-steve-jobs-in- surgery...](http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/was-steve-jobs-in-surgery- today)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That's very hopeful news.

Unfortunately _good_ news travels more slowly. At least HN can serve as a hacker-snopes clearing house.</comment></comment></comment>


China's return to religion - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2017/04/12/523631598/the-souls-of-china-documents-countrys-dramatic-return-to-religion <comment><USER2> My experience in China as a student point me to believe that most Chinese kowtow and go to temples for tradition and spirituality rather than institutionalized religion.

The entire article sounds like a westerner applying their cultural values and their sense of righteousness to China. For example:

>"But I do think that it does create values that are higher than any government's values - ideas of righteousness and justice that people are inspired by and that will inspire them to action if they feel that they are unjustly treated by the government."

(I'm an american born chinese but was brought to China for about 6 years by my mother)

Edit: My grandmother is extremely Buddhist, and both my mother and I are nonreligious. Even so, my mother brought me to the Confucius temple to kowtow and light incense, not because it actually did anything, but because it was a move of ancestral respect and tradition.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. It makes me wonder if these authors really believe what they are saying or if they are trying to spin a narrative that helps them sell books?

The other annoying thing that Western authors on China do is attribute everything to "face" and try to use this point as a huge distinction between Chinese and Westerners.

<comment><USER4> it's funny considering face stuff works pretty much same in West, just not to that extent as in China, yeah people will admit they don't know something unlike China, but still don't dare to tell someone they are cheap for instance

<comment><USER5> > people will admit they don't know something

Trump is working hard on changing that misconception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm of the understanding that many Chinese families are "spiritual" and believe in "traditions" and "folklore" but institutionalize religion as it is known in the west is not really seen in China.

That's why I wonder if the "oh no it's not religion because the government controls religion" arguments are the author jumping to conclusions.

This in fact seems like the patronizing form of Orientalism: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism) In the sense that we are forcing our Western understanding of religion onto our understanding of Chinese "religion", and then drawing conclusions from there.

I question the validity of the author's claim that a Chinese person said: "oh no it's not religion because the government controls religion" because it's unlikely for a Chinese person to openly talk against the government like that, especially with a foreigner, especially with a stranger.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that because the CCP is against religion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 16 years in China (many cities and towns and villages) here. No evidence of religion except in strange cases where they have a Christian family and go to government-approved/run churches. My wife is muslim and the general situation is that while they don't eat pork, people drink alcohol and wear normal clothes and are otherwise perfectly the same as regular Chinese people. They only go to the mosque for weddings and funerals. Other comments are correct re: ritual (particularly in Confucian cases) far trumps any notion of what westerners would label religion.

ie. Basically the entire notion of the article is bullshit. (Sorry to left- wing NPR-worshipping American friends, and "Pullitzer prize winning" Beijing- dwelling author trying to sell a book)

<comment><USER9> There's the phenomenon of "cultural" Christians (of all denominations)who only attend church for lifecycle events and major holidays like Christmas and Easter.

Quite often they are looked down upon by more heated Protestants.

<comment><USER10> When I grew up in Sweden in the 80's, I was a member of the state church despite not being baptized, because it was the state church, and my parents were members, so I was automatically added.

Almost everyone of my classmates were baptized and later confirmed. Everyone went to weddings and funerals in church. The school semester ending gatherings were held in church, we sung psalms, a priest read the christmas gospel if it was christmas, and something lighter if it was summer. Some would wear a cross necklace. If you asked people if they were christian, most would say "yes".

But noone was a believer. None of my classmates were christians. Almost none of their parents were. Yet to a casual observer, it would have appeared we were all good christian children. And since almost everyone was a member of the church, the official statistics backed it up. From the outside, you would have to poke pretty hard to figure out that no, none of these people are actually christian.

And it seems like the guy in the article isn't poking hard enough. He just sees religious activity, and immediately equates that with religious belief. Why would people go to church if they're not religious?

