The Daily Stormer, Online Speech, and Internet Registrars - <AUTHOR> https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2017/08/daily-stormer-online-speech-and-internet-registrars <comment><USER3> I used to think it was fairly easy to identify who was/is a "Nazi" or Nazi sympathizers (The Daily Stormer obviously passed the smell test). What I'm concerned about is that the scope of who's included in that group seems to be expanding. Immediately after Chancellorsville plenty of Liberal pundits, on and off Twitter, explicitly stated there was no difference between Republicans and the NRA and Nazis, which is of course a ludicrous statement. But people don't think it's ludicrous anymore. It seems a reasonable expectation at this point that this expansion will continue, because anyone who doesn't sufficiently condemn/signal their agreement with policing speech in this manner might find themselves branded a "Nazi sympathizer". Is this where we're headed? I sincerely hope not, because it's going to lead to a frightening trend of self-censorship. This is a sign of a seriously unhealthy political culture.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly were the USA is headed. The vocal minority wants the civil war to happen. They want to affirm their own epic narrative ([https://sivers.org/drama](https://sivers.org/drama)). David defeats Goliath, _for the common good_.

A lot of young people can't get a hold of their identity, so they grab on to their gender, race, being liberal, whatever. They make a virtue out of anything they already are. Then the journalists exploit the collective search for meaning by selling outrage and a scapegoat. Some people _need_ the "nazis": their identity depends on it.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that also what the Nazi alt-right people are doing: grabbing a radicalized ready made identity off the shelf because they don't know who they are?

I see a ton of this today. Maybe it's the social media version of the couch potato. This is what it looks like when people lose themselves in social media.

<comment><USER6> > This is what it looks like when people lose themselves in social media.

No, this is what it looks like when you have a racist country that doesn't address its institutional racism for decades combined with a racist political party that panders and dogwhistles to them for (at least 5, more like 20) years combined with broken ideas about free speech.

<comment><USER7> The Democratic vice-mayor of Charlottesville has publicly said he hates white people. Racism goes both ways and some people in both parties are guilty of it.

<comment><USER8> >The Democratic vice-mayor of Charlottesville has publicly said he hates white people.

Ok. How many white people have been beaten by police under his vile, racist vice-regime?

Oh. Zero, you say?

How many white people have had guns pointed at them by Black Panthers under his vile, racist vice-regime?

Oh. Zero, you say?

Then I think there's a difference. One side says mean things on Twitter, the other side infiltrates police departments and burns down churches.

<comment><USER7> Zero, I did not say.

According to the ACLU and ABC, police allowed the violence at the march to happen.

> [ACLU Tweet:] Clash between protesters and counter protesters. Police says > "We'll not intervene until given command to do so."

> Video replayed over the weekend on cable news and social media appears to > show long brawls between protesters and counter-protesters that went > uninterrupted by police.

[http://abcnews.go.com/US/police-face-criticism-eruptions- vio...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/police-face-criticism-eruptions-violence- charlottesville/story?id=49192837)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me this is not that different from state censorship I experience in Russia.

I would argue that the internet is the primary medium for exercizing one's free speech today. The technological change made printed medium outdated. If you are not on the interent, you will not be heard. If the the government decided to configure the crucial internet infrastructure (domain name resolution) in a way that private companies can censor speech(registrars and verisign), then it's effectively a violation of the first amendment. Because what this ammounts to is government saying that the medium of public protesting or sharing printed material is protected, but the medium of electronic communication is not, because we decided to privatize it. It's like saying you can't protest here because we decided to privatize all the public squares and paved roads, their owners don't want to see you, and the fist amendment does not protect you there, you can protest on a dirt road in the forest(TOR etc) where no one sees you.

I feel very uneasy about these events, because it's a precedent. Censorship of the interent in Russia began with pedophile histeria in the media to justify the laws, and now it's used to censor opposition supporting media. Considering the changing tastes of upcoming college graduates in the US, in terms of interpretation of what constitues free speech and what doesn't, the political censorship could become intstituionalized in the US through "TOS violations". And through this censorial normalcy could eventually pave way to the end of the current absolutist legal interpretation of the first amendment. Which would be very bad IMO.

<comment><USER10> Meh. The site's up again already on a .ru domain [https://dailystormer.ru/a-tale-of-true-friendship-trump- call...](https://dailystormer.ru/a-tale-of-true-friendship-trump-called-putin- to-get-us-a-new-domain/)

It's not being censored, it's just reputable companies don't want to deal with them. Fair enough I say.

<comment><USER11> Aaaand its gone...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ACLU position on this is also interesting. They actually fought in court for the permit for the rally.

"The First Amendment is a critical part of our democracy, and it protects vile, hateful, and ignorant speech. For this reason, the ACLU of Virginia defended the white supremacists' right to march. But we will not be silent in the face of white supremacy. Those who do stand silent enable it. That includes our president."

[https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-statement-charlottesville- vio...](https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-statement-charlottesville-violence-and- demonstrations)

<comment><USER13> That's an interesting position. And I understand it. It's not easy. But it exposes the discomfort they have with defending the first amendment.

It's like saying you support the right to an attorney but since someone is a murderer you hope the State Appointed defense attorney is a lackey or they don't appoint any.

<comment><USER12> I also wondered a long time about why would an attorney defend someone which clearly seems to be a criminal.

My understanding of this is that if someone is an obvious criminal, it will be easy to prove in court, so the attorney will not change the outcome.

<comment><USER14> John Adams volunteered to represent British soldiers accused of killing civilians[1]. He made some good arguments about fairness. Even if they're guilty of crimes, it's still not fair to abuse them, pile on more charges, or take shortcuts when gathering facts. They also still need to be sentenced fairly.

For example, if the guy who ran over and killed the woman in Charlottesville didn't get fair representation or trial, both sides could rightfully argue "the system is rigged."

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams#Counsel_for_the_Bri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams#Counsel_for_the_British:_Boston_Massacre)

<comment><USER15> This is the fundamental essence of classic liberalism. Specifically, the meta- level things like strongly preferring that the system is working well over all situations rather than getting the correct result in any particular one. Also, avoiding even the appearance of impropriety, which causes more damage than getting things wrong.

It's also the key insight of rule utilitarianism over act utilitarianism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >But few really oppose the basic predicate of these removals: that private companies can and should be arbiters of permissible speech on their platforms.

I am proud to count myself among those few. Social media is the modern public square and must be treated as such.

<comment><USER17> You're interpreting the first amendment as "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech _on the speakers chosen platform_." I rather like the idea that the New Yorker rejecting my work could be considered a violation of my rights.

<comment><USER18> Why is this canard such a common response in discussions like these?

The only explanation I've come up with so far is that the people saying stuff like this are profoundly stupid, and I really hate it when my only explanation of a POV is that facile and self-serving. I don't mean to pick on you in particular but I'm hoping you can explain this to me and try to steelman this common refrain.

Free speech as a concept (or a spectrum) exists independently of its codification in our Constitution. It's not something the founders accidentally wrote down and now we're stuck with it: they did it for a reason that some people (myself and the parent comment included) find compelling in contexts other than simply "when the Constitution forces us to".

It's fine to disagree with its relevance to specific contexts, but what on earth compels you to think that "The Constitution doesn't force us to!" is a remotely relevant response to "I think free speech is a good idea in this context"?

<comment><USER17> _Free speech as a concept (or a spectrum) exists independently of its codification in our Constitution._

Free speech exists as a concept, but _protected_ free speech doesn't. You can't have protected free speech without the laws that protect it. The point I made slightly flippantly is about the extent of the protection. Most people interpret the law as protecting the right to speak, not the right to speak _on a specific platform_.

As with all things this is best explained with an XKCD reference: [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

<comment><USER19> Laws don't define right and wrong.

If we didn't have laws against murder, would murder not still be wrong?

Just because the government is prevented from creating laws that infringe on free speech, that doesn't mean that individual infringement on free speech is morally permissible.

<comment><USER20> The problem is you are casting individual _exercise_ of free speech by delining to amplify speech they don't approve of as "infringement on free speech".

Free speech certainly includes the right to try to convince people to amplify your speech. It generally does not include an _entitlement_ to have them do it for you without you having to convince them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sigh. We went through this 70 years ago with literal nazis, are we going to have to live through it again, this time from the far left? Didn't they learn this poem in school?

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

To be clear, I don't agree with what nazi's say, but like voltaire I support their right to be able to say it.

<comment><USER22> > To be clear, I don't agree with what nazi's say, but like voltaire I support > their right to be able to say it.

Here, read this: [https://qz.com/1053957/charlottesville-neo-nazis-and-the- cas...](https://qz.com/1053957/charlottesville-neo-nazis-and-the-case-against- free-speech-for-fascists/?mc_cid=70d578520a&mc_eid=9deaabec7d)

I do not support the Nazi's right to say what they want. Nazism resulted in the murder of 30 million people. It engulfed much of the Western world in a war that ravaged nations and killed millions. It calls for ethnic cleansing and racial oppression. It is literally the opposite of the liberal democracy the United States is based on. It runs counter to the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it does not promote freedom, equality, and justice for all. Much of the same can be lodged against the people who support the Confederacy.

