Mobile Carriers Dream of Charging per Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/carriers-net-neutrality-tiers/all/1

<comment><USER2> Of course the Mobile Carriers _dream_ of charging per page, or for a tiered service or whatever. Just as I dream of getting a salary of one billion dollars a year!

But I don't get a billion dollars a year. Why not? Perhaps because other people exist who can do my job, and have the willingness to do it for less than a billion a year?

As long as competition exists, the telecomms won't get tiered service. But you can bet that the second some company survives the transition to tiered service as described, competition is non-existant, either due to collusion, or legislation.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of the best instruments for monopoly I have ever seen.</comment>


The case against Kotlin - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Pinterest_Engineering/the-case-against-kotlin-2c574cb87953 <comment><USER2> This article misses something I feel is really very important: _Kotlin is just Java_! Like, granted, I'm probably a better-than-average developer, but I was turning out well-factored, clean, readable, 100% Java-interoperable code in Kotlin in about a day. Over time I've added more Kotlin-specific stuff (like their way nicer-feeling collections APIs) but for real, it's just...Java.

But it's smarter Java. It gets out of your way. If you understand Java, the 1:1 mapping between Kotlin and Java is trivial. I can tell you what the auto- generated Kotlin code from the IntelliJ helpers is gonna look like when you convert Java to Kotlin and it's just...obvious? The only thing I have ever had even the slightest trouble with was how to take a var (which I understood immediately to be a backing field with getter/setter methods under the hood, both because the doc says so and because IDEA says "from getFoo/setFoo" when importing Java so it's an obvious intuitive leap) and apply a Hibernate Validator attribute only to the getter. It was a hole in the docs at the time, but I figured it out: `@get:Something()`. If that's the only thing that gets an experienced but largely out-of-the-game Java developer a little head- scratchy, this should be a slam-dunk type of thing for somebody who writes Java every day.

Maybe it's harder for Android. (I think you should write React Native for Android for basically anything you can--and I have, I released a Google Play app a couple weeks ago that I really should get around to marketing--because while I am down with Kotlin,I also like being able to actually share code everywhere.) But Java-to-Kotlin is a no-brainer, in my book, at literally any Java shop not targeting, like, Java one-dot-ancient.

<comment><USER3> You know, there is a joke that 90% of the developers think that they're better than average. :)

<comment><USER4> "90% of the developers think that they're better than average"

Median. It can happen that 90% of programmers literally better than the average.

<comment><USER5> The few bad/worse developers are then 10% and would have to be really bad

<comment><USER6> Is that unbelievable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _" Developers need to learn Kotlin well enough to confidently read the > language. While a few developers will self-teach themselves, teams will > still need to set aside training time for everyone to get up to speed. New > developers will need to learn Kotlin, and a one and done training won't be > enough. In addition, current developers who are trained but rarely touch > Kotlin may need a refresher if they move to a part of the code requiring > Kotlin. This means onboarding is slower and you may lose some velocity."_

Are engineering teams at Pinterest really so weak that going from Java to Kotlin—an extremely similar language—is a major hurdle? The entire mindset of this article is alien to me.

<comment><USER8> I'm a lone wolf in the Java space, and I must say that this one really hits home. I've been dealing with so many Java devs who are unwilling to approach anything else that I am sick and tired of their whining! These people are even moaning about JavaScript. I mean - Come On! (Job style)

<comment><USER9> I primarily use Python, C++ and Rust these days and I would certainly moan about having to pick up JavaScript.

<comment><USER10> When have you used it last? The ecosystem around it sucks but the language itself is not too bad, es6 has made the syntax pretty bearable

<comment><USER11> The semantics is the major pain point. It doesn't flag many errors. Python is a much easier language to dev/debug in because of this. Also, if you're going to transpile, why not transpile from a nicer language? ES6 is competing with ClojureScript/TypeScript/etc.

<comment><USER12> Is the 'transpile' nonsense a java script community thing ?

<comment><USER13> Transcompile is very old term in computing, at least the 80s, specifically referring to compiling from one language, to another high level language.

CoffeeScript simply made the shortened term more popular, but the use of a more specific term is nothing to get irritated about.

<comment><USER11> True, but transcompiling hasn't been a very commonly used term for that so it's not an obvious term to use. For example, the early C++ compiler that targeted C was not referred to as a transcompiler. Nor was the popular f2c fortran-to-c compiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm impressed by the even handedness of the article.

Normally, I wouldn't even think about using a language developed and championed by a litle Czech company, however, JetBrain's tooling is incredible and I gladly give them money every month for R#.

On the other hand, usually I would think that the language being endorsed by a major company for their platform was a big plus, but the way that Google drops products and initiatives, their support means little.

So yeah, I trust JetBrains a lot more than I trust Google and if I ever decide to bite the bullet and start developing for Android, Kotlin will be my first choice.

<comment><USER15> JetBrains is a mostly Russian company. It is registered in Czech republic, as business conditions in Russia are... erratic, to say the least, but most of their founders and employees are Russians, and their prime engineering unit is in St. Petersburg, Russia.

<comment><USER16> Yeah I'd be pretty pissed if I couldn't renew my license to Intellij this year because of some sanctions passed against Russia due to political BS by our political parties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well maybe, but _the_ Steve Yegge wrote this:

[https://steve-yegge.blogspot.fr/2017/05/why-kotlin-is- better...](https://steve-yegge.blogspot.fr/2017/05/why-kotlin-is-better-than- whatever-dumb.html)

Obviously these guy love Java. This, frankly, I can't understand. I've hated Java for 20 years :) However if you love Java, obviously you don't need to switch to Kotlin. If like 99% of people used to leaner languages, you find Java unbearably verbose, ugly, etc. Kotlin is a godsend.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. A lot of this has to do with where you came from and what you were used to previously.

I initially switched to Java in the late 90's from C++. At that time, C++ was just achieving (imo) its densest, most arcane features that were making me crazy. What I really wanted was a C+- or something that didn't force a bunch of stuff I didn't need on me. Java was exactly what I needed at that point.

After 15-20 years of Java, I recently switched to full time Javascript development and woah! It was like the freshest breath of fresh air. What, no types if I don't want them? Closures and protoype inheritance? Yes, Omg!

Imagine my dismay when I was first introduced to TypeScript! My code looked just like Java again. :( Seriously, I understand the reasoning behind TS and getting into it a little further convinced me it wasn't too bad after all. Again, what are you used to has a lot to do with your state of mind as a dev.

Any language that lets developers express their intent in the way they like is great. Kotlin, Scala are like the JS & TS of the Java world. All good (as long as they work!).

<comment><USER19> In case you haven't played with it, you may find that you like Groovy for writing Java in a JavaScripty fashion.

I have a ton of JS experience, and one thing that has continued to pain me with Java has been the arcane incantations required for Async and Closures.

I'd used Groovy just a little bit here and there for Jenkins stuff, but I finally looked into while building a DSL for our company. Closures are first class, typing is generally pretty optional, and you can use just about any Java library. When in doubt, you can always just write plain old Java.

I've become a huge fan, though I haven't started introducing any Groovy to my existing Java projects as they're mostly Maven built, and I don't really want to rock the boat.

Speaking of Kotlin and JetBrains, IntelliJ has pretty good support for Groovy, and follows @Delegate annotations very well for hinting and IntelliSense. I made my entire DSL type hintable with like four annotations and a 4 line GDSL file.

<comment><USER20> I'm curious what you mean here with the implication that you couldn't simply add Groovy code to your existing apps built with Maven. Have you tried it?

It has been probably over 5 years but when I was writing a lot of Java and Groovy, we were standardized on using Maven at that company. The Groovy Maven plugins worked and I had several projects with various mixtures of Groovy, all built with Maven: from Java with Groovy tests, to Groovy and Java throughout, to pure Groovy web services. It was a bit of a pain getting the configuration set up initially but it worked well.

<comment><USER19> What I didn't say was that my only experience so far is with Groovy by itself, and using Gradle to build. It's not an implication of Groovy or Maven for not supporting it, it's that I don't know the right way to do it yet.