Why, indeed?

<comment><USER11> It seriously depends on the religion whether the "believer" concept really makes sense. Believer in Christianity is meant to express a trust in God, faith in a very personal sense. Despite this being the intention, I would argue that it's not true for a great many Christians who instead want to feel like they belong in the social setting built up for & by and surrounding the Church.

The concepts of belief in most other religions are very different. Nobody in Egypt will tell you that they have trust in Allah to heal them and keep them healthy, just that they live in muslim country, the way "you live in the USA", and that the laws are what matters. Ignoring the religion is borderline acceptable (IF you're male), going against it is like what I imagine being a dissident in China is like. While they're probably not going to kill you at the first sign, society and the state will attack you in small ways, and then build up. It is not out of the question that they'll eventually kill you for it. Nobody, and I mean nobody on this planet believes Allah will protect them from illnesses if they eat halal food. But there is a clear threat, at the forefront of everyone's mind, that is keeping muslims in Egypt islamic. They don't see this as a problem, after all, any other state is no different, right ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article mostly talks about religions in terms of culture- customs and ritual practice and instilling traditional values-

 _But I think there 's also in a more positive sense that the government recognizes that there is a lack of values in society - that people don't believe in anything and there's a great uncertainty in society, a national malaise. And they also recognize that most people really don't believe in communism anymore. So they look at the traditional faiths as a way of instilling some kind of morality, basic principles for good living and that sort of thing._

\- as opposed to supernatural beliefs. The discussion thread should likewise focus on the social role that religion fulfills in terms of culture and public morality, because that was the emphasis of the article. Commentators are too easily jumping to the lightning rod of the validity of religious claims, ignoring other aspects that organized religion plays.

</comment><comment><USER13> What about Confucianism? It's odd to read an article about religion in China that doesn't even mention it (other than reference to the temples, which I assume were Confucian).

Perhaps there's something I misunderstand. AFAIK Confucianism isn't a religion worshiping a supernatural being as much as a philosophy and culture which includes ancestor worship. But my understanding, based on a little reading and study of my own, is that it played a very similar role to religion in Western countries.

Generally speaking, it was the 'religion' of China from around 250 BCE until at least 1911.

<comment><USER4> you answered your own question, it's not religion but philosophy, similar to Buddhism which ain't religion too, depending on definition

<comment><USER14> To see Buddhism as a full blown religion ( and very aggressive at that) visit Burma or Sri Lanka

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From what I understand, a key reason the Chinese government is suspicious of Christianity and Islam is they are both universalist religions that hold that all human beings are sons and daughters of the same God, and so all deserve to be treated with respect.

China, from what I understand, has traditionally held that the Chinese people and state are superior to everyone else, and so deserve a superior status in the world.

<comment><USER16> maybe prior to colonialism. The modern conservative Chinese narrative is more of an inferiority complex rather than the opposite.

It's easy to see why the CCP is against religion - the party is rooted with the cult of Mao, which is a de-facto religion. And like most other religions it does not tolerate the existence of competing religions.

<comment><USER15> >maybe prior to colonialism. The modern conservative Chinese narrative is more of an inferiority complex rather than the opposite.

Yea, I see what you are saying. But I also get the impression they think they are going to regain their status as "the center of the world"

>It's easy to see why the CCP is against religion - the party is rooted with the cult of Mao, which is a de-facto religion. And like most other religions it does not tolerate the existence of competing religions.

Most definitely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting, if religion is on the upswing in China. I wonder how the people feel about the government's involvement with the Panchen Lama. [1]

I didn't know much about this till recently.

[1] [https://youtu.be/bLY45o6rHm0](https://youtu.be/bLY45o6rHm0)

</comment><comment><USER18> Only two Christian denominations permitted: old Latin Catholic and a generic Protestant.

</comment><comment><USER19> That's unfortunate.

I thought the official communist stance of atheism helped them grow in multiples not possible for dogmatic societies.