I'm for dissent and speaking out. I do think, however, there is speech, which while is not libel and slander, crosses a line that should not be tolerated in a free and just society. Slippery slopes, intolerance, etc. A good litmus test is to ask if your speech calls for the killing or enslavement of those who are different than you. Considering we waged 2 wars over Nazism and the Confederacy, I'd say those ideas fall into that category.

<comment><USER23> I think you (and that article) completely missed the point behind the idea of free speech.

The fundamental idea behind speech is that it is a reflection of our mind and our reasoning. It is NOT the same thing as the actual 'reason' in our mind. By restricting speech, you do not 'change' anything of real significance.

If you force a man to only look in a mirror which shows a distorted view of his body, then not only he will be unable to do anything about his body, whenever he would want to do something about his body, he would go in the wrong direction.

When someone says 'gas all kikes', it isn't that by him not expressing that thought, you have permanently altered his reasoning. He is expressing that idea (assuming he meant it seriously, and not in 4chany way), out of the feeling of hatred and anger in his mind.

Similarly, when someone hears 'gas all kikes', and he thinks 'damn right', it isn't that without him hearing that vile statement from the first person, somehow the feelings in his mind won't really arise.

Now what about a more reasoned structured argument made by the first person, instead of just some call, for instance systematically blaming a certain group of people, and presenting 'proof'?

Again, if the speech is free, then it can be tackled down by other good people, explaining things. To every 'Mein Kampf', you can write 'Your Lies', or something else to appeal to anyone who wants to 'truly' believe in anything.

Finally, irrespective of what you may think, it is not possible to successfully curb speech, if someone writes a hateful book, it is spread in the underground circles, credited to anonymous groups. And when people receive that literature, the first question they ask is "hmm.. I wonder why some people are so insistent about not wanting anyone to read this? I wonder what evidence of wrongdoing is listed in this book against the other group. I wonder if what this book says is right, because otherwise the rulers wouldn't be so interested in preventing others from reading this". And I have first hand experience of this.

If by banning intolerant you can make people tolerant, if by forcing them to interact with others, you can make them like others, if by banning certain kinds of speech, you can change people's minds, then go for it. But since I know that's not possible, I am against restrictions on any kind of speech.

<comment><USER22> I'll have to disagree with your assessment. The reason we have freedom of speech in the United States is to prevent the government from silencing critics. The Founder's most definitely did not have the Nazi. Much of your argument resembles the same one used by critics of gun control, which is essentially that banning guns won't stop criminals from getting guns. I understand the sentiment, but I also think a society needs to draw lines around what it will tolerate and what it won't. Nazism and the Confederacy were harmful mindsets that killed people and tore apart nations. The only way to kill it is by education, but that doesn't mean we should let it fester.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been really uncomfortable with this whole thing. I get why offensive people get booted out of communities and social networks, but I don't feel like infrastructure/platform providers should be in the business of content moderation.

From what I read, it was suggested that it would be hard to even figure out what The Daily Stormer could've done 'wrong' according to Google Domains' Terms of Service.

<comment><USER25> Please don't downvote ocdtrekkie just because you disagree with him/her… that's what replies are for. Downvote comments that don't add to the conversation.

I'm here to say I am uncomfortable with e.g. GoDaddy censoring their users, too. I'm uncomfortable either way.

Because I remember when another web host, BlueHost, which happens to be owned by Mormons, decided that it could not in good conscience host (non- pornographic) websites for lesbians, and deleted their accounts without warning.

I'm not trying to make a false equivalency, but… should your web host decide whether they approve of your speech? No.

OTOH, should companies profit off hate speech or Nazism? No!

It's also worth noting that "hate speech" is hard to define! SPLC is the best- known authority here and they have absolutely fucked up and mis-categorized non-hateful religious criticism as "hate speech". Would you like to see GoDaddy start deleting ex-Muslim bloggers on "hate speech" grounds?

 _Edit_ 100% not to detract from anything said previously, but it's valid to say that the line exists at "direct incitement of violence"

<comment><USER26> > OTOH, should companies profit off hate speech or Nazism? No!

I really hate this point. I was (am) a "webhost" and also happen to be a staunch free speech advocate. My rule when I owned my own company was if I didn't have a court order and the content wasn't blatantly obviously illegal (e.g. child porn or outright specific calls for actionable violence) you stayed on-line and I would vehemently defend that right for you. As expected, as you gain such a reputation you tend to draw some really shitty people.

I will tell you that the "problem" customers cost far more than they ever made, and it wasn't even close. These were customers I truly despised, but I would actually be subsidizing their platforms due to those opposed (e.g. ddos attacks, constant support phone calls harassing my staff, fishing expedition warrants that needed to be fought, etc. etc.) intentionally costing me money in an attempt to shut down their speech. I found those actions more contemptible than the content they were opposed to - and much of it truly was vile.

This is _not_ a profitable segment of the industry to be in, but I still feel it's an extremely important line to _never_ cross and am saddened by the state of telecommunications as a neutral platform/common carrier today. We've lost so much in less than a generation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Daily Stormer read like a parody of the alt-right. But, unlike ISIS videos, it had zero persuasion power. [https://web.archive.org/web/20170813051230/http://dailystorm...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170813051230/http://dailystormer.com/) If anything, it was a testament to what's wrong with the movement. Leave the website up, for everyone to disprove and make fun of.

<comment><USER27> It's not persuasive to you (and me). But look at how many people are staunch, almost religious, defenders of ridiculous alternative facts. A lot of people believe what they want to believe and will only look for evidence that supports their believes.

<comment><USER28> You might want to enclose a term such as 'alternative facts' in quote marks; without them you legitimize the concept. The use of the adverb 'ridiculous' and the gist of your comment imply that you do not subscribe to the notion of 'alternative facts' yourself.

<comment><USER27> Learned something. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder when this "lawfare" (really more like TOSfare) on registrars, hosting providers, CDNs, payment processors, and fundraising sites (like patreon) will escalate into the use of censorship-resistant/distributed alternatives (like bitcoin, or onion services or whatever) among people with extremist political views (of any flavour).

<comment><USER30> Not even a TOSfare. It's just a plain old hate mob.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well this is an interesting situation. I don't mind reading absurdly offensive things that I disagree with, so I went looking for what happened to them. Seems they were rejected a total of 3 times for registrars for their .com domain, and were briefly online via a .wang domain which they claimed to have discovered was superior, but has since been shut down also. They are currently online via a Tor hidden site, and they still seem to have a Twitter feed, for now. They claim to be actively searching for a new .com registrar. They also seem to have been dropped by several other cloud services, including Zoho, Sendgrid, and Discourse.

Obligatory disclaimer - open Nazi-ism, every bit as offensive as you think it is. Browse at your own risk to your sanity and browser history. Thought about posting the Tor link, but honestly, you can find it with a couple of Google searches.

As someone else here said, I'm not so sure that defending the right of Nazis to speak and publish websites is the hill to die on here. But this does raise the question of who they will go after next. Exactly how offensive or outside of the mainstream do you have to be to get 90% of registrars and cloud services to terminate your services?

</comment><comment> jim-jim-jim It does tickle me slightly to see people with generally progressive sentiments become flaming supporters of private property and free enterprise over the issue of objectionable political content, smugly pointing out that free speech doesn't apply to businesses and more likely than not linking to that stupid xkcd comic--as though the debate being held over "free speech" were strictly a legal one.

I don't know. Defending Nazis isn't the hill I'm going to die on, but I'm very wary of the "let woke tech corporations root out hate" approach. ToS violations are very malleable things and can be leveraged against other controversial viewpoints as well. There's a communist youtuber who has had his material taken down multiple times for making a silly song about the shooting of Tsar Nicholas II. Making light of a 100 year-old regicide is hate speech in Google's eyes. Reddit has likewise targeted very neutral and scholarly attempts to document jihadist media. Free speech is not compatible with free markets.

<comment><USER32> > smugly pointing out that free speech doesn't apply to businesses

Unless it is about wedding cakes, and then the business has no right to self- determine what they can or cannot put on the cake. I have a hard time understanding how a bakery is a public accommodation, but an internet registrar isn't.

<comment><USER33> I don't think the difference there is bakery v registrar, but protected classes v arbitrary groups. It's like at-will employment: you can be fired for any reason _except_ these specific protected reasons (retaliation, age, race, pregnancy, etc).

<comment><USER34> A Gay couple isn't a protected class under under federal law, there are 7 protected classes based on: race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and familial status. As you notice "gender" or lack there off and sexual orientation are not defined as protected classes.

<comment><USER35> that's still being debated.

[http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/politics/doj-amicus-brief- titl...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/politics/doj-amicus-brief-title-vii- sexual-orientation/index.html)

<comment><USER34> Indeed, it also is more complicated than that since protected classes in the US (on a federal level) are defined by multiple laws and their protection status is not universal across all cases.

You may argue that familial/marital status is a protected class in the case of the gay wedding cake, the problem is that AFIAK (IANAL) applies to housing opportunities only.

You can argue in court that familial status extends beyond married/divorced/single/widowed but also to the type of marriage and then argue that the protection under title VIII of the Fair Housing Act sets a precedence for familial status being a universal protected class(this has been done for other protected classes in the past also).