<comment><USER20> You can mix Java and Groovy with Gradle as well. This might help: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22369033/how-to-use- grad...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22369033/how-to-use-gradle-java- and-groovy-together)

I haven't used Maven in a long time and I'm not sure what is the state of the Groovy Maven plugin. Writing unit tests in Groovy for your Java projects is a great, low risk way to get things working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kotlin is here to stay, it's a pleasure to code in it. The same way ObjC gave way to Swift and I also enjoy coding in it. They both are the only languages I use today for any development. I don't care about tail-call-whatever, functional-whatever or monad-whatever, I just care about a nice and clean syntax that gets out of my way to get the job done in less time. The rest will be improved by people way more intelligent than me in whom I trust, backed by two of the biggest players in the development world, Google and Apple.

<comment><USER22> Note that you can do functional Kotlin with the `tailrec` keyword for functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If it takes a week till new developer feels really comfortable, then it is quite fast and total non-issue. The article spins it as some kind of problem you need to be aware of, but realistically it looks like drop in a bucket compared to what it takes till one get really comfortable with existing codebase, company standards, processes and what not.

</comment><comment><USER24> This reminds me a lot of Swift's early days. Build times, dev stability, learning curve, static analysis (remember the esoteric compile/lint errors...) even reversibility (i.e. Apple had a tool to convert from Obj-C to Swift but not the reverse) were issues that were brought up. If Kotlin hopefully follows Swift's path then these will get ironed out over time.

</comment><comment><USER25> This article is most likely written by someone who does not like Kotlin but has to live with the fact that he has to use it. Let's see some invalid points:

> If you're going to use Kotlin in your code base, you'll need to teach almost > every developer on your team how to use it.

Not true. Java and Kotlin can be used on the same project and Kotlin also has seamless Java interop. If you don't want to write Kotlin you don't have to. It is also easy to read for other devs so readibility is not an issue.

Then the writer goes on and on how the velocity is affected by learning Kotlin but misses the point: you don't have to burn any bridges by using it.

> When I realized very few developers actually saw the developer velocity > gain, I was left with a bit of a, "so what's the point" feeling.

Then the op should question the capabilities of his developers. I came from a Java background and after several weeks of Kotlin exposure my productivity skyrocketed. It helps if you have some FP background but you can learn it on the way. Currently the whole team writes Kotlin code and looking back at previous sprints I can say that the velocity increased by a double digit percentage.

> Kotlin accounts for about 25 percent of our clean build time and 40 percent > of our incremental build time.

Then the op has some serious Gradle configuration problems. We also had this then tweaked Gradle (upped the version, started using parallel builds, etc) and now the difference is minimal. You are also better off with tools like JRebel even if you work with Java.

> Not being familiar with Kotlin, the developer immediately assumed Kotlin was > causing the problem and lost time investigating what was a simple fix. This > "weirdness" combined with the actual stability issues means there's > significant maintenance time lost.

I've been using Kotlin for more than a year and I only had a single stability issue (and it was an IDEA plugin problem). Kotlin works amazingly well with other libraries and after using it for several months I felt that I never want to go back to Java.

Maybe the op's issues are with the Android ecosystem or a bad development team, and not with Kotlin itself since we use it on the backend and we don't see the problems mentioned in the article.

The only valid point I've seen in the article is the lack of static analysis tools and as the article states it will get better.

<comment><USER26> > Not true. Java and Kotlin can be used on the same project and Kotlin also > has seamless Java interop. If you don't want to write Kotlin you don't have > to. It is also easy to read for other devs so readibility is not an issue.

Until you have to trace a bug through both codebases.

Dual interop codebases never work. A computer language simply takes up too much mental space to know even one language well and stay up-to-date on it.

Yes, I know there are exceptions, but I have yet to actually meet and work with one.

<comment><USER25> Not true. Our codebase is java/kotlin and it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Steve Yegge recently rose from the proverbial grave to build a case _for_ Kotlin: [https://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.il/2017/05/why-kotlin-is- bet...](https://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.il/2017/05/why-kotlin-is-better-than- whatever-dumb.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Hopefully most if not all of the points mentioned will become equal or better than Java as Kotlin matures

</comment><comment><USER29> Apple, and iOS developers, need Swift a lot more than Google needs Kotlin. The main benefit to Google is that Kotlin provides a ready-to-deploy lifeboat in case Oracle is able to make significant intellectual property trouble for Google.

</comment><comment><USER30> Never read a troll that ended with "we are hiring" before

</comment><comment><USER31> Well written and thought out, meta issues such as training are rarely mentioned in comparison pieces but do play an important role in the decision process

</comment><comment><USER32> Well written article. Most of the points made are common sense... but I think often the points are glossed over and we don't stop to think about it.

</comment><comment><USER15> If this is not FUD, what is?

<comment><USER33> Why is it FUD? There seems to be a serious split here with lots of people loving the article and lots not.

<comment><USER25> It tries to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Did you remember other languages by Google? Dart anyone?

<comment><USER35> Google did not come up with this - JetBrains developed the language and use it to develop their tools.</comment></comment>


Above the Law: The Data Are in on Police, Killing, and Race - <AUTHOR> https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/06/65309/ <comment><USER2> If this graph [1] is remotely accurate, shouldn't we be seeing "Police kill white man" headlines about twice as often as "Police kill black man"?

[1] [https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/0...](https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/06/Graph-3.png)</comment>


Why Does Hollywood Hate the Suburbs? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123033369595836301.html <comment><USER4> This is a fun contrarian rant, but really I think the author is confused about what Yates, and Mendes, by extension, are critiquing. The suburbs, as such, aren't under indictment here, but rather the culture of conformity that was endemic in the suburbs in this time period in particular.

To say that this suffocating culture of conformity as merely a mirage invented by the artistic and intellectual elite out of jealousy is absurd. Women in the suburbs were actually ostracized and turned to alcoholism to escape their mundane lives, people actually bought bigger and better lawnmowers and TVs to "keep up with the Joneses", etc.

It's not that the suburbs are the "physical correlative to spiritual and mental death", but merely that the suburbs were the actual place where cultural and individual diversity were discouraged and the spiritual and mental death actually occurred.

<comment><USER5> _turned to alcoholism to escape their mundane lives_

Women in prior years (and I mean, stretching back for 100s of thousands of years) had rough lives of childbearing and scrubbing and not much access to booze or Diazepam, and those changing factors led to (a number of) problem women, rather than...mundanity. I mean, do you know many women? They seem comfortable with mundanity.

The author was correct (and unoriginal) when he pointed out that class and geography combined to give the reds a new focal point of hatred against the bourgeoisie.

<comment><USER6> No. Firstly, I doubt very much scrubbing was going on more than about 3-4 thousand years back.

Secondly, women have had access to alcohol from around about the time alcohol was discovered, which I suspect was before the creation of scrubbing brushes.

Thirdly, I very much doubt that 'women' are comfortable with mundanity - <USER2> have our needs for intellectual stimulation every bit as much as men - <USER3> written by women cry out for this need from the moment novels started to be written, and letters between noblewomen from even before this time show the same need. And you can verify that the need still exists today by talking to a few of us.

And finally, the mundanity of a suburban housewife's life is an historic abnormality - for nearly the entire existence of the human race, women have had to work, just as men have. Tending shops, working in the fields, making clothing and so on, not just doing the housework. This aberration created by the extraordinary wealth of the western world in the period dating from the end of World War II through to the 70s made it possible for women to stay at home and raise children. Of course, the women from the generation that followed this generation saw what it had done to their mothers, and had no desire to follow in their footsteps, leading to the social revolution witnessed at the end of the 1960s. Women have since that time rapidly re- integrated into the workforce, this time by choice, rather than financial necessity. And that fact, more than any other that I have outlined here, makes your statement that '(women) seem comfortable with mundanity' a lie, pure and simple.

<comment><USER5> _which I suspect was before the creation of scrubbing brushes._

You suspected wrong, as I was using "scrubbing" as a metaphor for household work in general.

 _the mundanity of a suburban housewife's life is an historic abnormality_

As is the widespread availability of alcohol and other chemicals, which I suspect is a more important factor in the conduct of life.

