My last name is correct and your DB validation is stupid - <AUTHOR> http://thecowgirlcoder.com/2013/05/15/my-last-name-is-correct-and-your-db-validation-is-stupid/

<comment> a-priori Names are complicated, very personal, and vary a lot depending on the culture. In English-speaking North America we're actually spoiled that most people have names that follow a standard given-middle-family convention. And also that one's given name is the same in all contexts.

But not everyone's name follows the same format. My wife has two middle names, one of my friends has three middle names, his wife has two given names and a middle name, and my father-in-law goes by his middle name.

And this convention is not true everywhere. Wikipedia has a list of articles for how names work in various cultures:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name#Naming_convention>

As an example, here's how it works in Russia (note the diminutive form, where the given name depends on the social status of the person they're addressing):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_personal_name>

Of course, in lots of parts of the world, especially east Asia (e.g. China, Korea) it's common to put the family name first.

In general, the answer to "What is your name?" is "Who's asking and why?". If you need a person's name, you should ask for it in one of three ways:

1) What is your full, legal name? (e.g. Jonathan Anthony Smith Jr.)

2) What should we normally call you? (e.g. Jon, Mr. Smith, Johnny, Tony, Junior)

3) What name should we use when billing your credit card? (e.g. Jonathan A. Smith)

You should only ask the ones you need (don't need a full name? don't ask), and they should all of these should be free form with generous length limits and accept any Unicode text.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is an important topic, but the article is needlessly sexist. It pretty much assumes that men don't have hyphens or spaces in their names, even though her husband does. Women might have (a lot) more trouble with this than men, but jumping to the conclusion that there must not be any women on the Comicon website team is unwarranted. Also she explicitly calls "single capitalized word" names "heteronormative" which doesn't make any sense at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you read the first sixteen or so words, I'm guessing.

<comment><USER2> Well I read down to the heteronormative bit. But this part: _I am going to go to the About Us page, and I am going to see that the database engineer's name is Ms. Destinnee Chang-O'Driscoll. Then, I am going to paste a giant grin on my face, take a selfie, email it to that woman, and thank her for kicking ass at SQL._ I'm not saying that won't happen, but it seems that you think only a woman with a similar problem will make a website that works. Maybe you meant something different.

<comment><AUTHOR> "This isn't just a female problem; people with apostrophes and commas in their names all have this problem." I understand that I focused on my problem. It's my blog, after all. However, I did marry a guy with a space and two capital letters in his name. My friend has a ", Jr." to contend with. Try that on for size. Two different punctuation marks, a space, and a capitalized letter. There's a reason I said this isn't just a female issue.

<comment><USER3> But you waited until the 7th paragraph to mention that. By that point you had already framed the argument as being a female issue. Not only that but you dismiss it by saying "this isn't something that often happens to men." It's not something that often happens to women either. Most people in English speaking countries do not have hyphens or spaces in their names.

Your point is totally valid and important but it would have been much more effective if you framed it in a gender-neutral way.

<comment><USER2> "More effective"? It's a post on a personal blog, not a manifesto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Relevant patio11: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

I'd love to seem some kind of standardization around this. Perhaps the "persons" table doesn't have the name but rather the name is stored on a "names" table with an EAV model allowing for all kinds of conventions.

<comment><USER5> I'd love to see some of the supporting arguments for some of those not because I doubt them, but because I'm curious.

Know Thy Edge Cases, and all.

<comment><USER6> In parts of India it's common not to assign a child's first name when they're born. My birth certificate says "baby Beri". "Satvik" didn't come about until I was ~6 months old, and I have relatives who had no official first name until they were 12-14 years old!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cache version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fthecowgirlcoder.com%2F2013%2F05%2F15%2Fmy- last-name-is-correct-and-your-db-validation-is-stupid%2F)

<comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate you doing this. The lovely gentleman at Rackspace just broke the crap out of my site when he UNPLUGGED the server my VM was living on. I'm doing a site restore right now.

<comment><USER8> I tried rackspace years ago and had this happen. There was no apology, compensation, or admittance of guilt. It totally irked me and I stayed away from rackspace since then. I'm actually glad to hear they still do this today... my "unjust" fears are justified :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You make quite a point out of this being a problem for women. But presumably your husband (whose last name I assume is Van Vlack?) has the exact same problem?

</comment><comment><USER10> Sidenote: afaik, "Van Vlack" is not a "Dutch" name.

Inappropriately adding the "Van" (which in Dutch is written with a lowercase v) is typically something Americans of Dutch origin did to make their name sound more interesting to Americans.

But for those looking to process Dutch names (or other cultures with similar construct), those names are sorted by the part behind the "van", i.e., "Jan van den Brink" (yes, it gets more complicated) will expect to find his name under "B".

<comment><USER11> What you are saying is correct, but mostly in a pedantic sense. In the US context, "Dutch" name would mean "of Dutch origin", and not necessarily "as used by a Dutch person." (Many people consider themselves "Irish", despite being 3 or more generations removed from the Emerald Isle.)

The New York City neighborhood of "Harlem," for example, is a Dutch name even though in Dutch it's spelled Haarlem, and the original name for the place was Nieuw Haarlem. It's more precise to say that it's the English spelling of a Dutch name, but most people find that level of precision needlessly detailed.

I have no problems asserting that "Van Vlack" is an American spelling of a Dutch name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone with a Dutch "Van *" last name, I run into this issue all the time as well. Unlike the author, it doesn't upset me, I don't really care.

Sure, I was a little worried when the guy at the DMV warned me that the California system would always register my name wrong -- adding 'Van' as part of my last name along with my middle name. He told me to just mention it and everything would be fine.

Sure, it was pretty annoying the next time I went into the DMV and the guy blew me off, saying the system was fine. Sure enough, a few weeks later, my license arrived in the mail, incorrect. Unfortunately, they won't change it unless I bring them a passport or a birth certificate and pay to get it fixed, but it's not the end of the world. That change has persisted, and now my Washington State license still has my wrong name. Oh well.

Because my last name is much longer then the author's - 27 characters including spaces - it's been truncated since Kindergarden, and my University ID is still misprinted. Oh well.

I guess my point is that it's not the end of the world, there are bigger fish to fry.

<comment><USER13> I also have a Dutch "Van" in my last name and have given up trying to use the " " (space) in my last name. It just isn't worth the hassle of trying to use it. But I totally agree with you in saying "It's not the end of the world".

<comment><USER14> I recently changed my last name, now it has a space (Casseres Palmer). I just say something along the lines of, "My last name has a space, not a dash." I haven't really found it difficult to use. Out of all my licenses and IDs, only one of them has a dash in it. I don't know if it's because of the database limitation, or the person who entered it in assumed it has or needed a dash. My university, work, and other companies that I deal with have no problem accepting a last name with a dash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stating you bought your twitter handle is a quick way to get your account deleted.

<comment><USER16> Came here to say the same thing, I had to re-read that like 5 times before I realized "Yes, Yes, she did just admit to breaking Twitters TOS...."

<comment><USER3> Fortunately for her, there doesn't seem to be any way to report that.

<comment><USER15> Well that's not true: <https://support.twitter.com/groups/56-policies- violations>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fthecowgirlcoder.com%2F2013%2F05%2F15%2Fmy- last-name-is-correct-and-your-db-validation-is- stupid%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fthecowgirlcoder.com%2F2013%2F05%2F15%2Fmy- last-name-is-correct-and-your-db-validation-is-stupid%2F)

Sorry if my URL has extra stupid bits, I don't do this often

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the site being down; give me a minute to bring it back up.

<comment><USER18> Not to pile on, but there is a certain irony in the error message being returned:

 _Error establishing a database connection_

<comment><USER19> "If there had been even one single man handling the database, the thought would have been raised that perchance, just possibly, a caching layer should have been used."

That statement sounds just as wrong as stating that if only a woman had been on the tech team or handling the database, that the Comicon registration system would have accepted all last names. Women are capable of deploying caching strategies just as men are capable of recognizing nonsensical name validation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I also wish we had a way to include "special"[1] characters in names. My name would have a "ć", so I could never spell it correctly and had to anglicize it. I guess including spaces is a good start, but it would be nice to have the ability to add other characters too. Or, allow some kind of alternative spelling where every character is allowed so that people could actually still type my name using an American keyboard or a Czech one or whatever.

[1] As a developer, I got into the habit of calling non-English letters as "special characters" until someone pointed out that these characters are only "special" to people who don't use them.

<comment><USER9> There's a good case to be made that in many cases you must be willing to adapt your name to local circumstances. In many cases, the reason for having your name written down is for someone else to be able to read and understand your name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a good article about this problem: <http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names>

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a rather long name, and always get irritated about tiny signature boxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about when you end up with a truncated last name? At this point I have to maintain a list with comments on what my last name actually ended up being in the system for each website. Especially when I have to enter my name in for password retrieval.