<comment><USER20> That doesn't mean China has no dogma, it means atheism _is_ its dogma.

Google's definition:

dogma: (noun) a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true

<comment><USER21> Atheism is not dogma. That's wordsmithing to help believers in god feel comfort in a false equivalency between conception withour sperm and the cosmos / observable world empiricism.

<comment><USER22> Atheism certainly can be dogma, especially in the strong variety. It is usually also coupled with a healthy dose of scientism.

<comment><USER23> Yea, science is often weaponized by non-scientific people as an im-smarter- cudgel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's a diamond, buried in my backyard, the size of a washing machine. Knowing it's there, gives my life meaning. It bring me peace, and guides my life. Frankly, i wouldn't want to life in a universe where that diamond wasn't there. -- Harris 4:2

<comment><USER25> See [http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/secular-philosophies/why- rel...](http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/secular-philosophies/why-religion- must-end-interview-with-sam-harris.aspx?p=3)</comment></comment>


When Does 'Close' Become Too-Close-to-Call? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/when-does-close-become-too-close-to.html <comment><USER2> As a Minnesota voter, I think the one reason I would have liked a run-off election in the United States Senate race is that there were three major-party candidates running in the race. (Minnesota has three "major" parties by state law, and all three are capable of winning statewide elections.) So it's a little unclear to me how a pure Franken versus Coleman match-up would have come out if a run-off had happened here in Minnesota at the same time as this election cycle's run-off election in Georgia. Georgia knows who its two United States Senators are. Minnesota is still in doubt, months after the general election. I now like run-offs in major statewide races like that, when the margin after the general election is very close.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any matrix way to learn coding? - <AUTHOR> I want to develop many daily habits, such as running, reading, or exercise every day, but all difficult to stick to, I know someone, such as zurkburg, who can insist on what they want to do, so I wonder is there any systemic way i can develop a habit?<p>I want to learn programming language in just seconds. Just insert chip and boom you get expert in the language. <comment><USER2> Sure!

First learn any language over multiple years and collect a lot of experience in the fundamentals of the language. If possible do this to a second and third one as well.

Now you only need to read a intro guide and can start coding in almost any other language.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I the only one here who thinks that this post was written by somebody < 12 years old?

"matrix way"?

"insert chip and boom you get expert"??

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want to become a procoder, a codewiz or anything similar, then you should learn to type fast as well & try overtaking the type cursor! But, if your goal is to create solutions, then programing might be the last thing you do.

<comment><USER2> Curious. Could you explain this further? I build solutions the whole day and actually most i do is coding.</comment></comment>


RMS Talk on The Free Software Movement - <AUTHOR> http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/The%20Free%20Software%20Movement%20and%20GNULinux%20Operating%20System,%20a%20talk%20by%20Richard%20Stallman%20at%20UCSD.html <comment><USER2> This is going to be unpopular, but it irks me that people say that GPLd software (not LGPL) is free as in speech (liberty). It's a little less free than speech, since I can't take GPLd code and combine it with my proprietary code. I understand why people might not want me to do this, but then you can't very well say I have liberty to use that code. It's limited freedom.

Don't get me wrong, I love GPL software, it's just not the last word in freedom. I can imagine freer software, LGPL or the Perl Artistic license for instance. Infact I wonder why free software needs a license at all? The ultimate freedom would be source you can do whatever you want with. With no license to tell you what you can or can't do with it.

<comment><USER3> You need these restrictions in order to protect your freedom. If GPL would allow combining code in proprietary code, someone could take your GPL-code, build a product out of it, release it under a proprietary license, then sue you for infringing his license.