 _we have our needs for intellectual stimulation every bit as much as men_

If by "we" you mean "we women who read hacker news", sure. I'm looking at the aggregate. It's not a men vs. women thing, as men are also not driven to abuse by "mundanity" or other silly things.

<comment><USER6> _You suspected wrong, as I was using "scrubbing" as a metaphor for household work in general._

No kidding. But I suggest that in a society not yet capable of making scrubbing brushes, there probably isn't much housework going on.

 _As is the widespread availability of alcohol and other chemicals, which I suspect is a more important factor in the conduct of life._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_alcohol> Alcohol was discovered very early on in the civilisation game. I doubt that women of the Stone Age had much in common with the ladies of Wisteria Lane...

 _If by "we" you mean "we women who read hacker news", sure. I'm looking at the aggregate. It's not a men vs. women thing, as men are also not driven to abuse by "mundanity" or other silly things._

Now you're just trolling. Or perhaps you have some evidence to justify such a ridiculous statement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Art and intellect are solitary vocations, and their practitioners often require a common enemy to sustain the lonely effort. The suburbs continued to serve that purpose, but the type of antipathy toward them changed in the late '60s and '70s._

Some of the stuff this guy decided to put on paper is just truly idiotic. There are a few bits of insight in the article, but it seems to mainly just be some poorly aimed anti-intellectual, anti-urban diatribe.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Veterans of the Second World War and then the Korean War sought inexpensive homes of their own, far from the urban scrimmage that must have been, for some, a cramped extension of real combat._

The author has clearly never seen real combat.

</comment><comment><USER9> "There's a long history of being able to caricature the suburbs and get away with the idea that you're doing something that's deep and profound."

From an NPR report on evil suburbs:

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6215779>

Then again, if American Beauty sells, keep making more of it with the stars of Titanic. Beautiful, I love it, let's do it, see you at The Grill tomorrow. So I can't fault them from a business perspective, but artistically this review sums up my assessment of American Beauty:

<http://tech.mit.edu/V119/N44/American_Beauty.44a.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> When compared to the neighborliness of a tiny village or the freedom and peace or huge ranch or a villa in the mountains or the life of a city, suburbs truly are the worst kind of compromise.</comment>


ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/25/this-really-might-be-the-end-of-itt/ <comment><USER2> This is incremental progress, it's just one school. But a crazy step in the right direction. For-Profit institutions are a plague on our nation (high-cost low-value educations) allowed to rise up out of the failings of our strained public institutions (not enough capacity to meet demand).

What really blows my mind is that this seems to come after the justice department discontinues for profit federal prisons. It's like all that "change" we were hoping for with Obama seems to be coming at once.

<comment><USER3> In principle there's nothing wrong with for-profit schools which train people on specific job skills or certification programs. There are some valuable skills that non-profit community colleges can't practically teach. But still the federal government should only support financial aid for such schools if they demonstrate a high rate of job placement for students who complete the program.

<comment><USER2> You're right, there are many examples of great for-profit institutions. The problem is there's little differentiating them from "predator" schools. One issue is information asymmetry.

<comment><USER4> There is informational asymmetry in every transaction (as well as in non- profit schools); this is a red herring (unless you can show that it is causing a specific, large, unsolved problem). The current administration has repeatedly demonstrated hostility towards for-profit schools, and has chosen to use discretionary enforcement of rules against them rather than enforcing standards universally, because they know that the standards would hit many non-profit schools as well. I am not sure about the specifics of this case, but the Department of Education has been looking at for-profit schools much harder than non-profits.

<comment><USER5> _> I am not sure about the specifics of this case, but the Department of Education has been looking at for-profit schools much harder than non- profits._

This seems fair to me. You can argue that wasted money at NFP schools ends up in someone's pocket, but bald faced "every buck not spent educating you" going into the pocket of capital seems worse.

If the outcomes at FP higeher education aren't better, why not avoid funneling federal money (in the form of no interest loans, etc) _directly_ in private profits?

<comment><USER4> Non-profits are often compared by examining their overhead as a percentage of total spending, rather than their efficacy per dollar (or overall). This holds back many great charities, and benefits others which consistently waste money on doomed projects with low overheads. It seems to be just as wrong to assume that retained earnings or dividends are wasted overhead and compare organizations on that basis alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few years ago I had to make several hires in cities away from the main operations of our business. These were technical positions, but not _really_ highly skilled positions - think geek squad level proficiency. Many of the candidates came out of ITT, and to be honest they were among the best candidates for this level position, or at least they interviewed the best. I got the impression that ITT spends a _lot_ of time refining interview techniques - amusingly, at the end of the interview each ITT candidate asked us the same 3 questions almost verbatim, I'm certain those questions were drilled in to them as part of mock interviews. They were good questions, I wouldn't have thought anything of it until the 3rd or 4th time it happened and I started to notice the pattern.

From that experience, I have a hard time writing off ITT + similar as worthless or even predatory. I don't know what these people paid for there education, maybe it was enough that they'll never be able to get a good enough job to get out of debt, but it certainly seems like it was worth _something._ These people were certainly employable, and IMO moreso on average than those from similar socio-economic backgrounds who didn't have any secondary education to speak of.

<comment><USER7> How many of them did you end up hiring? That's not sarcastic, I'm genuinely curious.

My experience with ITT tech candidates was the opposite. When interviewing for a datacenter tech position, the candidates were hit and miss on basic sysadmin questions, and seemed to have never seen computer hardware before. To be fair, rackmountable datacenter-style computers look quite a bit different on the outside from the more commonly seen towers and laptops you'll find on a person's desk in an office. But once you open one up, basic components are similar enough that they should be easy to identify. DIMMs are DIMMs, hard drives are hard drives, etc. But when you point to a power supply and tell me that it is the CPU because it has all the wires, or tell me that the video card you're holding is a sound card, you should not have passed the computer hardware class requisite for your degree.

<comment><USER6> We probably hired ~7 altogether. Some were great, some mediocre as you'd expect. Honestly I don't know that they would have been any better at answering the questions you referenced, but I do think that on average they would have done better than others who applied but didn't have any secondary education. That indicates to me that the value of the ITT degree is >0\. Whether or not the value of the degree is enough to make up for what they paid, I honestly don't know - although several of them had used military money to get the degree so they weren't really out much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm torn on this. Understand, I have little love for ITT, and I got my 4 year degree from there. In hindsight, I wish I'd done community college and the local university instead. I honestly believe I'd have had a better curriculum, better books and a better ratio of instructors who cared to ones who didn't. I believe I'd have had to take on less student loan debt, as well.

That said, suppose ITT Tech does lose its accreditation, closes, etc. Where does that leave me and the other graduates who actually _do_ have a modicum of knowledge and competence? Are our degrees automatically scrubbed from history, having never been -- leaving us unqualified to hold our current jobs or any future ones that require a college degree? Do our degrees become a black mark against us, nullifying any experience displayed on the same resume? Or will it just be a non-event that nobody notices or cares about?

<comment><USER8> Degrees from these sorts of institutions are already arguably a black mark. I've seen this come up a few times in /r/sysadmin, and to some people, attending a school like ITT displays a shocking inability to do even the most cursory research before making a huge life decision. Fair or not, you can be almost certain you are not being considered for some positions because you attended ITT.

<comment><USER7> > attending a school like ITT displays a shocking inability to do even the > most cursory research before making a huge life decision.

Meh. Again, torn. I can understand the sentiment having had my own frustration with interviewing ITT tech grads years later. And it seems somewhat fair to hold that attitude against a recent graduate, considering the allegations have been around for some years now. But almost 15 years ago, with most accusations having not yet been levied and internet access not as widespread, "the most cursory research" wouldn't have likely have lead one to warnings about the school.

I shouldn't worry about it terribly. What's done is done and the only thing that can be done for it is to do the best work I can, and let the results speak for themselves.