<comment><USER22> I at one point had a name that was extremely long. Because it was in two pieces rather than four, it was usually misspelled rather than truncated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a very tangible problem, and a very solvable one when the right considerations are applied. Good on you for bringing it up. Personal expression, especially at a level as simple as a name, shouldn't be limited by bad software design. Sadly, many designers (possibly including myself!) have native-English bias, and don't cater wholeheartedly to names and characters which are unusual in the US and UK.

Unusually, I do feel the need to disagree with the inference that this is evidence of a gender bias in the tech industry. While our industry clearly has a massive gender bias (towards men, obv) and I feel strongly that it's something that needs to be highlighted frequently, I don't think that false positives are beneficial. I think this is a gender-neutral problem, and I think the gender talk is confusing and distracting to the very real problem of Western-centric design and development.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think we can all agree that not allowing spaces or dashes in a name field is poor, poor programming.

</comment><comment><USER25> Physicist Gerard 't Hooft has a whole page about the apostrophe-t in his name

<http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/ap.html>

and provides a lengthy list of manglings and mishandlings.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I've never heard of someone taking both their given last name and their married last name together as their new last name but without a hyphen. This is a new one for me. Hyphenating is very common. But so is replacing your given middle name with your given last name and taking on your married last name. If I saw "Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack" written somewhere I would have just figured you did that. So technically you full name is "Tarah Marie Wheeler Van Vlack". Interesting.

Edit: I also have a female friend who I'd always known as Maggie Smith- Brown[1] and I always just assumed that she started as Maggie Smith and married Mr. Brown. Until I met her husband... Mr. Smith-Brown.

[1]not real name

<comment><USER26> > I've never heard of someone taking both their given last name and their > married last name together as their new last name but without a hyphen.

That's actually incredibly common in Spanish-speaking parts of the world.

It used to be that women would add "de Foo", where Foo is the last name of their husband, but nowadays it's fashionable to drop the "de", because that implies ownership ("de" is the Spanish equivalent of "'s")

It actually gets way, way more complicated, but that's a tl;dr: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs>

<comment><USER14> From what I understand, the hyphen was introduced to last name of Spanish origin because spaces were not allowed in databases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ironically, "Error establishing a database connection"

</comment><comment><USER28> My last name is correct and your DB is down

</comment><comment><USER29> What is the solution to this? Names don't always follow first middle last. What about people who have 7 names? What about people who only have 1? Data needs some kind of structure to be useful.

I'm about to start a new project, I'm thinking of two fields "Legal Name" and "What should we call you?", both with special characters allowed.

But then you can't search by last name, and I think a lot of our users would be confused if names were in order lexicographically by first name.

<comment><USER30> There are a lot of properties of names that go against the basic "John Smith" format. How many of those properties you want to support probably depends on how much of the population you need to service.

For a bootstrap proof-of-concept project, I might expect names to be a pair of strings with no spaces in them. This'd cover (at a guess), 95-98% of US users.

For a startup, I might expect two strings, one of which can be blank, each of which contains 0-50 unicode characters. This at least adequately support (at a guess) 99-99.99%

For a government organization, maybe a single string, 1k unicode characters, and a way to snail-mail in a different name if yours doesn't fit that definition? That might be a bit extreme for a local government, but something like the IRS, where you have no choice but to use their service, has to push the limits of permissiveness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Given how infinitely variable names are, I'm not surprised that programmers have trouble getting them right. But I've also seen problems with validating something as simple as an e-mail address. For example, I wanted to get e-mail updates for a shipment on Fedex.com and discovered that I couldn't enter an address that contained more than one dot after the "@": firstname.lastname@example.com was OK, but firstname.lastname@example.com wasn't accepted.

</comment><comment><USER32> _> Administrative Contact: Wheeler Van Vlack, Tarah_

I think I know what you mean even with the site being down.

</comment><comment><USER33> The persons name is: Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack

Shouldn't the name be: Tarah Wheeler van Vlack ?

<comment><USER34> Depends. Prefixes of Dutch names are lower case if preceded by another name, and upper case if on their own ("Van Vlack" versus "Wheeler van Vlack"). Prefixes of Flemish (Belgian) names never change case, so the name will either be always spelt as "Van Vlack" or "van Vlack", regardless of context.

I guess that in the US the Dutch/Flemish conventions do not apply, and the spelling choices will depend on the person/family.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://ow.ly/i/27W6g> <\--- THIS is my issue. I can't even order a replacement debit card online. I have to go into a bank because Bank Of America can't handle my name. This happened two minutes ago.

</comment><comment><USER35> Related: An Aussie journo who goes by one name, and the problems he has with that.

<http://stilgherrian.com/category/only-one-name/>

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there any need to ask for First or Last Name? Why aren't we just asking for Full Name? Why complicate things?

<comment><USER37> If you ever want to be able to alphabetize by last name, having them captured distinctly is necessary. Otherwise, it's impossible to know where one part of the name ends and another begins.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FINALLY. Got site back up. It's anyone's guess how long it stays there, though.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you recommend React and Firebase for a social network project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> For the frontend use whatever you are familiar with as that will keep your velocity higher and your tech debt lower at first. If you use a new framework, you'll slow yourself down and pile on preventable tech debt because you'll do stuff that isn't quite correct in the new framework until you master it.

As for backend. Firebase is easy to use and quick to get started with. That said, it can get expensive pretty fast and I am not a fan of the lock-in it comes with it. I fully admit I prefer AWS over Google, although we use both today. However, even with AWS I avoid DynamoDB and vendor specific tooling that I couldn't run on a box myself. I'll use RDS for Postgres but that's because I can always move that to my own servers if the need arose. If I was using Dynamo that'd be tough. I'll use their API compliant tooling like MQ or their Mongo compatible document store if I wanted, because again I can move databases without changing code.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suggest you to go for a more stable UI (React changes too much, IMHO) and a backend that you own.

And I'd like to stress out the Infrastructure as Code as much as possible, so you can always keep track of WHERE and HOW runs WHAT.

I'd go for GraalVM or Laravel and Postgres as backend, as others have already suggested

</comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend ArangoDB. See my post here: [https://medium.com/@mikestaub22/slack-lunch-club- part-3-7-ba...](https://medium.com/@mikestaub22/slack-lunch-club- part-3-7-backend-e143fb4ab4bc)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd recommend Angular instead

</comment><comment><USER6> why not VueJS, Postgres, Go/PHP/Java?</comment>


Actix Web 3.0 - <AUTHOR> https://paper.dropbox.com/published/Announcing-Actix-Web-v3.0-QOXXb1lXgTubzXHzUq9ONY5 <comment><USER2> Congrats on the release! Actix is super exciting, and it's great to see how the community stepped up to maintain this amazing project.

Is there any effort to bring a Rails/Django like framework to Rust? AWWY [1] seems to indicate that there isn't anything like it in the Rust ecosystem, but I'd be curious to know if there's anyone working on something in that direction. All of the frameworks I've seen seem pretty "bare-bones" by the standards of Django/Rails (then again - it's hard to beat these frameworks in terms of feature-completeness).

[1] [https://www.arewewebyet.org/](https://www.arewewebyet.org/)

<comment><USER3> Personally,I strongly prefer light libraries over comprehensive frameworks. Yes, you have to build up your app, but at least you understand what you're doing. And when something goes wrong you know how to fix it. You can follow the code. This is super hard with a framework like Django.

<comment><USER2> I totally understand the sentiment, and generally, when I do solo projects or projects with small teams, I also prefer light frameworks.

In my experience, frameworks like Django and Rails shine when you have to collaborate with large teams on solutions though - the fact that there's comprehensive documentation, best practices, and clear standards make it so much easier to work together on a project. I do think Rust brings a lot of assets through its type systems when collaborating, but rolling your own auth/admin dashboard/orm is a hefty investment for most mid-size companies.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Admin can be complicated but the breadth of authentication is surprising when you start enumerating the features. "I forgot my password" and "remember me" are the easiest ones and yet they're not a hour's job. Authentication is not where a company should invest its money. Use a well proven library and keep solving problems that bring home money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately, there are readability issues in dark mode (Firefox, MacOS) - inline code blocks are unreadable. To fix the issue, run the following in the browser console:

        $$("html")[0].classList.remove("paper-noir")

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone else getting this annoying jerking fixed menu at the top when scrolling?

Why do people insist on doing fixed menu bars? Does anyone like them? I don't think I have ever used a website where it improved the experience. Phones have had reactive scrolling for years, so a quick flick and you're at the top. So I don't even know what problem they're trying to solve.