But in either case this is a matter for the courts, until there is a ruling not wanting to serve a gay couple isn't a crime just "abhorrent but legal".

As a liberal I would much rather see the free market take over, and before people say well a free market didn't help to combat the discrimination against African Americans it wasn't the lack of a free market but regulation where you had local laws that demanded a 7 ft barrier between black and white areas in a restaurant and many other abhorrent local laws.

A bakery that wouldn't want to serve gay customers will be at a disadvantage in a truly free market as they lose business from people that they do not wish to serve and people who think that behavior is abhorrent.

I would also like to point out that on some level if I were in there place I wouldn't want to get a cake from a place that didn't want to make one but was forced to do so. A wedding is an important event, a wedding cake as silly as it might sound is a big part of the tradition, I would much rather take my business somewhere else than have someone who doesn't want to make a cake to be compelled to make one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As a person from germany and as many of you might not know, the "daily stormer" is directly connotated to "Der Stürmer" [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer)].

That newspaper with its very popular antisemitic caricatures was one of the main sources of radicalization in germany.

</comment><comment><USER12> So, Amazon is still selling Mein Kampf.

Going by the No Platform argument mentioned a lot in this thread, or by the right to choose how to do business, people should be putting pressure on Amazon to stop selling it.

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mein-Kampf-Struggle-Adolf-Hitler- eb...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mein-Kampf-Struggle-Adolf-Hitler- ebook/dp/B01HE5UE04/)

<comment><USER37> Let's start by burning books we don't like and disagree with...

<comment><USER38> Would you please stop using HN for ideological flamewar? It's not what this site is for and it damages what it is for. (What it is for: gratification of intellectual curiosity. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Abhorrent but legal". An interesting term.

I feel that most people miss out the " _legal_ " part of it, though.

</comment><comment><USER40> "breitbart.com" has GoDaddy as a registrar, and Cloudflare as a cache provider. Should they be cut off?

<comment><USER41> A registrar or caching provider withdrawing service to a customer is essentially sending a message, and from that perspective the action should be covered by free speech. So I would argue that yes, if GoDaddy or Cloudflare were offended by Breitbart, they should be able to cut them off.

Note that in this case, the provider would not be infringing on the customer's free speech, because there are myriad other providers they can use.

<comment><USER34> If they were "sending a message" to a BLM or an LGBT group would you still support their rights to do so?

If the internet existed in the 1950's and the apparent (at least as a public face goes) vox populi would favor and crave for both self and institutionalized censorship as much as they do now the civil rights movement would've been dead in it's tracks.

It seems that people are busy yelling Nazi's Nazi's rather than having an actual good look at history.

When ever ideas are being silenced much much worse things tend to follow.

<comment><USER41> Yes I would. In fact I sided with the cake shop owners who didn't want to make a cake for a gay couple. They should have simply taken their business elsewhere, or made their own cake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> >If we ask these small companies to take on content removal obligations, we should not expect nuanced decision-making or robust appeal processes. We should expect legal and important sites from across the political spectrum to go down because someone complained about them.

This is a ridiculous statement. Domain registrars are already required (by ICANN) to receive, investigate, and respond to abuse complaints.

<comment><USER43> Was that the only point of theirs that held any sway with you?

<comment><USER42> I was just pointing out that specific statement. I've got thoughts, but no specific perspective on the rest of the article. It definitely raises interesting questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Reading posts by Milo et al, it seems MailChimp is also stopping service for some people on the Right they don't like.

</comment><comment><USER45> It is very important to distinguish something like Facebook blocking an account / Medium taking down a blog from a domain registrar refusing to cooperate.

You are free to create a room where only some ideologies are allowed, but it's dangerous to play the same game with the _ability to create the rooms_.

First the domain registrars, then networks say that they don't want to peer, and then we end up with a fragmented internet.

It is not wise to pretend that an opinion that you do not want just simply does not exist. The extremist in the room who everybody pretends is not there, is eventually going to do more radical things to be noticed. In the echo chamber of extremism, there is now no moderating thought; and the world loses empathy to understand these unpopular perspectives that still exist.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant"

"Isolation only promotes extremism"

</comment><comment><USER46> It is insane that we are allowing GoDaddy, Google and tech companies to be arbiters of free speech.

As a kid, I used to associate google, yahoo and the whole of internet as a bastion of freedom.

It is shocking to me that liberals ( a group I used to identify with until fairly recently ) are the proponents of censorship on the internet and in america. It is shocking to me that google, godaddy and the internet is now synonymous with censorship and propaganda.

Not only is censorship giving daily stormer and neo-nazis more sympathy/credibility, companies like google, godaddy and the liberal movement is making a mockery of liberal principles.

My first philosophy course in college was with a jewish professor. We were discussing free speech and the rights of neo-nazis/kkk/hate groups to free speech. I clearly remember her saying that protecting the rights of neo- nazis/kkk to free speech is the only way to ensure the rights of speech speech for everyone. Free speech rights exist to protect "offensive" speech - <USER2> it be pornography, atheism or hate speech.

What has happened to the tech industry? What has happened to the liberal movement? How did the tech community and the liberal movement get hijacked by anti-free speech and oppressive extremists?

If conservatives are pro-censorship and now liberals are pro-censorship, what future is there for individual rights, free speech and the liberal world order?

</comment><comment><USER37> First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

<comment><USER47> Then we took away their easy access to propagandize hate and they stopped coming for us.

<comment><USER37> And then google came for you...

<comment><USER47> If you expect other people to rally behind nazis you're going to need to invest a lot more effort.

<comment><USER30> Following the other poster I am really curious - are your against free speech? If so okay, no place to argue here.

<comment><USER48> I'm against free speech in certain circumstances; free speech is idealistic, for it assumes Bad Ideas will be shot down in fair public debate, and people are rational. When people say things along the lines of "I don't like what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it", they're really saying that they don't care about the consequences that may come of that speech out of principle. It's a very reductionist mindset.

This is a fantasy, and I think a level of control is needed to stop the rousing of genocidal ideology propagated through rhetoric and providing its proponents platforms to speak on.

<comment><USER49> > This is a fantasy, and I think a level of control is needed to stop the > rousing of genocidal ideology propagated through rhetoric and providing its > proponents platforms to speak on.

The Nazis you dislike would agree with you, and tell you we need to outlaw the speech of what they believe to be hateful open borders communists who, to their minds, promulgate the genocide of the white race.

The world has a long history of those who push for the restriction of speech ending up on the receiving end of restriction of speech. One good turn, history tells us, very often deserves another.

<comment><USER48> >The Nazis you dislike would agree with you

The fact that other people would also like to censor some speech in other circumstances is irrelevant to me.

>open borders communists who, to their minds, promulgate the genocide of the white race.

What's in their mind is irrelevant. I'm clearly not advocating genocide, it's not my business if they see it that way, they ought to educate themselves. There's a clear difference between advocating that the workers of the world unite and advocating killing Jews. As it also turns out, the Nazis would kill Jews whether or not the workers agreed with it, you can't say the same about any of my actions.

>The world has a long history of those who push for the restriction of speech ending up on the receiving end of restriction of speech.

I agree, so it must be done carefully; there's no causation, merely there might be correletaion between these two groups.

<comment><USER37> What exactly is the difference between the Nazis and the Commies (responsible for the death of millions in USSR, China and across the world - death camps, labor camps, starvation, cultural revolutions, terrorism...)

<comment><USER48> Killing has nothing to do with Communism. I don't defend those who have killed in its name, and I don't want to do the same as them. As far as I know, Nazism requires forceful removal or killing of people.

This is the difference.

<comment><USER37> Are you sure you are against the "forceful removal", this is what you said few posts ago:

> No, because I'm not advocating harm or killing, only the potentially > forceful removal of private property from landowners and capitalists.

<comment><USER48> I'm against forceful removal of people (as in, taking them away from their homes simply for being who they are), not of private property.

<comment><USER37> wow... so sad... you are exactly the same...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Free speech is not a sometime thing. Just ask 1926 Germany.

<comment><USER51> What exactly are you referring to that happened in 1926 in Germany? Maybe you're thinking of 1930 or 1933?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This article neglects to mention that anyone can relatively easily become a domain registrar.

It seems strange that someone would expect a registrar to defend them for the couple of dollars per year you generally pay.

<comment><USER53> > Anyone can relatively easily become a domain registrar.

Relatively easily? It isn't exactly a cheap venture: e.g. $4k+ per year to become an ICANN registrar.

I think people shouldn't have to pay that much to exercise their free speech.

> It seems strange that someone would expect a registrar to defend them for > the couple of dollars per year you generally pay.

I think that unless a registrar is legally compelled to unregister your domain name, they shouldn't take it upon themselves to unregister your domain name just because other people are offended by what you put on the web server that your domain name resolves to.

<comment><USER52> >Relatively easily? It isn't exactly a cheap venture: e.g. $4k+ per year to become an ICANN registrar.

I'd say that's relatively easy yeah, perhaps a bit much for individuals but in the end not everyone needs to be a registrar. This is still accessible enough that rather small groups of people can set up a domain registrar to serve their own needs.