<comment><USER8> I remember 15 years ago or thereabout and ITT Tech was advertising on daytime television. When was the last time a reputable institution of higher learning had a television advertisement strategy, let alone on daytime television. Their model has been predatory since day 1, and it wasn't too hard to see through it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "ITT is barred from awarding raises, paying bonuses or making severance payments to its executives or paying dividends without the department's approval."

Wow. How do we make that happen for TBTF financial companies?

<comment><USER10> You lobby your Congressional representatives. Elizabeth Warren has been kicking ass and taking names, but can't do it all alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What took so long?

No seriously. With all the articles we read about predatory practices, and various TV segments, what takes so long for things to fall into place?

I wonder if there is a good way to distribute information about school quality. And that applies to not-for-profit schools as well.

Collect metrics, make sure you give them to the purchaser at decision time. Akin to labels on food. If the for-profit or non-profit has great placement and great training, good for them.

<comment><USER12> Took a long time to take action against corrinthian colleges.

2007:

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-10-18-col...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-10-18-colleges- raid_N.htm)

2008:

[http://www.ocregister.com/articles/graduates-193364-job- stud...](http://www.ocregister.com/articles/graduates-193364-job- students.html)

This year:

[http://college.usatoday.com/2016/03/25/former-corinthian- col...](http://college.usatoday.com/2016/03/25/former-corinthian-colleges-to- pay-over-1b-for-defrauding-students/)

Unfortunately the damage done by these institutions is so great that it's ruined the credibility of getting many degrees or specialized training and all while saddling students with lifetime debt to the detriment of the national debt.

People really need to go to jail for this fraud. In some places I'm sure they are dragged out into the street and shot. I'm not advocating that . . . maybe one in the leg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The worst thing about ITT Tech (the stupid for profit scam school) is the problem it causes for the employees of ITT, the big defense contractor/technology company, which has nothing to do with the tech school. The "real" ITT has had its name dragged through the mud by these bullshit artists.

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

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

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/harris-corp-to-buy-exelis- for-4-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/harris-corp-to-buy-exelis- for-4-4-billion-1423223233)

[http://www.itt.com/Home/](http://www.itt.com/Home/)

So you worked at ITT in a senior technical engineering or management role, put that on your resume. Looking for a new job, good luck watching it get shitcanned by HT departments where somebody is scanning through resumes and will discard anything with "ITT" on it. Not fair, and lazy, but it happens.

<comment><USER14> Even though their name is simply ITT now (ITT Inc) I think I would put the old name International Telephone & Telegraph on my resume.

<comment><USER13> Know some people who worked for mid-size defence contractors (like EDO) that were acquired by ITT prior to 2012, even though they were receiving paychecks from "ITT" when they moved on, they put the name of the original easily googleable defense contractor on their resumes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department- education-b...](http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-education- bans-itt-enrolling-new-title-iv-students-adds-tough-new-financial-oversight)

An non-paywalled link.

</comment><comment><USER16> Please lets not dignify this sham of a business be referred to as a "University."

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm going to call BS on nearly everything said here about for profit schools. While I don't particularly care if ITT can't accept people relying on federal loans, I do believe that people aren't being duped by crappy schools so much as they are falling for them. Sure, the commercials have been everywhere for years, but it's really not hard for even the dumbest of dumb to type "ITT sucks" into Google and find all sorts of legitimate negative reviews. I have been to two trade schools for different careers; I chose them because there was almost nothing but positive reviews about them on the internet. I suspect that people attending scam schools have poor shenanigan-sensing skills and may subconsciously think that commercials on TV provide some sort of legitimacy. This is why I have no sympathy for the people who attended "Trump University", as at the very least you should go into such a program assuming there's a high chance it will sick and have an escape plan ready. But my generation doesn't seem to do that often and would rather rely on the safety nets provided by their parents and the state. Actually, it is a good thing that they can no longer take students with federal loans because those will be the same students whose ineptitude will fail them and then they will want the government to "forgive" their debt. LOL

</comment><comment><USER18> Haven't read the piece.

This is a very interesting headline, though, since as I understand it the federal nondiscrimination requirements for universities are tied to the fact that students receive federal funding, and when universities tried to point out that they can't tell whether a student's bank account has been filled by a government loan or some other means they got shot down.

<comment><USER19> They cannot see if the student is getting financial assistance in the way of food stamps, for example, but the student loan and grant program isn't like that. The federal money goes to the school first, and then anything above and beyond that will be deposited in the student's account. Which means students at this school now can either pay cash or get unsubsidized, non-garunteed funding through the private market, probably needing a cosigner or good credit. Some religious schools opt for this to be free from some types of federal standards. They may have other sorts of financial options available, but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER18> This is directly contradicted by [https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-vi-legal- manual#Direct](https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-vi-legal-manual#Direct) :

> Federal financial assistance may be received directly or indirectly.(11) For > example, colleges indirectly receive Federal financial assistance when they > accept students who pay, in part, with Federal financial aid directly > distributed to the students. Grove City College v. Bell, 465 U.S. 555, 564 > (1984)

Here's a summary from wikipedia ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX) ) of _Grove City_ :

> The Court decided that since Grove City College was only receiving federal > funding through the grant program, only that program had to be in > compliance. The ruling was a major victory for those opposed to Title IX, as > it made many institutions' sports programs outside of the rule of Title IX > and, thus, reduced the scope of Title IX.[3] The ruling, however, was short- > lived. The Civil Rights Restoration Act was passed in 1988 which extended > Title IX coverage to _all programs of any educational institution that > receives any federal assistance, both direct and indirect_.

(emphasis mine)

So, you're just plain wrong as to the state of the law; if the government gives somebody a big pile of cash, and they use it to pay for college, all federal regulations apply to the school. It is not necessary for the school to receive, distribute, or know about the federal money.

<comment><USER19> This doesn't change the fact that most federal loan and aid money goes directly to the school first. I'm not even sure if one can get the federal loans without working with the school.

It just appears that there are a few grant programs that pay directly to the student. This doesn't change the way the loans are generally processed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Whether for-profit or non-profit (yeah right) most upcoming freshman shouldn't be eligible for any of these student loans. They are all predatory, and these students have no credit history. I'd abolish loans for education completely and watch the cost of college and books drop back to affordable prices.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a private university with access to federal student loans, you get a firehose of financing, but aren't exposed to any downside from the defaults. Students and taxpayers are the bagholders, and you've already cashed the check.

</comment><comment><USER22> We should also stop allowing all colleges (including public ones) to graze on the huge loans that their students get. If there were not endless federal loans, public schools wouldn't be able to endlessly raise their tuition.

</comment><comment><USER23> "ITT is no longer allow to new enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants"

washington post is no longer allow to cheque there articles.

</comment><comment><USER24> Personally I don't think the government has the right to bar anyone from getting any kind of education. Yes, some of these are a shame, but the student might still learn something. And there's also the issue of time and scheduling. Many older people don't have the time to go to a traditional college and taking a 1 year program at night for a "2 year associates degree" fits them better.

Even worse still, most of these tech type schools around where I am are "non- profit". Not sure what that means or whats the difference, but they are just as much as a shame. One is some "art institute". I knew a girl who's dad paid $30K for her to go there for a year. She graduated but only worked briefly afterwards, and then couldn't get employed again. There is another aviation institute near me (also non-profit). Again $30K for 1 year of schooling. Although most could get a job afterwards, they found out working at McDonald's was far better than crawling around in a 110 degree aircraft fuel tank checking for leaks for $15hr.

<comment><USER25> I think the government has a right to ensure that the aid it pays out for an education is actually going towards an education, and not a front for siphoning federal aid for the enrichment of executives and shareholders.

<comment><USER26> >not a front for siphoning federal aid for the enrichment of executives and shareholders.

So many public and private non-profit universities are going to wet themselves if anyone starts enforcing that rule. Ok, they don't have shareholders, but it's well documented that the increasing cost of university and college educations is largely driven by administrative overhead and not paying professors, adjuncts and lecturers.

<comment><USER27> The increase in administrative overhead and such is more a case of the modern customer. Comparing private non profit universities and these BS places is stretching too far.

On the customers - the ability to attract modern students rests more on amenities like dining halls and dorms, not on the academics. Sad, but ultimately true.