<comment><USER7> I feel you. Fixed position elements are really an anti-pattern in many cases. This includes fixed "back to top" buttons and the like. They just clutter up space and distract from content.

<comment><USER6> I mean, even a small "back to top" in the bottom right corner, would be better than a fixed menu at the top. At least with that, its not taking up screen height. _Phone screens are small_ , stop putting stuff in the way that's not needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it true that actix-web doesn't actually use the actix actor framework anymore? I see it listed as a dependency in "actix_web_actors", but it doesn't seem to be used internally...

<comment><USER9> Yes, the new core is now faster than ever. I think they said that actors are awesome but that at this level, for this use case, it was better to start a new design.

They kept the name actif-web with actix in it because it was already quite established and they didn't wanted to start from zero.

You can still use actix in your projet. It's still actively maintained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Was it actix-web whose Git repo was removed during the brawl with the developer?

How it was resolved?

<comment><USER11> Bullying open-source developers is not exactly the best course of action if one aims for the better adoption of a particular project. It is good that the situation was somewhat resolved, but I still feel sorry for the original developer, and I am not sure if I would want to use Actix after "the community" (at least some awful parts of it) did such outrageous things to the developer.

<comment><USER12> The "Community" that harassed the developer is probably not the same community that now works on the code.

These mofos from Reddit who storm a GitLab ticket after it was posted there usually do not actually contribute to Open Source projects. They are pseudos who run their mouth but don't do the work. They are the ones who set up the wiki, but never write a single line of code.

<comment><USER13> Honestly, the ones that set up a wiki but not the code are at least as valuable as the ones writing the code.

<comment><USER14> At _most_ as valuable. A Wiki without any code doesn't bring much value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Web developer currently learning Rust and curious about Actix Web here: how does it compare to let's say Node.Js in regard to performance and security? Any feedback on real-world projects to give?

<comment><USER16> NodeJS is my primary stack, and I've built toy projects with Rust since 2014, but never used it in production.

Rust offers perfomance improvements in CPU and memory usage of the core application logic, and it's almost never the bottleneck for the typical web apps. Almost always, they're limited by IO, and I don't see any reasons why it would be better on Rust that on Node. Also, Rust offers security of safe access to memory, but that's a problem that exists in C and C++, not in GC- based languages. Finally, Rust offers a great type system, but Typescript has a very good one as well, and offers a much easier transition for Javascript Node developers, as well as a much more machure NPM ecosystem.

Overall, I just don't see how Rust would make much of an improvement over existing state of affairs.

<comment><USER17> > Rust offers perfomance improvements in CPU and memory usage of the core > application logic, and it's almost never the bottleneck for the typical web > apps.

Has anyone actually managed to find that this is the case? Just because your app is stalling on db queries doesn't mean it's "IO bound". Even the most trivial service that's just routing messages between two other services is likely to be radically faster when implemented in Rust vs JS.

<comment><USER16> > Just because your app is stalling on db queries doesn't mean it's "IO > bound".

OK, "IO bound" may not be the best description in this case. Because you're bound not by your ethernet card or operating system drivers, but literally by the work that's happening on a separate, database server's CPU. I should work on my terminology, thanks for the correction.

In my experience, it is usually waiting for DB. Regardless of whether your web app is well or badly written, it would get, at my estimate, would get no more than 5-10% request time improvement even if you made the app CPU infinitely fast, as 90-95% of the time is taken waiting for that database query.

But if you spend the same developer time rewriting all your ORM-generated n + 1 select statements to a single SQL query, you would still spend the same proportion of time waiting for the database, but your overall latency would get 10 times less. I've had some situations where I could get 10-20 time performance improvements by not touching application code at all, just tweaking the database indexes.

So, rewriting it all in a new language where you can, at most, 10% improvement, while you probably have areas where you can get 200-500% improvements seems unwise.

<comment><USER18> If your database queries are so bad that you can get such big improvements by changing the queries and indexes, then obviously focus on that, not the client programming language. But once you've done that your programming language is responsible for a larger ratio of the total time, since it runs in series to the database query, not in parallel. The benefit, in my experience, is much larger than 10% then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congratulation this seems really cool ;-)

Actix was already a great project but the community-driven switch mentioned here is a great step toward better support and broader adoption.

BTW is the fact the anouncement made on Dropbox paper has something to do with Dropbox as a company ? (I heard they are investing heavily into Rust)

<comment><USER20> Its just what the devs used to collabbrate and then they published it in place rather than moving it, as reported in /r/rust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >> Extensive usage of the projects helped us resolve memory leaks.

Hu? I thought Rust was memory safe? At least that's how it's promoted.

What's the point of Rust when one of the flagship project (Actix) had memory leaks for years?

<comment><USER22> Under Rust's definition of memory safety, a memory leak is not unsafe. Data will not be corrupted or accessed improperly.

Also Actix has had a strained relationship with the Rust community for a number of years, because of Actix's cavalier attitude towards `unsafe`. The result of which is that the project is under new leadership, and safety is given a stronger emphasis. I also never really considered Actix a "flagship" project of Rust. It was popular and promoted itself, but it sort of set itself apart from the mainstream Rust community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I unreasonably avoid frameworks that have O(n) routing. For some reason I just feel like the standard should be O(1) with the number of routes. There is a crate [https://github.com/http-rs/route-recognizer](https://github.com/http- rs/route-recognizer) which does this but most frameworks roll their own which just loops over the registered routes and takes the first one.

It can be slightly less flexible, however in most cases if you are using this sort of flexibility your URL structure is too confusing anyways. Since you can group together an number of regular expressions and match them in O(n) with the length of the URL you clearly have a lot of flexibility available.

Of course I should probably check the real benchmarks because the NFA based approach almost certainly has more overhead.

<comment><USER24> Is the route count unbounded? O(n) = O(1) for constant-bounded n.

<comment><USER23> Yes, this is why my discomfort is "unreasonable".

However I feel bad knowing that every route I add is slowing down my app. And I have the impulse to sort my routes by popularity to improve performance. I wish I could just trust the framework to match "as fast as possible".

<comment><USER17> If it makes you feel better, it's honestly probably faster for a certain number of routes or fewer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I actually really like Actix. Switched to using Rocket because of some controversy in the Actix stuff that I didn't care too much to keep tabs on. Has anyone used Actix recently? Can you use it ergonomically on stable or do you need nightly? Would love to hear opinions from users here.

<comment><USER26> > Switched to using Rocket because of some controversy in the Actix stuff

That's the first time I've heard someone making a technical choice solely by something that is not technical.

Did you change from Actix because you're afraid that the controversy would eventually hit your own written software? Or just felt bad supporting something that others didn't want people to support? Would love to hear the reasoning behind the change.

<comment><USER25> Oh, I don't care if there's all the politics, but the code disappeared. Using a dependency that disappears like that didn't make me happy. It was totally a technical decision to try to avoid an evolutionary dead-end.

I wasn't even upset about the unsafe. I didn't care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I want to love Rust but my biggest pain point was trying to produce a simple enough REST web service, initially with Actix, though I think I was trying to use it at a time where the docs were not in sync with what was released at the time. Not sure if this has changed, but I'd be willing to give Actix another try again if that's the case.

<comment><USER28> You should give rocket a try! The developer ergonomics are a lot better. Assuming this is you learning about rust.

Because performance-wise rocket is slower. But they're working on adding async support, after which they should be showing a lot better numbers.

<comment><USER27> Is it compiling under the stable compiler though? I tried switching compilers to try out Rocket and it just didn't work out very well for me, compiler errors everywhere that I couldn't seem to find a reasonable answer for. I'm not a fan of switching to anything that isn't considered stable unless I absolutely have to.

<comment><USER29> I believe async support is already on master as well as stable support, but there hasn't been a release yet.

There were two unstable features that Rocket was waiting on (which have been stabilized some releases back). Using nightly rustc is fine for the most part, but I wouldn't want to _rely_ on it for production services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > A powerful, pragmatic, and extremely fast web framework for Rust

In case anybody, like me, didn't know.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does it mean that Dropbox uses Rust?

<comment><USER17> This post is hosted on Dropbox's Paper product, which allows for publishing by 3rd parties (anyone with a free Paper account).

This post does not have to do with Dropbox engineering, which I do not believe uses Actix. But Dropbox _does_ use Rust quite a lot - their storage layer and sync engine, among other things, are implemented in Rust.

<comment><USER29> For one example of how Dropbox _does_ use Rust: [https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/-testing-our-new-sync- en...](https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/-testing-our-new-sync-engine)</comment></comment></comment>


Mastercard Leaves Facebook Libra - <AUTHOR> https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/mastercard-ceo-ajay-bangea-quit-facebook-libra-red-flags-2020-2-1028871194 <comment><USER2> Have absolutely no idea why they where involved in the first place?