<comment><USER2> If this was true wouldn't people releasing code under other licenses such as the LGPL be getting sued now?</comment></comment></comment>


Review: We do not recommend the $299 Oculus Quest 2 as your next VR system - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/review-we-do-not-recommend-the-299-oculus-quest-2-as-your-next-vr-system/ <comment><USER2> Thoughts on this?</comment>


Geographical profiling study claims to have unmasked Banksy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35645371 <comment><USER2> This raises some interesting questions about the ethics of what these researchers did. Similar to when JK Rowling was "outed," although IIRC they asked her permission before revealing it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Submission from 4 hours ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11236213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11236213)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't buy the "we do not know who Bansky is" meme.

The guy has had exhibitions at major museums, interventions where someone, at least police, should have allowed him to carry out his stuff without interruptions, and yet the media claims that all these things can be carried out by an anonymous player.

What surprises more is that pretty much everyone is falling for that fad.

<comment> m-i-l The article itself does say: "the resulting 'geoprofile' was a good match for an obvious candidate: Robin Gunningham, whom the Mail on Sunday named in 2008 after an investigation into Banksy's identity... 'What I thought I would do is pull out the 10 most likely suspects, evaluate all of them and not name any ... But it rapidly became apparent that there is only one serious suspect, and everyone knows who it is. If you Google Banksy and Gunningham you get something like 43,500 hits.'"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Url changed from [https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/science-has-revealed- bank...](https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/science-has-revealed-banksys-true- identity?utm_source=vicenewsfb), which points to this.</comment>


Simple but Challenging: The Universe According to Planck - <AUTHOR> http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=51551

<comment><USER2> Could someone, please, clue me on something that has been on my mind for a while now: The thermal radiation coming from distant stars has been red- shifted by the Universe expansion, together with the light in the visible spectrum. I suppose. Is it now in the same spectral area as the background radiation? Or is it the same thing?

Also, if we see the stars, do we also see the thermal radiation coming from them?

<comment><USER3> Starlight (and sunlight) chiefly _is_ thermal radiation. The CMB is something distinct, originating from before there were any stars at all!

Re:contamination, luckily stars in general are fairly sparsely distributed, so we can simply remove those areas. Apparently the plane of our own galaxy does have to be mostly cut out, though.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_rad...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation#Data_reduction_and_analysis)

<comment><USER4> > Starlight (and sunlight) chiefly is thermal radiation.

I just wanted to clarify for others that while we are used to learning that stellar radiation "originates" from nuclear fusion, most of the emission from fusion is absorbed by the outer layers of the star and then re-emitted. Hence why it is all thermal, and why starlight replicates blackbody radiation so well.

Just something I had been confused about for a while. Feel free to correct me if I am still confused. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Looks like time for a revolution in physics.</comment>


Elephants: Large, Long-Living and Less Prone to Cancer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/science/why-elephants-get-less-cancer.html <comment><USER2> If larger animals had better cancer fighting weapons, then the largest animals ever on the planet, the blue whale, being 15-25x larger, would have that much better cancer fighting weapons. I wonder what those would be.

<comment><USER3> They do. Evolution.

They needed to evolve to reach a certain age ( -> once they cant reproduce anymore) without dying to cancer. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMMPKJFYzdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMMPKJFYzdY) for a more in depth explaination

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Experiments in which mice get extra amounts of p53 have shown that the molecule has a downside: It can accelerate aging._

This bothers me. What exactly is the relationship between cancer and aging?

<comment><USER5> There is a theory that has substantial evidence that "senescence" the technical term for aging is a defense against cancers. Here is a long article about how cancer and senescence are related.[0]

[0][http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/nature0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/nature05985.html)

<comment><USER6> Correlation, but what could the causation possibly be? Cancers and senescence occur late in life, past the reproductive age. Doesn't that mean the correlation cannot be selective?

<comment><USER5> The article goes into more depth but it's more than just the correlation that aging and cancer both occur with age.

One neat thing the article brings up has to do with the p53 protein. People who have only one functional copy of this enzyme have Li–Fraumeni syndrome. Basically they get lots of cancer. On the other hand mice who over express the p53 protein don't get any cancer but age more quickly than other mice.