<comment><USER26> This kind of competition is only possible due to federal aid. There is a certain amount of non-educational amenities being provided, but it's trivial to find articles like these

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873233168045781614...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323316804578161490716042814)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed- administr...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed- administrators-growth_n_4738584.html)

That document the growth in non-teaching administrative and professional staff at universities. Staff that grow at more than double the rates of enrollment and teaching positions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think the way it started is that the agency threatened to take ACICS off the approved agencies for accreditation.

</comment><comment><USER29> This could be good for ITT going fully private. Much more control of it's product.

</comment><comment><USER30> Now if we could just get them disallowed from running terrible TV advertisements...

</comment><comment><USER31> I am an ITT Tech graduate who paid their way through school using federal loans.

I earned my A.A.S in Electronic and Computer Engineering Technology and my B.S. in Electronic and Communications Engineering Technology from ITT Tech. I started the process in 2001. My total student loan debt was over $60K when I graduated but I knew that would be the case going in. I don't buy this crap about 18 years olds not knowing what they are getting into.

While my program of study was electronics engineering I always intended on working in IT. I wanted to get my degree in electronics engineering because I felt I would get more out of an instructor led education in electronics than I would in IT. After graduation my first job was an desktop support specialist for a software company which turned into a junior system administrator position one year later. After one more year I switched to my current job where I was hired as system administrator and am now a Senior Linux Administrator. I make good money for the location and was able to pay off all my student loans and put a down payment on a house when I was 32. In full disclosure this was speed up by about 5 years due to my mom passing and a life insurance policy I was the beneficiary on but it really only speed up the process by those 5 years. I already was doing pretty well before she passed.

I had some outstanding instructors and I refuse to do them an injustice by saying my education was sub-par or otherwise not worth the investment. Of all my friends who went to normal state universities I am doing the best for myself career wise. From what I heard from them at the time the state university standards where dropping just as much as the private for profit schools.

After earning my M.S. in Information Technology I went back and taught part time as an adjunct for both the electronics and information technology departments. I quit about 3 years ago when I moved about 1hr away and did not want to commute. This was just supplemental income for me and never my primary job so I was able to just do things my own way and not worry about the repercussions if I failed to may students or did not haul the corporate line. Things definitely where different by the time I went back to teach. The standards where not what they use to be when I was a student. They also added a lot of degree programs with attractive sounding names such as Digital Entertainment and Game Design which attracted a much broader student base and failed to provide any sort of meaningful filtering of who they accepted. However the faculty was still a outstanding group of people who knew their stuff.

I cant speak for other ITT Techs than my own. I'm sure for every person like me who had a positive experience there are numerous people who could tell a horror story about their experiences at ITT Tech. I just feel like a large part of the problem is that ITT accepts people who are not college material and these people are doomed to struggle or fail out and when they do they are also a demographic of individuals who are more likely to blame the system than accept any blame themselves. Perhaps it is ITT Techs fault for accepting them; its certainly doing the schools reputation a disservice. But just like with the student loans I have a hard time accepting people do not know what they are getting into or filling sorry for them if they did not do their research before hand.

I fully acknowledge ITT Tech has its fair share of problems which have gotten worse over the years. I just don't think its particularly unique to them or even for profit schools.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The original title is actually "This really might be the end of ITT" which I thought was clickbaity and didn't really explain the story.

<comment><USER15> On the other hand cutting off Title IV is basically the death penalty for a university ... So the original title might not be that far off from reality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clickbaity titles are "true" in the sense of being accurate. The issue with them is that they don't explain what the article is about (forcing you to click on them and then to figure out whether you are interested in the topic).

<comment><USER32> Maybe it's just me, but the original also sounds like someone with a bias against ITT would write</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Industrial PC market prefers Windows 7 to 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pacetoday.com.au/news/industrial-pc-market-prefers-windows-7-to-8

<comment><USER2> Obviously. We're, primarily customer driven though so I'm sure we will need to ship it some time in the nearish future.</comment>


Show HN: Open source aggregator for the hottest startup events in your area - <AUTHOR> http://startupri.org

<comment><USER2> Hi! I run AustinUX.org, which is something similar for UX events in Austin, TX, and I've talked with Ross Karchner, who used to run DC Tech Events[1] using his own "eventgrinder" software, as well as other people/groups in similar situations.

I really like that it's not a "platform," where I have to have an account or RSVP to you and then separately for the event. That's the last thing an aggregator needs to be.

I can offer some advice based on my own research for a future Austin UX redesign.

If you're just naively accepting various Meetup and Eventbrite organizer feeds, I think you need curation options. I don't add every event that every design-related meetup puts on, for a variety of reasons.

Lots of events don't have Meetup or Eventbrite listings. ATXDribbble and Ladies That UX ATX organize primarily on Twitter. UX Book Club Austin and my old meetup organizes on Facebook. Being able to link to multiple links for an event is useful.

Keep Austin Stylish, a fashion site with a similar calendar for fashion events, and Dance Deets, a dance events site, both have lots of events that don't have any online presence at all, they're just flyers in boutique windows and club walls. Being able to have an online URL for events without canonical URLs is useful _in these particular cases._

Showing more information is useful, as well. In my experience, the priority of information should be:

\- "Where am I?"

\- "What's going on today"

\- "Is there an active community here"

\- "What else should I be paying attention to"

\- "Where are things this week/month"

\- Plus being able to just add some things to my calendar without RSVPing

\- RSVP to things properly (and add them to my calendar)

"STARTUP RI" and your newsletter call to action are not the same as saying "Hi, this is an uncurated aggregator for startup and tech events in Rhode Island."

Also, all of RI? Isn't that a whole state? Will you really drive across the entire state to go to an event? Geography is important, practical geography, like neighborhoods, areas people work and live, etc. South Austin, Central Austin, North Austin, East Austin are all different. You don't show enough context to know where things are. (I'm not saying a map with pins.) You also don't provide enough context on why I'd want to attend the event. "Writing Your Business Plan [in] Providence, RI" tells me nothing about what will be covered, who is hosting, why, etc. I have to click through all of these links and that's not really saving me any time or trouble. Same for your "Startups" and "Resources" links, ideally I'm going to become part of these meetups' communities. Giving me a list of the ones you track (and why) is useful.

You don't break up the dates enough. One of the few things I really like about Plancast is that it breaks up into "Today," "Tomorrow," the next few days this week, "Next week," later this month, next month, etc. The conditions under which someone can attend an event or not is very individual. You need to provide as much context as possible.

There's a list of v2 stuff, too, but that's a start.

[1]: Offline, here's an old IA link that has content: [https://web.archive.org/web/20110807113142/http://www.dctech...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110807113142/http://www.dctechevents.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Vitorio - Thanks for the comment! I love your idea on "Today", "Tomorrow", and and "next week", as those changes are currently on my staging branch!

In regards to geography, most of the Rhode Island tech people I know work in Providence as it is the main city. Rhode Island, the home of the industrial revolution, is a great state, but it's so small that many of my old colleagues drove from other states (MA and CT).

However, I would love to break up the events by "topic" so would you be available for a quick Google Hangout?

Regards, Andrew

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Before we add more features and a city selector to it, let us know what you think!

\- @andrewcpkelley

</comment><comment><USER3> Where's the source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Michael - At the moment, I'm using Crunchbase, Eventbrite, Meetup, and Eventbrite. [http://github.com/acpk/startupri](http://github.com/acpk/startupri)</comment></comment>


A neural network library written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jackm321/RustNN <comment><USER2> More precisely, it's an MLP library.

My wishlist for Rust in scientific programming:

\- A really nice ndarray library interfacing with BLAS/LAPACK, like NumPy \- A nice CUDA library for wrapping the C API \- A Jupyter/IPython kernel \- and of course, a whole bunch of people using Rust for scientific programming.

<comment><USER3> In sum, everything you already have in Python.