Gathering corporate intel seems the only viable excuse apart from sheer incompetence.</comment>


The End Of Boring Presentations - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/presentations-pecha-kucha-technology-breakthroughs-oreilly.html <comment><AUTHOR> Phoenix had its first Pecha Kucha night a few days ago. We've had five Ignite Phoenix events.

I presented at Ignite Phoenix IV (watch! <http://vimeo.com/5351826>). Prior to that I did a Pecha Kucha format talk at a Phoenix Ruby User Group in an attempt to get others to do the same (I failed :( ).

Attending the Phoenix Pecha Kucha event I was struck by the differences between the 6:40/20x20 format and Ignite's 5:00/20x15. The shorter slide duration, and overall shorter length of each talk, really seems to matter.

It's hard to say for sure, since a good part of this is the quality of any given talk. These are tough formats to use, and require careful planning and much practice. In real life not enough people seem to put in the needed effort. (To be fair, these are all volunteers and are earnestly doing their best. )

Still, despite what should be minor differences, the Pecha Kucha talks seemed to drag.

Part of the problem may also have been that the talks were punctuated by speaker transitions and intros. Meanwhile, at Ignite Phoenix, it's become a well-old machine: as soon as one speaker is done, the next is out and slides are rolling within , say, 20 seconds. You end up with much higher information density.

Anyone else here give an Ignite or Pecha Kucha talk? Or try some other interesting format?

</comment><comment><USER2> if the content of your presentation is boring, get new content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Often the problem is that parts of the content are boring, and people don't want, or know how, to edit.

One would hope that with a shorter format people would have less of a problem filling the time with not-boring stuff.</comment></comment>


Awk by example, Part 1 -- - <AUTHOR> http://www.funtoo.org/en/articles/linux/awk/1/ <comment><USER2> Thanks, I was interested in an Awk learning resource, and this looks like exactly what I would want.

<comment><USER3> You might also take a look at Sed & Awk, co-authored by Daniel Robbin's father, Arnold Robbins.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=m4ZzElQZxcoC&dq=sed+awk...](http://books.google.com/books?id=m4ZzElQZxcoC&dq=sed+awk&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=hVAITJjTDsGB8ga5z7yQAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAw)

<comment><USER4> _The Awk Programming Language_ is vastly better, IMHO, and half the size. Brian Kernighan co-wrote it. It's _that_ good.

The awk chapters in Bentley's _Programming Pearls_ and _More Programming Pearls_ and Peteris Krumins's Awk One-Liners series ([http://www.catonmat.net/blog/awk-one-liners-explained- part-o...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/awk-one-liners-explained-part-one/)) are worth a read, as is the source for awk. (nawk, at least - haven't looked at gawk).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> $ awk -F":" '{ print "username: " $1 "\t\tuid:" $3" }' /etc/passwd awk: { print "username: " $1 "\t\tuid:" $3" } awk: ^ unterminated string

Needs to be

$ awk -F":" '{ print "username: " $1 "\t\tuid:" $3 }' /etc/passwd

</comment><comment><USER6> This is an exact copy of [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-awk1.html?...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-awk1.html?ca=dgr- lnxw07LinuxAwkP1&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GR), not sure who's copying who...but the article on IBM is from July 2008

<comment><USER7> Funtoo is Daniel Robbins site and the article you've linked is credited to Daniel Robbins as well.

Really nice introduction to awk. I've been meaning to dig a bit deeper into it and this is straightforward and easy.</comment></comment>


This Is Not a Recession. It's an Ice Age. - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/quantifying-coming-recession/608443/ <comment><USER2> I think there's a difference between an economic depression for fundamental reasons or say overleveraged finance and due to an exogenous shock like this.

It's true that the current measures put the economy on freeze mode but really even if businesses are closed down temporarily, no assets are lost. Even if the stock market contracts sharply, after this is over the planes are still in the hangars and the restaurants still exist.

It's obviously not a good thing but I'm not really as pessimistic medium and long term. The crisis will compress prices, it'll devalue assets but the flipside is that after this is over waiters will be rehired, someone is going to pick the airlines companies up, there's no value destroyed here, just ownership shifted around. The bull run had to come to an end at some point for some reason and the aftermath may even equalise generational inequality to some degree.

<comment><USER3> _> even if businesses are closed down temporarily, no assets are lost_

Intangibles like customers, suppliers and know-how can be a lot more valuable than physical assets.

Maybe the restaurant building is still there, but if the visionary chef changed careers because she has to pay the rent, is it really still the same restaurant?

The tables, chairs and kitchen equipment are still there, but if former customers can no longer afford to dine there, is the restaurant still a viable business?

<comment><USER2> None of those intangibles are lost either though. The visionary chef is still going to be a visionary chef once the pandemic is over and things return to normal, it's not like knowledge workers or artisans all turn into permanent forklift drivers or something.

There is going to be some degree of disruption as organisational capacity needs to be restored but this is no different than any other natural disaster, from which economies usually rebounce very quickly.

And as to customers still being able to afford things, that's where the government can and will step in to stabilize demand.

<comment><USER4> > _government can and will step in to stabilize demand._

As much as they can. Government debt at all levels across Europe and the Americas was out of control before the epidemic, especially in the U.S. This crisis will lead directly to waves of state/sovereign defaults.

I should say I'm optimistic about the pandemic itself. I firmly believe the morbidity and fatality rate will drop sharply as it spreads, even where medical systems are poorly prepared.

I think the economic effects will end up being the bigger concern.

<comment><USER5> Prior to the pandemic, Government spending was out of control. Considering we were/are paying billions for an already obscelete border wall and our defense forces (ironically totally defenseless against the C19 enemy)are soaking up almost a trillion$ of our national budget, it may be time for the our fearless leaders to re-prioritize.

<comment><USER6> Quite true, the federal deficit has skyrocketed under the Trump presidency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only 30 days ago I was pondering the thought - will this virus be the catalyst that causes a global financial recession: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22363059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22363059)

Interesting how trains of thought have quickly changed in such a short time.</comment>


Johnston Sans: The Tube typeface that changed everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35916807 <comment><USER2> > "Having the serifs on makes things more difficult to read, there's more for > the eye to take on," says Steel.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Readability_and_legibili...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Readability_and_legibility)

> Serifed fonts are widely used for body text because they are considered > easier to read than sans-serif fonts in print. However, scientific study on > this topic has been inconclusive.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that's a contradiction - I'd guess that sans serif is indeed much easier to read specifically on _signs_.

When the UK designed its road/motorway signs they conducted all kinds of usability studies and ended up designing the Transport typeface; just about any country I've been to in Europe uses sans typefaces for roadsigns and station/tube/airport signs.

The jury may well still be out for body text in books and other publications. That's not the problem Johnston was asked to solve though.

<comment><USER4> The US (and most of North America, it seems) also use sans serif road signs. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic)</comment></comment></comment>


Forget Today's Drama, Dustin Curtis' Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/forget-todays-drama-dustin-curtis-svbtle-is-trying-to-push-blogging-forward/ <comment><USER2> TechCrunch never ceases to amaze me. Pushing blogging forward? With a simple markdown to post converter with a crappy editor with an "idea" button?! Give me a break, man. Its too early for this.

An entire article about some designer elitist's _super-cool-too-cool-for-you- bro-because-I'm-a-superhero closed blogging "network"?_

Svbtle (dumb name.), is garbage. It looks like something I designed in 7th grade, yet it's getting so much attention that arguably the _worst_ tech blog on the Internet did a write-up on it?

It was copied in 12 hours for a reason, _it sucks_.

Hacking is about openness, not snobs rubbing their clout in everyone's faces.

<comment><USER3> Although you certainly have a point I think your judgement is a bit too harsh, and the the logic "it was copied in 12 hours [therefore] it sucks" just doesn't follow.

<comment><USER2> It may be, but I really don't take lightly to snobby people acting like the crap they make is better than anything anyone has ever seen.

I have a markdown editor, too. It's called VIM.

<comment><USER4> A snob is just a regular person who has incited jealousy or offense. You're bigger than taking offense to someone who has a product with some quality control in place in its pre-launch phase.

<comment><USER2> If quality control is the reason, then say so politely. Making the people reading about your product feel inadequate is not a good look.

It's obvious the author of this article is friends with the self-proclaimed superhero-dick-villain, as an article about a closed blogging platform is in no way, shape, or form applicable news for a website of TC's magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a more graphic term than "circle jerk" that I'm allowed to use on HN? If so, that term describes this situation.

I don't know how Dustin Curits does it, but anything he does attracts an insane amount of attention.

<comment><USER6> Attention and money are quite similar in that they accrete: if people are already paying attention to what you do, anything you do is attention-worthy.