>I think that unless a registrar is legally compelled to unregister your domain name, they shouldn't take it upon themselves to unregister your domain name just because other people are offended by what you put on the web server that your domain name resolves to.

Oh, absolutely. And that's not what's happening here, registrars are simply forcing Daily Stormer to transfer elsewhere. They're not just deleting the domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think this author either misunderstands the issue or is trying to pull a fast one. They start out by reviewing net neutrality and how it affects ISPs:

>At the same time, if the people I talk to are geeky enough, they usually support Net Neutrality. They believe that ISPs, as providers of core Internet infrastructure, should not get to be arbiters of content. ISPs should allow the bits to flow equally -- not suppress or favor particular messages or sources.

And then leaps into talking about registrars and hosting:

>Two of the intermediaries that rejected the Daily Stormer, Go Daddy and Google, were only acting as its domain registrars. They did not host the site, they just made sure that dailystormer.com was associated with the right IP addresses, so users typing the domain and clicking links to it would get there.

ISPs should transmit bits neutrally but there's no reason a registrar or hosting service needs to host those bits if they decide not to. There are plenty of registrars and hosting services, market effects will shape behavior. If GoDaddy doesn't want the bad publicity, they should make the decision that suits their business. There are not that many ISPs and it's not their role to police content for exactly the same reason the phone company isn't liable for connecting a call that results in a bomb threat or wire fraud.</comment>


Against Narrow Minded Bitcoin Maximalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.buildblockchain.tech/blog/narrow-minded-maximalism <comment><USER2> The article promotes a more moderate Bitcoin Maximalism, that does not abolish "Smart Contracts" or the possibility of another chain overtaking Bitcoin e.g. in market cap.

For the first point there are more and more 2nd layer solutions building on bitcoin, like RSK, or Lightning, supported by many Maximalists. In the end I would prefer using those solutions which have the most seemless integration with my store of value.

Now my store of value of choice should be that of everybody else, or else it would not be a good store of value. This leads to the case where another chain overtakes Bitcoin.

This is kind of alright with me, as long as that chain is a fork of Bitcoin or an Airdrop, and it should probably be a done deal, meaning a vast majority of the ecosystem supports it, even before it goes online. In every other case, e.g. Ethereum overtaking Bitcoin, I could not accept the new leader as a store of value easily, since it could be replaced again. Especially if the replaced asset would lose worth quickly. Exception of course is a possible but improbable unfixable technjcal failure.

It seems I am risking the predestination trap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts- yes you seem to have grokked the point of my article. It's as much an exhortation for the Bitcoin community to build the vision of the world it wants, not to blindly assume it will arrive!</comment></comment>


Smokers and the obese cheaper to care for - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748884.html <comment><USER2> The key thing to understand about studies like this is that healthier people tend to be more productive and therefore are more likely to contribute more to society. It may cost more to treat the health problems of an 80 year old alzheimer patient than a 40 year old with lung cancer, but that 80 year old likely worked for an additional 25 years during which they paid taxes and helped to overall grow the economy.

So it is easy to measure the cost but the benefit is harder to measure (and this doesn't even count harder to measure benefits like happiness that healthier people tend to have).</comment>


Why Another DVCS? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ericsink.com/entries/why_another_dvcs.html

<comment><USER2> Veracity looks interesting; I had not heard of it before. I have a question about one of the items on the comparison chart here:

<http://veracity-scm.com/>

What is an "immutability doctrine", and what does it mean for one to be liberal/conservative?

 _Edit: I found a FAQ on this question:_

[http://veracity-scm.com/qa/questions/71/what-is-veracitys- do...](http://veracity-scm.com/qa/questions/71/what-is-veracitys-doctrinal- stance-on-immutability)

 _Edit 2: I just noticed that the Veracity command is a nice, short "vv". Must be an homage to the emacs "ctrl-x v v" binding. Nice touch!_

</comment><comment><USER3> Git seems to have moved beyond just the early adaptors: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codeplex/archive/2011/07/11/survey-r...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codeplex/archive/2011/07/11/survey- results-open-source-developer-preferences-june-2011.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm really not seeing any answers here. I see that the project has decided it doesn't need (or hasn't yet implemented) some things that I think are fairly important.

I'm missing the simple list of "this is very important and missing from all the tools you know." Somewhere between git, mercurial, bzr and fossil, there's a hole so large and so fundamental that an entire new tool must be developed to fill it.

</comment><comment><USER5> This page doesn't answer the posed question. It's actually something about SCM advocacy and adoption curves. The chart on the front page is much more informative.</comment>


Why philosophy is so important in science education - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/why-philosophy-is-so-important-in-science-education <comment><USER2> TL;DR: It's important, but no real explanation of why.

<comment><USER3> Here is one answer.

"This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy, but which one to have: rational, conscious, and therefore practical; or contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal."

[https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Who-Needs-Ayn- Rand/dp/0451...](https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Who-Needs-Ayn- Rand/dp/0451138937)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Java widget toolkits? - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
First, a little background. I'm currently developing an application to help students write essays. It was a bit of a selfish endeavour as I wanted a free app to outline my essays with and I couldn't find any, so I decided to write my own.
Currently I'm using awt and Swing, but the problem is that the widget library seems too limited to do anything more advanced than what I'm currently doing. The lack of fully native widgets also throws the polish off a bit; and the native L&F with Swing still isn't as fully "native" as it should be.
Should I continue using Swing merely because it's easier to work with? Or should I switch to GTK+ or Qt for a better and more comprehensive experience?
Maybe I should just ditch Java and switch to Objective-C or C++.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> If you're open to the idea of targeting HTML5, either for the web or embedded in an app, I'd recommend <http://www.sencha.com/products/gxt/>. This is built on top of GWT, which is basically a Java->JS compiler and which has its own widget library. You can try GWT's own widgets, but I found them very limiting and frustrating.</comment>


$1T Apple compared to other companies : Visualization - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/02/technology/apple-trillion-market-cap.html <comment><USER2> People need to stop using the word "worth" as replacement for "market capitalization". Really, whole idea of multiplying stock price with number of stocks to compute "worth" is absurd (if you imagine Apple releasing more stock or buying back all of it, the prices won't change linearly).

Ultimately what matters is current revenues and profits not the _future estimate_ of revenues and profits by bunch of casino gamblers. If you just look at revenues, Apple is ahead but by not absurd amounts. For example, AT&T had revenues of $39B while Apple had $53B. The combined revenues of only AT&T and Disney is more than sufficient to beat Apple.

<comment><USER3> Apple's shareholders have, collectively, decided that they would rather hold Apple stock than have a trillion of today's dollars shared between them. A trillion dollars with which they could do all sorts of other things. But no, they would rather own a slice of the future of apple.

To the question, 'which would you rather have: a trillion US dollars cash, or ownership of apple?', the market has said 'apple'

So... yes, that is what apple's 'worth'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While watching nytimes simultaneously drain my phone battery and data plan is fun and all, I feel like this could be better represented if you used static graphs on a regular web page.

</comment><comment><USER5> These market capitalizations do not seem sane to me.. that's 3,076 dollars for every us citizen, including all the kids. I think this might be the moment the stock market jumped the shark.

<comment><USER6> Is it that bad, though? Apple is selling $1000 iPhones at 70% profit margins with a US market penetration of ~40%. Handwaving some really bad math, Apple will have a trillion dollars in profits from that segment alone over the next 10 years. This discounts worldwide markets and every other product line that they also have.

<comment><USER7> That 70% profit margin doesn't count r&d, marketing, salaries, services, software, etc. Not to mention that the iphone has significant market penetration outside the us e.g. it's a major status symbol in most of eastern asia, and it has I think _70%_ market share in canada (!).</comment></comment></comment>


The Boring Company Flamethrower - <AUTHOR> https://www.boringcompany.com/flamethrower <comment><USER2> Password protected. EDIT: After further investigation it seems the old password used to be "flame" \- but has been changed since :(</comment>


Show HN: Imagine Waking Up to Today's Weather in Your Inbox - <AUTHOR> http://calio.co/

<comment><USER2> Have you tested the map? The colours made me think you supported most of Africa but none of North America, which is silly.

<comment><USER3> Hey Mooism this is the developer. The map was actually supposed to represent countries were are currently delivering emails to. But you've got a good point there!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I have 100MM views/month and need to monatize - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, We created a widget that goes on publisher website. We have been modestly successful but have a few big name publishers. So far our widget gets about 100 MM views a month. We have 154x250 space within the widget to monetize for ourselves. What's our best approach here in terms of ads. Is there a list of ad vendors (other than ad sense) that might be interested in this inventory? We are new to the display/native ad game so any suggestion is welcome. AD's can be displayed within a lightbox (to keep users within the pub site) or just can be directed to the ad page on click. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Wow - what an opportunity. Honestly - you have something great here.

I hope this doesn't come across as an insult as you've already expressed your dislike for Outbrain and Taboola but you've stepped right into their market and have a huge opportunity to shake things up.

I'd say you've figured out what every publisher loves - or should love - keeping traffic and keeping the audience engaged. I assume most smaller publishers >10m views would make more money keeping readers clicking around their own site several times compared to losing them to a "click-bait" sponsored content ad.