<comment><USER4> Everything except execution times that are remotely acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Aw, you beat me to finishing! Nice work, I was trying to learn rust at the same time as writting it.

github.com/bfrog/tin</comment>


Intel to use nanowire/nanoribbon transistors in volume 'in five years' - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/15865/intel-to-use-nanowirenanoribbon-transistors-in-volume-in-five-years <comment><USER2> I think it can be difficult to appreciate the problem that 'gate all around' transistors solves. For all their "layers" semiconductor devices have been essentially stuck in 2 dimensions[1] since the beginning of time.

This is the key point (from the article) : _One of the key benefits of these GAA transistors is that the transistor can be specifically tailored to the operational requirements._

Basically, in the "way back" times there was exactly one type of transistor characterized for the whole process, so you got to use the "P" version or the "N" version but always the same transistor. This got upgraded a bit when companies figured out how to mix more than two (I've seen up to seven) types of transistors in the mix so that you could have "drive" transistors for I/O, and "internal" transistors (for logic) and "buffer" transistors that would move clock signals further on the chip or with a sharper turn on or turn off characteristic.

If you can create a process where the GAA transistor is parameterized _in the process_ (by which I mean the circuit designer can say "I want this parameter to be X, this other to by Y, and this third parameter to be Z all at frequency Q" for each and every transistor in the part, that is _huge_. I would guess that conservatively that adds 30% to your scaling efficiency.

Mask tweaks would be harder but at these scales I don't know that anyone is going in and "fixing up" problems with an e-beam on die these days.

Anyway, the result is going to be some pretty amazing parts when this stuff is integrated into the pipeline, especially mixed signal parts (some analog / some digital) because that is an area that can really benefit from a bunch of different transistor sizes.

[1] EDIT: Referring here to device geometry in the X and Y dimensions. While these determine some parameters, typically such transistors were all of a very similar size (back when the process node name like "1 micron" was equated to the transistor feature size, unlike today where its more of a measurement of _something_ such that the fabs can brag about how small it is)

<comment><USER3> When you said "2 dimensions" I assumed you were referring to the spacial dimensions X,Y.

Reading the rest of your comment, it appears you were referring to transistor parameters?

Edit: corrected tapographical error to _spacial_.

<comment><USER2> Excellent observation! Yes I was referring to geometric dimensions when I said "2 dimensions" but from a device physics perspective changing those two dimensions _also_ changes the device parameters :-) (in classic CMOS/NMOS processes I have seen it characterized as leakage and voltage threshold)

You are correct though it was worded in a confusing way.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I see. I initially thought you were going to launch in to three dimensional chips.

Thanks for clearing that up, makes sense now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In other news, Ampere [1] expect to launch their 128 Core ARM Chip by the end of this year.

I know nothing has really happened yet but I am already feeling a little sorry for Intel.

[1] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/15871/amperes-product- list-80...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15871/amperes-product- list-80-cores-up-to-33-ghz-at-250-w-128-core-in-q4)

<comment><USER5> couple of items which struck nicely

>Q32-17* - 32 cores and 4TiB RAM is 58W TDP, i.e. basically beefy laptop level

>4-Wide superscalar aggressive out-of-order execution

So, with the last item being the key to modern CPU performance, it isn't just Intel, it is probably whole x86 family will feel the pinch. Add to that Apple's move to ARM. Sounds like a promise of great times to come - i.e. competing architectures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe they should worry about 10nm first :)

<comment><USER7> That's not how the industry works.

They have always multiple technologies in different stages of development.

Intel failed one major technology node and it will hit their profits hard,but anyone who thinks that it has any effect to their 7nm node don't know how this works.

<comment><USER6> Just some lighthearted fun poking at Intel :) They were market leader long enough they can beat a few jokes I think.

I do wonder though whether the fact Intel failed on 10nm means they're likely to fail on 7nm and below as a result of a failed culture? Certainly the technology looks very different for the next node (or so I assume) and maybe Intel just made a bad assumption/went down the wrong path that cost them many years for 10nm, but the fact they weren't able to insulate against the risk does seem somewhat worrying, right?

<comment><USER8> I'm totally unaware of the Intel-failed-at-10nm story -- is there somewhere good to read an intro to that?

<comment><USER6> This talks about it some: [https://www.extremetech.com/computing/295159-intel- acknowled...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/295159-intel-acknowledges- its-long-10nm-delay-caused-by-being-too-aggressive). I hadn't read it but this article seems to talk about it as well: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/technology/intel- culture-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/technology/intel-culture- robert-swan.html).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> lachlan-sneff I wonder if advancements in semiconductor manufacturering will eventually help bootstrap molecular nanotechnology.

</comment><comment><USER9> Excited to see this in ten years.

</comment><comment><USER10> You think this is a knee jerk reaction to Apple's ARM line announcement and Japan's TOP500 ARM headlines?

<comment><USER11> Doubt it, to quote Jim Keller "We're all building nanowires in the fab. Intel, TSMC, Samsung, everybody's working on it."

<comment><USER12> It seems like there was plenty to still work on then. What's up with Jim Keller's abrupt resignation? [https://www.anandtech.com/show/15846/jim-keller- resigns-from...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15846/jim-keller-resigns-from- intel-effective-immediately)

<comment><USER13> I was wondering about his resignation as well. He does have a history of showing up, pushing the technology bounds, optimizing the fab and design processes, then moving on to do it again. Maybe he just hit his benchmarks for work completed and wanted a new challenge.

<comment><USER14> He left due to a close family illness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > ... 'In Five Years'

So what does Intel want us to do today, make a circle around a bonfire and sing praises?

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems like too little, way too late. In five years we're going to see an entirely different landscape in regards to the popularity of arm processors.</comment>


At the Blackboard: Kurt Vonnegut diagrams the shapes of stories (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/arts-letters/blackboard <comment><AUTHOR> previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18844948](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18844948)</comment>


The Counterintuitive Effects of Cancel Culture - <AUTHOR> http://coconutheadsets.com/2020/07/the-counterintuitive-effects-of-cancel-culture-how-banning-things-makes-them-stronger/ <comment><USER2> Expressing this simple idea will get you attacked with righteous fury on the forums of arstechnica and other places that really should know better. its so strange to be derisively called a "lefty" and "librul" by your family and then called "alt right" and "fascist" online.

</comment><comment><USER3> Uh... that's not counterintuitive. That's the point.

The problem is that right wingers seem to feel that they're part of the conversation. Nobody involved in what they call "cancel culture" cares what right wingers think. They already know what right wingers think. In the US, the right wing exists to oppose everything left wingers want -- even if it's something they used to like. We already know that. It's predictable and obvious.

This is a conversation that the left wing has within itself. Unlike the American right wing, where an irreligious, adulterous, multiply-bankrupt draft dodger can become the universally-beloved darling of the "law and order party" because they are exciting and therefore win elections, the left wing is asking itself hard questions. People aren't always good, even the ones you like, and you need to decide what you're going to do about that.

There's no way to discuss that without elevating it. There's nothing wrong with people knowing that JK Rowling is a transphobe, and that some people are going to be angry enough about it to want to be shut of her. They see transphobia as a threat to themselves, and it won't go away by pretending it doesn't exist. That means airing it.

As I said, nobody really cares what right-wingers make of that. It's safe enough to treat all right wingers as already transphobic: they will, reliably, vote for transphobic candidates, and mock those who want to deal with trans issues because they themselves don't have to care about it. The discussion doesn't involve them, and if they happen to hear about it and invent new epithets to call left wingers, that's just Tuesday.

I'll close by saying, even though it's really not the done thing, that I do find it amusing that I'm about to be downvoted into oblivion by people complaining about "cancel culture". That, too, is OK. I've said what needed to be said, and it's part of a difficult conversation that will be full of false starts and failures. Even among people who didn't reach for the downvote button six words in, there are actual, genuine disagreements that need to be worked out. If it happens here, fine. If not, it will continue to happen.</comment>


The Evolution of Character Codes, 1874-1968 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://trafficways.org/ascii/ascii.pdf <comment><USER2> Enjoy this character code puzzle. [http://realmode.com/punch22.html](http://realmode.com/punch22.html)

<comment><USER3> I've been thinking about this all night. I can't seem to wrap my head around it. Got a hint for me?