You can trivially see that with sports and hollywood stars, they can't fart without it being news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is how misnomers are created.

"couple developers forked it within hours, and offered new versions for the world to install."

A couple of developers did not fork Svbtle, only one developer copied the design but wrote original code. Dear Techcrunch, that's not a "fork". Nate has since changed the design and he plans on refining it.

<comment><USER8> I agree with you and thankfully it looks like the "forked" was edited out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward? That is like Scoble saying that Quora is the biggest innovation in blogging over the past 10 years.

Whether or not this is the future of blogging, I've learned something from this whole episode... don't go on Hacker News to show off a two feature minimalist pet project, arrogantly state it's close to elite members only, and not have it re-implemented in hours. It's called Hacker News for a reason.

<comment><USER10> >Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward? That is like Scoble saying that Quora is the biggest innovation in blogging over the past 10 years.

I recognize the words, but that whole statement seems like complete gibberish.

<comment><USER11> Scoble did actually say that: [http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/26/is-quora-the- biggest-bloggi...](http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/26/is-quora-the-biggest- blogging-innovation-in-10-years/)

But when people started to downvote his Quora answers he took it back: [http://scobleizer.com/2011/01/30/why-i-was-wrong-about- quora...](http://scobleizer.com/2011/01/30/why-i-was-wrong-about-quora-as-a- blogging-service/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are two important things raised by this article but completely missed.

Firstly, what dcurtis made is not as ground breaking as the article makes out. It looks very promising but this trend towards simplification is happening everywhere. On the mac you have iA Writer for writing things. If you look at productivity apps (names escape me), the trend is to strip things down only to what is required to be most productive. Same things are happening in bug tracking and message boards.

dcurtis has come up with something that is really neat but saying "it looks like a better Tumblr" after seeing two screenshots seems a bit premature. There was also mention of "competing with Tumblr".. its a closed beta with 6 users.. the hype machine needs to calm down.

The second point is everything dcurtis has been working on being completely ripped off in a couple of hours is almost completely ignored. We not talking about someone being inspired by the idea. Nor are we talking about duplication of functionality. Instead someone cloning the concept, functionality AND design of both the front and back end!

For the developer to then open source it on github should be story. Now anyone else can rip off dcurtis' site. Its not acceptable. There is nothing wrong with being inspired or copying functionality from another website. However, cloning both and front and backend then open sourcing it to encourage others to participate... not cool. This should be the story. Any hype is premature.

<comment><USER13> The value of dcurtis's site will be the limited bloggers and their content.

The design and the platform isn't much value. Releasing those and announcing he was starting a multi-author blog would have given better publicity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one who is a bit underwhelmed by this "amazing" blog network? Most of the blogs seems like linkblogs that doesn't add more information.

When I see the materialistic design now, I just think "oh look, just another shallow blog..."

<comment><USER15> Dom Leca's blog looks like that, and maybe Daniel Zarick's. But the others look more substantial. Also, the blogging has barely started so I'm not willing to jump to conclusions about what it's going to look like 2 days from now, let alone long-term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know how more clear it could be that dcurtis is an egotistical, self- proclaimed genius. I love this tweet: <https://mobile.twitter.com/dcurtis/status/182986897444966402>

And then this one for good measure: <https://mobile.twitter.com/dcurtis/status/183394426914217984>

Begging to use the _platform_ is probably a little exaggerated.

</comment><comment><USER17> EDIT: DanBC said it far more elequently than myself here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DanBC>

The negativity being spouted by commenters regarding Dustin Curtis approach with Svbtle to me shows a complete misunderstanding of what he is trying to achieve with the network. Many have complained about the closed, private beta and the supposed elitist attitude put across by Dustin. Many are acting like they have been emotionally hurt and are lashing out against the work that Dustin is trying to do with Svbtle.

For me, this reaction is understandable, and expected, but I was taken aback by the volume of the backlash, especially on Hacker News.

Svbtle is an attempt at a closed, curated and quality controlled network of blogs. In essence, the very people who have reacted so vehemently to this are EXACTLY people you DONT want in a closed, curated and quality controlled blog network.

Those of you who feel slighted by being excluded from this network and are loudly beating your chests either about how simple the idea is or how too minimalistic (or both) are trying to project your development ethics and ideals onto another discipline, and in my humble opinion, the two are incompatible.

Software development or hacking clearly benefit from the exchange of ideas, sharing and propagation by merit. I wont expand on this any further because all of this is obvious to the vast, vast majority of members here.

Writing doesn't benefit from this. Writing is a solo exercise; a personal and subjective process. A process that benefits from curation from experts; editors who have the chops to not only recognise and correct, but to guide, steer and sometimes say "No". I think Dustin is on to something here. In order to move forward, blogging has to move from the quagmire of "least common denominator", "wisdom of the crowds" sensationalist, ad driven and machine targeted writing.

I was clear to me that this was what Dustin is attempting to assemble the pieces together and start. Yes, most blogging platforms have "drafts" as a feature. Dustin appears to be attempting to move the users of Svbtle away from thinking of drafts; whole articles, and focus on germinating ideas into writings for publishing. The nub of the idea here is small, but is a gentle side step left. It's not an amazing innovation or anything particularly special, but if you can create a platform or network that contains enough side step left ideas like this, then he may have something with the potential to become something special. I'll beat the already pretty beaten dead horse, but I see something of Apples approach to design/production here. Just enough little twists on common ideas in one package creates a very compelling package. And it's always those twists that the competition fails to see.

The idea of a curated, limited network of bloggers with proof reading services is a good idea. As is the desire to build a brand off the interface, to build trust in readers so that when they come across another blog with the same design they know they will be getting quality content. A platform focusing on promoting good content with an emphasis on filtering article ideas. These are good ideas and well overdue.

If you feel slighted by Dustin because Svbtle doesn't include you, thats probably the reason you weren't invited to join yet; the quality isn't there. It certainly shows in your comments that you can't contribute anything of the kind of quality Dustin is trying to curate. So, go clone the software. Copy the visual design. You've missed the larger point I think Svbtle is trying to make, just like all those hundreds of tablet makers out there.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can we put away the pitchforks already? I keep hearing how "Hacker News has gone down hill" but it was never as visible to me until the Svbtle threads.

Dustin has been working on this design and others for what is effectively many years. He's rightfully proud of his usability discoveries, so he shared them in a blog post. Read the post again, there's nothing sinister there, only a couple of questionable phrases that got blown out of proportion and completely picked apart: <http://dcurt.is/codename-svbtle>

We're supposed to be a community of people who like to make things and inspire others to do the same, which means supporting each other in the endeavor. Dustin is a member of this community and has done nothing towards us to deserve the name calling and hatred he's receiving.

<comment><USER16> > only a couple of questionable phrases that got blown out of proportion and > completely picked apart

I don't know about that. So far, many of the tweets from his own Twitter account seem to postulate himself as a genius. I would like to think the UI he has created isn't leaps and bounds above what I've seen and I know very few developers get the kind of credit he seems to think he deserves for doing very similar work. Doubtful his work operates on the caliber of the average IBM engineer. Sorry, it's really off-balance. If I am giving dcurtis praise for his evolution of blogging, I have to ask myself _why_. Would the same praise be given if _you_ made Svbtle? Doubtful. The fact that it was essentially duplicated within less than a weekend shows that the praise was probably placed rather than earned.

> I keep hearing how "Hacker News has gone down hill" but it was never as > visible to me until the Svbtle threads.

"HN going downhill" and "whaaa! no one fellated me for the work i did" seems to have some correlative timing. Another thing that is tiring – those proclaiming HN has become a wasteland, but submitting their own articles to HN hoping for the spotlight, only to later call the end of days when people don't immediately grovel at their knees in astonishment.

<comment><USER18> Are you justifying this completely poisonous and destructive behavior on the basis that you found his Twitter feed too arrogant for your liking and that he got more attention than you would have?

> submitting their own articles to HN hoping for the spotlight

I'm confused, are you accusing me of submitting my own work for a spotlight? Or Dustin? I've certainly done it for my own work in the past, as many other members of this community, but it wasn't Dustin who submitted Svbtle.

<comment><USER16> > Are you justifying this completely poisonous and destructive behavior on the > basis that you found his Twitter feed too arrogant for your liking and that > he got more attention than you would have?

I don't expect to get that kind of attention for something on that level. Nothing I've done certainly would warrant the kind of attention Dustin is getting for this concept. We're not talking about a lot of work, let's remember. The whole "but his years of experience to get to this design!" garbage talking point is most ignorant. Sometimes people post stuff on HN and it's so simple but brilliant that my jaw drops in awe. Building over top of Tumbler, Posterous, etc, philosophy and taking it 1 step further (not to mention: exclusivity, arrogance, nepotism, prop theatre) is not inciting that emotion. Sorry.