There exists a similar dimension for telomeres. If you have to few you are at higher risk for developing senescent related diseases. If you have too many you're prone to cancer.

Basically a senescent cell has decided not to divide anymore because it has determined it would be dangerous to do so. So many of the enzymes/chemicals/genes that push these cells to continue to divide cure senescence related illnesses but lead to higher risk of cancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder, exactly how might a cell "commit suicide"?

<comment><USER8> The medical term is "Apoptosis" and the Wikipedia article is a good intro to this _very_ complex topic [1]

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"All in all, it's interesting, but the mechanism needs to be properly investigated,"_

This is the type of academic bullsh@t that needs to stop. Of f@cking course more research needs to be done but let these people have their moment for advancing the field.

Life is literally too short to ruin it in this way.</comment>


Falling Short: An analysis of the reporting of UK drone strikes by the MoD - <AUTHOR> https://dronewars.net/2018/07/09/falling-short/ <comment><USER2> This kinda reminds me of the argument made in Ken Burns Vietnam that the brass tried to "measure success" of the war by body count and that created a perverse incentive to manufacture body count. And by argument I don't mean the series as a whole but it was a thought brought up in one or more of the episodes.

<comment><USER3> Not sure where i ran into the claim (may have been the Oliver Stones series), but it went something like this:

While on patrol one of the soldiers shoots a elderly woman holding a bicycle in a village. By the time the report reached the DC it had become an ageless, genderless, Vietcong with a grenade.

<comment><USER2> I tried to watch his "Untold History of the United States" and it felt like some of it was taken out of context or attributing malice where naivety, incompetence or insufficient information would be a more plausible explanation. Can't think of any specific examples. Just what I remember from watching it before stopping.

<comment><USER4> The dead and their mourners can't tell the difference between malice and incompetence. Why does it matter?

<comment><USER2> I don't believe in consequentialism. Intent is more important imo. Not to say the consequence isn't important it is just I don't think it should be the only thing taken into account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Edit: I was responding below to the original title of the post, which is was " _Civilians have been 'airbrushed' out of reporting by the UK on its drone strikes (dronewars.net)_." It has since been changed to match the title of the OP.

The "airbrushed" language seems misleading to me. The connotations are of a coverup or deliberate post-facto erasure (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union#Censorship_of_historical_photographs)). What the OP describes seems to be more like an issue of insufficiently standardized reports. This is clear as the recommendation it gives to address the "airbrushing" is basically a report-writing checkbox:

> In order to improve transparency, it is suggested that each MOD report > should include whether or not civilians were present in the vicinity of a > strike, or whether it was unknown if civilians were in the area.

<comment><USER6> >insufficiently standardized reports

In fact, a standard has been established: in 96% of the reports, civilians are simply not mentioned.

The 'standard terms' are used instead: "terrorist" and "extremist".

This is very disturbing - we, the public, are being lied to about how much civilian damage is being caused by our ignorance of the warriors who insist they must be allowed the freedom to kill anyone they want, without culpability.

I, for one, hope to see more public oversight of the war-mongers, such that our daily efforts to produce more enemies in the war-torn regions of the world is brought to a minimum.

(EDIT:s/94%/96%/)

<comment><USER2> Intercept did a lot of good reporting on this.

[https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/](https://theintercept.com/drone- papers/)

<comment><USER6> Indeed that is a brilliant resource for those of us with an interest in the hidden machinations of the warrior classes. Seriously deep info.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I don't know what you mean by warrior class.