I would however recommend after spending a decent amount of time on your site to take a look at Taboola and Outbrain - the copy and design of their sites are very to the point and informative - to publishers and advertisers. I don't really get that from your site. I'd try to be more like them in those areas - they have a knack for grabbing both publishers and advertisers.

As for getting the advertisers, get on LinkedIn - search for people with job titles like Manager of Digital Marketing - poke around their profiles see if their company might be a good fit for you then fire them off a quick email.

Just my two cents!

<comment><AUTHOR> neuen, THANK YOU so much for the feedback! definitely not an insult, it is something we have known all along. The only thing going for us is the video. We were so focused on sales (w/ big publishers) that the site took the back burner. We are working on a redesign focused more to get small to mid-level publishers. thanks again for your insights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you haven't considered affiliate programs, that would be a good direction to go. You'll have to do more testing but once optimised you'll get a higher ROI than you would from most non-adsense ad companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I can google a few, are there any programs that you would recommend?

<comment><USER3> Check out ShareaSale, Commission Junction and potentially Clickbank to get started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're just testing the waters, an inventory marketplace like BuySellAds.com might be worth checking out.

You can browse through the inventory of similar sites to get a gauge of what you can expect, CPM wise: [https://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/](https://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/)

Later on, you might just want to strike one-off deals with interested advertisers, or build in a more "native" ad solution into your platform, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for this suggestion! I will check out buysellads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a way to see the product. It might help in getting you better responses.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure thing, this is an overview of the product [http://us.veeseo.com](http://us.veeseo.com) and here is a sample link for it out in the wild: [http://mmajunkie.com/2015/01/diego-brandaos- ufc-183-challeng...](http://mmajunkie.com/2015/01/diego-brandaos- ufc-183-challenge-staying-motivated-when-not-struggling-so-much)

<comment><USER6> On the sample link which one was your banner?

<comment><AUTHOR> there isn't - we are not monetizing it at the moment. so all 4 boxes are client video recommendation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What kind of content do your publishers show?

<comment><AUTHOR> video

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Show me an example URL. I may invest

<comment><AUTHOR> sure thing, this is an overview of the product [http://us.veeseo.com](http://us.veeseo.com) we are bothered by the stupid recommendation engines (outbrain/taboola) that insults our intelligence at the bottom of ... pretty much every website. veeseo is a tool for editors that shows relevant content that their own publisher produced. no click-baits! :)

<comment><USER6> Can you send me your statistics for the last year? Find me on email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised no one has suggested you to just simply take donations or suck it up. After all, according to most HN users, all ads are bad and adblock is a God's gift. You have no right getting revenue on the content you create.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, well I do see ads as a necessary evil, although some companies do a better job with non-intrusive ads.</comment></comment>


Rktnetes brings rkt container engine to Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/07/rktnetes-brings-rkt-container-engine-to-Kubernetes.html <comment><USER2> We're really excited to broaden customer choice and let people decide what container technology makes sense for their workloads. The CoreOS team has been amazing in helping to ensure Kubernetes is flexible enough to support alternate runtimes starting with not just rkt, but a full scale implementation of all of Kubernetes (running on rkt). Thank you so much!

Disclosure: I work at Google on Kubernetes.

<comment><USER3> What about LXC? Is there just no community interest for this feature?

<comment><USER4> If you've ever looked at the underlying code of "LXC" it's basically a bunch of spaghetti scripts that utilize cgroups. It was awesome for its time, but it's really not something worth supporting in 2016 vs. the new container runtimes.

<comment><USER5> This is extremely misinformed. When did you last look at it? Can you post some examples of the spagetti scripts mentioned? What features do the 'new 2016 container run times' have that the LXC project did not provide initially and does not have? Really?

It's sad to see this level of dimissive reductive fud being used against the LXC project liberally and consistently especially here on HN to promote other container solutions.

A quick visit to linuxcontainers.org or the LXC github repo will quickly and dramatically dispel such notions.

The LXC project is written in C and has been in development since 2009 along with cgroup and namespace support in the kernel. It's mature, robust and easy to use. It provides advanced container networking options from veth to macvlan and supports aufs, overlayfs, btrfs, LVM thin, ZFS for snapshots and clones, since at least 2011. It was also the first to support unprivileged containers with its 1.0 release in 2013.

It's this work that Docker was based on and its unfortunate the ecosystem far from highlighting the benefits they got many choose to downplay and misrepresent the LXC project leading to comments like the above.

LXC is now on 2.0 with multiple improvements from proper display of cgroup controls and container resource usage inside containers with the lxcfs project to initial support for live migration.

It is also significantly easier to use than single app containers especially for multiple processes and networking without needing to create custom process managers, run apps in specific ways or network workarounds. LXC runs the container OS's init in the container, Docker and others do not. There are reasons for both approaches. Hope for better informed discussions on Linux containers here.

<comment><USER6> Well the big one that LXC does and has always lacked is a story for how to ship code. Docker has distribution / hub, rkt has quay, LXC has... nothing.

If LXC had a registry long ago, I suspect you'd see a lot more people using it directly.

Now the big difference is that LXC is mostly (as of right now) a Canonical project and they have a habit of trying to compete with the world. LXD looks interesting from a technology POV, somewhere between Intel's Clear Containers (where they seem to have gotten the idea from), and Docker. I don't see it really gaining any traction however.

A few examples that spring to mind of them competing with the world and for the most part, failing:

        * bzr - if you want a python vcs, use mercurial
        * Upstart - we all know how well that worked out
        * Dekko - their fork of the lightweight email client Trojita
        * juju for config management. This one is arguably one of the best things Canonical has produced tech wise
        * Unity/hacked up GNOME - because working with upstream is boring, and the world wants lots of Ubuntu phones
        * Their own window manager, Mir, because they can do it better than Xorg developers who are writing Wayland with decades of experience.

The list goes on and on.

<comment><USER7> Huh? LXD is Canonicals, but I don't think LXC is in any sense a "Canonical" project? (I thought) LXC's primitives are what Docker is actually using.

Why would LXC need a registry any more than say Rkt? scp a tarball, or host the tarball on an https endpoint? Done, no?

<comment><USER8> Docker stopped used LXC stuff a while ago. Sure docker uses Linux namespaces and such, but that has a lot more to do with OpenVZ then LXC.

People seem to like LXC because they want to treat containers as 'light weight virtual machines' and run full stack Linux OSes in them with init systems and multiprocesses and such things.

However that isn't the direction the industry is moving, which is focusing on containers as simple runtime packaging were you have the absolute minimum needed to run a single application.

RKT is interesting because it doesn't depend on a a separate daemon to manage containers. Instead you use the host's systemd daemon to manage containers in a similar way you manage everything else in a system. It simplifies things like managing cgroups and improves reliability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The rkt process model does makes a lot more sense than Docker. The combo of Kubernetes + Docker has always seemed a little awkward to me; K8s just wants to control containers, and something lower-level than Docker would fit its needs better.

Looking forward to trying it out!

</comment><comment><USER10> Does kubernetes without rkt support pluggable isolation environments? It seems like a pretty cool feature to be able to say "this pod needs to be run under kvm." I'm not well-versed in how good the regular container isolation has become at this point, so maybe it's not as big of an issue these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is an alpha feature but you can switch the rkt "stage1" using the rkt.alpha.kubernetes.io/stage1-name-override annotation on a pod.

So if you wanted to use the virtual machine based pod isolation you could do something like rkt.alpha.kubernetes.io/stage1-name- override=coreos.com/rkt/stage1-kvm:1.10.0.

We are working with upstream to come up with a better mechanism but this is a great example of where having an annotation is a great release valve for adding experimental features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What would a user of Kubernetes (as opposed to the person setting up Kubernetes) gain from this? How much of the underlying containerization technology is exposed through the Kubernetes APIs such that one could actually leverage features in rkt that aren't in Docker, or vice versa?

</comment><comment><USER12> Will it ever be possible to run a heterogeneous cluster with rkt and docker containers running side by side in the same cluster? Or is that a bridge too far?

<comment><AUTHOR> This should be possible as it is a kubelet level flag. And the k8s API doesn't care about those details. So, you could have a kubelet join the cluster with docker and a different one join with rkt.

That said, I haven't tested it personally.

What would your motivation be for doing this?

<comment><USER12> Our motivation would just be supporting both to the end user. I'm imagining a single Kube cluster with Pachyderm running on it and users can specify their jobs as either Docker containers or rkt containers. Ofc this use case is only as real as the users desire to specify their jobs in both formats on the same cluster which I haven't validated.

Maybe a more realistic use case is that it would allow us to specify our Pachyderm containers in rkt and still support Docker for users jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm personally most interested in getting Kubernetes to provide support for the Open Containers Initiative specifications. And it would be really awesome if you could use runC as the executor for Kubernetes. Or at the very least, the rkt executor generated OCI configuration files so you could use other OCI- compliant runtimes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Rkt + Kubernetes = rktnetes! I'd love a little help with the pronunciation? In my head the "t" is silent...rock-a-netes?

We're obviously big CoreOS and Kubernetes fans at Pachyderm so great to see more technologies supported in general

<comment><USER15> rocket-netes?