<comment><USER4> It's not possible if they want to be able to over-punch their current stock of 5-bit punched used tapes. Proof: take for instance the character U. U has 4 holes, leaving 3 unpunched spots, which means 7 possibilities for modification (2^3 - 1 = 7). Those 7 possible modified Us must cover all of the 25 non-U letters.

We can assume then that it's not a requirement to be able to over-punch their existing used 5-bit punched stock. Then it's possible, and my proof above of why it's not possible to convert a 4-hole U to more than 7 other characters is a big hint as to one solution... think of a primary encoding and a secondary encoding. What property must the primary encoding have in order to guarantee any character in the primary encoding can be over-punched to one of 25 characters in the secondary encoding?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093735).</comment>


We underestimate the threat of facial recognition technology at our peril - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/17/we-underestimate-the-threat-of-facial-recognition-technology-at-our-peril <comment><AUTHOR> Taken from the comments (a Guardian pick):

\--

" Parliament should refuse to expand its use until the government can demonstrate it won't be used to violate human rights or turn us all into criminal suspects."

Which obviously they will not and cannot do. The problem with these types of laws and systems- is that even if you 'trust' the government that installs them (you shouldn't)- you may not be able to trust the next government. They call it 'turn key' tyranny. The idea being that their is a system in place- and all it will take is for a fascist authoritarian government to come to power and 'turn the key'\- using this mass surveillance to control, intimidate, police, terrorise, imprison, or kill their enemies.

In this context the technology can be likened to Pandoras Box. Once it has been opened it cannot be closed. Also- it is potentially so powerful that it will prove irresistible to an entire class of Authoritarians and Corporate interests.

As AI evolves, linked with these mass surveillance technologies- we face a future worse than Gattaca- a place where the machines can see if you are depressed, antisocial, lying, or just conscientiously objecting to an immoral government. You can be denied a job- merely because of your facial expression- and you will never know or be told what happened. Once this type of power gets into the hands of corporations they could deny you insurance based on your 'personality profile' or 'disease markers' they read off your face... and you will never know it's happened.

And NONE of this is new: in the 1960's ASIO routinely vetted applicants for jobs at the ABC and denied them- on the basis of their political affiliations or activism- and the applicants were never told- and had no right of reply. These types of powers have been abused in the past- and they will be abused in the future.

As we saw in the USA- many many people in Government were happy to approve such mass surveillance- and denounce Snowden for revealing the extent of such programs- right up until the point they found out that they themselves had been targeted. Suddenly they developed a belief int he right to privacy.

With systems like this in place- the machines and databases themselves will make resistance useless- as we will all potentially be blackmailed by our own data. All will fear that the power can be turned on them- and all will be silenced. Self-policing: the Pa-Opticon dystopian dream made reality.

And any fool who says only those with something to hide have something to fear: recall that ASIO has been given the power in Australia to go into someone computer and implant documents and data covertly- and that any journalists who reports on such an action faces years in prison. That's right: In Australia ASIO has the power to plant evidence!

They will say- it is only to be used against the 'terrorists and pedophiles' so we mustn't worry our little heads... which brings me back to Turn key Tyranny...

The only question left is: has the Key already been Turned?</comment>


Angrave's crowd-sourced System Programming wiki-book - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/angrave/SystemProgramming/wiki <comment><USER2> It looks like this grew out of course materials for the sophomore-level operating systems course at UIUC. If that's the case, they've really stepped up their game since I took the class in the late 1990s. At the time, they had made the extremely regrettable decision to do the course in Java. The pinnacle of the semester was an assignment to complete the half-finished implementation of a TFTP client. (Lest anyone think I'm dissing UIUC here -- like any university the quality of its instruction was uneven. UIUC was also home to the formidable Jason Zych, who taught a great sophomore data structures course using C++.)

</comment><comment><USER3> >Interestingly enough, there are efforts to improve Scala compilation time by keeping only a subset of the language. Which then raises the question, why keep Scala if you ditch its powerful features (such as macros)?

Is reasonable scala proposing to remove macros? I read as though they proposed to compatible with others like TLScalac or scalac or Dotty?

</comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting</comment>


Talkr: Add a chat widget to blogs - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/03/28/talkr/ <comment><USER2> You know a technology is bad when someone linking to it has to say "warning" after the link. PDFs are also in this category.

<comment><USER3> It's not PDFs that are bad so much as Acrobat. When I'm using kghostview or something else that doesn't require me to go work on another task while I'm waiting for it to load, I don't mind clicking on PDF links. Of course, a lot of people abuse PDF and use it where they should just be using HTML, but that's not the technology's fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This will never take off as an applet. Huge mistake. Hope no one here is creating applets.</comment>


Ask HN: Kill Hollywood or Empower Hollywood?  - <AUTHOR>

Where do you stand? Paul released his RFP to "Kill Hollywood". Jason wrote a post to "Empower Hollywood".<p>I ask, because I am inspired to solve the problem in this space. I am interested to see what HN sees as the future of the entertainment industry. <comment><USER2> Do what you're good at. The tech industry blows at content. It's great at disruptive technology. Do that, but don't forget the goals of what you're doing... The goal should be that great content gets made. That means that people in Hollywood need to eat.

Of course, in the future Hollywood people may not eat quite as well.

Of course, in the future Tech people may not eat quite as well either.

<comment><USER3> I was having a similar conversation with a friend of mine the other day, and I think what PG pointed out was really poignant, that content doesn't have to be movies and TV shows.

I do like the occasional movie, or TV show, but I don't need nearly as much as I used to. With Netflix and Hulu and YouTube, I don't have to wait for _new_ content, just new to me. And there's plenty of legacy content to keep us happy if we really require a 22 minute sitcom.</comment></comment>


Twitter: Who are these men are in this picture and how are they in my tweet? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/capetownbrown/status/1173756778531708928 <comment><USER2> KellyM > Maybe one has nothing to do with the other but it's unsettling that this has happened when tweeting photos of bath time.

Ryan Dalton > RIIIIIIGHT!

Twitter seems to encourage this reactionary, fearful behavior. What would be more likely to cause this photo to appear: a technical glitch or a malicious act?

<comment><USER3> Twitter is the Jerry Springer of the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good luck getting through to Twitter's useless "support team". I've been locked out of my account for four years and it's pretty much impossible to get the attention of anyone over there.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hash collision?

<comment><USER6> For sure a hash collision in their content-addressed storage system for images. Probably they take a thumbnail of the image and pass it to a md5 function or something instead of truly making sure there are no duplicate IDs.

<comment><USER7> But why not include the timestamp? How many image uploads can Twitter have within whatever resolution time you'd use? I wouldn't have thought it was _that_ many.

<comment><USER6> Including the timestamp defeats the content-addressing. You want to not having to store two duplicate images if they are uploaded at different times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 4chan has an issue where if two posts are made at the exact same time, the photos attached are swapped, which makes for some funny posts. Not sure if the two problems are related, but if they find the men in the photo, I wonder if they posted a picture of a doll.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty neat - just tried from two separate networks, got two separate results.

</comment><comment><USER10> The most interesting part of this tweet, is that when faced with a situation that you have to decide if it was technical glitch or the Illuminati, people just go on and believe it was the Illuminati.</comment>


Extremes become routine in an emerging new Arctic - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0892-z <comment><USER2> We have got to organize geoengineering efforts before the ocean currents stop. What I'm worried is a sudden shift in climate that kills billions of us, in an event that occurs within the next 10-30 years. Release of methane hydrates trapped in ice and methane bursting out of the tundra scares the hell out of me.

Cooperation from governments is necessary to actually implement it, but I think it is a mistake to try to rely on those institutions.

Why do I think this? Our government bungled development of reusable rockets for decades until SpaceX came along and just did it. You can quibble about how much NASA provided in seed money, but that's really not what I'm trying to get at here.