<comment><USER6> The class of people whose principle preoccupation is the fighting of war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "In games without frontiers, war without tears. If looks could kill, they probably will."</comment>


Companies Pay Workers to Live Close to the Office - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-pay-workers-to-live-close-to-the-office-1456223402 <comment><USER2> That's behind a paywall

<comment><USER3> [http://news.yahoo.com/companies-pay-workers-to-live-close- to...](http://news.yahoo.com/companies-pay-workers-to-live-close-to-the- office-135222410.html?nf=1)</comment></comment>


Appdash, an open-source perf tracing suite - <AUTHOR> https://sourcegraph.com/blog/117580140734 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, my name is Stephen Gutekanst and I'm the primary developers working on Appdash at Sourcegraph. I'm really excited to hear your thoughts about it and to see how it can be improved to fit your needs -- if you have any questions I'd love to answer them! :)</comment>


Getting Started with Event Data and Keen.io - <AUTHOR> https://www.airpair.com/keen-io/posts/getting-started-with-event-data-and-keenio

<comment><AUTHOR> Just posted another blog about gettting started with Keen.io. I didn't really find any good basic writeups from anyone online, so just wanted to give a brief overview of the Keen service and event data. Hope it's useful! [https://www.airpair.com/keen-io/posts/getting-started- with-e...](https://www.airpair.com/keen-io/posts/getting-started-with-event- data-and-keenio)

<comment><USER2> Great guide Mark — it's important to get event data right, or else it really limits the analysis you can do. I'm always so sad when I discover bad data.</comment></comment>


Sweet.js – Hygienic Macros for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.sweetjs.org/ <comment><USER3> Thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14695495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14695495)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7978897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7978897)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7219267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7219267)

2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4650929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4650929)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4560691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4560691)

</comment><comment><USER4> For those who don't know, hygienic macros are ones that avoid variable name collision. An example below from [https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/hygienic- macros-introduction/](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/hygienic-macros- introduction/)

// C program to illustrate a situation known as

// accidental capture of identifiers - <USER2>

// undesirable result caused by unhygienic macros

#define INCI(i) do { int x = 0; ++i; } while(0)

int main(void) { int x = 4, y = 8;

        // macro called first time
        INCI(x);

        // macro called second time
        INCI(y);

        printf("x = %d, b = %d\n", x, y);
        return 0;
    }

<comment><USER5> >int x = 0; ++i;

That can't be right.

<comment><USER6> It's right. Expanded it's `int x = 0; ++x` and `int x = 0; ++y`.

The first case doesn't have any side effects. The second case does.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. Obviously I don't write any C so I appreciate the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually work on a JS project that needed to heavily rely on macros to reduce build file size (the project is from before ES6 and rollup.js). I ended up going to MetaScript [1] as all of its syntax was based on comments. So all the other tooling and code highlighting worked without issue.

[1] [https://github.com/dcodeIO/MetaScript](https://github.com/dcodeIO/MetaScript)

</comment><comment><USER8> Typescript doesn't officially support macros yet, but if you want to live dangerously (which you would if you were choosing to use Sweet.js!) you can check out [https://github.com/cevek/ttypescript#transformers](https://github.com/cevek/ttypescript#transformers) :)

<comment><USER9> I didn't know about this project. I've wanted something like this for like 2 years or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On the README:

> Currently, Sweet should be considered experimental and under heavy > development (re-development more like). As such, the API will be undergoing > a bit of churn until probably the end of the year. So, probably best not to > try Sweet in production systems just yet. If you're interested in helping > out though we'd love to have you!

Project last updated 2 years ago. I think this is dead.

</comment><comment><USER11> Racket likely has the most sophisticated (mostly) hygienic macro system out there. In particular, syntax parameters are a really neat feature which lets you implement things normally requiring breaking hygiene in a hygienic way. For example, implementing early return using return as a keyword can be done using a syntax parameter which allows for nesting, renaming the "return" if you want, and composing it with other macros which utilize their own "return" keyword.

<comment><USER12> Racket truly has some great stuff wrt. macros -- I'm not sure if it was invented as a research vehicle for macros specifically[0], but they've even gone as far as implementing fairly advanced type systems _as macros_ [1].

Besides the one I've linked, they have lots of interesting papers around the macro system: the handling of 'stages', the modularity, etc. Basically just google "Racket [something]" and go from there :)

[0] Probably more just a general 'extensible languages' type thing?