<comment><USER16> This is how we say it at CoreOS.

Roughly: rocket-net-ease

<comment><USER6> Will it ever be possible to switch between rkt and docker at the pod level instead of at the kubelet level?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is some terrible branding!</comment>


Show HN: Clayoven – a minimalist website generator for math, code, and articles - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/artagnon/clayoven <comment><USER2> > It has been built at a glacial pace, over a period of seven years, as my > website expanded in content.

Three cheers for slow software. Thoughtful solutions are under-appreciated. I'm surprised how many junior devs I need to convince that the fact that programs like vi, emacs, make and TeX are 40+ years old is a _good_ thing.

<comment><USER3> I agree with thoughtful solutions being under-appreciated, but you can't correlate age with quality or goodness.

<comment><USER4> Of course you can. The question is, whether the correlation is strong or weak, and what sign it has.

I'd argue the correlation is positive and somewhat strong, for the following reasons:

\- Survivorship effect (not really bias in this context): old software that survived and is still used to this day survived for the reason. Old legacy systems in companies may survive because they're too expensive to replace, but old end-user software survived because it is _good_. Often, it's better than any new software - vi(m), Emacs and TeX all are - and so they kind of suck the oxygen out of the room (why build a new, better vim, when real vim can be made better faster?).

\- The times of vi(m), Emacs and TeX were much saner. It was because web apps were the dominant mode of building end-user software, it was before SaaS was the dominant business model - and both of those incentivize bad software that's disrespectful of user's cognitive and computational resources (not to mention privacy). People cared more about end-user ergonomics than developer team velocity. People cared about performance, because it was a difference between a working and not-working application. Today's software doesn't care, because bad performance only means _the user_ can't run more than few applications simultaneously, and that's not any individual vendor's problem.

So yeah, I find it to be a good heuristic that old end-user software that's still in use is going to be better than new software, if you're willing to overlook some idiosyncrasies of the past.

<comment><USER3> There's thousands of video games that are still around and are not 'good'. Win XP was used for years (decade?) and the question of it's goodness was up for debate for a long time. Something that's older will have more security issues. You can say WinXP did a lot of good things for it's time (sane networking, ect), but it's ability to fulfill the role 'good enough' waned pretty quickly.

Vim/emacs/notepad++ are all good enough text editors, there's not much call for machine learning ai on text editing, what new conceptual application is there for text editing tech? Excel has been the same for ten years because it fills a finite hole. There are other products that age quickly spill over to categories of programming that can always benefit from the infinity of detail or quality and don't fill a fixed finite hole. e.g. video games.

Yeah computers as a rising force of workhorse power is only now restarting. We had a period of stagnation for a while.

<comment><USER5> Excel has been the same for which ten years?

<comment><USER3> The basic tech behind it. The ui has changed a lot. There was an article a year or so ago saying the engineering team doesn't get a lot of big meaty change to do and new rotating managers push ui changes. A few details of that might be off, but the grid of cells has stayed.

<comment><USER5> Last 10 years saw the introduction and great progress in PowerQuery and PowerPivot. Those two make Excel a very different, more versatile, tool.

I'm not sure what "basic tech" is, or which UI changes you refer to (I think it's pretty much unchanged since 2007, with minor styling updates).

97 till 2007 was sad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do not understand the point in these static site generators.

To me, the attractiveness of having a static website is that you get to choose the presentation appropriate to the particular content of each page. You can also automate some of the work in making those pages — generate a particular folder or preprocess some of the htmls — but static site generators seem to insist on running the whole thing.

If you are happy with a blog + a couple of similarly-formatted static pages, why not Wordpress?

Also: 'minimalist' generator with its own made-up markup format.

<comment><USER6> I used to run 5 wordpress sites on shared hosting. For a number of reasons I decided to move to a vps. It had basic resources but nothing special as I wasn't doing anything special. They were all very low traffic sites. But even with that, mariadb kept crashing due to running out of ram. As I was investigating what was going on I also started to realize the huge amount of traffic aimed at my sites just trying to compromise them. I took some steps to secure them but I still kept having issues.

I've transitioned all but one to static sites. Wordpress really didn't bring anything I needed that I don't get with Hugo. With my static sites I don't come close to the resource issues I had. Things are much more secure, there's nothing to "hack". My workflow is simple and I really like it. I edit my posts locally in Atom. I push changes to my git repository and then build the site and use rsync to push those changes to the host. It works great.

So that's the point for me. Much more resource efficient, more secure, gives me what I need without losing anything.

Another option I haven't used but I think could make sense in some situations is using wordpress as a static site generator.

<comment><USER5> MovableType, from what I remember, defaults to generating static pages. It's proprietary these days, though. wget -r on a wordpress site probably takes a bit too long? I don't know.

Anyway, the task solved by static generators is trivial, so we get a trillion non-supported github repos all building the same kind of site (basically a Wordpress site), badly. Moving from one to another without breaking links is hard. Wordpress at least will not go away at a random moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not sure if you guys have heard about mathjax.js. Used to be a good one back in the days, when I used it.

[https://ranvir.xyz/mathjaxprogram.html](https://ranvir.xyz/mathjaxprogram.html)

[https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax](https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax)

<comment><USER8> A good alternative is KaTeX. That one doesn't require JavaScript.

<comment><USER9> Are you talking about [https://github.com/KaTeX/KaTeX](https://github.com/KaTeX/KaTeX) ? In that case, that seems to be a JS project/library, so not sure how it could _not_ require JS.

<comment><USER10> It does not require JS on the client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use something similar but aimed for the documentation on projects I work on. Its a bundle of mkdocs, plantuml, matjax etc. available in docker container.

[https://github.com/majkinetor/mm-docs- template](https://github.com/majkinetor/mm-docs-template)</comment>


Ask HN: How much traffic does a TechCrunch link yield? - <AUTHOR>

And for that matter, same with the other usual suspects. <comment><USER2> Visual Website Optimizer made a post about it. Check it out at : [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing- blog/demysti...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing- blog/demystifying-the-techcrunch-effect/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussion here on Quora: [http://www.quora.com/How-much-traffic-does-a- startup-get-fro...](http://www.quora.com/How-much-traffic-does-a-startup-get- from-being-featured-on-TechCrunch)

</comment><comment><USER4> Couple of thousand, with a long tail. Betabeat was about ~500.

I'll write a blog article posting the google analytics data if you're interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> HUGELY interested. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Catalogue of Foreign Movies/Series on Netflix Organised by Language - <AUTHOR> http://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/catalogue.html <comment><USER2> nice!</comment>


Ask HN: Would you be interested in an HN Diaspora* (open source FB) pod? - <AUTHOR> https://diasporafoundation.org/ is pretty intriguing to me in being a decentralized and open source social media platform, kind of what it feels like it should be... I think it'd be awesome if the HN community (which includes a lot of my friends who are on Facebook) had its own official pod, so that the network effects cause for staying on FB is at least lessened.<p>I don't have the resources to set this up, but perhaps some of you/Y Combinator does... <comment><USER2> I supported them during the crowdfunding stage, I set up a pod for a very brief time and offered it to my family members and close friends, but it didn't "take" and I shut it down. That was years ago.</comment>


Ask YC: How Many User Points Do I need... - <AUTHOR>

... to be able to change the color of my header? I <i>think</i> that is a YC easter egg right? <comment><USER2> Zero if you use one of the many Greasemonkey scripts available: <http://userscripts.org/scripts/search?q=ycombinator>

</comment><comment><USER3> 250 (or perhaps it's > 250) : I've just got there.</comment>


Forget flat design. Design in a 1995 style for full impact - <AUTHOR> http://www.lingscars.com/ <comment><USER3> Aaaand it's down. lingscars.com will never understood why a scary DDoS from a "Hacker site" hit them..

<comment><USER4> Sadly Lin is now blaming Hacker News for hacking her site with the intention of taking it offline - which is just retarded as:

a) we're legitimate curious visitors (albeit not maybe not customers - <USER2> who's to say that some of us wouldn't be converted from window shoppers to buyers - that's kind of the point of websites after all) and

b) her webserver set up to only allow for 500 concurrent connections. Which is just pathetic - particularly given the amount of crap she serves (and thus the countless number of additional server connections each visitor makes to download said content).

I used to think that her site was a mark of a genius; where she deliberately made her site to look amateurish to push the site viral and thus give her huge exposure that most other rentals could only dream of. But then I read her rage tweets[1] and realised that she's just another idiot with an internet connection. Needless to say I'm very disappointed - I liked Lin and her site better when I thought it was designed ironically.

[1] [https://twitter.com/LINGsCARS](https://twitter.com/LINGsCARS)

<comment><USER5> To be fair, the trouble with a name like Hacker News is that the uninitiated don't know it's for programmers and entrepreneurs.

And I never get people having a go about stuff like concurrent connections at amateurs, that's _completely_ our fault.

Why can't web servers stop acting like babies that need constant attention with some sort of mystical knowledge to stop them falling over when something new happens? Why is our software so brittle?

<comment><USER4> Because hardware varies significantly. What's optimal on some systems is sub- par on others. Thus it takes a sysadmin to set up the server optimally.