My second example for why we can't rely on the government is the way the Coronavirus pandemic played out. We watch the slow-moving train wreck from January onward. Every single one of our institutions failed us! In fact, many of those institutions _prevented_ individual action, with respect to testing: [https://paulromer.net/fda_perpetual_process_machine/](https://paulromer.net/fda_perpetual_process_machine/)

Finally, I think Allan Savory is also part of the answer. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI)</comment>


What is the roundest country? - <AUTHOR> http://gciruelos.com/what-is-the-roundest-country.html <comment><USER2> > We cannot use those (xi,yi)(xi,yi) directly, because they come from a > Mercator projection of the earth, thus they are distorted. I had to apply a > transformation to them in order to get coordinates that aren't distorted. In > order to do that I used the pyproj library.

Nitpick: you apply a transformation where they are _less_ distorted. There is no "distorsionless" mapping from R^2->sphere. A more accurate approach would be to use spherical geometry to calculate the actual areas, but I doubt that it would change the values too much though.

Also I would be curious what was the exact projection you used and how you choose the parameters for each country.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I do is the following: For each country, I transform its points from the equirectangular projection I'm given to an azimutal projection centered in some point (that depends on the country).

That point is obtained by computing the midpoint of two random points from the border of the country.

I know it is not the best (if the country is not convex, then the midpoint isn't necessarily inside it), but it works. The code is at the end of the post, if you want to take a look at it.

Thanks for pointing that out though, I'm going to add this to the post.

Edit: you were right, it wasn't even the Mercator projection, it was the equirectangular projection. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neither this, nor the post it's inspired by, is as interesting to me as a question with a much simpler-to-calculate answer: what's the _smoothest_ (i.e. lowest fractal-dimension, smallest surface-area-to-volume ratio) country?

At the top would be some country with artificially-defined borders that have not since been reshaped by war or treaty. At the bottom would likely be the most "historied" country.

(Then again, at the bottom might just be Canada or Russia, since they have so much jagged coast to count. Perhaps, for the parts of a country that abut international waters instead of another country, we could use the political boundaries of the country's _coastal waters_ surrounding that coast, rather than the boundaries of its landmass.)

<comment><USER4> Would be interesting as even natural borders are very different. I remeber South Africa (very straight coastline) vs Ireland (very fractal coastline) being used as an example for complexity in nature.

<comment><USER5> Coastlines vary even within the same country. See South Korea (rank 51). Very smooth in the east, crazy fractals in the southwest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For some reason Egypt has shown up as the most rectangular and now one of the most round countries. Goes back to how the average person's definition of these terms isn't capture by the metric. When I say a country is "rectangular" I'm thinking about straight lines and sharp corners. "Round" I guess should be the absence of corners?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's nothing wrong with that. A square is very "round" in the sense that it is very close to a circle in terms of shape, compared to all other possible polygons out there.

<comment><USER7> > A square is very "round" in the sense that it is very close to a circle in > terms of shape, compared to all other possible polygons out there.

Regular convex n-gons approach a circle in terms of shape as n increases. A square represents n=4. For any n>4, the polygon will be closer to a circle in terms of shape than a square, no?

ADDED: Right. Thank you for pulling my head out of abstract, regular convexness. IRL FTW. :-)

<comment><USER8> Yes, but you are only looking at regular N-gons, while the person you are responding to is considering all polygons.

Square countries are relatively close to being circular compared to the many highly irregular countries out there, not compared to other regular N-gons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Watch out for over-generalization, especially when the thing you're generalizing is a geographic shape.

(In GIS, "generalization" is what you might also call "simplification" \- reducing the vertex count of the borders so you have less data to deal with.)

Take Scarborough Reef (aka Scarborough Shoal) for example: #6 on the list with a Roundness of 0.9. It only has four vertices, a simple squarish quadrilateral. Is that what it is really shaped like? You be the judge:

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scarborough_Shoal_La...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scarborough_Shoal_Landsat.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I know, that is a pity. I didn't simplify anything though, I use all the vertices that the dataset gives me, the dataset is the problem here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if they will get the same result if they plot the countries as shapes in a physics engine and roll them down the hill.

<comment><USER11> There's a half-baked mobile game idea in that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't recognize France on spot 156. As for United States on spot 121, Netherlands on spot 93, Denmark on spot 97 etc. it looks like they have included all overseas territories. But it does look weird.

<comment><USER13> France seems to be centered on Siberia or something.

You can see Polynesia at bottom right, Southern and Antarctic Lands at bottom left, mainland at center left, and the territories in the Americas at the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, Egypt is both round (20) and rectangular (1)?

Compare: [http://pappubahry.com/misc/rectangles/](http://pappubahry.com/misc/rectangles/)

<comment><USER8> There's actually a lot of overlap. See Nauru (2, 10), Sierra Leone (1, 14), Uruguay (9, 13) etc.

It's interesting, I think both of these metrics reward largely the same thing, independent of actual approximate shape, which is a lack of irregularity in their borders and many degrees of symmetry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What happened to France?

<comment><USER16> The borders of France, and other colonial powers, are considered to include all of their overseas territories. This is a bit easier to see with the USA.

In practice I don't think this affects the computation much, since the overseas territories have relatively small areas.

<comment><USER17> I don't think "Metropolitan" France would be 156th.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> LaTeX nitpick: use \text for function names, like \text{roundness}, or else you have _roundness_ which means _r_ times _o_ times _u_...

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice writeup but it seems like there should be a closed analytical solution vs. an iterative one.

</comment><comment><USER20> It seems a bit counter-intuitive that Vatican is 4th roundest, and 2nd rectangularest

<comment><USER21> You can fully specify any rectangle by its length and width (and the fact that it's a rectangle...). They're all very round compared to arbitrary shapes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nauru is the 2nd roundest (0.923) and the 10th most rectangular (0.917). [http://pappubahry.com/misc/rectangles/](http://pappubahry.com/misc/rectangles/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Swaziland is a good candidate for the "roundest country". Macedonia and Qatar wouldn't be too far behind either.

<comment><USER4> 11, 21 and 103 respectively, according to this (table in the middle).

<comment><USER23> Hadn't see the table before my reply. I was just thinking about the countries from the ones that i remembered. Thanks for pointing me to it!

<comment><USER4> Weird, I missed it too when I first read the article, even though it is bang in the middle. They should have mentioned it in the text maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I had no idea what or where Serranilla Bank (#70) was. Something new to learn everyday. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Why do France looks like little dots???

<comment><USER26> Overseas dependencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nauru is the 2nd roundest I know.

</comment><comment><USER28> I dont know.</comment>


Is iOS7 out yet? - <AUTHOR> http://isios7outyet.com/

<comment><USER2> A quick chart:

        Eastern – 1 PM
        Central – 12 PM
        Mountain – 11 AM
        Pacific - 10 AM
        London – 6 PM
        Moscow – 9 PM
        New Dehli – 10:30 PM
        Shanghai – 1 AM Thursday
        Tokyo – 2 AM Thursday
        Melbourne – 3 AM Thursday
        Auckland – 5 AM Thursday

Stolen from: [http://www.gottabemobile.com/2013/09/17/ios-7-release- time-e...](http://www.gottabemobile.com/2013/09/17/ios-7-release-time-expect- ios-7-download/)

<comment><USER3> 10AM Pacific

<comment><USER2> Thanks, added.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> at first I was shocked that this entry got 5 votes in 10 minutes(I probably know why), but then I realized it must takes effort to "break" a webpage with 3 elements in it. I am referring to the twitter button which is larger than the page and so shows the horizontal scrollbar. And if I reduce the window height the scollbar goes away and reappears whenever it feels like... I don't even...

Now, ok, I am sounding like a jerk, but seriously if you want to make something like this at least a bit of effort...

And now the shameless plug text is even at least 2x bigger...

<comment><USER5> looks like it's fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > BillGuard. Finance made beautiful on iOS7.

Looks like this is a (not-so-)subtle advertising attempt by BillGuard.

<comment><USER7> I'm OK with that. There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/19705/ios-7-download- release-d...](http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/19705/ios-7-download-release-date- arrives)

</comment><comment><USER9> One word of content. Six words of advertisement.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be cooler with a counter :D

</comment><comment><USER11> Abe Vigoda is still alive.</comment>