If I had been responsible for, say, Ruby on Rails, I'd expect the kind of clamour that Dustin is getting for a weekend project – of which, many are posted to HN as "Show HN: My weekend project X". All of which are reviewed, criticized and praised for what they are. Not one of these humble moonlighters go off to Twitter and claim X community is dead, or that everyone sucks if they don't agree. Most of the time, they take the criticism and learn from it. Dustin cried in the corner and acted like a spoiled brat. The tweets just solidify that.

> I'm confused, are you accusing me of submitting my own work for a spotlight? > Or Dustin? I've certainly done it for my own work in the past, as many other > members of this community, but it wasn't Dustin who submitted Svbtle.

No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm sure Dustin Curtis's 'members' entry used to read "Dustin Curtis, Superhero" rather than "Villain". Why the change?

<comment><USER20> Because traditionally, that's how many super villians start out, before their brilliance being misunderstood by their peers throws them into a downward spiral of taking over the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think "Well-read" (the first two words in the article) does not mean what the author wants it to mean.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't like people here dismissing the ideas in Svbtle because of the smugness of its author.

I agree with everybody else that Dustin presented it in a very elitist and smug way, but that doesn't discount the fact that the ideas are good. Nor does the fact that it's easy to clone.

The minimal blog platform is cool, as demonstrated by the fact that people reaction has been so strong when they discovered they couldn't have it. Revolutionary? No, nothing is revolutionary in this industry, especially three days after the first release.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you get your telecommute job? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN! How did you get your first telecommute job? Were you actively searching for one or did the company you work for allow you to work telecommute? What tips would you have for developers seeking telecommute work? There was already a post on HN earlier about how to maintain a telecommute job.  However, how do you actually go about getting one?
Thanks for your responses! <comment><USER2> I applied for a system administration job with a company that had offices world-wide, but I started in the U.S. An opportunity came up within my company to provide sysadmin support in an AsiaPac timezone, and I took it! Trying to obtain a professional job in a foreign country can be difficult otherwise because most companies aren't willing to hire somebody who doesn't already have a work visa for that country.

</comment><comment><USER3> Similar thread from _two days ago_ :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709601)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/)</comment>


New study looks at the connection between parental age and autism risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/the-type-of-parents-most-likely-to-have-a-child-121212598657.html <comment><USER2> "Another hypothesis is that people who have children at advanced ages may do so because they themselves are "on the spectrum," and may have social difficulties that made it tough for them to couple up and become parents for much of their early adult lives; in these cases, researchers theorize, there may be a genetic link to autism."

Ouch. I wonder if there's any truth to this, it's certainly an interesting hypothesis!

<comment><USER3> It wouldn't explain why the incidence of autism is increasing, though.

<comment><USER4> Do we really know if it is increasing? Or has our ability to detect it increased?

I wonder the same things about cancer and I believe that in the past 50+ years we have identified more types of cancer. Same with autism, the spectrum has broadened in the past decades. People who were once just plain weird or different for my parents generation could now be classified as having autism in my generation.

It would be interesting to see a study if cancer or autism are actually increasing or if we are just now finding diseases that have plagued mankind for generations.

<comment><USER5> >I wonder the same things about cancer and I believe that in the past 50+ years we have identified more types of cancer.

I wrote a long post about this a few weeks ago but the long story short is YES! We _absolutely_ have detected more (asymptomatic) cancers with increased screening of healthy people.

Here's my previous post - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9621249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9621249)

Here's some random links:

[https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/screening-for- disease-i...](https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/screening-for-disease-in- people-without-symptoms-the-reality/)

[https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-skeptical-look-at- scr...](https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-skeptical-look-at-screening- tests/)

>Prostate cancer is very common but isn't always harmful. It is found in 80% of autopsies where the men died of something else. Many more men die with prostate cancer than because of it.

>The screening test for prostate cancer is a blood test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA). This is not a yes-or-no test. It must be interpreted in the context of the patient's age and risk factors and the rate of rise, and any cut-off level is arbitrary and will miss some small percentage of cancers. If the PSA test is positive, the next step is biopsy. Typically, 12 needle biopsies are done, 6 on each side. They find cancer in 25% of patients. But if you go back and do more biopsies, you'll find cancer in 25% more patients. Theoretically, if you could see every cell in the prostate, you might be able to find a cancer cell or two in almost everyone, most of which would never progress or kill the patient. So you have to decide how many biopsies are reasonable. If you find cancer on a biopsy, the next step is treatment, and treatments for prostate cancer are not benign.

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/overkill- atul-g...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/overkill-atul-gawande)

>we've assumed, he says, that cancers are all like rabbits that you want to catch before they escape the barnyard pen. But some are more like birds—the most aggressive cancers have already taken flight before you can discover them, which is why some people still die from cancer, despite early detection. And lots are more like turtles. They aren't going anywhere. Removing them won't make any difference.

>Over the past two decades, we've tripled the number of thyroid cancers we detect and remove in the United States, but we haven't reduced the death rate at all. In South Korea, widespread ultrasound screening has led to a fifteen- fold increase in detection of small thyroid cancers. Thyroid cancer is now the No. 1 cancer diagnosed and treated in that country. But, as Welch points out, the death rate hasn't dropped one iota there, either. (Meanwhile, the number of people with permanent complications from thyroid surgery has skyrocketed.) It's all over-diagnosis. We're just catching turtles.

<comment><USER4> Very interesting reads. Thank you for the comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The interesting thing about the increasing correlation between something scientifically measurable (age in this case) and autism, is that means something _physical_ is changing. If something physical is changing from parents to children, then that means autism is at least partly genetic (it's been shown before[0]) and it might be able to be measured and predicted before birth and development, which further means that it can be treated earlier, and prevented more.

I have a friend that was diagnosed with autism early, and through years of help with an awesome therapist it would be hard to tell that they're autistic. That said though, many people don't have access to that kind of help or stability, and therefore suffer significantly more throughout their life.

I like making these connections because if people realize that things like autism are _physical_ ailments contracted at birth, and not something that fucking vaccines give you, then perhaps the stigma around them will disappear and we can bring a higher quality of life to all.

[0] [http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/new_autis...](http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/new_autism_causing_genetic_variant_identified)

<comment><USER7> Not enough people know that with early detection and treatment most autistic people can live successful, independent lives.

An interesting ethics situation arises whenever we have the chance to eradicate a condition: Should we?

With Aspergers, a mild variant, researchers have argued that it is a "different cognitive style, not a disorder or a disability, and that it should be removed from the standard Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, much as homosexuality was removed."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome#Society_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome#Society_and_culture)

<comment><USER8> I'm really leery of this recent push towards trying to create "acceptance" around autism. Yes, some people are only mildly autistic and can live mostly normal lives with significant extra help. If my luck holds, my autistic son will fit into that category.

But autism is also the completely non-verbal 12-year-old I recently encountered at an indoor play structure, whose only verbal communication was the characteristic autistic squawk (I've heard it from my son too, and quite a few other of the autistic kids we've met through various groups), and who only narrowly avoided scratching his mother when she tried to remove his empty milk cup by virtue of her having long practice at dodging his clumsy movements. (I don't think he was deliberately trying to hurt her, but that matters little once the hands get moving.)

I'll also be blunt, because I think too many people dance around this issue out of fear... even parenting a mildly autistic child is _unbelievably emotionally exhausting_. A great deal of those human interactions that are part of the reason to have children, or, if you find that too, ah, direct, one of the major things that helps you get through all the difficult work at 3am and during toilet training and all those other times... gone. I was actually creeped out a bit when holding another parent's baby a few months ago, because their five-month old was _making eye contact with me_... an experience I am not used to. (My other kid can't either, but for other reasons.) That's what I'm used to. It's hard to even express until you're in the middle of it, but it's _hard_.

Honestly, improving autism isn't all about just the autistic person's life; they don't live isolated lives, in fact, they're drawing more than average resources, emotional and otherwise, from those around them. Those who live around the autistic person could benefit from autism being improved.

And I'm grateful for what research has been done that has in fact been helpful. Never in a hundred years of parenting would I have imagined the amazing transformation that can come over my kid just by strapping 2 pounds of workout weights to his legs... I never would have made the proprioception connection without the research that has been done on the topic. So you'll forgive me if I get a bit nervous about anything that makes it even REMOTELY sound like maybe we should just shut down all the research and "accept". My son may need emotional acceptance, but he doesn't need acceptance of his autism... he needs research on how to deal with it, and parents who do not simply let him retreat into his own little world and pull the entrance in after him, something he clearly wanted to do when he was 3 and 4, thinking it's just another choice.