Also, most web farms these days are built with multiple nodes that serve ~500 concurrent requests (even multiple VMs performs better than one instance of Linux on the same hardware running bare metal) and load distributed across each node. So a 500 concurrent default is entirely reasonable.

However all of the above is moot because she's running Apache on Debian - which does _not_ default to 500 concurrent connections. That is a setting she's applied herself (or paid someone to set up).

And for the record, I'm all for amateurs rolling their own web servers - I'm certainly not elitist in that regard. But the fact remains that some of this stuff is rather technical, so complaining that it isn't easy is like saying cars should be self-servicing and that we shouldn't need garages and engineers.

<comment><USER6> But a lot of these limits could default to automatically adjust. Serving much more than 500 concurrent requests for static content is rather trivial on most remotely modern hardware if the software is designed for it.

And reasonable queuing behaviour for sites have been possible for well over a decade. E.g. Eddie is 14 years old ([http://eddie.sourceforge.net/txt/WP_1.0.html](http://eddie.sourceforge.net/txt/WP_1.0.html) \- see the "Quality of Service" section in particular - while Eddie is intended for clustered setups, there are many situations where this approach is amenable even to single server setups) and provides a solution (amongst others) where if the system can't handle the incoming traffic, rather than serving up the main page and choking on assets and failing miserably in serving up anything to anyone, you can serve up a small light "queue" page and grant access to the full site as and when capacity allows.

There are certainly plenty of things that truly does require a lot of technical skill to sort out, but a lot of software have poor defaults and lacks relatively straightforward features that would make the out of the box experience tremendously much better for less technical users.

<comment><USER4> _> But a lot of these limits could default to automatically adjust._

No. I do not want my server hardware attempting to guess optimal performance. I'd rather do that myself and know that it's set up correctly.

You wouldn't buy a sports car then moan that it's a manual gear box and lacks cruise control. Just as you wouldn't run an automated tool to master a studio recording before sending the master off for CD pressing. If people want guesswork then don't install professional tools (sane defaults are another issue though - I just object to pro-tools applying guesswork).

 _> And reasonable queuing behaviour for sites have been possible for well over a decade._

Apache does queue TCP/IP connection requests. "Sorry pages" should be configured on the load balancer rather than HTTP daemon as the whole point of them is to offload the work from the saturated nodes.

 _> There are certainly plenty of things that truly does require a lot of technical skill to sort out, but a lot of software have poor defaults and lacks relatively straightforward features that would make the out of the box experience tremendously much better for less technical users._

A lot of software does have crap defaults, like how Apache publishes it's version number and the underlying OS by default (the _ServerTokens_ directive). However the examples given (concurrent connections and sorry pages) are not wrong (her concurrent connections is set to a non-default value and sorry pages don't belong on the HTTP daemon because they're supposed to bypass the load)

<comment><USER7> _" No. I do not want my server hardware attempting to guess optimal performance. I'd rather do that myself and know that it's set up correctly."_

Parent said " _default_ to automatically adjust" \- and I see no reason it shouldn't. You could still manually tweak all you want.

<comment><USER4> The automatic adjust option would be a crap default though. Just the process of Apache checking whether a page is static or dynamic means accepting the connection to begin with - by which point it would be too late to forward the connection to a sorry page if content is dynamic. It would also mean that connections end up stacking at a far greater rate as Apache is required to open each and every request just to identify teh requested file. The whole process would just break servers that are already under heavy load and serves no purpose what-so-ever on servers that aren't stressed. And since this whole argument is about how software should ship sane defaults, Apache is definitely doing the right thing by not including such nonsense by default.

Believe me when I say that I'd welcome such a routine if it was practical as it would save me weeks of my life from load testing and fine tuning. But it just wouldn't work in practice.

<comment><USER7> Automatic dynamic tuning isn't an obvious choice[1], and isn't what I was suggesting, and I doubt it was what the parent great-grandparent was suggesting. I simply meant scaling parameters based on the hardware available and whatever else can be determined easily at configuration time.

[1] Not going to come out and say it _couldn 't_ work, but I am skeptical for a good many reasons, some of which you've touched on.

<comment><USER4> Ahh yes. That could work. In fact I've often wondered why Apache didn't attempt a little of that (even just on the most rudimentary level; setting the concurrency of processes based on the number of CPU cores reported. But it wouldn't be hard to add a little more intelligence)

If that was what the parent comments referred to though, then it's still a moot point as Lin was isn't running the default tunings (if her 500 concurrent figure is to be believed), so the issue still falls back on her rather than Apache defaults (which is what this argument started over). Though I guess you could also argue that if Apache did some level of auto-tuning then Lin may not have felt obliged to tamper with the defaults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/) \- Survived the tests of time. I hear it still converts ;]

<comment><USER9> First time I saw this I thought: "uhm, what a nice scammy little site..."

<comment><USER10> Especially with the cheap car insurance promo.

<comment><USER9> Did you actually read the message from Buffet to convince people to buy jewelry?

\--> [http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/message.html](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/message.html)

 _Fine jewelry, watches and giftware will almost certainly cost you less at Borsheim 's. I've looked at the figures for all publicly-owned jewelry companies and the contrast with Borsheim's is startling. Our one-store operation, with its huge volume, enables us to operate with costs that are fully 15-20 percentage points below those incurred by our competitors. We pass the benefits of this low-cost structure along to our customers. _

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not just the small players that preserve such excellent retro-design insight. May I introduce the HBO Corporate website:

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

<comment><USER12> Wow that is a lot like a site I would have made in 1997. (I'm not a web designer, but back then sometimes there was no one else to do it.)

Except that Donald Norman would say that putting directions like "PLEASE NOTE: For GUIDE SERVICES, MEDIA RELATIONS and access to other HBO EXTRANET sites, use the links on the left." means that your user interface is not self- explanatory and should be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The best part is her cookie disclaimer:

"EU cookie law. Piss off Von Rumpy. Me... I hammer visitors to death with cookies, so I can find out what they want. Cookies allow my website to serve visitors the content they need. Get used to it. The EU cookie law is an ass. - Ling"

</comment><comment><USER14> I present you [http://www.fabricland.co.uk/](http://www.fabricland.co.uk/) \- real shop (with a branch near me) and actually a pretty good place, just with a hideous (and genuine, as far as I can tell) web site.

<comment><USER15> A quick glance seems to indicate they break every rule of modern web design. It's almost too perfect. Like the spec was to to do the exact oposite of what you're supposed to....

<comment><USER16> It's titled "New Page 1". It's just so perfect.

<comment><USER17> The title of the mainframe page is "Fabricland fabric shops throughout South of England and mail order service". So, that's good and informative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't link to it now because the site is down, but lingscars has a PDF of 'web design tips' where she explains the design and gives tips on website design. She's obviously got an eccentric public image, and the design tips document is a bit of a joke, but the design here was a deliberate choice to differentiate the site from competitors, make potential customers feel less intimidated and more socially involved. There was even a webcam of the office with a button which apparently played a song in the office when you pressed it.

The business is also doing very well.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really enjoyed the cookie ticker. Here are its full contents: [http://pastie.org/8034213](http://pastie.org/8034213)

Unfortunately, the site seems to have detected me mucking about (perhaps because I deleted the element containing the annoying flash video?) and redirected me to /_donotsteal.html (which itself was a redirect to /_donotsteal.html) for a while. Now it just serves me a 1-byte file for any URL, except for /_donotsteal.html, which is 4 bytes.

<comment><USER4> Christ on a bike, there's a lot of weird stuff in there:

        cookie:sexual_orientation=female; - watches how often visitors make irrational decision changes and identifies those people who are schizophrenic as: FEMALE.

        cookie:favourite_biscuit=garibaldi; - can detect missed key-strokes caused by crumbs jamming the user keyboard. Compares results over a long period of time to determine typical biscuit type.

        cookie:favourite_animal_noise=BAAAAA; - monitors any accidentally open audio channels, to determine if the user snorts or chuckles while browsing and then compares the wavelength of the noise with a table of animal sounds.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's Ling's LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?authToken=qSpd&id=3543...](https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?authToken=qSpd&id=35433059&trk=prof- sb-browse_map-name&authType=name)

I think there's some sort of genius in there. Its somewhat like playing the piano and faking playing the wrong notes intentionally - its a lot harder to fake playing badly than it is to actually play bad (if that makes sense)

<comment><USER20> Does she have a public profile? The link you provided requires auth. I think she's fascinating and inspiring.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/ling- valentine/b/a49/2ab](http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/ling-valentine/b/a49/2ab)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> MSY, a popular computer parts store in Australia, has always had a pretty dodgy-looking website.

[http://msy.com.au/](http://msy.com.au/)

<comment><USER22> They're probably the most popular PC parts store in Australia (I've bought from them), yet it looks like they couldn't afford to upgrade their site template they created in 1997.

<comment><USER23> Last time I went in there I was impressed that they had now invested in a few tables around their counter area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I go to a large indoor swap meet/flea market near here to check out used computer equipment, tools and other stuff. The aisles are crowded, stuff hangs everywhere, lights are flashing, sounds collide, sellers project offers to you from behind makeshift counters, and you move through it slowly to make sure you don't miss anything.