[1] [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/stchang/pubs/ckg- popl2017.pdf](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/stchang/pubs/ckg-popl2017.pdf)

<comment><USER13> I only glanced over the paper but its novelty seems to lie in the turnstile language itself, i.e. the design of a metalanguage to define EDSLs that have a typesystem.

Yes, it is built using macros and I assume cleverly uses whatever macro system features Racket provides so there is possibly something novel there as well.

However, the fact that it can be done or has been done on its own is not quite so surprising to me. If you have the ability to inspect syntax you can obviously do something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is a little bit of a shame that it doesn't seem to be under active development anymore. For personal projects, it would be fun to be able to write up little DSLs

<comment><USER15> It seemed to undergo a major rewrite and then died.

I could also never really figure it out post-rewrite. Pre-rewrite, I had made some cool macros just out of intuition after reading some of its examples. Now, I can't get many of its own examples to compile in its live editor.

Too bad. It's about 1000x simpler than, say, implementing low-level Babel transformations.

<comment><USER16> I feel the pain. Things got a little bit easier with Babel Plugin Macros and Typescript (which forces you to build macros that adhere to a reasonable type system)

<comment><USER17> I've only recently learned about Babel Plugin Macros and haven't used it in production - but here are a few links in case anyone's interested.

[https://babeljs.io/blog/2017/09/11/zero-config-with-babel- ma...](https://babeljs.io/blog/2017/09/11/zero-config-with-babel-macros)

[https://github.com/kentcdodds/babel-plugin- macros](https://github.com/kentcdodds/babel-plugin-macros)

[https://github.com/jgierer12/awesome-babel- macros](https://github.com/jgierer12/awesome-babel-macros)

These "macros" take a different approach than Sweet.js: they're not syntax extensions, but rather code transformers that you import and use explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> After falling in love with Clojure and then Clojure being rejected by my company, I so wanted Sweet.js to become a thing. Macros allow for some incredible magic and amazing productivity, in my experience. Unfortunately, Sweet.js looks abandoned last I checked. And I'd be surprised if I could sell my company on it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder, ES6 template strings allow any kind of string inside them which can be constructed based on existing values in the surrounding function. So I can give such a string as argument to a function which returns some non-string JavaScript value, perhaps a function.

Would this qualify as a "hygienic macro"?

</comment><comment><USER20> Are there any active projects that do anything similar?

The two things I'd quite like to transform are

In a es2015 Class function if base identifier foo is a class field (in this or ancestor class) it becomes this.foo . Only for fields defined in the Class definition.

for (x of y) becomes for (let x of y)

</comment><comment><USER21> This project is dead, but writing a Babel transform using something like [https://github.com/benjamn/recast](https://github.com/benjamn/recast) is easy and fun!

</comment><comment><USER22> Was a great project. I experimented with it about 5 years ago and really liked what I saw. But at the end of the day, it's not so fun having syntax that none of your tooling understands.

</comment><comment><USER23> What's the main reason to use this?

I mean, I've seen languages like Rust using macros excessively, but why would you do so in JS?

</comment><comment><USER24> pls explain me difference between it and eval

<comment><USER25> From what I gather reading the docs, this ties into Babel and that lets you define actual new syntax rather than just eval strings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There was a period where the developer considering reversibility. I wonder where that arc ended up.</comment>


Canonical, Ubuntu Linux, CTO leaves - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/24710/Canonical_Ubuntu_Linux_CTO_leaves

<comment><USER2> The submission is only the first sentence of an article and a link - here is the actual article: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/canonical-ubuntu- linux...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/canonical-ubuntu-linux-cto- leaves/8831)</comment>


Ask HN: Do guys who hate clothes shopping ask their female friends for help? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I use trunkclub.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you happy with their service?</comment></comment>


Podcasting the Past - <AUTHOR> https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/3036 <comment><USER2> Podcasting is hard work! I have a podcast called Jesus in Books. I read a book about the historical Jesus Christ, then discuss it. It's pretty tame stuff compared to, say, Dan Carlin's epic _Hardcore History_ , and a lot shorter too. My episodes rarely go longer than 20 minutes, but the time to prepare, record and edit the episode is about _20 hours_.