Do not stop the research. Do not just "accept" autism. If your experience with autism leads you to the conclusion that's a valid choice, then _be grateful you were only grazed by the bullet_. Not everybody was, and that may even include some people around you who were only indirectly affected.

<comment><USER9> Would you draw a distinction between those with autism who cannot live a self sufficient life with those who can live a self sufficient (though not normal) life? Especially in the cases of those who don't need significant resources during childhood to live self sufficient lives.

To apply this to some other disorder, do you think there is a difference (in terms of how society should respond) between someone with OCD enough to cause issues but not significantly hamper their life versus someone who is unable to leave their house?

<comment><USER8> I'd draw a ton of distinctions, in fact, I'd draw one per person. Everyone's unique.

But I have no idea what in my post would even _remotely_ lead you to the conclusion that _I_ am the one treating "autism" as an atomic condition that you either have or don't, what with all the distinctions you'll find in it if you look.

My concern is that I know where this sort of "acceptance" push leads. Already I see autism researchers have to precede their perfectly acceptable and even wonderful research with "Not that autistic people aren't wonderful, but..." That's a step, no, that's _several_ steps down the road to where soppy-headed thinkers start babbling about "autistophobia" and run the researchers out of town on a rail.

(And then _congratulate_ themselves on running the researchers out of town on a rail.)

Oh, jeez, when I typed that word I _really_ hoped it was a neologism... [https://www.google.com/search?q=autistiophobia](https://www.google.com/search?q=autistiophobia) That's not what my son needs. I don't think internalizing that one is intrinsically and inescapably a victim is good for _anybody 's_ psychology but he _really_ wouldn't be able to deal with life if he incorporated that into his worldview.

(And carefully note my claim there... it is not that people are not sometimes victims, even at scale, and it's not that sometimes they don't need this pointed out... but convincing someone that they are _intrinsically and inescapably eternally a victim_ is a terrible thing to do to a human being.)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for this. All you have to do is look at the "Deaf Culture" folks to see where attempts to normalize a disease state leads.

The lack of ability to hear is not a difference to be celebrated, and anyone who does celebrate it is a sad, pathetic individual spreading harm and--very often--hate.

It is possible to gracefully accept who we are and the things about us that can't yet be fixed, while at the same time striving to fix them.

Our diseases are not our identities.

Deaf Culture and other similar movements start off by accepting the lie that collectivist bigots have imposed on them--that our diseases _are_ our identities--and then simply declare that that identity is _good_. Accepting the identity that hostile collectivists want to impose on you is rarely a good thing. In the case of disease states it really does end in opposing any attempt to cure the disease, and if there's a purer kind of evil than that-- cloaked in the brightly shining garb of rights and defense of the oppressed-- I'm not sure what it is.

<comment><USER11> Although I'm sure there are examples of inappropriate dogmatism in the Deaf Culture conversation, I think you're painting the whole situation with too broad a brush. Unlike autism or OCD, deafness inducts you into a culture that exists parallel to the hearing world. It has its own schools, its own norms, and even its own bars. I'd say it's more similar to an isolated small town than a pathological "disease community" like a pro-anna message board.

So for adults considering surgical intervention, there are very reasonable questions about what it means to be reaching beyond their language community. As for deciding when surgical intervention is appropriate for children, that's an ethical shitshow I'm glad I don't have to sort out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think this topic is too important for it to go discussed meagerly or without a consensus opinion - however loose - based on an array of the most current exhaustive studies on the condition. Too often these findings pop up in popular media without any backdrop or without the larger context of other studies, whether with similar or dissimilar findings.

Here is a study that links autism to low iron intake among pregnant women:

      Iron deficiency affects 40%–50% of pregnancies. Iron is critical for early
      neurodevelopmental processes that are dysregulated in autism spectrum
      disorder (ASD). We examined maternal iron intake in relation to ASD risk in
      California-born children enrolled in a population-based case-control study
      (the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) Study)
      from 2003 to 2009 with a diagnosis of ASD (n = 520) or typical development
      (n = 346) that was clinically confirmed using standardized assessments.
      .
      .
      The highest quintile of iron intake during the index period was associated
      with reduced ASD risk compared with the lowest (adjusted odds ratio = 0.49,
      95% confidence interval: 0.29, 0.82), especially during breastfeeding.
      Low iron intake significantly interacted with advanced maternal age and
      metabolic conditions; combined exposures were associated with a 5-fold
      increased ASD risk. Further studies of this link between maternal supplemental
      iron and ASD are needed to inform ASD prevention strategies.[1]

[1] Maternal Intake of Supplemental Iron and Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder

[http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/22/aje.k...](http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/22/aje.kwu208)

<comment><USER13> Because of this my wife took iron supplements during pregnancy with our 2 kids. Seems to have worked? Of course I have no idea what would have happened without the supplements. Also, a lot of these things are part of our household diet even before pregnancy: [http://i.imgur.com/rwOgsHS.png](http://i.imgur.com/rwOgsHS.png)

<comment><USER14> They are also part of a generally healthy diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In most posts about autism here, a reader is unaware of the early signs. Early intervention is a key in treatment.

For the benefit of those who don't know some potential clues: not pointing, no/low eye contact, non-verbal/no babbling, rote behaviors, toe walking, no facial expressions, lack of response to outside stimuli.

Further reading with milestones by age here [http://www.autismsciencefoundation.org/autism-early- signs](http://www.autismsciencefoundation.org/autism-early-signs)</comment>


She Warned of 'Peer-To-Peer Misinformation.' Congress Listened - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/technology/social-media-disinformation.html <comment><USER2> I have been highlighting this article on Obama's election, every time these stories come up: [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team- us...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big- data-to-rally-voters/)

He was lauded for using "big data" and "data science" to run a successful campaign.

The social media companies picked on this and ran with it. Now this seems to have backfired.

Then there has been the culture of "attack ads", a lot of them based on misrepresenting facts to put it mildly.

So, now Congress and politicians want to do some posturing on Russian "interference". In case they do pass laws banning RT or some special interests from buying ads/bots etc. What then? The can of worms is already open.

People will find a way around. It can be as simple as registering a LLC and then having the Russian "data scientists" work through that. Or even American companies knowingly engaging in this.

The root problem here is the data collection being run by every other company out there. It helps companies and invariably advertisers identify people based on their tastes. So, will Congress and the politicians actually ban outright data collection? My guess is they wont. Posturing this as a Russian and a commie problem gets them enough brownie points.

<comment><USER3> I've come to the conclusion is that politicians have decided that tech is a safe punching bag for both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans can punch up on tech companies to seem like they care about Russian interference without beating up their own candidate, or examining their own advertising practices, and Democrats are still angry that the election was so close and tech seems like something they can just keep punching unlike Comey or Clinton.

We basically need to weather the storm here and act contrite since no one has come to this topic with good intentions of actually trying to fix our elections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm struggling with the takeaway here. Most of the people on the planet have grown up watching blatant misinformation being broadcast on TV, radio, and print. Specifically, during every single government election of note, anyone recall John Kerry and the swiftboats? Social networks now present a new tool to amplify a message, in addition to TV, Radio, Print. So is this a movement to police the messages? And where does this lead, marketing companies can't do business with international organizations during elections? And who decides what messages are allowed and disallowed? Seems this line or reasoning only leads to infringement of freedom of speech.

<comment><USER5> The difference is the ease and scale with which identity and source can be hidden or spoofed to exploit trust relationships and herd instincts on the internet.

Whether something is white (e.g. RT, Voice of America, etc), grey (e.g. swift boat vets for truth, astroturfed citizens for X), or black hat propaganda (e.g. Black Matters, @TEN_GOP) depends on whether you represent yourself as (a) yourself, (b) a neutral party, or (c) your adversary.

So yeah, the problem is one of policing identity rather than messages. In other words, how do we make it more difficult for people to get catfished?

<comment><USER6> Can you explain to me why a couple hundred thousand in ads matter more than a couple billion of super PACs and why those people that spent those billions are blaming it on the couple hundred?

I mean maybe they do, but I feel like in that case you just have to be really shit in marketing and sales, no?

EDIT: you may say: "But I mentioned so many other topics", yes, true, yet the very first in your list is RT. and no I have no skin in this game

<comment><USER7> The Facebook ads are hyper-targeted and more effective than tv ads. They are also viral so they get larger exposure without requiring repeat "airing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tanushree Mitra wrote a computational paper on this in 2016 [1], finding something similar:

"Using four years of longitudinal data capturing vaccine discussions on Twitter, we identify users who persistently hold pro- and anti-attitudes, and those who newly adopt anti-attitudes towards vaccination. After gathering each user's entire Twitter timeline, totaling over 3 million tweets, we explore differences in the individual narratives across the user cohorts. We find that those with long-term anti-vaccination attitudes manifest conspiratorial thinking, mistrust in government, and are resolute and in-group focused in language."