This site gives me the same feeling -- raw selling.

Edit: respectfully fixed a typo.

</comment><comment><USER25> I loooove Lings Cars - her "nuclear missile" is parked just round the corner from my house

Watch her on here on dragons den to understand the nuclear missile quip

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1ktZRZ5ZM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1ktZRZ5ZM)

</comment><comment><USER26> A must watch - [http://www.besquare.me/session/the-future-of-digital- marketi...](http://www.besquare.me/session/the-future-of-digital-marketing/)

<comment><USER27> Ling's got some solid points to make. For example, the silly things she does on her site builds trust with her customers because her customers get more of a glimpse into her personality compared to other dealerships. Trust converts more than pretty, or sensible, visual design.

It's taking branding in a different direction than what we normally consider and I think it's worth while to think outside the box most of us put ourselves in when considering how to maximize conversions. I don't know if what Ling's doing is optimal, but it definitely sheds light on other approaches that are sometimes ignored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of my favorites: [http://www.arngren.net/](http://www.arngren.net/)

Arngren started out as an electronics and hobby type store in Oslo, and a catalog, and their website looks pretty much the way their massive catalogue used to look like 20+ years ago, when it had toys and household stuff in between pages of IC's with pinouts.

On one hand the website is horrible. On the other hand, it perfectly captures the brand...

</comment><comment><USER28> The direct response industry continues to use long sales letters and "ugly" design to great effect. It's the same kind of a/b testing that agile UX practitioners espouse that produced "Red gets read!" lore in direct marketing. Still gives me the heabie jeabies looking at that stuff though.

<comment><USER29> Is there a good beginner's guide to learning about that sort of thing? I'll use whatever works, even arcane and ugly landing pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> The best way to learn is to measure. Try one type of ad, measure response and reach, adjust, measure again. Rinse and repeat until you see what works and what doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Close, but it still doesn't beat Yvettes' [1]

[1] [http://websitesfromhell.net/view/yvettesbridalformal.com-10/](http://websitesfromhell.net/view/yvettesbridalformal.com-10/) (Site is no longer up).

<comment><USER31> This is a Norwegian classic: [http://arngren.net/](http://arngren.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> w-hat are they doing wrong?

[http://www.lingscars.com/](http://www.lingscars.com/) redirects to [http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html](http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html)

Firefox (NoScript) shows:

The page isn't redirecting properly

Iceweasel has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.

Lynx shows:

lynx [http://www.lingscars.com/](http://www.lingscars.com/)

Looking up www.lingscars.com Making HTTP connection to www.lingscars.com Sending HTTP request. HTTP request sent; waiting for response. HTTP/1.1 302 Found Data transfer complete HTTP/1.1 302 Found Using [http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html](http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html) Looking up www.lingscars.com Making HTTP connection to www.lingscars.com Sending HTTP request. HTTP request sent; waiting for response. HTTP/1.1 302 Found Data transfer complete HTTP/1.1 302 Found

lynx: Start file could not be found or is not text/html or text/plain Exiting...

<comment><USER33> [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.li...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.lingscars.com)

<comment><USER32> webcache - so this site worked - and went down by a Hacker News DDoS of only 31 points (3100 visitors) in 56 minutes.

/me sings [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> <BLINK>THERE ARE PLENTY MORE TO FIND HERE</BLINK>

[http://www.iamsad.co.uk/](http://www.iamsad.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Brilliant. From the live office webcams page (where you have the option to taunt specific employees):

"Are those traffic lights real? Yes! There is another set of traffic lights, hidden to the left of the camera, too! They keep my staff awake with visual stimulation in the same way that my website invigorates my visitors!"

The office looks just like the website.

</comment><comment><USER36> The tutorial for using the website is awesome (and beautifully anti-american): [http://www.lingscars.com/chat.php?domain=www.lingscars.com&l...](http://www.lingscars.com/chat.php?domain=www.lingscars.com&lang=en&operator=Ling%20V)

</comment><comment><USER37> Similar colour scheme to iOS7.

</comment><comment><USER38> The classical text only version of a website in case your bandwidth is limited: [http://www.timecube.com/](http://www.timecube.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems the site is redirecting to [http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html](http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html) for me?

<comment><USER39> +1

Maybe it is because of my ad-blocker?

</comment></comment><comment> 97-109-107 [http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/](http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/) \- will bring hours of enjoyment then

</comment><comment><USER40> It's a pretty funny, retro looking site but as far as I can tell she does pretty well out of it. She might not be an artist but she's great at marketing in her own way.

</comment><comment><USER41> This one is awesome [http://www.wingsandwheels.com/wantads1.htm](http://www.wingsandwheels.com/wantads1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER42> See also: [http://www.powercity.ie/](http://www.powercity.ie/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Yeah. Flat designs are boring -- I never end up on the floor, convulsing, when I scroll through a flat website.

</comment><comment><USER44> Take a look at the sauce - Ling definitely knows what's up! Epic ASCII art right there!

<comment><USER45> Yeah, I saw that to.

Tried finding clues who does the website but no luck after first scan.

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure who handles it now, but Jamie Hurst[1] handled it up until quite recently.

[1][http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jamiehurst88](http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jamiehurst88)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Go big or go home. I like it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Someone should create a LingsCars inspired theme for Bootstrap or whatever :)

</comment><comment><USER48> She's got a deLorean for sale, that makes up for a lot.

edit: gender corrected, tx.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aha! Below the deLorean is this statement: "This is clearly a joke listing. This car ceased to be made in 1982. For the ASA benefit - this is a j-o-k-e"

<comment><USER48> Spoiler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This made my day.</comment>


MIT Web Programming Competition Finalists - <AUTHOR> http://6.470.scripts.mit.edu/webbys/ <comment><AUTHOR> MIT 6.470 is a web programming competition/class that started 6 years ago. Our mission is to push the bar on web programming here at MIT and to get more people involved earlier on in their careers. We also strongly believe that competition is a fun and energizing way to learn.

I also want to mention that we're always considering ways to expand our reach. We would love to positively impact the greater community by either expanding our current competition, running additional competitions, or expanding our educational materials/software. We have plenty of ideas of our own (and not enough time ;) but I'm certainly up for discussing ideas, receiving advice, etc anytime! (Feel free to email me or just post here.)

<comment><USER2> How many of these projects have turned into real companies?

<comment><USER3> Very few if any. The focus isn't really building companies or startups, but more-so to fit the theme, learn some new stuff, and build something cool in a month. A lot of people come in with a ton of web-programming experience and do it for the competition and prize money, but there are also plenty of noobies learning how to make websites for the first time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had the privilege of being a judge this year. An extremely interesting takeaway from this competition is the changing climate of web technologies/design every year. I was a participant in the competition two years ago and the level of complexity and refinement of the websites was not really close to this year's overall. Two years ago, the focus was very much on building and clean HTML5 sites without much other emphasis. Now, Bootstrap has helped the generally design-lacking MIT students put some shine on their websites, and tools like node.js and Backbone are making more rich, real-time applications much easier to build.

From seeing the difference in two years, it's clear how important open source technologies are for helping people push the boundaries of what the web is capable of with less effort than ever. Of course, many of these things existed just two years ago as well, but improved projects and exposure is helping move things forward.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, you can really see these are student projects. They are basically focused on what students care about. It makes sense, but it's very narrow-minded and probably not very appealing to many people out there. THis being said, some of the services are very well designed.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's really interesting to see that most of them are map or trip related. I guess it makes sense due to all the data provided by mobile location-based services.

<comment><AUTHOR> There were three themes they could choose from: vacations, real-time eduction, and meeting new people (more detail here: <http://6.470.scripts.mit.edu/2013/competition/challenge>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Notability was the best; though, I haven't had a chance to collaborate on notes with anybody.

<comment><USER7> Notability is awesome! I'd definitely use it - much better than peeking at a neighbors notes.</comment></comment>


Why men can't and shouldn't stop staring at women - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/why-men-cant-and-shouldnt-stop-staring-at-women/article2379872/singlepage/

<comment><USER2> I was expecting the author to actually answer the question in the title.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's biologically impossible not to stare at a woman you find attractive.

<comment><USER4> It is very hard not to at least glance in their direction for a moment while your brain initially takes them in.

It is perfectly possible to not stare at them like a slack-jawed yokel seeing New York for the first time on a constant basis. Exerting self-control is what civilisation and manners are all about.

<comment><USER5> Exactly so, just as it's instinctive for your mouth to water if a stranger is eating something that smells good, but not okay to grab the food off their plate, and instinctive to get angry when someone gets in your way, but not okay to punch them out.

Instinct is a poor excuse for boorish behavior.

BTW, tourists from New York can be equally slack-jawed when they see (e.g.) a real live cow for the first time. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because evolutionary sexual selection, as a process, has to start somewhere. No staring, no humanity as we know it. Lets all stare. Discreetly but not sheepishly.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is how you do it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFSEHxx9iys>

</comment><comment><USER8> On the one hand, what's wrong with staring as long as you're not creepy about it and stop it at staring?

On the other hand, as human beings with higher thinking capable of reasoning, you would assume that we can control our base urges and wouldn't use biology as an excuse.</comment>