So yeah, podcasting can be time consuming, but I find it's a great way to commit what I've read to memory and formulate my own opinion on the subject matter.

Here's my podcast for anyone who is interested in checking it out: [https://soundcloud.com/jesusinbooks](https://soundcloud.com/jesusinbooks)

<comment><USER3> The cheat is to have your podcast be two reasonably witty people interviewing each other.

Then you just talk for 30-120 minutes, and the episode is pretty much done.

This is how most comedian podcasts work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm probably way outside the norm here, but I don't like podcasts. Or videos, for that matter. I'd rather just read the material. Because it's faster, and I can jump around far more easily. I'm guessing that people mostly listen to podcasts while commuting. Which I don't do. I can't imagine listening while working. And even the idea of sitting around listening to someone talk makes me nervous.

Anyway, I'd be curious to hear how others experience them.

<comment><USER5> I like to hear podcasts when I am performing some mindless task that keeps my hands or eyes busy. Driving or cycling to work, walking around / exercising, doing the dishes or the laundry, cooking, eating lunch when I am by myself, etc.

I find that podcasts are more engaging than just putting up some background music on my headphones in these situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Omnibus with raconteur John Roderick, and quiz kid Ken Jennings is one of my favorite podcasts. Light-hearted,odd history.

[https://www.omnibusproject.com](https://www.omnibusproject.com)

<comment><USER7> If you like John Roderick, you will love his weekly 60-90 minute conversations with Merlin Mann, "Roderick on the Line," which recently rounded the 300 episode mark.

The ease at which John and Merlin weave between interesting subjects and cool stories from mostly-John's bonkers life is really something to behold.

EDIT: Also, John has another podcast with Dan Benjamin, "Road Work," that is a lot more focused on how John's peculiar mind works. It is very good too!

<comment><USER6> Yes. It's "Roderick on the Line" that makes me think of him as a raconteur.

Don't forget about "Friendly Fire", the war movie podcast. His love of history comes through in that almost as much as in "Omnibus."</comment></comment></comment>


Blizzard Targets Fan-Created 'World of Warcraft' Legacy Servers - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/blizzard-targets-fan-created-world-of-warcraft-legacy-server-180203/ <comment><USER2> Funny how this happens shortly after blizzard releases World of Warcraft Classic

[http://ca.ign.com/articles/2017/11/03/blizzcon-2017-world- of...](http://ca.ign.com/articles/2017/11/03/blizzcon-2017-world-of-warcraft- classic-announced)

A coincidence maybe?

<comment><USER3> They've done this many times before. The last time was in 2016 when they shut down [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalrius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalrius) which is what lead directly to WoW Classic.

Before that, they've done several bi-yearly waves of shutdowns.

There's still hundreds of repositories on github that contain versions of this code used for various servers.</comment></comment>


Easiest Webserver for Node Js, PHP, Python with Support for Free SSL (Let's Enc) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/githubsaturn/captainduckduck <comment><USER2> This is very cool. The fact that it handles load balancing, clustering, and SSL is great. I started with Rancher, but I currently use AWS ecs (ec2 container service) and setting up the elb was a pain. Nice job! This is legit! Maybe move this to Show HN so more people can see it

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :) It doesn't let me edit this post. I probably have to re-post it.

<comment><USER3> You can also contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer: they can update the post for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I opened sourced the platform that I made to serve my personal side projects. It's basically an open source version of Heroku. Similar to Dokku, except it comes with Free SSL certificate support, clusing support, web interface and etc. Let me know what you think :)</comment>