[1] [http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/icwsm16.vaccine.mitra.p...](http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/icwsm16.vaccine.mitra.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a lot of pushback on these kind of findings from those in the tech industry.

One common argument is "oh, old media is just trying to undermine new players", and sometimes there is some truth to this.

But that misses the point. New media is winning is because it is _effective_ , and misinformation campaigns on social media platforms are much more effective than traditional media.

It's easy to see this, by looking at where advertising spending has moved. If it works for selling contact lenses, it sure works for selling "Don't mess with TX Border Patrol"[1] or "Get ready to secede" or "Being Liberal/Bernie Sanders: Clinton Foundation is a Problem"

[1] [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a377ej/facebook-i...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a377ej/facebook- instagram-russian-ads)

</comment><comment><USER10> How is peer-to-peer misinformation any worse than centralized misinformation?

I've seen a lot of hand wringing from the Legacy media over every other source's misinformation but I've yet to see a story from the NY Times calling bullshit on their own bullshit.

<comment><USER9> _I 've yet to see a story from the NY Times calling bullshit on their own bullshit._

[https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections](https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors- the...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times- and-iraq.html)

<comment><USER11> Sure, it only took the NYT 58 years to issue a retraction of their whitewashing of Stalin.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/24/opinion/the-editorial- note...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/24/opinion/the-editorial-notebook- trenchcoats-then-and-now.html)

<comment><USER9> I dunno - are you really serious about criticizing them for something they published between then 1920 and 1940s? When already "the editorial page vigorously dissented from his accounts."

And I'd also note that the NTTimes post WW2 wasn't pro-Stalin at all, and it's only in the modern era that people seem to expect a whole mea-culpa about that kind of thing.

But I guess it is a credit to them for going back and writing about something everyone else had forgotten, 27 years ago, 50 years after it occurred.

I guess we are still waiting for the corrections from Hearst and Pulitzer over the US/Spanish war, though. Any day now....

<comment><USER11> > When already "the editorial page vigorously dissented from his accounts."

Yeah, that's just ass-covering and weaseling.

> But I guess it is a credit to them for going back and writing about > something everyone else had forgotten

Stalin was murdering and enslaving people within living memory, and his successors continued the process until 1991.

I assure you that the surviving victims and their friends and families have not "forgotten".

<comment><USER9> And the NY Times reported that murdering and enslaving that whole time, including while that dodgy reporter was reporting otherwise.

Here's one from the year before that apology (ie, from 1989): [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet- paper-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper- says-20-million-died-as-victims-of-stalin.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In a somewhat similar vein in 2009 I wrote about how useful Twitter is for spreading disinformation.

Some of the points I made were somewhat mitigated by Twitter product changes but I still think it holds up as an article/paper.

[http://memeover.arkem.org/2009/12/twitter-as-vector-for- disi...](http://memeover.arkem.org/2009/12/twitter-as-vector-for- disinformation.html)

<comment><USER13> Seems that would feed nicely into driving the social prompting (ie the thumbs up) facebook relies on to push their product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Again, the problem is that "social media" is so centralized.

It seems to me that there is too much focus on "how Facebook and Twitter are doing it wrong". Reliance on Facebook and Twitter to solve misinformation is absurd. We should be focused on _alternatives_.

<comment><USER15> Because of information and attention dynamics, I seriously doubt any stable altenative regime that doesn't look muchlike the present one will appear.

Zipf's Law, network effects, advertising concentration, ec., etc.

<comment><USER14> > altenative regime

Why must it be a regime?

There is no _need_ to use centralized platforms.

<comment><USER15> regime: 2a "A way of organizing or managing something; a system:"

[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/regime](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/regime)

<comment><USER14> regime: 1a, 1b, 3.

<comment><USER15> Curiously enough, those weren't the definitions I offered as those weren't the definitions I was using.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone else think it is possible this could explain the 'surprise' part of the loss by the presidential Democratic campaign?

Considering Democrats probably are also the most social media savvy/participant of all the voting participants it just seems plausible.

<comment><USER11> It wasn't a surprise to anyone who wasn't immersed in the bicoastal media bubble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could the title be changed swapping "She" for "Renee DeResta"?</comment>


Ask HN: Question about Contracts - <AUTHOR>

About 18 months ago I started working with a startup, I was 18 at the time.  I worked 80-100 hour weeks for no pay and no equity.  I signed a contract before I went to college in the fall saying that I was owed $10,000 and 10% of the profits in 2010 (due at the end of the year).  I ended up being paid the $10,000 about 8 months late.  This summer, I went back and was hired for $6,000 a month.  The company ended up making $1,000,000 with ~$400,000 in profit, and when, while in the process of leaving the company to return to school, I asked for the 10% of the profits, they claimed that the contract that I signed for the Summer contained a clause that superseded all previous contracts.  My question is, did I sign the previous contract under false pretenses, never intending to sign away my right to the 10% of the previous profits, and is that clause even legal in this case?<p>It's just incredibly frustrating as a college student who can't afford a lawyer to feel like other people made a ton of money off of my work (I was one of 2 developers, the other ended up leaving and suing for $130,000 for a similar amount of work) and I'm getting screwed.  Any help would be appreciated, thanks a lot. <comment><USER2> I don't see how you have a choice to not hire a lawyer. It shouldn't cost more than a couple of hundred dollars to find someone to read through the contracts and tell you what they think, i.e. are you screwed or not.

If $40,000 dollars is at stake, a few hundred dollars is probably worth it to get a professional opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree about the lawyer comment. At minimum, get an opinion. Secondarily, you can also negotiate to pay only based on success. So, you don't pay unless you win. It's a fairly common practice, expecially if you've got a good case.

Best of luck, AL

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure if it's appropriate to ask personal questions like this, but I don't have a ton of options, and I apologize if I offend anyone.</comment>


CVC: An Open Source Industrial Strength Verilog Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://www.tachyon-da.com/ <comment><USER2> Is this the same CVC as this?

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pragmatic-c- software...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pragmatic-c-softwares- cvc-verilog-simulator-now-supports-apple-mac-os-x-94268049.html)

Also, any relation to GPL cver?

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/gplcver/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/gplcver/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Tachyon Design Automation was formerly Pragmatic C Software.

It looks like GPL cver is an ancestor to the current CVC; CVC currently supports Verilog 2005.

<comment><USER2> Any SystemVerilog support at all? For better or worse, at least some SV constructs are leaking into a lot of RTL code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> CVC is a truly industrial strength Verilog simulator, something that the EDA world desperately needs. It WILL do FULLY back-annotated SDF simulations for ASIC and FPGA designs, it is compiled and FAST, and is open source.

It is a project that definitely deserves attention.</comment>


Introducing Reference.me - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reference.me/index.php/2011/10/01/introducing-reference-me/ you will need an invite code. Use use: protoref <comment><USER2> Cool just signed up...what is the relationship between Mixtent and Reference.me?

Really like the design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked the design. If you have any other thoughts or feedback please dont hesitate to sare them

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why do I need to make a password if I'm signing up using my Facebook account?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You will need an invite code. Use: protoref

<comment><USER4> Looks interesting!

Any way to try it without signing up through Facebook?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at this point but we wont post anything on your wall without permission. When adding people to you trusted network check/uncheck the notify with wall post check box as you see fit.

Looking forward to your 2cts</comment></comment></comment>


A Programmers Rant Against Fancy Data Structures (1990 and 2001) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-adam.com/adam/rantrave/st02.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> It's an interesting way to think about programming. Curmudgeon is the word that comes to mind, but I'm sure that young programmers would think that I'm a curmudgeon too.

His dislike for data structures in favor of parallel array is kind of how like mostly just use lists and dictionaries in Python instead of fancy classes.</comment>


Open Data Reveals $791M Error in Newly Adopted NYC Budget - <AUTHOR> http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/147446103684/open-data-reveals-791-million-error-in-newly <comment><USER2> This is kinda frustrating to see considering the many, many other open data problems I've seen. Sure, it's a typo, but did it deserve its own article? No. There are more important things to discuss.

(Not trying to minimize the work or the problem of the typo, just that it's very in-line with the many other issues I've seen that need to be fixed.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the author used this as an example to highlight and bolster the importance of open data:

"The fact that this amount of money made it through the budget process presumably mislabeled makes the case for Open Data even stronger. Open Data is not just about "transparency". Our government officials are only human and our agencies have limited resources. Budgets are far too large and complex to be understood end-to-end by our legislators. As more data gets out to the public, we'll start to see that our citizens can help improve the way government operates - even if it's sometimes proof reading! "</comment></comment>